David Roberts

I run a newsletter/podcast called Volts about clean energy & politics. Subscribe & join the community at volts.wtf!

[bridged from volts.wtf on Bluesky by Bridgy Fed]

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Last Notes

2025-04-05 20:53:54

Crippling oil, crippling LNG, reducing GHGs via economic contraction ... is Trump an undercover degrowther?
How Tariffs Could Scramble Tru...

2025-04-03 18:38:51

Meanwhile: "The damage climate change will inflict on the world's economy is likely to have been massively underestimated, according to new research by my colleagues and I which accounts for the full global reach of extreme weather and its aftermath."
Climate Change Could Wipe 40% ...

2025-04-01 21:47:06

The two biggest importers of cheap Chinese solar panels: Saudi Arabia & Pakistan.
Clean energy is gonna do some funny things to geopolitics.
Guest post: Saudi Arabia's sur...

2025-03-31 20:02:46

Louisiana utilities are providing dirty power at higher and higher (and higher and higher) prices, and the state's industrial customers are getting sick of it. They want to opt out and procure their own (renewable) energy.
US electricity prices are surg...

2025-03-31 16:29:57

The right built its giant media empire, with all its tentacles in radio, cable, local TV & newspapers, & social media, *precisely in order to achieve this result*, to be able to do lawless shit free from public accountability. Surely step one in solving this problem is acknowledging it exists!

2025-03-31 16:20:53

Even the news that does get out gets pushed through a variety of niche and hyper-ideological filters that don't fit together and don't add up to any coherent larger picture. There is no "main signal" any more, no shared understanding of what is happening, just a buzzy, chaotic Rorschach blot.

2025-03-31 16:18:54

Politically aware people -- including all pundits and probably everyone reading this -- cannot seem to break the habit of imagining that the US public is responding to the same information they have. It's not. The public isn't hearing, doesn't know.

2025-03-31 16:16:19

I keep hearing pundits saying that various Trump crimes & follies "aren't landing with the American people." I can't believe we're still talking like this.
The US information system is broken, just as it was broken throughout the election. People *aren't hearing about what he's doing*.

2025-03-26 03:57:58

Just went out and tried some authentic Chicago deep-dish pizza.
Meh.

2025-03-25 20:44:17

This, I think, is what smart people have such trouble accepting: that morons can succeed perfectly well in US politics. When a GW Bush or a Trump rises all the way to the top, it doesn't mean they're secretly smart, it means our corrupt, desiccated system is defenseless against venal morons.

2025-03-25 19:21:54

The most obvious lesson to draw from the leaked Signal chat is that these people really are morons. It's not a public act, it's not a schtick, there's not some secret back room where they drop the facade. They are genuinely stupid, incompetent people.

2025-03-24 04:12:13

Performative naiveté is the price of entry to high-level political journalism in the US. You are required to remain gormless, prohibited from developing a clue.
https://shiitake.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:twjze4qqf6fgxz33ct52wlnl&cid=bafkreichrngwwmrzry6pzd7ubsjdphk7ps3y5agwaxohiheaouvho5gj6y

2025-03-21 20:57:24

The unspoken background belief seems to be that EPA's work will "speak for itself," or that the legacy media will dutifully & fairly report what EPA does to the public -- that communicating the merits of a competent bureaucracy is someone else's problem. But no one's doing it!

2025-03-21 20:55:09

This really gets to my point about information asymmetry: why is this up to these poor employees? The right has a giant propaganda machine that slanders & demeans federal agencies in every medium, at every opportunity. Why is there no propaganda machine on the left celebrating EP with equal vigor?

2025-03-21 20:50:25

Here's a letter to the American public from (anonymous, out of fear of retaliation) current & former employees of EPA, earnestly -- and somewhat heartbreakingly -- explaining how important their work is & what a tragedy is is that Trump's destroying it.
An open letter from EPA staff ...

2025-03-21 17:20:53

OK, on Monday I'm talking with Helena Saren, head of the Zero Carbon Future Mission at Business Finland, about decarbonization in Finland.
Got any questions about Finland?

2025-03-21 00:24:05

NREL estimates that, by 2030, the US wind industry will need 124,000 new turbine technicians (61% growth from 2020).
If you know young people looking for green careers, send them to this very cool new apprenticeship program for wind techs:
A Groundbreaking Apprenticeshi...

2025-03-18 19:25:04

The modest restrictions on gun sales proposed by Dems are supported by overwhelming public majorities. If you're saying Dems should "move right on guns," you are 100% captured by the worldview of RW media.

2025-03-17 17:18:56

The triumph of all the world's worst people.
‘Beyond My Wildest Dreams’: Th...

2025-03-14 20:25:13

Civil servants, by and large, *care*. I really think that explains why reactionaries are so hostile to them. Reactionaries can't conceive of sincerely dedicating yourself to others, sacrificing for others, so they must invent elaborate "deep state" conspiracies to explain it away.

2025-03-07 22:15:20

It's the same with Pinker, with Haidt, with all these guys. I genuinely think the reactionary centrist media/influence machine -- the Free Press, Persuasion, the Atlantic, that whole nexus -- has done more damage & poisoned more minds than MAGA. It *dominates* America's elite class.

2025-03-07 00:00:41

Man this is so true re: 538 and all the other websites, journalistic & otherwise, that have disappeared over the years. Why not keep them online?!? It's so f'ing cheap. Just one more valuable resource flushed down the corporate toilet for no reason.
ABC Shuts Down FiveThirtyEight...

2025-03-06 20:53:02

The new line: yes, recession, but ... recession good!
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2025-03-05 21:05:41

jfc
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c7ozmxoc5b2ky4iam2o36uic/post/3ljnpg3ix4s2j
#nevent1q…jn8s

2025-03-05 20:31:01

On Friday, I'm talking with the authors of this paper about how utility ratepayers are getting stuck with the bill for massive data centers, what regulators can do about it, and what a future electric system dominated by social-media megacorps might look like.
Got questions?
Extracting Profits from the Pu...

2025-03-05 18:52:35

It seems like everywhere I look, men are demanding permission to be assholes, and I just keep thinking, "ok, but ... why do you *want* to be an asshole?"

2025-03-02 21:13:10

"People *are* doing things. You will meet those people when *you* start doing things."
Democracy is Crumbling. Is Any...

2025-02-26 18:39:43

Today on Volts: Pakistan, a country with ~45GW total installed electrical capacity, has imported a whopping 30GW worth of solar panels since 2020. I talk with two in-country experts about the seismic changes underway, how to keep them going, & what other developing nations can learn from them.
Pakistan's solar boom

2025-02-22 17:55:00

I think the key thing to understand is that, if VSPs truly acknowledged the nature of today's conservative movement, their own positioning -- wise, above it all, a little of this, a little of that -- would be exposed as craven moral cowardice.

2025-02-18 21:01:07

The US has always contained far more fascists than communists, and fascism has always posed a much bigger & more proximate threat to democracy. Yet we've never had a "brown scare." No McCarthy-esque hearings to root out fascists embedded in gov't. Wonder why that is.

2025-02-17 23:22:30

"The sheep like the shade, plus the solar panels increase grass yield and protect sheep from predators," said Pearce. Meanwhile, Pearce revealed farmers and shepherds reap their own set of benefits, as "sheep eliminate the need for herbicides or costly grass cutting on the solar farms."
Researchers make unexpected di...

2025-02-15 19:03:15

History buffs will know that every authoritarian leader eventually converges on some version of: "I *am* the state. I can not break the law, I am the law, the law is instantiated in me."
Our march to authoritarianism so far has been excruciatingly by-the-book. Hitting every beat. No surprises.
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2025-02-14 18:25:13

"Staggering sales drops, swastika-daubed EVs, companies culling fleet models, and fan-forum owners selling their cars—Elon Musk's alt-right antics are seriously impacting his electric car business."
Man I wouldn't be caught dead in a Tesla these days.
www.wired.com/story/elon-m...
Elon Musk’s Toxicity Could Spe...

2025-02-12 21:32:01

Seattle's tech wealthy waged a frenzied war against it. Seattle's quisling city council moved the ballot to February to suppress turnout. Nonetheless, the voters of Seattle have overwhelmingly approved a measure funding a social housing agency by taxing the rich.
www.cascadepbs.org/politics/202...
Seattle poised to pass ‘excess...

2025-02-11 20:48:39

To me, nothing captured our current historical era better than Herman Cain tweeting Covid skepticism *from beyond the grave, having already died of Covid*.

2025-02-11 20:14:56

Turns out that centuries of economic thought are correct: increasing the supply of a good will, all things being equal, lower the price of the good.
Weird that people talk themselves out of this obvious insight when it comes to housing.
After Skyrocketing, Rents in A...

2025-02-11 20:07:59

My great fear is that, to the average semi-connected US news consumer, the last few weeks just looks like "Trump does a bunch of bold, decisive stuff that leaves his critics running around & squawking."

2025-02-10 20:15:56

It's wild how many Americans still vaguely think of China as the place where low-wage labor cranks out low-value ticky-tacky products. That was true, I dunno, 20 years ago, but these days China is kicking our ass specifically on sophisticated high-tech engineering. We oughta be embarrassed.
China breaks its own record fo...