How About a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?

Jan 20, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition

One source of frustration for the climate coalition – and the ideological left more generally – is the amount of money and coordinated effort that the ideological right has put into political and ideological persuasion over the last four decades. Chapter 4 of my book...

Why my political predictions could be wrong #3 – Young people will save us.

Dec 5, 2024 | Blog, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate, News, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition

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 and #Energy social media communities will be familiar with the...

Political Disagreement as Apostasy

Nov 25, 2024 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition

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 using the acronym defined it, it became evident pretty quickly that it...

Thinking Critically About Election Lessons for Energy Transition Politics, Pt. 2

Nov 11, 2024 | Blog, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition

[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 intervals. — DS] ——- In September I speculated about how each...

Thinking Critically About Election Lessons, Pt. 1

Nov 9, 2024 | Blog, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition

[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 elections it is common to see immediate, impulsive “takes”...

Are We Failing the Marshmallow Test?

Nov 5, 2024 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition

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 days. It is likely that around 70 million Americans (or more) will...