I am once again asking you to consider how AVs affect sprawl, congestion and emissions. This study of Boston found that AVs would increase total driving ~40% & reduce transit use by ~10%. (Many people would switch to AVs from transit and/or move away from the CBD.) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Very cool post-doc opportunity to work with @samuel-bagg.bsky.social on anti-corruption institutional design. Tight deadline! @lpeproject.bsky.social @lpeblog.bsky.social #lawsky apply.interfolio.com/188955

Today's the 10,000th occasion of me seeing someone with zero historical training or output interviewed as a "historical expert", so to be more explicit: Most people would never accept this level of blatant malpractice in engineering or medicine. Don't accept it in history - it can be just as deadly.

Actually a laughable claim - the US right has been more institutionally robust than the US left for much of the last century, thanks to waves of corporate and lassez-faire institutionalization in the Progressive and post-Hoover decades, and union-busting starting in the 70s.

All technology adoption is cultural!

📣 ANNOUNCEMENT! 📣 I am very excited to announce my new platform and products! 1) The @transitiontimes.bsky.social newsletter, made to promote all the good work being done on the #energytransition! See the welcome note at www.transitiontimes.net/tt-1-welcome... 1/3

In our paper on competition btwn electric and gas distribution service, @jlappen1.bsky.social and I highlight that electric and gas technologies are in different phases of development: whereas gas tech is mature, electrotech is rife with potential gains. Regulators -- ignore this at your peril!

In other words, significantly less than the cost of one (1) billionaire gubernatorial campaign

That said, shrimp farming is really bad for the planet.

Fun update: Just had an inspection by the @cpsc.gov! Very cool to learn about their work, very good to see a fast, serious govt response to a potential commercial safety hazard, very fun to learn that CPSC inspectors carry badges (which sadly they wouldn't let me take a picture of).

Every heatwave that passes without a ban on sale of single-use AC in favor of dual-use heat pumps is a missed climate opportunity and an unfair, unnecessary cost paid by people who're trying to keep themselves cool and safe

Two ICE agents tracked down a woman *inside a polling place* yesterday. Why? They demanded that she take down an Instagram post in which she named Jonathan Ross as the man who shot & killed Renee Good (after the Star Tribune identified Ross). www.syracuse.com/news/2026/06...

Today was hottest day ever recorded in France, breaking yesterday's record! 60,000+ people died suddenly in European heatwaves in 2022. Heat dangerous for elderly ppl living alone (over 70,000 died in 2003!). 21stC state capacity requires cooling & social care phenomenalworld.org/analysis/glo...

The extreme heat preparedness event has been cancelled due to extreme heat. Climate change makes climate adaptation - decarbonization - harder. There will never be an easier, safer moment to act than right now. www.thenation.com/article/envi...

Galaxy-brain idea: divert less water for consumptive use

Once again seeing lots of "the US has enough electricity to power data centers - it just can't plug them in!" We've got to be real careful here. Improving capacity utilization isn't value-neutral - improving dispatch of underutilized coal, for example, isn't a policy win!

I'm a huge fan (pun intended) of the vision of using the Tube as a heat exchange resource. Designing that system right means improving the ability to vent/cool the system below at the same time as we use it to decarbonize building heat above. Underground: For Climate, as they've said for a century!

If I were, say, the ambitious gov of CA, and I saw what a disproportionate amount of enthusiastic coverage this tiny pilot project has gotten, I would pour an absolute waterfall of capital into expanding it - and another into showing people that CA in fact does build things! But what do I know

Question for the indoor air quality folks: If (hypothetically, ofc) you have a landlord-special gas stove, a hood that vents back into the room, a single operable window, and no door in the kitchen doorframe, are you likely to get the stove emissions out better with or without the hood?

If I were, say, the ambitious gov of CA, and I saw what a disproportionate amount of enthusiastic coverage this tiny pilot project has gotten, I would pour an absolute waterfall of capital into expanding it - and another into showing people that CA in fact does build things! But what do I know

Climate disasters are undermining decarbonization - I explored this vicious cycle in 2020. But TfL is a good illustration of the virtuous cycle that's possible: Shared infrastructure like transit is one of the most effective places to target our adaptation efforts! www.thenation.com/article/envi...

this is cool as shit

How deeply entwined is oil in American culture? The first-ever Olympic gold medal in basketball was won by a US team made up mostly of members of the McPherson Globe Refiners, a team of Kansas refinery workers. That refinery has been owned for 90 years by an agricultural co-op.

Today is the official end of my eight years' affiliation with Oxford - and most importantly, with the Bodleian Libraries. A few fond reflections on the best and most bizarre library system on the planet - a network so vast and byzantine that it's hard to say how many libraries it actually contains:

U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy has proposed eliminating the U.S. Forest Service’s airworthiness inspections for aircraft that fight wildfires. The idea itself could benefit Sheehy personally.

paging CWA lawyers - this look like a lawful discharge to you guys?

one thing I'm really truly a RETVRN guy about, ironically enough, is Whitaker's Words. @archive.org should resurrect the actually-functional original.

@agranato42.bsky.social's 2017 investigation of the political economy of the Stanford Review remains a true banger of student investigative journalism.

In a buried report, oil regulators pinpointed nearly 600 wells operating illegally, threatening Oklahoma’s drinking water. Then there were 1,400+ wells that had operated for decades without any limits at all — grandfathered in from an earlier era. With @readfrontier.bsky.social

People desperately want to do anything other than organize people in the communities they live in, which takes enormous amounts of time, relationships, and continuity. It is a soil-tilling work and everyone wants to short cut to the harvest.

I think we underestimate the difference between tech tycoons and older industrial or dynastic ones. Bezos, Musk, et al are paper billionaires, which means their wealth remains vulnerable to political interference. It may give them purchasing power, but it doesn't insulate them from politics

Such a good illustration of why, as a matter of political economy, it's so crucial to enact real, robust, economy-wide data center regulation. Market incentives mean that data centers will seek to develop wherever new power infrastructure is being built. ... 1/5 www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

Both the government and the Court of Appeal now treat protesters as terrorists and terrorists as protesters. It's hard to accept that a "Labour" government is imposing rightwing authoritarianism on the UK, but please read this column to see what's happening.+🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Ginzburg reordered my whole understanding of the world. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/b...

95% of all "TX is outperforming CA on decarb" claims incorrectly conflate energy and power, capacity and utilization, and addition and displacement. I'm a Hanlon's Razor guy, but whether it's ignorance or malice it's got equally pernicious results!

New favorite energy deployment visualization just dropped

The obsession with getting instantaneous election results is weird and unhealthy, serves no real purpose, and feeds conspiratorial nonsense. Increasingly thinking we might be better off just embargoing all results for like a week.

I would like to pause the planet for about a month to catch up on reading

Never let it be said that I don't know how to have a good time

This is the level of toxic we're talking about: process unit inputs that are so corrosive they melt and shatter hazmat suits

(trying this again). The emissions reduction rollback is huge and deserves this highlight from Narwhal. A few more details on the numbers specifically - its all a bit confusing because "Pathways" has been used to mean both CCS plus other levers 🧵 thenarwhal.ca/oilsands-pat...

🚨new paper🚨 from me and @gruberte.bsky.social. As part of our work on why/how we should take public control of the Powder River Basin for a managed decline of fossil fuel use. In this paper, we calculate how much it would cost to take over and tl:dr- basically zero dollars. 1/

For years, CA climate progress has been crippled by many advocates' insistence on giving state officials the benefit of the doubt as "climate leaders," regardless of their actual actions. In a Becerra-v-Hilton world, there's no longer any excuse. CA advocates must organize to fight.

A great read with a widely-applicable lesson: fossil industry has huge liabilities that get tend to get conveniently left out of asset valuations. At the same time, industry has no plan to pay for its liabilities - they're going to get dumped on the public one day. Maybe we can combine those facts?

Crucial read for anyone who interacts with carbon accounting or thinks about climate change. Danny and his colleagues have fought an immensely difficult uphill battle against corruption, and been slandered for it. The upshot here, imo, is that paper tons should be considered worthless at best.

This post is getting a little attention, so a couple solution-oriented additions: this baseline can be improved upon even with robotaxi growth. 1. Cleaner grid = cleaner EVs 2. States and cities can create anti-deadheading regulations and incentives 3. Take space from cars, give to people

I think Honolulu might have the biggest climate risk : decarb opportunity spread of any major N American city. Unfortunately it's so far left even low-hanging climate action on the table...

here's a writeup! it's my understanding that this would be the biggest non-tenure-stream faculty union at a US private uni so this is a Big Fucking Deal, but admin needs to be pressured to not, uhhh, overturn valid election results just because it doesn't like them web.archive.org/web/20260603...

Be sure to take a look at the photos in Josh's thread. One thing we're hoping to accomplish with this paper is to kick people loose from the (wrong!) notion that energy distribution systems and options for use have basically been the same for 100yrs. Things have changed--and are changing right now.

New from @justingundlach.bsky.social and I in the Energy Law Journal! It's time to confront the blind spot at the heart of state public utility regulation: The regulatory framework intends to prevent competition, but electricity and gas nonetheless compete. 🧵 🔌💡 www.eba-net.org/wp-content/u...