American expats evangelizing air conditioning abroad. Intriguing climate adaptation strategy.

Well well well how the turn tables….

Three kinds of tweeters in the Elon era: Those who left on principle, those who stayed on principle, and, uh, a third group.

yas kween

Alex Trembath It's ok to come back to Twitter now because Elon opposed the OBBB. This has also allowed us to establish that it wasn't a Nazi salute, he was just acknowledging the crowd.

Jesse D. Jenkins That seems like a good effect, though -- more capacity of nascent technology has much higher global decarb value than marginal US solar, no?

I think the era of the climate hawk might be over.

PNW urbanists are crushing it - in part because The Groups are much worse in CA. But why? Many reasons, but I suspect the influx of post-materialist left-pastoralists into SF and Santa Monica in the 1960s created a New Left politics that endures through culture and institutions

“With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that the IRA was not the beginning of something but the end of it. The political, economic, and cultural conditions that allowed for climate hawks’ advances over the last decade simply no longer hold.”

I think the IRA's failure actually has relatively little to do with the IRA itself. The IRA subsidies did/do have supporters in the GOP (e.g., Speaker Johnson saying before inauguration that he wanted a scalpel, not a hammer taken to them). They were repealed for essentially

Endorse, with caveat that I do think there was electoral cost to IRA. Not exactly explicit or direct but in addition to inflation, Biden/Harris deathbed conversion on nat gas was unconvincing at the vibes level for a lot of voters and in context of not only inflation but high

“Progressive technocratic hubris…risks undermining much of what the IRA could accomplish.” Ted Nordhaus and me in 2023.

Right now there is a sort of confusing “populism vs abundance” debate roiling the progressive discourse that I think keeps eliding the critical point that mainstream environmental orgs keep pushing an agenda that is neither is abundant nor populist. slowboring.com/p/big-ass-truc…

Notable quote here — Pretty clear that the clean firm carveout was not just a product of negative views toward renewables but of a slowly-cohering “baseload” vision. A good reason to find the “they’re gonna screw over these technologies in guidance” line less than compelling.

I do think the IRA experience reveals both the floor and the ceiling of technology-centric climate policy.

I wrote this 14 years ago lmao

“George Washington once estimated that he spent $15,000 a year in today’s currency on candles made from whale spermaceti. Yes, our first president was literally the famous dril tweet.” via Derek Thompson

one thing being a parent really drives home is that "cheap plastic crap from china (ie low cost, mass produced consumer goods from east, southeast, and south asia) are straightforwardly welfare enhancing

Unfortunately, 1. It also neeed and never got permitting reform to move faster 2. Had a TON of other requirements placed on investments that slowed them down and 3. Was (wrongly IMO) framed abt climate when its really abt a nat'l security and the economy 6/