He’s right. Policies which make the Chinese people feel secure enough to consume would be good for China (probably raising birthrates) and good for the world. It would only be bad for the CCP’s control over the economy.

chinese steel mills: "yes here you go buy anything now we get it to you tomorrow" US steel mills: "yeah that's going to be a minimum order of $500k, also we will never answer the phone, and we will get back to you in about 2 months"

Sean Speer Everybody -- first governments, now private citizens -- wants to skip the hard part of convincing the electorate to adopt one course or another. In large part this is because the electorate is too blasé to be convinced of anything.

Transparently obvious to me that economies of scale for building housing is a good thing.

Fukuyama was so prescient. In a society with strong rights and material comfort, but light on demanding shared purposes and some degree of sacrifice, thymotic energies go searching. Some quiet into bourgeois hedonism; other will seek “metaphorical wars” and eventually real ones.

If WWII didn’t end with negotiation, how was Hirohito allowed to continue as Emperor?

And yet the West sparked the Industrial Revolution, which is the single most important thing ever to happen in human history.

Because energy is much more scarce and expensive in Europe.

European Parliament president says there’s a market for Canadian oil and gas in Europe ctvnews.ca/politics/artic…

Paying for judges to take courses in this, that, or the other has to have an insane ROI in terms of societal impact.

Right now, we do not have evidence that the fertility decline of the last 15 years is caused by a shift in environmental exposures. But I have said many times that if we found actual evidence to that effect, the spatial and temporal patterns we've seen would cause me to accept

carney trump poll trade deal economy tariffs theglobeandmail.com/politics/artic…

Coal power is showing signs of decline in China 🇨🇳 In the first half of 2025, coal power declined 55 TWh (-1.7%), as growth in solar and wind exceeded demand growth ☀️🍃 This is the first time China has ever seen prolonged falls in coal power outside of a major economic shock.

2015 projected global oil consumption by 2025 EIA: 102M/bpd IEA: 103M/bpd OPEC: 104M/bpd Actual global oil consumption in 2025: 105.4M/ bpd

📯🇩🇪Germany abandons the long-term, fixed-price contracts to buy green power from new renewable energy projects. "The energy transition can only succeed with more pragmatism and realism" said the country's Economy Minister Katherina Reiche while presenting the policy change 🧵

CHART OF THE DAY: What would happen if all investment in new or existing oil and gas fields stopped? It isn't pretty, says the IEA: "For oil, this drop would be >5.5m b/d every year [...], equivalent to losing more than the entire current oil production in Brazil and Norway."

Canada’s LNG revival from the dead is different than the US post Pause surge. The former is backed by dedicated, nearly unlimited upstream support. A Canada supportive of #LNG exports is a marketing problem for USGC LNG and Qatari LNG in Asia. Distance matters. Center on Global Energy Policy

Look chaps, what I’m really saying is that there is a not insignificant technical risk (and now political ones too) that the Grasberg mine may never restart. Not in years. I mean ever. Two clues: First, location. Grasberg sits in one of the wettest climates on the planet. The

Important thing to keep in mind while we make fun of unprofitable AI datacentres.

European energy prices started rising in July/August 2021, when Russia started choking off supplies through Yamal-Europe and Gazprom-owned storage was left empty. Misleading to start this timeline in January 2022.