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James Walsh

@lensofjw.bsky.social
87 followers 369 following 67 posts

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers” Currently focused on climate change mitigation in Africa: p2x.co.za Previous filmmaking: sinamatella.com & Photography: jameswalsh.work

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Reposted by James Walsh
Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
What an amazing way to visualize early human migration. Lovely map by @HarvardCGA. A great colour scheme and an appropriate map projection! Source: buff.ly/3lbxonJ
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 02/06/2026
The idea that only nuclear or gas can provide "firm power" -- the last line of defense against the relentless advance of clean energy -- is going the way of the dodo. There are no arguments left. The only reason to fight progress now is corruption & raw political power.
canarymedia.com
24/7 renewables could happen sooner than you think
Grouping wind, solar, and batteries together can already be more affordable than building a coal or gas plant in prime locations, new report finds.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
This, this and more of this:
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
🎯
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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
1/ Industrialization shifting on the African continent. Industries anchored in South Africa once. Now? Morocco “sustained modernisation of its productive system, diversification of its exports and the effective implementation of its industrial policy”. www.theafricareport.com/420195/how-m...
theafricareport.com
How Morocco stole South Africa’s industrial crown
From aerospace to car manufacturing, 20 years of targeted industrial policy have made Morocco the African Development Bank’s top-ranked economy on the continent – as Eskom and Transnet hollow out Sout...
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Beautiful writing. Similar reasons why I chose Liverpool: watching Bruce Grobbelaar, John Barnes, Ian Rush back in the day left a mark. www.theguardian.com/football/202...
theguardian.com
My Arsenal devotion began with watching them lose in a South African cinema
As a boy in the apartheid era I saw footage of the Gunners getting beaten in the 1969 League Cup final by Third Division Swindon – on Saturday I will be in Budapest with my son for the Champions Leagu...
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Vehicle to Grid is a brilliant solution for South Africa. Watch this space.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Mother Nature rebounds when we give her a chance.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Exceptional, essential work.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Louder for the peeps at the back!
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Irony is a dish best served cold. I mean revenge.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
My role model. www.linkedin.com/posts/jamesw...
linkedin.com
As a boy, when I was sick and stayed home from school, my mom would put on our recorded Living Planet VHS tapes for me to watch. Curled up on the couch, under a blanket, being transported to Borneo…...
As a boy, when I was sick and stayed home from school, my mom would put on our recorded Living Planet VHS tapes for me to watch. Curled up on the couch, under a blanket, being transported to Borneo ...
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
cc @adamtooze.bsky.social @70sbachchan.bsky.social @katemac.bsky.social @janrosenow.bsky.social
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Thanks to @ember-energy.org team for the excellent data sets on Clean tech exports and imports. Illuminating.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Pictures > 1000 words
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Thanks to Caroline, @stephenlacey.bsky.social and @jigarshahdc.bsky.social for the always brilliant Open Circuit @latitudemedia.bsky.social podcast. Some gems from the last episode inspired me to write this piece on South Africa.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Pain at the pump is gonna override behavioural change inertia. Watch this space. www.linkedin.com/pulse/bubble...
linkedin.com
Bubble at the pump
The air bubble in the global energy system surfaces this week at the South African pump where diesel hits R30 a litre for the first time. The pain will be more severe in July when the R3.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Time for a good news story. Turns out we can manage for biodiversity and net zero with carefully planning and execution: www.cam.ac.uk/stories/sola...
cam.ac.uk
Birdlife soars on nature-friendly solar farms
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
This is some writing!
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Watch this space!
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
“…that smart people have always existed, and that very little in the human experience is new. That requires, you know, intellectual humility — and a willingness to think about other people’s experiences.” This writing from @lopatto.bsky.social is 🎯 www.theverge.com/tldr/915176/...
theverge.com
Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want
Did the tech industry get high on its own supply?
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Reposted by James Walsh
Jigar Shah @jigarshahdc.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Bottom line is that the technologies exist, but the workforce, supply chain, and technical assistance are real barriers. There will be extraordinary pain. We are in a humanitarian crisis in Asia and Africa. That will spread around the world. But change requires motivation...
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
👇🏽
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Watch this space
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Reposted by James Walsh
Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 14/04/2026
If you haven’t heard about it yet, the youths are super into IRL human interactions, no AI, and “physical media” (vinyl! DVDs! tapes!) right now and it’s glorious. Like there are 20yo influencers that just read old paper books and talk about feelings.
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Reposted by James Walsh
Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Orwell: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
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Reposted by James Walsh
David Fickling @davidfickling.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
The scale of the energy transition going on in places that most people barely think about is extraordinary. Renewables hit a 43% share of generation in Uzbekistan in March — and a huge amount is still under construction. www.uzdaily.uz/en/uzbekista...
uzdaily.uz
Uzbekistan Hits Record 43% Renewable Energy Share
Uzbekistan achieves a milestone with 43% of national electricity supplied by renewables, led by solar, wind, and hydro power generation.
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Steven Beschloss @stevenbeschloss.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Wise words from Spain's Prime Minister: “The momentary relief cannot make us forget the chaos, the destruction, and the lives lost. The govt of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket. What is needed now: diplomacy, international law and PEACE.”
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Mark McIntyre @markjmcintyre.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
I don't remember seeing an image of Earth before that captures the (thin, fragile, tiny layer of) atmosphere so clearly. I mean, look at that.
Zooming in on the photo of Earth taken by astronauts on Artemis II on their way to the Moon, you can clearly see the Aurora Borealis and thin layer of atmosphere wrapping around the planet.Zooming in on the photo of Earth taken by astronauts on Artemis II, you can clearly see the thin layer of atmosphere wrapping around the entire planet.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
That thing about a picture and a thousand words... www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-pa...
linkedin.com
Our Pale Blue Fullstop.
I can't stop looking at this image taken two days ago by the Artemis II crew. It made me think of the unbroken chain of consequence that allowed us as a species to take a photo of our home from off pl...
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Reposted by James Walsh
Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
[reposted to add alt text] @mahsaalimardani.bsky.social: We didn't deserve this day.
I spent today calculating time zones. 8pm on the East
Coast of America is 4:30 in the morning in Tehran. I
told my family who spent half their month's salary on
the unstable VPNs that allow messages and momentary
WhatsApp calls. They laughed. The particular laugh
Iranians have developed across centuries of catastrophe.
One particularly nihilistic cousin asked what they
should wear when the bombs kill them.

This is what it means to be Iranian right now. You joke
because the alternative is to scream.Today, Donald Trump threatened to end Iranian
civilization by nightfall if the Islamic Republic did not
concede. By late evening, that threat had been
suspended. A two-week extension, a short ceasefire, the
diplomats buying time. And I watched myself feel
something that should never have to pass for relief:
gratitude that nuclear annihilation did not happen
today.

Let me be precise about what that feeling is. It is not
hope. It is the specific exhaustion of people who have
been denied hope for so long that the mere
postponement of catastrophe registers as reprieve. We
celebrated nothing. We simply exhaled.My family in Iran has been living under this arithmetic for
decades: a psychotic regime that surveils and harasses them,
imprisons their neighbors, shoots their children in the
streets. And now, on top of that, the spectacle of foreign
leaders treating their annihilation as a negotiating position.
There are people in Washington and Tel Aviv who speak of
bombing Iran the way they discuss a policy option. There are
influencers and commentators who find Iranian suffering
legible only when it confirms what they already wanted to
do. The Islamic Republic's atrocities (and they are real, they
are ongoing as I write this) have become license for others to
be monstrous in turn.

This is the trap our people are caught in. Not a binary
between the regime and its foreign enemies, but a vise. The
boot of the Islamic Republic against their necks has not
loosened; if anything, it makes dissent harder, gives the
regime new reasons to tighten, to quietly murder political
prisoners, as it has done since its founding. And the cavalier
rhetoric of annihilation from those who claim to be on the
side of freedom does not liberate anyone. It just adds new
terrors to an already terrorized people.What Iranians deserve is so ordinary it is almost
embarrassing to say aloud. They deserve to not spend
their mornings calculating whether they will survive
until evening. They deserve to be seen as people, not as
collateral, not as acceptable losses, not as the
unfortunate human context around a geopolitical
problem.

The ceasefire is two weeks. The talks may go nowhere.
The regime endures. And in various cities in Iran, my
family will go to sleep tonight in clothes they chose for
comfort, not for dying in, which is, I suppose, what
passes for a good day.

We are still here. We are still owed so much more than
this.
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Celeste Ng @pronounced-ing.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
"...You deserve the world. Not this world, hostile and unkind, but the one we are building in the lines of poems, in our wildest melatonin dreams, in the dirt of our gardens and the recipes passed down to us..." - "You Deserve the World," Ally Ang
magazine.washington.edu
‘You Deserve the World,’ a poem by Ally Ang, ’21
UW Magazine | University of Washington
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Home.
[alt text from NASA] Earth sets at 6:41 p.m. EDT, April 6, 2026, over the Moon’s curved limb in this photo captured by the Artemis II crew during their journey around the far side of the Moon. Orientale basin is perched on the edge of the visible lunar surface. Hertzsprung Basin appears as two subtle concentric rings, which are interrupted by Vavilov, a younger crater superimposed over the older structure. The lines of indentations are secondary crater chains formed by ejecta from the massive impact that created Orientale. The dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime. On Earth’s day side, swirling clouds are visible over the Australia and Oceania region.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
@adamtooze.bsky.social would love to hear your thoughts on this?
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Jordan Carlson @jordantcarlson.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
>Canadian company builds solar panels in Malawi >is paid in Malawi's (volatile) currency >invests those payments in local farmers growing chili peppers >sells chili peppers to Nando's, in USD >builds sustainable business model on Cheeky Nando's This is my favourite news story of the year so far.
cbc.ca
Solar power in Africa is heating up — thanks in part to chili peppers | CBC News
They're the chili peppers in the spicy chicken at a restaurant you might know. And they were an ingredient used by a Canadian company to build the first solar power plants in Malawi.
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David Fickling @davidfickling.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
I’m loving all the people arguing now that Pakistan’s solar boom was inevitable and obvious, but nothing comparable could happen in other countries in future. It wasn’t obvious in 2022, when Pakistan saw no role for solar in fixing the energy import dependencies that had just sent it to the IMF! 🧵
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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
A prolonged Hormuz closure is, in plain terms, a global fuel rationing event. And when fuel gets rationed, poor ppl lose access first — to hospitals,fertilizer,cooking fuels,water pumping, lighting, transportation,refrigeration,and basic economic life energyempirepodcast.substack.com/p/stop-treat...
energyempirepodcast.substack.com
Stop Treating Hormuz Like a Thought Experiment
As we enter April, this is no longer a pricing story and is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
We live in a beautiful world.
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Reposted by James Walsh
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 03/04/2026
More context on this #Artemis II image: * This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right * The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon: ☀️🌍🚀🌕
A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)
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Reposted by James Walsh
Rob Cyran @robcyran.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Take a median income location, have grid reliability problems, along with cheap solar and adoption skyrockets. Watch as this pattern replicates in multiple Asian countries because of LNG shortages.
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Jigar Shah @jigarshahdc.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
“Glass half full” is easy when you can still afford the glass. For a few billion people, a prolonged Hormuz closure doesn’t mean expensive energy. It means no energy. Energy is life.
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Elle @biknmusicmama.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
From cycling under the light of moon on a beautiful night, to looking around and adding up the obscene amount of money we spend on cars, this article echoes so much of my thoughts about riding a bike and how CONNECTING it is- to people, to nature, to life- and how cars sever that connection.
irishtimes.com
I’m driving less. I don’t want to see the world through a driver’s eyes any more
Before I began driving less, I had long had a melancholic sense that the city lifestyle I lived was cut off from the seasons and nature
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Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) @doctorvive.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
I cannot recommend this conversation between @pkrugman.bsky.social and @volts.wtf enough. Every point was a banger, and DR’s final exhortation that young people go into clean energy rather than finance actually made me tear up a little. So good. open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
open.substack.com
Talking with David Roberts
Climate, energy, and America left behind
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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Weekend reading.
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
The energy transition isn't just about cheaper electrons. It's agency — the difference between reacting to crises you can't control and building infrastructure that compounds your independence over time. www.linkedin.com/pulse/butter...
linkedin.com
Butterfly Wings and the Petrol Price
The Strait of Hormuz closure hits SA through fuel, food, and interest rates. The countries that built renewables are riding it out. We haven't
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Do the work. Be the momentum.
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Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
People in general have not yet understood how cheap battery storage has become. I assume the technology will receive even more funding now that gas/petrol prices keep escalating. Energy independence will be the goal of more nations now.
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Ember @ember-energy.org · 25/03/2026
75% of the world lives in fossil fuel importing countries. Every $10 oil price rise adds $160bn/year to the global import bill. The single biggest fix: EVs replacing imported oil in transport could save importers $600bn/year. Read the report: 🔗ember-energy.org/lat...
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James Walsh @lensofjw.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
👇🏽
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