Matthew Archer

Matthew Archer

@matthewarcher.bsky.social

226

Posts

assistant professor at maastricht university interested in political ecology, sts, sustainability, supply chains, environmental anthropology, china, circularity, sci fi, and lots of other stuff

book! https://nyupress.org/9781479822027/unsustainable/

Posts Replies Media

Reposted by

Way too much press coverage of "AI" is spent debating the hypemerchants' claims of speed & efficiency & scale of impact, & not nearly enough is time spent on 2 very basic questions: Are these systems outputs anything like correct? And, if & when they get things wrong, how much harm will that cause?

Reposted by

Teaching any kind of #envhist #ecocrit #envhum course this semester? Don’t forget about the best resource for new books: Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talks. In one hour you get an overview of the book and insightful Q&A with the author. 140+ to choose from. newnatures.org/greenhouse/

Reposted by

«You can’t get a model like Nordhaus’s to give you believable results, no matter how sophisticated it is, because it’s structurally unsound.» An interesting interview with profs Zengelis and Ward (in english) about the Norhaus DICE type of models. www.energiogklima.no/to-grader/in...

DICE: A fundamentally flawed modelwww.energiogklima.no William Nordhaus won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for a model designed to assess the economic consequences of climate change. But it is fundamentally unreliable, say leading economists.

when did boomers collectively decide it was okay to talk on the phone in restaurants? the past month or two it feels like every restaurant i’m in has a pensioner chatting on the phone, as if the person in the other end were sitting at the table with them, often for half an hour or more. bizarre.

Reposted by

What is AI's real carbon footprint? You won't find it in sustainability reports of tech giants. That's because they claim it's mostly or entirely powered by renewables. Natasha White & I dug deeper to find reality to be otherwise. Thanks to use of dodgy credits. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

How Tech Companies Are Obscuring AI’s Real Carbon Footprintwww.bloomberg.com Tech giants leading the AI race have found a way to conceal the climate impact of their growing electricity use: unbundled renewable energy certificates.

adrienne buller’s really should be required reading for these people

The whale thing is indeed a carbon offsets project www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-... Also see: sea credits bsky.app/profile/keta...

Can Putting a Price on a Whale Save the Environment?www.scientificamerican.com A single whale can lock up as much carbon as 1,000 trees. By turning them into carbon credits, a new project hopes to save the climate and the whales

Reposted by

Big new piece by Natasha White and @akshatrathi.bsky.social -> the rapidly growing power demand for generative machine learning tools **is not** being powered by clean energy. It is, in fact, helping to stall climate action on grids --->>> www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Reposted by

My new piece for the Scottish Left Review as part of their technopolitics special issue: 'A Just Transition Means Resisting AI' scottishleftreview.scot/a-just-trans...

Reposted by

This is why fines equal to a large portion of corporate income, and regularly jailing CEOs, for corporate crime is a necessity in a civilized society.

Eric Schmidt took a break from selling AI to the military to tell a bunch of Stanford students to become entrepreneurs and if that required stealing a ton of content, they shouldn’t worry about it. When they succeed, their lawyers will clean up the mess.

Roundup: Eric Schmidt says the quiet part out louddisconnect.blog Read to the end for a disastrous Peter Thiel interview

Reposted by

Power Lines Drawing #106 (Hamtramck)

please can we nip this high energy glorification thing in the bud before it takes off? like just stop talking about it.

Reposted by

The fun thing about the 1998 technothriller 'Enemy of the State' is that every technology which is depicted in it as shocking, sensational, and the source of driving tension when used by the bad guys is, today, just kind of… everywhere, in everything, &, more often than not, not at all remarked upon

Reposted by

Just when you thought the voluntary carbon market couldn't get any worse....Amazon has developed its own carbon offset standard. #ClimateSky #EnergySky carboncredits.com/amazons-own-...

Amazon's Own Carbon Offset Standard Sparks Concerns Over Market Confusioncarboncredits.com The top rated website for carbon credits, carbon markets, carbon offsets, carbon pricing, carbon news, esg investing, netzero and more.

Reposted by

Them: A healthy planet that supports life is essential for Me: Everyone? Them: Our ability to continue growing our business over time Me: ... Them:😊

Jeg leser noe corporate BS av et helt annet kaliber enn jeg er vant til

if you’d rather listen instead of read, new podcast just dropped 🤓 open.spotify.com/episode/7rkW...

BOOK THREAD in february, i published my book UNSUSTAINABLE: MEASUREMENT, REPORTING, AND THE LIMITS OF CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY with #NYUPress @capacademicbooks.bsky.social #greensky #anthrosky #geosky #newbook #sustainability #politicalecology nyupress.org/978147982201...

Unsustainablenyupress.org A behind-the-scenes look at how corporate and financial actors enforce a business-friendly approach to global sustainabilityIn recent years, companies have f...

Matthew Archer, "Unsustainable: Measurement, Reporting, and the Limits of Corporate Sustainability" (NYU Press, 2024)open.spotify.com Episode · New Books in Anthropology · In recent years, companies have felt the pressure to be transparent about their environmental impact. Large documents containing summaries of yearly emissions rat...

Reposted by

BOOK THREAD in february, i published my book UNSUSTAINABLE: MEASUREMENT, REPORTING, AND THE LIMITS OF CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY with #NYUPress @capacademicbooks.bsky.social #greensky #anthrosky #geosky #newbook #sustainability #politicalecology nyupress.org/978147982201...

Unsustainablenyupress.org A behind-the-scenes look at how corporate and financial actors enforce a business-friendly approach to global sustainabilityIn recent years, companies have f...

Reposted by

"The university has an obligation to interrogate the proposition that a world in which AI is widely used is desirable or inevitable. We don’t need to cheer for a vision of tomorrow in which scientists feel comfortable with not personally reading the articles …” uniavisen.dk/en/cut-the-a...

Cut the 'AI' bullshit, UCPH — University Postuniavisen.dk Why do we keep believing that AI will solve the climate crisis, get rid of poverty, and unleash the full potential of human creativity?

Reposted by

"Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly. It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns"

Oh damn

UAW Files Federal Labor Charges Against Donald Trump and Elon Musk for Attempting to Intimidate and Threaten Workers - UAW | United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of Americauaw.org The UAW has filed federal labor charges against disgraced billionaires Donald Trump and Elon Musk for their illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging ...

BOOK THREAD in february, i published my book UNSUSTAINABLE: MEASUREMENT, REPORTING, AND THE LIMITS OF CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY with #NYUPress @capacademicbooks.bsky.social #greensky #anthrosky #geosky #newbook #sustainability #politicalecology nyupress.org/978147982201...

Unsustainablenyupress.org A behind-the-scenes look at how corporate and financial actors enforce a business-friendly approach to global sustainabilityIn recent years, companies have f...

Reposted by

It is pretty interesting that Elon Musk's position on climate and fossil fuels is, note-for-note, almost a pitch-perfect replica of Norway's national governmental and societal position on climate and fossil fuels

@ the editors of every major wester newspaper

Fascism isn't a disease. Fascism isn't a disability. Fascism isn't a lack of education. Fascism isn't foreign. Fascism is a defence of established power and privilege through the dehumanisation of anyone that challenges it.

Reposted by

When experts, scientists etc said "offsets and carbon removal should only be used for residual, hard-to-abate emissions", high-emitting companies just defined 99% of their emissions as residual and then just kept on doing what they've always been doing.

Reposted by

Here’s the thing: we know how to solve climate change! We’ve known it for decades. It’s mostly to stop using fossil fuels. You can largely do this using existing technology. It’s not gonna be easy, but that’s the solution. Wishing for a magic robot that can tell you a different answer is baby shit.

Someone just unironically said AI will help solve climate change. I found myself without words...

Reposted by

Deutsche Bank financed the construction of Auschwitz. They do not get to have a “brat summer”

😈 more of this please amp.theguardian.com/world/articl...

Brazilian rancher ordered to pay $50m for damage to Amazon | Brazil | The Guardianamp.theguardian.com Brazil court freezes assets of Dirceu Kruger to pay climate compensation for illegal deforestation

insightful in the sense that it shows how committed the pundit class is to depoliticising the would-be-murderous intentions of racist white people. it attributes their actions to things like covid lockdowns and male bonding, glossing over the fact that many of these people are self professed nazis.

I think this probably the most insightful thing I've read this week. On the psychology of riots by Simon Kuper (and this link should be free 300x) on.ft.com/3SH5NvJ

How to read a rioton.ft.com [FREE TO READ] Violence on British streets has reopened an age-old debate about what drives disorder — and what can be done about it

Reposted by

(Apparently bc it's room that could be given to the many, many children they intend to force people to have. But when will the children have time to play in parks? They'll be too busy working in the mines/meatpacking plants.)

Reposted by

Unbelievable to me that it is 5 years since David Berman took his life. Thinking of him today. Wrote this last year about his indelible poems and their insights into the despoliation of American landscapes post45.org/2023/01/davi...

David Berman’s Edge Cities: Poetry, Commercial Real Estate, Municipal Feeling - Post45post45.org In Roe Ethridge’s cover photograph for David Berman’s book of poems Actual Air (1999), two glass office towers rise over a row of pines (fig. 1). Below, a dry and grassy wastage does a poor impression...

last morning in catalonia has been a good one

hildegard von bingen