Wolf Hall, though brilliantly cast, acted and produced, is a pale mirror to the light of Hillary Mantel’s incandescent novels.

The sick man of Europe is....Europe

For goodness sake, what a spoiler

Lula’s agenda for G20: tax billionaires; reduce hunger and poverty; reform western-dominated post-war institutions; more green finance for poor countries.

Everyone else’s agenda for G20: what the hell is Trump going to do?

Biden’s decision on long-range strikes into Russia is about allowing Ukraine to hold the line as Russia prepares an onslaught ahead of Trump’s accession, so any freezing of the conflict takes place on grounds more favourable to Kiev.

The world has consistently underestimated the pace of growth in renewable energy capacity. I take from this that, for all the rhetoric coming from the ’climate scam’ tribe, decarbonisation is happening.

Casualty compensation is fuelling the economies of Russia’s poorest regions. Towns are getting wealthier even as they empty out.

Via WSJ

www.wsj.com/world/russia...

The FT asks if Germany’s growth model is broken. It certainly doesn’t look healthy.

t.co/5Mlc5rhQaG

The host of COP29 calls fossil fuels a “gift from God.”

A Venezuelan oil minister in the 1960s had a contrasting view: he called oil “the devil’s excrement”.

Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo was referring to the distorting effects of poorly-managed oil wealth. The climate impact drives his message home.

So much in the Trump playbook is confused and contradictory. For instance, how does he propose to build an anti-China coalition when he is pulling the rug from under vital partners such as Mexico?

By dialing back America’s climate commitments, the Trump administration risks handing the initiative to a strategic competitor in one of the most significant areas of innovation in generations. From a strategic perspective, it would be like ceding leadership in the race for AI dominance.