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Tim Watkins

Our climate future looks bleak

Polar Bear stuck on ice

We could be seeing the worst case scenario for climate change, according to Eric Mack at Forbes: “Here’s a few brutal facts about what’s been going on since October of 2015: The past seven months have been the hottest, based on global averages, that any human alive today has ever …

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Is energy about to topple the shadow banking sector?

Fracking Marcellus

The shadow banking sector is made up of companies that act as intermediaries in the credit market; arranging loans that regulated banks could not or would not want to make directly.  They are the same kind of companies that acted as intermediaries arranging all of those sub-prime mortgage loans that …

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It’s NOT the economy, stupid!

Trump

The rise of Donald Trump and – to a lesser degree – Bernie Sanders is inexplicable to most professional pundits.  Trump was supposed to be a joke candidate who was widely expected to fall at the first hurdle.  The Republican Party was bound to opt for a Washington insider like …

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UK banking reform hits the wrong target

Bank reform

Proposals from the Competition and Markets Authority to empower customers to switch banks are an inadequate response to the wrong problem according to Christine Berry at the New Economics Foundation: “They’re calling for customers to receive more information about their accounts and alerts when they’re nearly overdrawn, as well as …

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Global temperatures heated up again in April

London haze

The latest figures from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies showed that April’s temperature was the highest on record – the seventh month in a row in which global temperature records have been broken. According to Ciara Linnane at Market Watch: “It was the hottest April on record, the data …

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Renewables not growing fast enough to wean us off fossil fuels

Turbines traffic

Renewables and nuclear will be the fastest growing energy sources by 2040 according to the latest projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).  Renewables are expected to grow by 2.6 percent per year and nuclear by 2.3 percent; with the highest growth rates in developing, non-OECD states. Unfortunately, almost …

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Oil and Gas giants go renewable

Windy Future

Competition in the renewable energy sector is about to heat up, says Selina Williams at the Wall Street Journal.  This is because major global oil and gas companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and Total have begun to invest in the sector: “While the investments of Europe’s biggest energy companies …

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Britain needs a rethink on nuclear energy

Hinkley

New Nuclear Watch Europe, an industry-funded pressure group, called on ministers to review which nuclear projects are most likely to be built, according to Kiran Stacey at the Financial Times.  In particular, ongoing problems with the Hinkley Point C project threaten to undermine the whole industry: “Other projects are currently …

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UK Government too fixated on Brexit

Brexit

The UK government is losing sight of the economy, according to Szu Ping Chan and Lauren Davidson in the Telegraph: “The Government is ‘losing sight of the economy’ and using the EU referendum as an excuse for policy inaction, according to Europe’s biggest accountancy body.   In a letter to the …

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Trump appoints pro-fracking/anti-environment energy advisor

Donald Trump

Republican presidential contender Donald Trump has asked one of America’s most ardent drilling advocates and climate change skeptics to help him draft his energy policy, according to Valerie Volcovici at Reuters: “U.S. Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota – a major oil drilling state – is writing a white …

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