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Energy service is a collective good, Part 2: Appreciating Option Value
[Part 1 of this post is here.] This will be the last blog post for 2024, so here's a gift suggestion for the holidays. Consider helping someone you love develop a greater appreciation for "option...
Energy service is a collective good, Part 1: Price Discrimination
Because affordable, reliable electric service is an essential element of our lives, voters tend to worry about it, and to react strongly to the risk of its loss. The provision of energy services...
Why my political predictions could be wrong #3 – Young people will save us.
Note: This is the third in a series of posts auditing the political analysis (and corresponding prescription) in Climate of Contempt. The first two were here and here.] Longtime denizens of #Climate...
“The power of conviction … yeah, I always fall for that.”
This is a relatively famous New Yorker cartoon by Jason Katzenstein, depicting a generalization about male/female rhetorical styles. But it might as well be illustrating the way social and...
Political Disagreement as Apostasy
Slogans, acronyms, and memes rise and fall quickly on social media. I recently saw that the term “FAFO” was trending on Twitter. Not knowing what it was I clicked on it. Though none of the posts...
Ubiquitous Petroleum Products
I have learned that there is one sentence in Climate of Contempt that, more than any other, seems to grate on the the ears of some in the climate coalition. It is found on page 166: “[O]ur economy’s...
Engineers Are Problem Solvers
While we anxiously awaiting the inevitable MAGA assault on climate policy progress and the regulatory state, it doesn't do much good to react to or comment on it until it actually takes shape. So...
Thinking Critically About Election Lessons for Energy Transition Politics, Pt. 2
[This is the second of two posts exploring what (if anything) we can learn about energy politics from the results of the November election. After this I will return to regular posting at regular...
Thinking Critically About Election Lessons, Pt. 1
[NOTE: This is the first of two posts about taking care when drawing political lessons from the election results. The second will appear here on 11/11. -- DS] ---------- When Democrats lose...
Are We Failing the Marshmallow Test?
Whatever the outcome of today's voting, we will learn something from it. And I will post some reactions to specific races and what they signify for stronger climate policy on 11/10 and succeeding...
Why My Book’s Political Predictions Might Turn Out To Be Wrong (#2) — “Will Voters Be Scared Straight?”
One of the recurring themes in Climate of Contempt is that while modern media doesn’t change human nature, it does amplify the worst aspects of human nature in powerful ways. The book recommends...
Intentional vs. Unintentional Fake News
In chapter 4 of Climate of Contempt I summarize the academic literature showing how (1) online platform algorithms mislead and anger us, and (2) political persuaders use that anger to push us toward...
Reports of the Republican Party’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
No matter what happens on Election Day, members of the climate coalition can use it to recalibrate their sense of how energy transition politics works, and to better understand the modern GOP's...
Be a Savvy, Multi-directional Learner, Part 1 — Markets vs Regulation
[Reader warning: This is a wonky post that is aimed at people who have read Climate of Contempt or who otherwise have a deep and granular understanding of how electricity markets work.] ------...
Learn to Manage the Shpilkes
The word “shpilkes,” which refers to a state of agitated anxiety, is probably unfamiliar to most non-Yiddish speakers. I am not a Yiddish speaker, but like many of us above a certain age I learned...
Energy Messaging in National Elections is Tricky
The parties’ nominating conventions are over and their platforms set. The GOP platform emphasizes “energy dominance” and doubling down on fossil fuels. (And see my previous posts discussing the...
“Kindness don’t ask for much but an open mind”
For some people, complex ideas resonate more when conveyed through artistic expression than through narratives or numbers. Many readers will have heard of energy historian Daniel Yergin’s book, The...
“Rage-Farming”
Of all the political communication pathologies worsened by modern media technology, one of the lesser-known is “rage-farming.” It's an old idea in new clothes. Their biographers detail the pettiness...
World Values Survey & the Energy Transition
The most recent version of the World Values Survey (WVS) came out a little more than a year ago. The Economist had a particularly lucid and useful explanation of its conclusions, including some...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
“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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
“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.”...
“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...
‘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...
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...
Why My Book’s Political Predictions Might Turn Out To Be Wrong — “The Inflation Reduction Act will transform climate politics”
[Note: This is the second in a series of posts looking at how the political analysis (and corresponding prescription) in Climate of Contempt could turn out to be wrong. The first post was here.]...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
“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...
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...