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  For the past couple of years, I've been in the process of dropping US tech services. I've moved away from Google and Microsoft, deleted Meta and Twitter accounts years ago, and kept WhatsApp only because life without it would be incredibly difficult. Substack was the last one on the list, and I'm now getting off it too. Finding a suitable alternative wasn't easy until I discovered Writizzy, which is just perfect. Along the way, I've also realised how few apps I actually nee...

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  People across the US are heading to the polls. This election is already setting records. Early voting has reached an all-time high, while campaign spending is expected to hit $11.6 billion, making it the most expensive midterm election in American history and even topping the 2024 election. Below the 50 biggest donors. Democracy may be one person, one vote, but some people have more than one vote's worth of influence to spend. Make of it what you will. #midterms https://www.visualcapita...

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  "I don't think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don't take the toys out of their hands, we are fools." __ Ray Bradbury

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  Brazil's government says deforestation rates in the country's Amazon and savanna regions have fallen to record lows since records began in 1988. Of course this trend could shift depending on the outcome of the upcoming elections. Worth mentioning that deforestation had surged under the administration of the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro. https://apnews.com/article/brazil-amazon-deforestation-lula-flavio-bolsonaro-c00358ad3db9d53fcdf3a1e65da5d8ec

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  In Finland, Google chopped down 250,000 trees, without a permit, to make room for a shiny new data centre. If you are still using Google, maybe it’s time to ask yourself whether its services are worth a quarter‑million trees and why we have to sacrifice so much of our nature. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/oct/22/finland-google-felling-trees-datacentre #google #nature

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  Actual sea surface temperatures have now passed 30°C in the key Niño 3.4 region of the Pacific ocean. For the first time in this data record. This is the perfect storm of climate change and a super El Niño. #climatechange #elnino

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  I am sure this is nothing to worry about ... #elnino #extremetemps #climatechange

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  That's pretty nuts guys and terrified. Tom Watson’s first intervention in his new job at spytech firm Palantir is to write a letter to his former colleague Labour MP Clive Lewis to say that the firm has been surveilling his anti-Palantir activities. Is there anything the Big Brother doesn’t want to know about us? #surveillance https://www.thenerve.news/p/clive-lewis-tom-watson-palentir-letter-labour-conference-citizens-event

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  Today, I'm writing about the public education in the age of climate change and why the next heatwave won’t just disrupt school days; it will disrupt children’s opportunities. https://theclimatehistorian.substack.com/p/public-education-in-the-age-of-climate?r=1qy42b&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web #climatechange #education

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  A teenager struggling with climate anxiety searches for hope in an unexpected place – writing letters to imprisoned activists. Max, 14, is on a quest to understand the human stories behind direct action and why so many climate protesters are in prison. Why indeed https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2026/sep/22/prison-letters-the-teenager-writing-letters-to-jailed-climate-activists-documentary?CMP=saturdayedition_email #climatechange #protest

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  Friday’s newsletter is here 👇 Today I'm writing about Jensen Huang, AI, Super El Niño, and the Growing Human Cost of the Climate Crisis https://theclimatehistorian.substack.com/p/jensen-huang-ai-super-el-nino-and?r=1qy42b&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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  It’s crazy how all these real problems around the world - the heat, floods, fires, all getting worse with this huge El Niño - barely get talked about in the media, while everyone is getting wild about AI going rogue. Sure, AI might be a big risk someday, but climate change is already happening and it is relentless. And somehow we are not treating it as the urgent real-time crisis it is. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/23/el-nino-450000-extra-deaths-six-months #climatecha...

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  To get an idea of just how dehumanising politics has become in our world today, here is an official mini‑site run by the US government. One can easily imagine the Nazis setting up something similar back then, had they had the means. Is this what the US has become today? https://www.whitehouse.gov/aliens/

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  People often ask me why I walk. Usually I say that those who walk live longer. The immune system gets stronger. Your body gets stronger. Walking clears your head, boosts your mood, and sharpens your memory. Walking is a superpower. But deep down, I know that there is another reason. Everything around us is fast-paced, frantic, and optimised. Walking is wonderfully slow. Sometimes, I think it’s one of the most radical things we can do. https://theclimatehistorian.substack.com/p/why-do-i-walk?r=...

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  Climeworks reported that its Mammoth facility in Iceland removed 675 tonnes of CO₂ in the first half of the year, nearly six times more than the same period last year. If that rate continues, it would remove around 1,350 tonnes annually. We emit ~38.1 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year. Removing 1,350 tonnes offsets about 0.0000035% of annual emissions. So we’re reversing global warming by roughly 2 seconds annually. Progress! https://www.energyconnects.com/news/renewables/2026/september/car...

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  I’d never really thought how climate change might impact public education, especially in the early years, when children’s development is most vulnerable. Could climate become a force that reshapes how schools operate and what they teach? "Pupils missed 15m hours of school time during UK’s June heatwave, study finds" https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/sep/11/pupils-lost-teaching-time-uk-june-heatwave-school-closures #climatechange #education

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  For more than 100 consecutive days, global sea surface temperatures have hovered at record‑breaking highs. On 9 September, the global average sea surface temperature reached 21.23°C. That sounds quite pleasant if you think of the ocean as a swimming pool and imagine yourself floating in it with a drink, but it becomes considerably less agreeable when you remember that the ocean is one of the planet’s great climate regulators. https://theclimatehistorian.substack.com/p/when-the-planet-crosses-...

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  “There is after all, a 10% probability that we won’t be around long enough to witness the full impact of climate change. In a darkly ironic way, it seems we have managed to create two existential problems at once, and one of them might solve the other simply by removing the audience.” https://theclimatehistorian.substack.com/p/when-the-planet-crosses-a-line?r=1qy42b&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web #climatechange #ocean #elnino

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  A few days ago, I posted a short text about a small number of billionaires who own a massive share of the world’s wealth and the damage that kind of ownership does to the planet and everyone on it. What struck me most in the responses wasn’t anger but something closer to paralysis. So today I’m writing this: the problem isn’t just that billionaires have too much money. It’s that we’ve started acting as if they have the right to decide the future, our future. https://theclimatehistorian.su...

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  989 people in the U.S., out of 340 million, are billionaires. 3,428 people, out of 8.3 billion, worldwide as of March 2026. That's roughly one in every 2.4 million humans. A tiny group of the human population and yet they do disproportionate damage to the planet and its people. We are destroying the Earth to create wealth for these men. It doesn't have to stay this way. We can change this. https://www.forbes.com/sites/pr/2026/03/10/forbes-40th-annual-worlds-billionaires-list-elon...

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  Climate change versus heritage: the little fight nobody asked for. Right now, heritage looks like it’s winning. But when the real showdown arrives, safe humans versus beautifully preserved furnaces from 1890, it’s not exactly a big dilemma. In the end, the moral obligation always wins. People get insulation. Nostalgia gets a “sorry about that.” https://www.lemonde.fr/en/money-investments/article/2026/08/10/french-state-heritage-architects-block-roof-insulation-projects-over-height-restricti...

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  This El Niño is projected to be the largest in at least 150 years El Niño has always returned. What has changed is the world it now returns to. https://theclimatehistorian.substack.com/p/this-el-nino-is-projected-to-be-the

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  Be like her. (Illustration by Patrick Léger https://patrick-leger.com/) #reading #books

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  The El Niño climate pattern that’s strengthening in the Pacific Ocean is on track to be the largest one in at least 150 years. If current forecasts pan out, the #elnino will unleash a surge of heat from the ocean that, combined with human-induced global warming, will probably make next year the hottest on record. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02293-y

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  “I want us to be happy about the weather. I don't know whether something's happened to meteorologists to make you all a little bit fatalistic and harbingers of doom.” "Because I think there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of excess deaths. It will be brutal.” https://open.substack.com/pub/theclimatehistorian/p/a-bit-warm-for-june?r=1qy42b&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web #climate #weather #extremetemps

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  Sometimes a single historical detail explains an entire era. When Alan Greenspan was sworn in, Ayn Rand was there in the Oval Office watching. That image says rather a lot about what happened next. https://open.substack.com/pub/marginalspace/p/the-fountainhead-of-all-our-problems?r=28pz0f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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  Across Europe, heat waves and droughts have increased the at‑risk‑of‑poverty rate by 1.1 percentage points, pushing an additional 5.6 million people into poverty between 2004 and 2022, a reminder that climate change is creating real hardship for people who never chose to face it. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/a-drying-and-heating-up-europe-is-deepening-poverty-and-inequality-study #climatechange #inequality

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  The word “uncharted” has become a journalistic cliché, especially in climate‑related reporting. Most people don’t consciously care about the word itself but journalists use it because it is safe, dramatic, and it presents uncertainty. They overuse it because they're struggling to describe a world where the baseline keeps shifting. When everything is unprecedented, language gets repetitive. https://www.ft.com/content/857d4917-b04b-4349-b90a-7f3cf7aabd3f?syn-25a6b1a6=1 #climatechange...

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  It’s astonishing how far greed can drive people. Already rich, they still grab for every last scrap, and they do it by denying millions the services they depend on to live. Some firms, like BlueCrest, 👇 were rebranding employees as “self‑employed partners” instead of staff, allowing both sides to dodge the higher taxes and National Insurance contributions that real employees must pay. Obviously, once the loophole closes, they hate it. https://www.ft.com/content/6b8cd156-c5bb-4cce-8c54-818fd1...

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  If there is one lesson to take from this latest heatwave, it is that Europe’s record-breaking heat is part of a broader climatic transformation that is gradually reshaping the continent. We're already testing the limits of what our infrastructure, hospitals, and institutions can absorb, and the only way to prevent those limits from being pushed further is the one we have known about for decades: a fast phase‑out of fossil fuels. https://open.substack.com/pub/theclimatehistorian/p/does...