As the replies from Jay and Tilman demonstrate, David does not engage with the strongest criticisms of his article. In addition to its errors, it shows evidence of bad faith, as I document: www.theargumentmag.com/p/we-absolut... The bad faith starts in the first sentence.
If school enrollment keeps declining and local income remains anemic, school closures and teacher layoffs in California could soon be inevitable. Building more infill is the only way to avoid this.
www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...
Climate targets can be useful tools, but they ultimately represent targets rather than thresholds. Every tenth of a degree warming is associated with more severe climate impacts, but there is no global climate tipping point.
In the era of affordability politics, making clean energy cheaper may be a more viable emissions mitigation strategy than making dirty energy more expensive. My latest over at The Climate Brink digs into the debate:
Weakening growth in demand for oil and gas is already having geopolitical consequences. When oil goes ex-growth, all hell will break loose - and all heaven too. Expect some highly non-linear decades.
I finally read the op ed. Matt Yglesias is right. (98% right at least, which is an A+ for a NYT op ed). Don't @ me. It's the holidays and I don't have the appetite. But Matty's position is pragmatic, substantively sound, and the only way we have a chance of making progress on climate in this moment.
Cost of living is the #1 issue for every subgroup of voters imaginable - young people, people of color, women - *except* for the ~ 1% of the population that has donated to a Democratic campaign in the last year
The Father Coughlin story is interesting because of parallels to the modern era. Wildly popular charismatic figure (30M listeners at peak when US had ~120M ppl). Private broadcasters tried to fact-check, pre-clear speeches, ban him while fans protested the censorship. FDR tried to stay out of it.
... and, while the people I called out were overstating matters, so was I: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/u...
Disappointing to see BSky filling up with this motivated reasoning. “Most of the electorate” *did not vote* in yesterday’s off-cycle election! The low-information voters who gave the GOP a sweep in 24 won’t be back until 28.
🔌💡 Really disturbing article – especially for those of us who think nuclear can be done safely & well, and could play an important role in a carbon-free grid. Politically-connected, regulator-undermining, safety-shortcutting development makes the whole industry untrustworthy, & could bring disaster.
Do not miss this stunning investigation that reveals how a Koch-funded machine and Silicon Valley's new found interest is behind the dangerous advanced nuclear hype in the US.
🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
To rephrase: solar PV has grown to the point that it is no longer primarily an energy industry concern. It is global economic news of the most positive and exciting kind.
Consider cooling. A large fraction of humanity suffers from hot living and working environments. Mining, manufacturing, distributing, and running HVAC systems can all be scaled and made much cheaper by abundant cheap electricity. Billions of lives can be happier, healthier, and longer. Let’s go!
So please invent new ways to turn 10 or 100 or 1,000 GW of nameplate solar into human well-being. The power should be there, if only we can do the “easy” part of making people’s lives better with it.
First, China continues to produce the panels. Second, the world can adopt them at ever-increasing pace. Electricity is an extraordinarily productive means to an incredible variety of ends — lighting, HVAC, any service powered by an engine. We will be *so* rich if we harness this prosperity engine.
The ~800GW of panels shipped this year will produce as much electricity as Japan uses, *every year for the next three decades*, at *even cheaper cost*. If the curve continues, in '26 it will be 1,100GW / India, reaching 5TW/China around 2031. We’ll be awash in incredibly cheap electricity if ...
I always learn from Jenny’s annual discussion of solar. She leaves out the most important point IMHO: $0.09/w panels at TW/year are a global prosperity engine if used to produce goods and services. It’s worth taking a minute to wrap your head around this unprecedented abundance. 🧵
This was excellent; thank you Renée and Rachel
Lots of excitement over SB 79—understandably. I would add, every single bill California YIMBY sent to the governor was signed today. www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/10/g...
Ho hum, just a wild disruption coming to upend the political economy of energy that has defined American prosperity for the last century. Cute topic, leave it to industry journals.
I would also note that nobody really knows, when they install a residential solar and battery system, what the economics are going to be. In the days of feed-in tariffs you had a good idea, but nowadays it really does depend on future power price structures.
Here are 10 provocations on climate and energy. Tell me if you agree, disagree or have a nuanced take. Drop your own provocations in reply or quote post.
Start:
1. By 2030, the use of air conditioning will lead to greater increase in electricity demand than data centers. And it's not even close!
"The most promising feature of BESS is that it adds value to every grid and every power source—with the exception, perhaps, of nuclear power which typically runs continuously about 95% of all the hours in a year." www.coldeye.earth/p/autumn-cha...
Large minorities of the electorate have right-wing views on immigration and crime that mainstream politicians won't embrace, as a result voters back new parties or (in the US) outsider insurgents like Trump.
www.slowboring.com/p/a-boring-t...
A recurring theme is the loss of institutional authority and the rise of "invisible rulers": not literal hidden puppet-masters, but the distributed, often unseen forces-platform incentives, crowd behavior, narrative entrepreneurs-that determine what ideas gain traction. The book also discusses how institutions can adapt, the role of transparency, and the risks when participatory media is exploited by bad actors. If you'd like, I can give you a chapter-by-chapter breakdown so you can see exactly how it develops its argument. Sure Here's a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of Invisible Rulers so you can see how the argument unfolds:
= ChatGPT 5 > l • • What model are you I'm running on GPT-4o, OpenAl's multimodal model that can handle text and images. You're getting the text-only side of it right now, but it's the same underlying model that can also process visuals when needed.
First time using ChatGPT5. It knew the concept from my book I asked it to write a few paragraphs about. Lovely nuanced prose. Knew the source.
Then asked if I wanted more info about the book…and hallucinated chapters that don’t exist. 🤷🏻♀️
Not being able to pick a model is a dealbreaker.
Both solar and lithium batteries are on exponential growth curves of about 30%, but most of the batteries are going into cars, with reduced availability for charging at solar peak. We need new ways to soak up TWh of solar, such as synfuels or thermal storage, ASAP.
<<< Breaking! My latest for Bloomberg >>>
Why rumours of the death of the transition are exaggerated, and why it's time for a #PragmaticClimateReset.
Part I of a two-parter - my attempt to reframe the conversation about climate action, net zero and the transition.
about.bnef.com/insights/cle...
🔌💡 Smart, illuminating analysis in what's clearly going to be a good newsletter.
Pass state laws rescinding local ability to prevent infill housing. All other improvements will be marginal.
