Your weekly guide to Sustainable Investment

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By Robert Rubinstein

Excerpt from his upcoming book Radical Truth-The Church of Capitalism's New Clergy ⛪

Meet the newest clergy in the Church of Capitalism: The Algorithmic Priests. They don't need humans—just Python code and the divine power of compound interest. Their sermons are in binary, their communion is data, and their god is the almighty algorithm. #ChurchOfCapitalism #AlgorithmicPriests #BinarySermons

A LinkedIn-appropriate rant about the wonderful world of algorithmic trading

You know what I love about LinkedIn? It's the only place where you can simultaneously humble-brag about your promotion while watching your retirement fund get algorithmically strip-mined by guys who couldn't get laid in college but can now crash entire economies with a misplaced semicolon.
 

The Divine Comedy of Modern Finance

 

Remember when trading was done by humans? You know, those sweaty guys in colorful jackets who at least had to look each other in the eye while they destroyed pension funds? Those were the good old days of artisanal financial destruction—hand-crafted by Ivy League sociopaths with actual vocal cords.

Now we've got something far more terrifying: algorithms. That's right, Wall Street decided human greed wasn't efficient enough, so they automated it. It's like giving a toddler nuclear launch codes and then acting surprised when they push the shiny button.

Meet Your New Financial Overlords

The High-Frequency Holy Trinity

1. Speed Demons (HFT Gods) These algorithms operate in microseconds—literally faster than you can blink. While you're reading this sentence on your lunch break, HFT algorithms have executed thousands of trades, skimming money like financial mosquitoes. They've spent billions to shave milliseconds off execution times. BILLIONS. To move a Microsoft buy order a nanosecond faster.

Meanwhile, your kid's school can't afford new textbooks. But hey, at least some hedge fund made an extra nickel!

2. Pattern Addicts (Machine Learning Martyrs) These are glorified pattern-recognition programs that mistake correlation for causation more often than your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. "Our neural network discovered a correlation between rainfall in Brazil and small-cap stocks!"

Great. By the time you publish that finding, every other algorithm has already incorporated it. It's like designing the perfect umbrella after the rainstorm ended.

3. Risk Management Theater (False Security Prophets) These sophisticated models tell you exactly how screwed you are approximately three seconds after you're already screwed. They use historical data to predict the future, which is like using last year's weather forecast to plan this weekend's barbecue.

 

The Cathedral of Quantitative BS

 

Walk into any major financial institution today and you'll find the new priesthood: PhDs in physics and math who couldn't get real jobs advancing humanity, so they decided to help billionaires become trillionaires instead.

These quants speak in tongues of "stochastic calculus" and "Markov chains." They don't say "we're guessing"—they say "we're applying Bayesian inference techniques." They don't say "we have no clue"—they say "the emergent properties demonstrate robust heuristic validity."

Translation: "We're gambling with your money and collecting fees whether we win or lose."

The Retail Investor Experience (A Tragedy in Five Acts)
 

Act I: Education (Indoctrination) You learn just enough to be dangerous—primarily to yourself. "Buy low, sell high!" they say. By the time you hear about an opportunity, professionals have already priced it beyond reason.

Act II: Tool Provision (Delusion Enablement) They give you colorful trading apps that make you feel like Gordon Gekko. It's like giving a child a plastic steering wheel and watching them believe they're driving.

Act III: Fee Extraction (The Fleecing) Management fees, trading fees, account fees, breathing fees. There are fees inside other fees, like financial nesting dolls of exploitation.

Act IV: Failure Attribution (The Gaslight) When you inevitably lose money, it's YOUR fault. "You didn't diversify!" "You let emotions drive decisions!" Never mind the game is rigged six ways from Sunday.

Act V: Hope Renewal (The Hook) Just when you're ready to quit, they show you stories of regular people who struck it rich. It's like cigarette companies showcasing 90-year-old lifetime smokers as proof their product isn't dangerous.

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By: Robin Eveleigh

A new research centre is set to transform our understanding of animal feelings and the impact of human actions on them

Acutting-edge research centre that’s designed to transform our understanding of animal feelings and rewrite the rules on how we live alongside them will launch this autumn at the London School of Economics.

The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience is backed by £4m in funding from the Jeremy Coller Foundation, the philanthropic vehicle of private equity entrepreneur Jeremy Coller. The centre’s inaugural director, Prof Jonathan Birch, said the world-first facility would be a place for ‘ethical moonshots’, which will strive to put Britain back at the forefront of animal welfare. “Let’s make a world in which all sentient beings are respected, even the smallest ones,” he said.”

“Our goal is to use the emerging science of animal minds to design better policies, laws, and ways of caring for other animals,” he said. “Our centre … won’t change everything overnight, but it can change the conversation in the UK and beyond – and help us rediscover who we are.”

The project will bring together top thinkers from fields such as philosophy, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and biology. The shared research will focus initially on three priorities: devising frameworks for the ethical use of AI in relation to animals, revamping welfare laws to safeguard insects and other invertebrates, and shaping information campaigns to shift public attitudes and behaviour.

Birch said Britain had long prided itself in taking a strong stance on animal welfare, but pointed to the industrialisation of agriculture as an example of how we have lost our way. “We think of ourselves as a nation of animal lovers. But more recently we seem to have lost our sense of ambition,” he said.

“Progress has stalled and is, in some areas, reversing. Farmed animals and farmers alike are becoming cogs in ferocious corporate machines that put profit before care, compassion and dignity.”

Our centre can change the conversation in the UK and beyond – and help us rediscover who we are

Birch suggested advances in AI presented both a risk to animal welfare and a revolutionary tool for helping us understand our animal neighbours. He said his research colleagues would be exploring ways to limit its potential to abuse the natural world. At the same time, it could help decode animal communication and help us better understand what creatures want.

“We want to change the way humans relate to the rest of the natural world,” said Birch. “Some might say this is an impossible dream, but the boundary between the ‘possible’ and the allegedly ‘impossible’ is one we aim to move.

What might evolve from the centre’s work?

New codes of practice for the farming of invertebrates such as insects, and tougher protections for sentient creatures such as crabs and lobsters.
AI systems that account for wildlife welfare, for example in the expansion of driverless cars and automated farming outfits.
A reckoning between our values and actions in the UK, closing the gap between ‘our self-image as a nation of animal lovers and the reality of our indifference to animal welfare

Source

Artificial intelligence is a major power guzzler. But if used wisely, it might just help clean up the very grid it depends on. New research suggests that AI could help slash global climate pollution by as much as 5.4 billion metric tons per year over the next decade, more than enough to offset the emissions it generates. The study, published in the journal npj Climate Action by the Grantham Research Institute, highlights a surprising upside.

“The key will be to channel practical AI applications towards key impact areas to accelerate the market adoption rate and efficiency of low-carbon solutions,” the study said, noting that governments will have a vital role to play.

“Governments must regulate AI to minimise their environmental footprint,” the study said, pointing to the need for energy-efficient AI models and the use of renewable energy to power data centers.

It also says governments should invest in AI infrastructure and education in developing countries, “ensuring that the benefits of AI are shared equitably.”

If AI is deployed to improve sectors like transportation, energy systems, and food production, the net climate benefit could be huge. Despite the energy demands of AI data centres, which are growing rapidly, the potential emissions savings from smart applications of AI far outweigh the environmental cost.

Right now, AI’s rise has some environmental advocates sounding the alarm. Data centres consume staggering amounts of power, and that figure is expected to double by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. President Donald Trump has backed rapid AI development as a national priority, framing it as a tech race with China. However, that expansion has also become a reason cited by some officials to justify new fossil fuel development, sparking fresh concern over climate backsliding.

Indeed, BloombergNEF projects that fossil fuels will remain the dominant energy source for powering these AI systems over the next ten years, putting global carbon reduction goals at risk. Also, oil companies are already using AI to scout new drilling opportunities. So where’s the silver lining?

According to the Grantham study, there’s real potential for AI to do good—if we point it in the right direction. The researchers lay out five key areas where AI can be leveraged to reduce emissions: changing consumer behaviour, improving energy efficiency, optimising transportation, accelerating technological innovation, and reshaping food systems.

Take energy management, for example. AI can predict fluctuations in renewable energy supply and demand, making it easier to integrate solar and wind into national grids. That means less need for dirty backup sources like coal or gas. On the food front, AI could help identify plant-based protein alternatives to meat and dairy, both of which are major emissions culprits. In transportation, smarter systems could lead to better battery tech, cheaper electric vehicles, and more adoption of shared transport models.

Put all these pieces together, and the world could be looking at an annual reduction of 3.2 to 5.4 billion metric tons of CO2 by 2035. For context, that’s more than the current total emissions of the entire European Union. Compare that to the U.S., which emitted around 6.2 billion metric tons in 2023 alone.

Granted, these cuts still fall short of what’s needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But they’re not insignificant. The researchers estimate that even as AI ramps up, emissions from the data centres powering it will fall between 0.4 billion and 1.6 billion metric tons over the next decade, much lower than the emissions AI could help prevent.

The study does come with caveats. The AI landscape is evolving so quickly that the research might have underestimated its potential. It only looked at three major sectors and didn’t fully explore how gains in energy efficiency could sometimes lead to higher overall consumption. That so-called rebound effect is real.

Still, study co-author Alessia Pierfederici believes the findings make a compelling case. Yes, data centres will add to the world’s emissions load, but the bigger story is how AI can be used to bring emissions down. The real question is whether governments, industries, and innovators will choose to focus AI’s immense power on fixing the climate problem, not making it worse.

“That said, governments need to play an active role in guiding how AI is applied and governed, to make sure the downsides are managed effectively and the full potential of AI for climate action is realised,” she added.

Source

New research sheds light on how rising temperatures are squeezing farmers and raising prices for consumers.

New research spotlights the challenge of growing food on a warming planet. 

Two recent studies — one historical and the other forward-looking — examine how rising temperatures have made and could continue to make agricultural production less efficient, fundamentally reshaping the global food system as producers try to adapt to hotter growing seasons.

The findings illuminate the bind that farmers and consumers find themselves in. Agricultural production is a driver of climate change; it’s estimated to be responsible for somewhere between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it is also hampered by the changes in weather patterns associated with climate change. While producers struggle to harvest the same amounts of food in the face of droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes, shoppers are more likely to face climbing food prices.  

The forward-looking study, published June 18 in Nature, analyzes the impact of warming temperatures on the caloric output of agricultural production. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability found that for every additional degree Celsius of warming above the 2000-2010 average, the global food system will produce roughly 120 fewer calories per person per day.

In a scenario where the Earth experiences 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, that’s the equivalent of everyone on the planet missing out on breakfast, said Andrew Hultgren, lead author of the study.

Hultgren and his colleagues compiled a massive dataset on the production of six staple crops in more than 12,000 regions spread out over 54 countries. They then modeled how different warming scenarios might impact crop production; they also factored in how farmers around the world are adapting to higher temperatures. What they found is that, even with adaptation, global warming is associated with an “almost a linear decline in caloric output,” said Hultgren, who is also an assistant professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Measuring agricultural adaptation and its impact on output was important, said Hultgren, because research often assumes that farmers either adapt perfectly to global warming or not at all. The reality is that adapting to any growing season challenges comes at some cost, and farmers are constantly weighing the business benefits of implementing new techniques.

For example, one tool that corn farmers in the U.S. Midwest have to prevent hot days from thwarting their harvest is planting crop varietals that mature relatively quickly. “Corn is very sensitive to extreme heat,” said Hultgren, “so one very hot day can actually be bad for your entire growing season yield.”

But fast-maturing varietals also often produce lower yields overall, meaning these farmers likely can’t sell as much corn as they would have under cooler weather conditions, said Hultgren. “So there’s literally a cost of avoiding that extreme heat,” he said. 

A drop in the global supply of crops will also lead to an uptick in food prices. But Hultgren noted that the impacts of reduced agricultural output won’t be evenly distributed. In wealthier countries such as the U.S., for example, those who can afford higher food prices will likely eat the cost. In poorer countries, these shifts could worsen food insecurity. 

Additionally, rising temperatures will impact producers unevenly; the study estimated that in a high-warming climate scenario, corn farmers in the U.S. will experience 40 to 50 percent losses in yield by the end of the century. Based on these projections, “you wonder if the Corn Belt continues to be the Corn Belt,” said Hultgren. Meanwhile, other regional producers — like rice farmers in South and Southeast Asia — will see yields grow in the same time frame.  “There are absolutely regional winners and losers in this global aggregate,” he said.

The historical study, published June 20 in Nature Geosciences, looks at one of the ways agricultural production contributes to global warming: land clearing. When farmers want to cultivate new cropland, they often start by removing the plants that are already growing there, whether that’s grass, shrubs, or trees. When land clearing happens in carbon-rich regions in the Global South, like the Amazon rainforest, it increases deforestation and carbon emissions, said Jessica Till, the study’s co-lead author. 

“Deforestation in tropical areas is one of the most urgent issues and biggest areas of concern,” said Till, a research scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. (Till and Hultgren were not involved in each other’s studies.) “The more land you clear, the more forest you remove to create cropland, that’s going to have a negative effect on the climate.”

Till and the other study authors examined this feedback loop between agriculture and the environment: When crop production becomes less efficient due to extreme weather and heat, farmers must acquire and clear more land to boost production. That expansion in croplands then in turn results in higher greenhouse gas emissions, which exacerbates warming and makes crop production even less efficient. 

They found that, even with improvements in agricultural productivity (due to technological improvements like new seed varieties and precision fertilizer application), climate change was responsible for 88 million hectares, or 217 million acres, in cropland expansion globally — an area roughly twice the size of California — between 1992 and 2020. 

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Ammonia is currently one of the most divisive topics in the maritime decarbonization space. The decarbonization potential of ammonia is undeniable: ammonia (NH3) does not contain carbon, meaning it eliminates CO2 emissions at the point of combustion, and is an ideal hydrogen carrier.  

Due to these climate-positive characteristics as well as the extensive existing shipping and handling network and high potential for production scalability, an increasing number of shipping and maritime actors are basing their decarbonization plans around ammonia. The view that ammonia is a panacea for maritime decarbonization challenges is far from ubiquitous across the maritime industry, however.  

Skeptics point to practical and safety challenges that must be overcome for the widespread uptake of ammonia as a maritime fuel: namely, non-CO2 emissions from combustion (NOx, N2O), methane slip, and the serious human and environmental hazard posed by methane spills. Even for those fleet owners and operators undeterred by the potential safety risks, ammonia faces the same chicken-and-egg challenge of all zero- and low-emissions fuels: fleet operators will not commit to adapting fleets for ammonia without a clear supply of green ammonia, while potential green ammonia suppliers cannot invest in production capacity without a strong and committed demand signal from users.   

As the maritime sector grapples with this vicious circle, several global players (e.g., Fortescue, Yara, MOL, CMB.Tech), are attempting to simultaneously drive production while supporting the development of the demand market and supporting infrastructure such as bunkering and storage facilities. 
 

Innovation: Technology Addressing Pain Points Along the Ammonia Value Chain 
 

• Ammonia synthesis: Innovators developing low-temperature, higher efficiency synthesis processes to reduce fuel costs and facilitate integration of renewables

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• Ammonia engines: Conventional ICE engines must be adapted to combust ammonia. Several OEMs are close to commercialization of dual-fuel ammonia and conventional fuel engines, enabling fuel flexibility and reaching up to 95% CO2 emissions reductions. Additional systems must address NOx/N2O emissions.
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• Ammonia cracking: Leveraging ammonia as a hydrogen carrier, innovators are adapting conventional, high-temperature ammonia cracking (splitting ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen) to power vessels and stationary generators with green hydrogen:
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  • Low-temperature catalytic cracking systems for onboard propulsion, combined with hydrogen combustion, or fuel cells (e.g., Amogy, Ammonigy, Pherousa) 
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  • Novel membrane reactors for efficient hydrogen separation and purification (e.g., Membravo, H2SITE)
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  • Ammonia cracking can be situated at ports to provide clean hydrogen to electrify equipment and vessels, as well as onsite energy storage  

Key Innovations Unlocking Decarbonization Potential of Ammonia for Vessels and Ports 
 

Ammonia cracking in itself is not a novel technology, but conventional systems are not suitable for vessel propulsion or distributed power generation. Crackers operate at high temperatures (up to 900°C), have large physical footprints, and massive energy demands. Innovators and innovative corporates are adapting conventional crackers in several ways to meet the specific demands of both the maritime and power generation sectors.  

KBR, developer of hydrogen and ammonia production solutions, is leveraging existing components and infrastructure to deploy large-scale ammonia cracking systems. Targeting 10-1,200 tonnes per day of hydrogen, KBR´s thermal catalytic process leverages a nickel-based reactor and reports a hydrogen yield of 80% (with remaining 20 units reutilized as a clean fuel source) or up to 96% if powered by natural gas.  

While currently engaging with the power generation sector, KBR has identified the maritime fuels sector as a key demand market for ammonia in the coming years, outpacing even the demand from the fertilizer industry (currently 80% of global ammonia demand). 

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