This blog discusses the issues raised in Climate of Contempt, as applied to developments after the book went to press in February 2024. I try to post about every 5 days.
Annotating Energy Transition Stories — Episode # 3
I noted in a previous post that popular understanding of the energy transition is harmed as much by constant minor exaggerations and omissions as by outright lies. Many of the misrepresentations of the MAGA right are characteristically obvious, often parroting Donald...
Climate Change and The Electric Grid — Wildfires
We have known for some time that climate change can increase the intensity and frequency of wildfires. And in recent years wildfires sparked by electric utility infrastructure have become more common. California, Hawaii and Texas have experienced particularly...
Climate Change and the Electric Grid — Severe Weather
Dangerous heat, more frequent and intense flooding and wildfires, and more violent hurricanes are constantly in the news cycle. What we know about the relationship between climate change and severe weather is worrying enough. We need not embellish reality with the...
Pesky Pluralism, Part 2
The antagonist in the 2006 film The Illusionist is a fictional 19th century Hapsburg crown prince, played by Rufus Sewell. Sewell's prince is vain and cruel in his personal life, and a dedicated autocrat. But he is also dedicated to modernizing the empire to improve...
Pesky Pluralism, Part 1
One feature of the modern information environment is that it allows conspiracies and utopian fantasies of the left and right to grow undisturbed by reality. Utopian ideas are often the product of the irresistible notion that “if everyone thought like me, everything...
“Flooding the zone with s**t”
As I have noted in several other posts (e.g. here and here), a second Trump presidency would represent a setback for the energy transition because of Republicans' turn away from green energy and toward fossil fuels. If opinion polls are to be believed, a strong...
Complexity vs. Simplicity, Education vs. Advocacy
Sometimes, in contentious, factually-complex situations, people want simplicity and moral clarity. Those two forces -- seeking moral clarity and appreciating complexity -- are difficult to reconcile sometimes. In December of 2023 the presidents of Penn, Harvard and...
Project 2025 and the Energy Transition, Part 2 – Environmental Policy
[NOTE: There is a post-publication update at the end of this post.] In my previous post I examined what Project 2025 -- the GOP playbook for remaking the executive branch -- had to say about redirecting energy policy away from renewable climate concerns. This post...
Project 2025 and the Energy Transition, Part 1 — Energy Policy
[NOTE: There is a post-publication update at the end of this post.] Progress on climate change will be a big part of Joe Biden's legacy. He defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election, backed the doomed Build Back Better bill, and signed the Inflation Reduction Act...
Health, Safety & Freedom
Several years ago, a friend of mine presented a paper at a law school whose faculty is known for its conservative ideological bent. The paper described a regulatory agency’s analysis showing that the public health benefits of a particular regulation far exceeded its...
Transitions To Authoritarianism Sneak Up On Us — Part 2
In an earlier post I noted the growing list of scholars who warn of parallels between historical transitions from democracy to repressive dictatorships, on the one hand, and U.S. politics today, on the other. Part of what they see has to do with the recent...
Everything is Great, Everything is Terrible
Chapter 3 of Climate of Contempt describes the politics of climate policymaking in the 21st century, including internecine conflicts among Democrats that are partly generational. By now, it probably goes without saying that overcoming intraparty conflict is crucial to...
“It’s Hard to Be Humble”
In 1980, a country music artist named Mac Davis had a hit with a song called "It’s Hard to be Humble." The opening lines were “Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble / When you’re perfect in every way.” The song was obviously tongue-in-cheek, but when it comes to...
The Rhetorical Journey of Eco-Modernists Online
In March of 2024 the Breakthrough Institute’s Ted Nordhaus published an article entitled “Did Exxon Make It Rain Today?” The gist of the article is his claim that most media coverage of climate change catastrophizes the issue, and that climate scientists are complicit...
“I mow my lawn”
In my 20s I worked at a law firm whose system for evaluating the performance of attorneys included a "public service" component. This was fairly typical back then for big firms, and its aim was to encourage its attorneys to develop broader connections in the community...
‘Organizing Hatreds’ Is Bad For The Organizer – Part 2
In last chapter of Climate of Contempt, I argue that the future of the energy transition is intertwined with the future of liberal democracy. I write in chapter 6 that only voters can peacefully reverse the “trend of ever-increasing polarization and tribalism," and...
Where to Get the Full Story About Energy Transition Tradeoffs
Modern information flows shield the good news about the energy transition from conservatives, and the bad news from liberals. Our insulated realities make us too certain too quickly that our preferred truth is THE truth. In fact, we don’t know how technology will...
‘Organizing Hatreds’ Is Bad For The Organizer – Part 1
The grandson and great-grandson of U.S. presidents, Henry Adams, wrote his famous statement about politics being “the organization of hatreds” as an expression of his disillusionment with politics, especially the political effectiveness of whipping up contempt for...
Why My Book’s Political Predictions Might Turn Out To Be Wrong — “The Inflation Reduction Act will transform climate politics”
Some people, particularly those at the ideological poles of each party, reject the idea that congressional majorities are built by winning the ideological middle. They see engaging the dwindling set of potentially-persuadable voters as a largely futile exercise....
Transitions To Authoritarianism Sneak Up On People
One of the central implications of the analysis in Climate of Contempt is that the energy transition is inextricably intertwined with U.S. political dysfunction. In chapter 6 I cite scholars who study transitions from democracy to populist authoritarianism who contend...
You might be in an ideological bubble if …
Chapter 4 of Climate of Contempt discusses the academic literature on Internet "filter bubbles," and how and why they wind us up emotionally. They close our minds to information and arguments that challenge our beliefs by making that information too emotionally...
Annotating Advocacy Journalism – Episode #2
The modern media environment damages public understanding of complex issues as much by incentivizing frequent small inaccuracies as by way of bots and deliberate misinformation. Let’s look at another April 2024 example of sloppy journalism that leaves the wrong...
A Closer Look At Censored News & Its Effects
When talking about censored news feeds in front of groups, I often repeat a sentence from Climate of Contempt to the effect that Democrats and liberals are more likely than Republicans and conservatives to have heard about the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen...
The Chasm Between Invention and Commercialization
Steve Levine's 2015 book, Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World, tells the story of one of the laboratories competing for federal (2009 ARRA) stimulus money targeting battery development. Along the way the book illustrates the difficulty of...
What Is “Capture”?
In chapters 2 and 3 of Climate of Contempt I describe the gap between folk wisdom about corporate dominance of the policymaking process and what empirical political science research says about that issue. That gap is fairly large. As a general matter, well-resourced...
Celebrating Good Energy Transition Journalism
In chapter 4 of Climate of Contempt I explore the way competition from social media and advocacy journalism has crowded out – and changed – traditional journalism. And I use this blog to point out examples of the kind of incomplete picture of the politics and the...
Conservatives’ Dilemma
Because my book is aimed at the climate coalition -- and how misunderstanding of regulatory politics by some of its members slows energy transition policymaking -- many of my examples of over-the-top online communication come from within that coalition. But I also...
The Biden power plant rule’s uncertain prospects
Most plans to stabilize atmospheric carbon in time to avoid the worst effects of global warming rely heavily on rapid reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity sector. We have the proven technologies that would allow us to do so relatively...
Politics = Salience + Framing + Emotion
There is an old axiom (sometimes attributed to Carl Sandburg) that trial attorneys know: "When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law." The 1990s courtroom/family drama "Picket Fences" featured a wily defense attorney...
Annotating Advocacy Journalism – Episode #1
Let’s look at two April 2024 examples of misleading journalism. On April 12, 2024 the Daily Caller ran a piece entitled “Electricity Prices Have Risen Seven Times Faster Under Biden Than Trump.” It began with this: Electricity prices have experienced a significant...
Why state, local and private initiatives are second best
Paralyzed by negative partisanship, Congress is unable to craft regulatory legislation to tackle climate change by limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As the costs of climate change grow larger with increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon, and become more...
“It’s the Voters, Stupid”
The transition to a much lower carbon energy system will (eventually) require congressional legislation. That implies a significant change in the positions of existing members of Congress and/or change in the composition of Congress. Both types of change depend, in...
Why This Blog?
I intend for this blog to serve as a continuing resource for students, journalists and others who are interested in avoiding the distorted picture of the energy transition – and its politics – that online news and information presents to each of us. As with the rest...
Moral Ambiguity and John Muir’s Human Ecology
In Climate of Contempt I argue that, in politics, we are too casual about developing negative judgments of others in the absence of complete information about what drives their choices. This pops up in various ways throughout the book, one of which is the introductory...