This Week in Links
A selection of links: Things worth reading and thinking about this week.
In More and More and More, historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues that “energy transitions” have been more like energy source additions: new energy sources tend to get layered on top of older sources. This FT chart suggests much the same: solar and wind have grown rapidly in recent years—but alongside rising fossil-fuel use. Of course, that doesn’t mean a green energy transition is impossible—but we must be mindful of the addition-versus-substitution problem facing the urgently needed pivot to renewables.
Two million people voted in the New York City mayoral election—nearly double the turnout in recent elections. Despite a strong countermobilization by Andrew Cuomo, “Mamdani’s million” secured the 34-year-old democratic socialist’s victory. Mamdani combined a politics of material redistribution and affordability with charismatic coalition-building and an emphasis on dignity for all.
Earlier this week, one of the world’s richest countries, Norway, decided that it can’t afford to manage its $2.1 trillion sovereign wealth fund in accordance with its own ethical guidelines.
Norwegian Labour Party finance minister Jens Stoltenberg found common cause with the right-wing Progress Party, Conservative Party, and Centre Party to “pause” the Oil Fund’s ethical divestments. Stoltenberg claimed the fund’s guidelines could force the fund to divest from tech giants like Microsoft and Meta.
But suspending the fund’s ethical divestments tout court on those grounds sets up a grotesque moral principle: the greater the offender, the less justifiable it is to hold them to account.
The underlying story, reported in the Norwegian press, is that the Trump administration has leaned heavily on Norway, making known its dissatisfaction with an earlier decision by the wealth fund to divest from the bulldozer manufacturer Caterpillar over links to Israel’s occupation.
Even “Mod Squad” Democrat Abigail Spanberger deployed left-economic populist messaging in Virginia’s gubernatorial race:
Here are some other things worth reading and thinking about this week:
Sky: How the world’s richest man is boosting the British right
LA Review of Books: The Return of the Luddites
The Guardian: How Stephen Miller is turning the US state department into an ‘anti-immigration machine’
Foreign Policy: How Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget Became So Powerful
Prospect Magazine: Sudhir Hazareesingh: Slave resistance was not exceptional
Bloomberg: ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Studio Accused of Union Busting After Firings
A dashboard allowing users to track Meta ad spending around the world: PoliDashboard.org
Foreign Policy: Add This to the Canon of Great Diplomacy Books
The Guardian: UN approves resolution supporting Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara
The University of Chicago Press: Jean Baudrillard
The Atlantic: Letters From John Updike
NY Times: Obama Calls Mamdani to Praise His Campaign and Offers to Be Sounding Board
Columbia Journalism Review: How AI browsers sneak past blockers and paywalls.
Ben Burgis: In Defense of the Fowkes Translation of Marx’s Capital
Politico: Dems say the American Dream is dead. A lot of Trump voters agree.
Mike’s Substack: How the Substack feed is learning to understand your reading journey
Politico: ‘I’m not sure anyone would run against those two’: How Vance and Rubio came out on top
The New Republic: Kash Patel Loses It Over Report He Used FBI Jet to Go on a Date
ABC News: Lauren Boebert’s racially charged Halloween costume sparks backlash
Politico: A confidential manifesto lays out Isaacman’s sweeping new vision for NASA
MSNBC/YouTube: Zohran Mamdani on Obama call, Dems who help Trump, Dem Socialism & 50 Cent: FULL Melber Intv
The Guardian: Blood spilled in Sudan can be seen from space. Nobody can feign ignorance about what’s going on | Nesrine Malik
CNN: Dick Cheney, influential Republican vice president to George W. Bush, dies
HAU (journal): Foreword : Argentina’s libertarian experiment | HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory: Vol 15, No 3
Current Affairs: The Case for Centrism Does Not Hold Up
CNN: Spanberger and Sherrill were roommates on Capitol Hill. They’re now making history in their states
Axios: Mamdani calls NYC “light” in “political darkness” after historic win
NY Times: Right-Wing Chatbots Turbocharge America’s Political and Cultural Wars
WSJ: How NYC Voted: Detailed Maps and Charts of the New Yorkers Who Propelled Mamdani to Victory
The New Republic: Trump Humiliation Worsens as Fresh Info Reveals Scale of GOP Losses
Bloomberg: What Happens After You Quit the Corporate Grind in China
LA Review of Books: The Will to Power in China
The MIT Press Reader: Five Moments in the History of Chinese Cybernetics | The MIT Press Reader
Foreign Affairs podcast: Xi Jinping’s World of Treachery and Sacrifice
The Guardian: Trump goes on posting frenzy a day after Democrats win key elections
The Guardian: US Starbucks workers prepare to strike if contract is not finalized by next week
The Guardian: Mary was not co-redeemer, Vatican says amid spread of cult of the Madonna
The Guardian: Revealed: Qatar-linked intelligence operation targeted ICC prosecutor’s alleged victim
Wired: Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign Figured Out How to Channel Fandom
Bloomberg: What to Expect When Airlines Cut 10% of Flights Due to Shutdown
Harvard University Press: Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State (by Mahmood Mamdani)
University of California Press: From Apartheid to Democracy by Michael Omer-Man, Sarah Whitson
Polity Press: Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI
W. W. Norton: Here Comes the Sun | Bill McKibben
MIT Press: J. G. Ballard, Selected Nonfiction, 1962–2007 (paperback edition, originally published in 2023)
NY Times (2024): Why Are Museums So Afraid of Hans Haacke?
Thanks for putting these together. I suspect that capitalism doesn’t do energy transitions as it’s a system predicated on ever expanding growth. Each new energy technology thus adds to the mix rather than totally replacing the previous technologies.
The infinite-growth imperative at capitalism’s core is a major obstacle to an authentic green transition.
In the short-term, the fossil-fuel industry should be forced, at the regulatory level, to reallocate a significant share of its capital to renewables.