Reminder that Mike Johnson named a law school he was dean of after child sex predator Paul Pressler, got his job because of Matt Gaetz and is now committed to protecting Donald Trump. This is not his first time at this rodeo. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...

Anyway, what's half a million dead people to the fossil industry? They were mostly poor people anyway.

Part of the reason for this is that the truth is so awful it defies belief -- akin to literally stating GOP policy positions, people will literally not believe you because, paradoxically, it is so bad that they think, if it were true, everyone would already know and no one would stand for it.

It is an ironclad law of climate comms that we must absolutely in every case focus on the economics of these actions, only incidentally mention the mass human casualties, and never, ever the natural world.

I wish it were better understood that this is an act of mass murder akin to firing into a large crowd. Impossible to say specifically who will die as a result of this action, but certainty that it will be many.

First #COP30 report. About the U.S., Australia, Norway and Canada and their oil and gas interests for @drilledmedia.bsky.social drilled.media/news/COP30-OCI

As #COP30 gets underway in Belem, a new report shows that four countries—Australia, Canada, Norway and the U.S.—have collectively *increased* oil and gas production 40% since the Paris Agreement was signed 10 years ago @rishpardikar.bsky.social writes: drilled.media/news/COP30-OCI

It will not surprise you to learn that many of these same countries are the ones moving to block the just transition mechanism--the thing that would actually help the world move away from fossil fuels--at #COP30

“Between 1989 and 2022, households in the top 1 percent added about 100 times as much wealth as households at the national median. The share of all U.S. wealth held by the top 0.00001 percent has nearly doubled over the last decade.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/o...

"We don’t yet know if AI will transform the economy or even be profitable. Yet Washington is insulating the industry from all sorts of risk. If a bubble does pop, we’ll all be left holding the bag."

Musk and others on the far right are obsessed with things like Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons because they see fantasy worlds as reinforcing their own beliefs about immutable hierarchies of race, gender, and by extension morality www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Today on Volts: markets for distributed energy resources (DERs) are usually fragmented & opaque, making it difficult to scale up. A UK startup called Piclo is setting up a marketplace where buyers & sellers of grid flexibility can meet, compare terms, & sign contracts. Much needed, long overdue!

The walk from being a former climate and clean energy wonk to outright techno fascist mechanism designer should be a lot longer imo

Lots of talk on here about how Caltrain should cut this or streamline that to compete - imo, counterproductive austerity thinking. This is a public policy choice! Waymo is a state-regulated entity. We can simply deny these companies' requests to compete directly with transit, or impose conditions.

The Trump admin seems set to force two Colorado coal plants to stay open past their planned closure this year, even as the costs of keeping an aging, unnecessary Michigan coal plant running through the summer top $80M. Are more must-run orders coming? www.canarymedia.com/articles/fos... #energysky

Next time someone tells you renewables will beat gas on economics to justify deregulating everything, maybe consider that even wildly uneconomic coal plants continue to run and pollute, and coal pollution may well go up not down due to bonkers state intervention.

Two years ago Colombia's president pledged to stop awarding new exploration contracts for oil, gas, and coal. On the world stage, this was a big deal. Now the question is: how is Colombia's energy transition going? NPR went to Colombia to find out 🇨🇴 Read and listen here - only on @npr.org

MA and New England climate folks - Has anyone seen the text of this House bill? Cutting the 2030 climate goal, reducing Mass Save efficiency spending, sounds bad. 🔌💡 commonwealthbeacon.org/energy/house...

There are dark clouds on the horizon for Massachusetts climate policy. A new House bill proposes major changes to Massachusetts's policy. See thread below.

Trump's EPA set up a system whereby corporate polluters could be relieved of the burden of meeting air-quality regulations. How? By, uh, asking. Sure enough, lots of them have asked, with devastating consequences for air quality. New report:

Colombia is in the midst of their energy transition. Is the story a happy one? We spoke to more than a dozen Colombian energy folks - from renewable developers to ministers to coal lawyers to oil company execs. Here's what they think went right, and what went wrong. Listen and read on NPR 📻🎧🇨🇴⬇️

Want to learn more about Colombia's energy transition? @npr.org has you covered. 🫡 🇨🇴 🎧 ⬇️

Former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe is the latest prominent Democrat to join Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a fossil fuel industry front group that seeks to influence liberals to embrace methane gas as clean, climate-friendly energy

Crazy good job with the best team in Climate Politics right here! cc @leahstokes.bsky.social @volts.wtf @costasamaras.com @aimeewitteman.bsky.social @waiterich.bsky.social @bslotterback.bsky.social @douglewin.bsky.social @jigarshahdc.bsky.social tell yr friends.

📣 cool climate job! 👇

If you want to be in the thick of the action & really make a difference on climate, you're not going to find a better job/org than this.

Some rare (these days) good news in the renewable energy policy space (at the state level, of course). Michigan is thus far meeting its renewable portfolio standard targets, and is seeing significant growth in distributed generation: www.michigan.gov/mpsc/commiss...

Great joining @amywestervelt.bsky.social (along with colleague and co-author @prof-b-t.bsky.social) to discuss our chapter in the recent @cssn.org volume, 'Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment': drilled.media/podcasts/dri...

“Climate-related disasters forcibly displaced 250 million people globally over the past decade, the equivalent of 70,000 displacements every day, according to a report by the UN refugee agency.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I cannot stress this enough right now: share journalism that you think is good. You might not always be able to afford subscriptions or to tip journos but since everyone seems able to hate on headlines they dislike etc., they must also have the power to elevate good quality writing! We need it.

In the spirit of sharing good writing, here's a fab piece by @richardfisher.bsky.social about the glacier that inspired a key scene in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - and the fact that it is now disappearing because of climate change. share.google/oDSLK0gKOppk...

Working in a coffee shop this morning surrounded by the chatter of about 20 elderly women writing postcards to voters in Tennessee, hoping to flip its 7th Congressional district on Dec 2. Just incredibly wholesome stuff.

The final version of this paper is paywalled, but if anyone's interested, here is an open-access preprint: kevinjkircher.com/wp-content/u...

"Accounting for these increased methane emissions removes over two-thirds of the apparent post-2005 decline in United States net greenhouse gas emissions." Essential paper by @kevinjkircher.com. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

one thing I like about Bluesky is that I can create a little personal feed of just the stuff I don't want to miss, check it now and then without having to wade through a bunch of ads, propaganda, or slop, and when I'm caught up, just close the app and go do other stuff

“Across the world, strong and stable majorities continue to back ambitious climate policies…The problem isn’t a collapse in public support – it is the growing disconnect between people and politics, .. www.politico.eu/article/cop3...

You ever call a senator's office and ask the staffer who picks up what it's like to work for someone without a spine? 10/10 recommend.

welcome to 2025 everyone!!

Progressive groups yes but also a lot of the federal employees involved with all this www.gravityisgone.com/a-slap-in-th...

Point number 1 in a media statement by the Least Developed Countries group comprising low-income countries, mostly from the African continent is a call for climate finance #COP30

Some excellent work on a proposed Canadian LNG project. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt6H...

Huh well it turns out I heard from a few federal workers about this and well "We civil servants organized to help our colleagues face the hardship of the shutdown, we put up with the pain and our only request was to not be betrayed like this. Trade our pain, make it count."

The installed capacity of carbon capture and storage is about 50 megatonnes per annum of carbon, but it actually captures about 30 a year Have been hunting for this number for a LONG time - buried in a DNV CCS report -> brandcentral.dnv.com/original/gal...

"electrification is also the key to a dramatic improvement in energy efficiency, potentially reducing global final energy demand by 24% over the next 25 years, even as global GDP doubles" A truly stunning point. This is why I write about energy efficiency so much! www.ft.com/content/7258...

"More than 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to the UN climate summits over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, inadequate climate action and record oil and gas expansion" www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Not a bad view, walking to work after the first snowfall of the winter.

The consensus is that the electrification of transportation will destroy 5 million barrels per day of oil demand by 2030. In this new piece I argue that this number is too low for a bunch of reasons.

Medieval serfs living through their oat fields being trampled by the armies of rival kings but the oat fields are our health insurance access, the rival kings are the insurance and airline lobbies, and the mercenaries on horseback are senators.

One striking thing about this @drilledmedia.bsky.social podcast on Norway's internal conflict over oil and climate: The US has the same basic problems - oil and gas wealth skewing our culture and politics - but none of the social benefits that Norway's *publicly owned* O&G wealth provides.

As COP30 (UN meeting on climate change) begins, 10 years into the Paris Agreement, US emissions are about as high as ever, due substantially to methane pollution from oil and gas systems. The US is the world's worst cumulative climate polluter, nearly 2x China, and is not participating in COP30.