Over the last two weeks, I've begun working on a project driven by the theory of change underlying all of my academic work: narrative shift work can lead to just energy/climate policy outcomes. It's surreal, still tenuous, and I don't want to jinx it because we have a ways to go.

I’ve gradually withdrawn from social media and especially academic social media over the last two years and while I’ve no doubt missed out on some opportunities that come with having a big online footprint, my life has tangibly improved.

I feel like lots of smart people in climate who should otherwise know better are hedging on AI and remaining publicly agnostic about data centers out of fear of offending those with funds and power and/or until they can figure out which way the wind is blowing. That sucks.

I feel like lots of smart people in climate who should otherwise know better are hedging on AI and remaining publicly agnostic about data centers out of fear of offending those with funds and power and/or until they can figure out which way the wind is blowing. That sucks.

Academic editors emailing my (non-academic) org’s info@ address to request a peer review two years after leaving higher ed, there is no escape ahhhhhh 😱

Why is every single person with political aspirations in this country such an enormous piece of shit

The premise that early community engagement from infrastructure developers is important to "de-risk" projects is based on the assumed inevitability of said projects.

I so feel this. It's weird being a politics-oriented researcher who pro-actively moved into policy when the environment for it seemed favorable (IRA/BIL, etc.) and then realizing that it had been politics all along. It feels like whiplash and wasted time.

It’s bizarre being a policy-oriented researcher in an environment where evidence and public opinion are basically irrelevant to what happens. We’re not informing policy any more, friends; we have to make politics.

A huge loss. Dr. Pacheco-Vega always stood out to me as enthusiastic, collegial, enormously generous, and an example of how we all should be in academia.

I left academia in early 2024 and made another career transition (due to Trump 2.0) in late 2025. I feel like I’m just now coming up for air and while I’m in a very good role, I feel a bit disoriented about my place in climate and energy work and the path ahead.

Shout-out to the Boomer guy in my co-working space who takes loud calls in the shared work area, stays in conference rooms past the time he books, and who is generally obnoxious as fuck. Appreciate you perpetuating the stereotype as the most selfish and least self-aware generation.

Paxton is awful but don’t lose sight of the fact that Cornyn is also a pile of shit who deserves endless humiliation.

Not enough attention is paid to stock photos attached to climate journalism. These aren't innocuous choices. I wrote about images used in drought coverage in the Colorado River Basin that gave the impression that the main consequence was fewer party boats on Lake Mead. Not great!

COAL REBOUND?!!? Nope... Coal generation is up 1% in April 2026 vs April 2025. It's actually lower than April 2021. Gas gen is also up 1% y-o-y even as gas price spikes. There is no gas-to-coal switching, cos gas was already more expensive than coal before the crisis🤷‍♂️

Another milestone in the (still too slow) clean-energy transition: Wind and solar produced more of the world's electricity than fossil gas for the first time ever in April ember-energy.org/latest-updat...

One thing that feels weird in the post-academia journey is how so much of my academic work over a decade-plus - teaching, writing a book, grants, articles, conferences, talks - is effectively erased or invisible in my day-to-day.

The fact of the matter is, people of all stripes don’t want big infrastructure built in their backyards, whether it’s wind and solar or data centers and petrochemical plants. It’s completely understandable. And developers completely suck at presenting value propositions in ways that make sense.

why does our school district assume parents don’t work and have limitless time

The loose local anti-data center coalition is posting AI-generated flyers on social media about opposing data centers.

How is “The Dems should stop campaigning on climate” not another form of institutional acquiescence to an assumed but actually non-existent “mandate” of the far right? Besides, I think Dems are given too much credit for being pro-climate because they don’t engage in familiar forms of denialism.

How is “The Dems should stop campaigning on climate” not another form of institutional acquiescence to an assumed but actually non-existent “mandate” of the far right? Besides, I think Dems are given too much credit for being pro-climate because they don’t engage in familiar forms of denialism.

There was a business manager/department admin at my university before I left academia that was almost completely unresponsive until the third or fourth email. Gave a talk there to my old department last month and *surprise,* honorarium is in the wind. 😵‍💫

Have begun to think of myself less as a failed academic and more as a dude who works on energy and climate policy with a lot of other interests and qualities beyond a career. Progress.

Today I gave a guest lecture to students who were reading my book and man, it was nice to talk theory and history and big ideas again.

Took the day off, floated the river, caught fish.

It feels like there are fewer tenure announcements and fewer people announcing landing TT jobs and every now and then it dawns on me how many PhDs are in the wind, their work and expertise being vastly underutilized and under appreciated.

Spent the last two days at a tribal energy markets and transmission workshop and was happy to see non-native industry leaders in the transmission governance/RTO space get very pointed feedback about dropping the ball on meaningful tribal engagement.

Starting to belatedly hate-read the abundance book for a side project and that opening about imagining a world of abundance is so sterile, individualistic, devoid of culture and I'm wondering why this future is given so much more mainstream credence than imagined climate justice/GND futures.

Wish I had a career mentor.

It's Earth Day, which means you should preorder my new book, "Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions." cup.columbia.edu/book/buildin...

It’s Earth Day and I’m thinking about how far the work for a livable climate often takes us from the places we hold dear and wish to fortify against catastrophe.

Me wanting to wade into the bad-faith discourse on racial capitalism on the other site but also needing to work on *checks notes* transmission permitting stuff for me job.

Data centers (in their current form) are deeply contingent upon the imaginaries of a platformized web, which began consolidating in the mid-2000s. They are far from inevitable and alternatives already exist. They’re just not as cheap, ubiquitous, nor profit-generating.

I think a lot of ostensibly pro-climate people in energy (e.g. regulatory, policy, research), broadly speaking, have made the foregone conclusion that data centers are inevitable so should be done “right,” and I think this is wildly mistaken.

I recently hired someone. During the search, finalists submitted timed written essays. One of my colleagues flagged two responses as AI when reviewing. Different tools showed different likelihoods of AI use, from 3%-70%. Then I plugged my original writing in and it said 80% AI. We are cooked.

Jerk chicken, beans and peas, mango salsa, fried plantains. Heaven.

So like what should I stock up on before the bread lines start to grow

One plausible reason data centers elicit more outrage than fossil fuel infrastructure is a problem of visibility, of "materializing" fossil fuel infrastructure beyond sites of extraction (h/t energy humanities scholarship). Data centers are just more tangible.

It is striking to me that pro-data center officials are experiencing more violence than fossil fuel execs. Not sure what to think of this yet.

Placing data centers within a broader corpus of large infrastructure that harms local communities but purportedly contributes to a “greater good” (dams/mines/pipelines), they aren’t visible technical marvels and it’s very hard to craft disingenuous stories about their real benefits (which are few).

Placing data centers within a broader corpus of large infrastructure that harms local communities but purportedly contributes to a “greater good” (dams/mines/pipelines), they aren’t visible technical marvels and it’s very hard to craft disingenuous stories about their real benefits (which are few).

Source tells me the TPUSA SRP candidates are stable. Please god

Source tells me the TPUSA SRP candidates are stable. Please god

The coal state/community to data center hub is something to keep an eye on.

In the past week I: Learned we were awarded $600k to do some really exciting work on transmission permitting. Hired a brilliant policy analyst to support my work in the Intermountain West. Worried constantly about nuclear war, genocide, and food and fuel scarcity Installed a new garbage disposal

Journalism schools around the country should design a new course called “How to not be a transactional piece of shit” centered around Jake Sherman.

Even Ezra Klein doesn’t think Trump’s doing nuclear threats the right way.

I’m thinking a lot about people who have been arguing since early 2025 that the military would do the right thing in the event of a fascist takeover… as they now gratuitously commit war crimes in Iran.

So SAVE ending is going to destroy our finances. Super awesome.