In the era of affordability politics, making clean energy cheaper may be a more viable emissions mitigation strategy than making dirty energy more expensive. My latest over at The Climate Brink digs into the debate:

Incredibly, not one of these milestones scores as a “win” using the traffic engineering metrics that quietly dictate city planning. Urban planning prof Jonathan Levine and I have one paper detailing why and another explaining why it has to change for any vision of abundance to succeed. Links below.

In the story of our house electrification and DIY solar install, we’ll include a chapter about Washington Gas dragging its feet to cap the gas line. Today is the fifth time this guys has assessed the line, but still hasn’t completed the task. We filed a gas service abandonment nine months ago. ⚡️⚡️

Gotta give big props to the Downtown D.C. Holiday Market. In the last few years it has gotten *way* better, and proves that people will absolutely come out for well-planned car-free spaces and events. More of this, D.C.!

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Good description of one of the country’s most crippling problems. “One person’s health care cost is another person’s health care income.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/o...

We spent a year investigating billionaires for @washingtonpost.com. We found: the wealthiest 100 Americans gave $1.1 billion to influence the 2024 elections — 140x more than they did in 2000. And almost all of that giving boosted Republicans. washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

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You know, I would grumble but accept it if they said, "The science is controversial," because it obviously and unfortunately is. But to say it isn't "evidence-based" when there is so much evidence is utter horseshit. And the other studies haven't been "ignored"--they've been carefully refuted.

I’ve been in Toronto at the #astmh meeting these past few days and last night some very good news was presented here: A new malaria drug has proven efficacious in a large trial and could soon be approved.🧪 My story in @science.org (and 🧵on why it's important to come): www.science.org/content/arti...

Every month for the last 77 years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has estimated Americans' unemployment rate This streak dies tomorrow Govt staff could not survey Americans about whether they're working or looking for work in Oct, the 1st time in 934 months This blind spot will remain forever

Imperial College London and Earthwatch Europe are calling on the UK government to implement stricter regulations for environmental risk assessment of pet medications like imidacloprid and restrict blanket preventative use of flea and tick treatments in the UK.

There has been a lot of recent interest in mitigating "super pollutants", short-lived climate pollutants like methane and refrigerants. We should cut emissions, but using them as carbon offsets risks breaking the math of net zero: www.theclimatebrink....

"Progressive yimbys are firmly in charge" in Baltimore as mayor signs bills: No off-street parking required. Single-stair buildings up to 6 stories. Reduced setbacks. Still in process: Allowing 2- & 4-unit buildings in multifamily zones. www.thebanner.com/politics-pow...

Meanwhile, in the far-left progressive bastion of ... entire State of Utah: "The plan shows 3,100 miles of paths. The network would come within a mile of 95% of Utahns, connect to 33 school campuses, 31 state/national parks, and 74 high-capacity transit stations." www.sltrib.com/news/2025/10...

🚨🚨Things are just getting worse. 🧵 www.politico.eu/article/us-a...

The USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse. I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email

Every single report to shareholders from a large REIT includes something about how it's great that market-rate multifamily housing isn't getting built in high-cost coastal cities because the shortage is what allows them to rent gouge.

Let's help Clay out here with some math. The $4200/yr. is for a household. Average SNAP household has 1.9 people. So that's $2210/person. $2210/year is $184/month, and that's a little over $6. per day. Clay, let's see you stockpile groceries on $6/day. Hell, let's see you eat on $6/day.

Soon, everyday phrases became impossible. “I’m hungry” became “There emerges, within this organismal enclosure, a not-unfamiliar sense of lack—interpretable, perhaps, as nutritional, though not necessarily limited to metabolic vectors.” www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-g...

What an image. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

22. Examples of real long-duration storage technologies are pumped hydro (reservoir size is decoupled from turbine capacity), or big tanks of molten salt or hot water, or hot rocks. But all of these do still cost a lot of money if they are only cycling once per year.

Susan was a force for goodness and humor and creativity, so full of life. It was a great privilege to know her. www.npr.org/2025/10/16/1...

As the guy in the White House has recently insisted, today is Columbus Day. What to do about it, given Indigenous peoples’ entirely merited dislike of the whole thing? A couple-three ideas that I've been thinking about. 1/

UPDATE: Newsom has signed SB 79 into law!! This is a great day for anyone who cares about ending California's housing and homelessness crisis, getting the state to net zero emissions, and recovering American democracy.

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

Terrible on its own terms, and also poisoning the waters in congress for any kind of bipartisan deal on transmission/permitting issues.

Bikes

The #1 piece of advice that TransLink's CEO offers other North American transit agencies: Provide frequent service

Vancouver's TransLink is a rare success story in North American transit, with ridership almost matching pre-Covid levels. It might be the only big 🇺🇸/🇨🇦 agency that has *expanded* total bus service since 2019. I spoke w/CEO Kevin Quinn about lessons from TransLink's rapid recovery. 🧵

Class 1 e-bikes, which require pedaling and have electric assist that tops out at 18mph, are very different than throttle-operated class 2 and 3 bikes, which are themselves very different from the bigger, faster electric motorcycles that are proliferating under the “ebike” label.

Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen. He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.

This is pretty grossly misleading. 90-95% of this footprint is associated w/life cycle emissions of manufacturing - and almost nothing from the use of the inhalers (see the Supp Info linked below). Should manufacturing in general reduce it's emissions? Sure, but that isn't specific to asthmatics.

Reducing energy waste in homes could offset all projected data center demand. @rewiringamerica's new report shows how: in exchange for speed to power, data centers fund residential load reductions. Households get lower bills & the grid gets more reliable. Link in reply 1/2

Before a new solar or wind farm comes online, its owner has to pay to upgrade the grid to handle that electricity. (It's a big obstacle for renewables.) But the same rule apparently doesn't apply to data centers. Consumers pay to help them come online. www.ucs.org/sites/defaul...

Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop

You might think that the mayor of Yellowknife, the capital of Canada's vast Northwest Territories, would be a fan of giant pickups. Nope. He's disgusted by car bloat. www.linkedin.com/posts/benjam...

Millions of people are being left behind due to car-centric policies in the United States.

For as much as some members of Congress say the D.C. government is dysfunctional and should be disbanded, it's worth noting that the D.C. government will open and operate normally tomorrow because elected officials can do stuff like, you know, pass annual budgets.

Driving to Vermont and back in our Bolt this month was, in fact, much easier than it used to be.

Farewell, sweet origin of poster’s disease

Trump's autism announcement mangled evidence. But the backlash seems a bit much? A researcher on studies finding NO link has also been a paid expert in lawsuits. And I would caution against relying on judges to decide where the strongest evidence lies.

This @washingtonpost.com has great context on the Tylenol litigation. (And more fair than the @nytimes.com story that annoyed me so much the other day.) Thanks @laurenweberhp.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Tireless Mercatus team @salimfurth.bsky.social @ebwhamilton.bsky.social @charlescgardner.bsky.social just dropped 18 (!) strategies for state govts to increase housing supply. Love the ideas to limit "lawsuits of questionable merit" [ahem, Virginia]. www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

Oooooh tricky! Notice anything about California's definition of ultra-processed foods? That's right! In order to be a UPF, food has to meet a definition that has nothing to do with processing. They need that because PROCESSING HAS ALMOST NOTHING TO DO WITH FOOD QUALITY.

In the Post (& elsewhere), Energy Secretary Wright continues to get basic facts wrong. He claims “We’ve been talking about ‘electrify everything’ for a while. Today, 15 percent of energy in manufacturing comes from electricity, same as it was 25 years ago.” False. Here's the real global data.

A peril of working as an expert witness in litigation, whether for big companies or (as in this case) people who sue those companies: The NYTimes may imply that your conclusions are warped by financial self-interest. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/h...

In a UN speech today, President Trump said that "all of these [climate] predictions were wrong". Back in 2019 I led a research effort to digitize old climate model projections and assess how well they did. Turns out they got future warming pretty spot on!

Wait, it gets worse. The team of economists and researchers responsible for the USDA survey that measures food insecurity and hunger were put on indefinite paid leave today. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Fewer people work in farming in Asia’s largest countries