@kostyack
Consulting on climate change & the energy transition for NGOs & foundations at Kostyack Strategies. Senior Contributor at Forbes.com & Senior Fellow at ceea.us. All opinions expressed here are solely my own.
Afraid you are right. Another industry conference with conversations designed to offend no one. Always a mistake to be tantalized when the word "accountable" is put on a conference agenda.
Assumed this piece would discuss how Trump's Iran invasion was destroying demand for oil by highlighting its volatility. Instead it focuses on the flip side: "efficiency, electrification, solar, and batteries don’t create volatility—they quietly erase future demand with compounding certainty."
County Supervisor: "We negotiated in good faith. And Google’s response was to go find a local government that will ask for less.”
Next week's Council of Institutional Investors meeting should be wild. Especially the session on holding PE firms accountable. Any bets on which asset owners will call bs on the entire shadow banking project?
Follow Jeff for clear explanations of why we who depend on a stable climate in for a rough 2026 and 2027. In short, El Niño will exacerbate global heating. Driven primarily by our continued fossil fuel dependency - a fact that should be emphasized in all discussions of the punishing heat waves.
It's doubtful that policy makers will want to say no to data centers, but perhaps they could start asking tough questions about the heavy reliance on fossil fuels to power them is a smart move from a security perspective. And the other forms of hubris in the buildout plans.
As state legislatures around the US debate whether to continue costly tax incentives for data centers, it will be interesting to see how much attention is paid to the many vulnerabilities and uncertainties around this infrastructure.
The NYT pieces focuses on Trump's Iran invasion as the latest factor destabilizing the shadow banking industry. It's also bad news for the tech industry that's so intertwined w shadow banking. Bombs dropping on the tech giants' data centers, disrupting supply chains needed for their chips, etc.
Blue Owl is featured in this article as a bellwether. Not mentioned is that it is one of the key financiers of the data center boom, specializing in lending to firms like CoreWeave with "less-than-sterling credit." As this article suggests, investors are increasingly dubious. #AIbubble
Years ago Wall Street persuaded Congress to let it operate an unregulated "shadow banking" business for sophisticated investors. The business ballooned to $3T thanks to dubious promises made to public pensions & other institutional investors. Today, a crisis of confidence and talk of a bank run.
The irony here is that Cushman & Wakefield sells climate advisory services, so it is not a climate denier. But there's an enormous "anti-ESG" industry threatening anyone in the finance industry who dares to talk about climate. So C&W apparently acquiesced, to the financial detriment of its workers.
This new @clientearth.bsky.social lawsuit could set important precedent on whether retirement plan managers have a fiduciary duty to address climate risk. Cushman & Wakefield's small cap fund disclaims any effort to analyze climate risk, ignoring how climate change threatens portfolio value.
Oil and gas (and geothermal) companies are now digging holes deep enough (four miles) that you could have 24/7 clean power anywhere on earth @canarymedia.com www.canarymedia.com/articles/geo...
Bloomberg NEF's Vagneur-Jones: “When a technology becomes cost competitive, you get to a tipping point on adoption.”
Recipe for Dem success in this PR battle: hold Big Tech accountable for (1) not providing needed support for renewables, the most affordable form of electricity, as the industry struggles w Trump/GOP obstruction, (2) fueling a new era of fossil gas power, thereby imposing massive costs on consumers.
So the network state will be in Miami?
Donald Trump is seeking to collect massive amounts of information — including personal and partisan voter data — at an unprecedented scale. He is trying to pressure AI companies into allowing unrestricted use of their powerful tools against American citizens. www.democracydocket.com/opinion/trum...
Isn't it because the policies are short-term and the insurers can simply drop out of the market? The big question that no one wants to confront is, what happens when these properties inevitably become uninsurable?
Lots of other great orgs out there, but speaking from direct experience, ACLU has been successfully defending our liberties for a long time and clearly knows what it's doing. I recently made my largest donation in my lifetime to them.
Let's continue to exercise our First Amendment freedoms & bear witness to the unprecedented abuses by Trump's goons. When they say we're going into “a nice little database” and are now considered domestic terrorists, let's record that too. And donate to @aclu.org. Let's take our country back.
One was a coal miner, the other a worker (and union leader) in a petrochemical factory. Both died of work-related illnesses. Both set up their kids and grandkids for a better life.
We updated our record of people immigration agents have killed or caused to die since Trump took office in January 2025.
As of today, agents have killed at least 28 people in the field and 48 people in custody.
Trump and the tech giants helping each other with their PR problems, this will go over well.
Imagine if every press release celebrating the economic benefits of a new data center disclosed these costs. Key facts about this facility would also include "eight natural gas turbines and 51 diesel generators," "premature mortality" and "respiratory and cardiovascular disease."
As the tech industry increasingly turns to onsite fossil fuel power for data centers, what does this mean for nearby communities? A new study evaluates the impacts of fine particulate matter from a VA facility's onsite power system & finds $53M–$99M/yr in health damages.
"Tech companies have increasingly committed to “Water Positive” initiatives by replenishing more water than their Scope 1 consumption. However, these replenishment efforts focus on total volumetric benefits and may not address the impacts of data centers’ peak water use on public water systems."
"This largely overlooked water capacity constraint is emerging as a bottleneck for data centers and can force operators to rely on less efficient dry cooling, further stressing the power grid during summer peaks."
New from Han et al: "Meeting the growing water demand of data centers requires substantial peak water withdrawals, which many communities in the US cannot supply, especially during the hottest days of the year."
Perhaps we should be a little more concerned that a top military commander told our troops "President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” And he's just one of the leaders claiming we're embarked on a religious crusade.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft & Meta are expected to sign a pledge at the White House today to offset the electricity needed to power data centers. Hoping journalists spend a little time looking at how their climate and DEI pledges have played out before giving these latest pledges any credence.