Limiting rate of warming (or peak warming) and limiting long-term warming are different goals and can’t be adequately represented with a single metric without making hidden choices regarding tradeoffs between them

Some governments still intrinsically get this - but no sign that any of them are in the US, where policy conversations are focused on gas tax suspensions, which diminish rather than expanding state capacity. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/w...

No: don't call it a mid-transition war This is not a mid-transition impact, this is the same oil shock/disruptive impact as the last however many times, moderated somewhat and for some countries because there are actually alternatives available and in some cases deployed H/t @gruberte.bsky.social

A wise mentor of mine once described this dynamic as "It's impossible! And, besides, we're already doing it!"

My kingdom for one (1) LA politician who's willing to pursue a generational policy+political win heatmap.news/ideas/la-fir...

Can't escape the feeling that the fossil fuel industry understands the transformative stakes of this moment far better than clean energy industry and advocates. Today's ex: In CA, I'm hearing that gas utilities will be spending *shareholder money* on stronger gas-efficiency incentives! (1/2)

Hot take of the morning, fueled by jetlag

Env folks, me included, like to talk about the Cuyahoga River - but I think Exxon Valdez offers a more effective, less well-understood story for defending env regulation. Not "things used to be bad, but we fixed them - let's not go back," but "if you don't prevent the damage, you can never fix it"

Beautiful, beautiful stuff

OH MY HEART...the Oberlin Luddites Reject "The Year of AI Exploration"! 💚

I'm very excited that my report on housing affordability for @groundwork.bsky.social, coauthored with @mikefellman.bsky.social, is finally out. Today is a full teaching today for me, but I will try to put a post up about it tomorrow. groundworkcollaborative.org/work/fixing-...

I'd like to remind everyone that we do not in fact have to just ask.

Good thread here. 49,000 customers in the area are staring down a utility-wide shutoff because a private corporation wants to sell electricity to data centers instead of whole communities. As Josh points out, it's a crisis that will likely fall to the state to solve as a literal last resort.

Time sensitive: this is the last day to submit comments opposing the Bureau of Land Management's clearcutting of Oregon's ancient forests. This is a tool that educates you on just how diabolical it is, and it helps you submit your comment. morethanjustparks.com/oregon-old-g...

CA needs to build on its 2019-era conversations about how to manage potential failure of an IOU. By default, if Liberty can't solve this problem profitably, the state will solve it with public dollars. In that case, accountability should look like ownership transfer. calmatters.org/economy/2026...

I think this is what a lot of commentary today has been missing: This is a public payment to strategically shift foreign investment between sectors and states. That makes it a much, much more worrying precedent than a simple payment for lease abandonment.

Today my students discussed whether and to what extent Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism play a similar structural role in Europe to the role antisemitism played in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then the Israeli Foreign Ministry just goes and tweets out an Islamophobic octopus.

Perfect

*beating my head, or perhaps yours, against the sign* The US is a net petroleum exporter! Road fuel prices are rising in the US not bc of direct supply constraints, but bc we allow exports! In the US, the gas price spike is a producer profit spike, not a sign of sudden new producer costs!

Worth reading in its entirety. Lots of implications, but one I keep coming back to is that a generational window of opportunity may be closing for shifting freight back to rail - and winning the huge pollutant, road safety, and energy efficiency benefits that come with that shift. No time to lose!

Roses are redde Noble are the manatees For a bettir future Teach artes and humanityes

For all of the local planning “down to the square meter” done for this project, connecting it regionally is a fundamental question w/r/t its sustainability, and the fact that California Forever hasn’t provided an answer demonstrates that have not solved the governance problem they claim to

As the boxcar labels show, this was political commentary! The National Recovery Administration (predecessor to the National Labor Relations Board) stopping the Great Depression in its tracks.

Refiners have CA over a barrel, and that means they can use both high prices and low to extract concession after concession. Rather than waiting to react to each new demand, the state needs to blunt that leverage. A legal framework for state ownership is how. calmatters.org/environment/...

Remember Fort Pillow

ANALYSIS: Badenoch and Farage might not want to admit it, but Conservative and Reform plans to scrap net zero whilst boosting the North Sea would actually make the UK even more reliant on gas imports 🤔 www.carbonbrief.org/...

You can make a permitting timeline much, much longer if you refuse to take "no" for an answer, and then you can get a lot of political traction by blathering on about "lack of certainty." Across industries, in many of the outlier cases, the certainty was there up front!

So much this. City climate / sustainability offices get blown this way and that by all kinds of whims (including by the very international city networks that are supposed to be helping them.). They should focus on what they and only they can do! (Or be shuttered.)

Yes! Never waste a good crisis. This is the opportunity to build transit, bike friendly and pedestrian friendly infrastructure!

Certainly my experience with universities. Sustainability offices are great, but emissions really start to fall when the facilities department is well funded, staffed, and directed.

(w caveat that US is less vulnerable to this oil shock than most others, and the real cause of domestic price rises is the end of the export ban) a crash program to shift your state off of oil by rapidly developing transit and accelerating TOD would be extremely easy to communicate rn!

My longstanding thesis and a hill I'll die on: mayors around the country have been setting up mayoral climate offices that create a splash but accomplish very little. Real local climate policy means reinvigorating existing departments and embedding decarb missions there. cf Depts of Transportation!

Really glad to see @sammyroth.bsky.social covering what I agree is one of the most important under-the-radar climate stories of this year so far. LADWP is one of the most powerful decarbonization agencies in North America, and it's looking for a new GM www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/los-angele...

Hey #envhist! Parks Canada is ending its library services+ “decommissioning” its collection. We stand to lose a valuable set of materials that reveal if and how the Agency fulfilled its mandate (or didn’t). Read more here+write the Minister @juliedabrusin.bsky.social niche-canada.org/2026/03/10/c...

Immediately disqualifying for the job for which he has been nominated. The 4th Amendment specifies it’s “the right of the people,” not of citizens. We cannot allow someone who doesn’t understand the 4th Amendment to be the head of DHS.

you were pokemon going to panopticon dystopia, whether you realized it or not

This is good for transit riders and airport users. But it's also a huge missed opportunity, because the revenues will remain within the airport - it's illegal to spend them on anything else. Actual climate action in the aviation sector requires transferring funds. www.latimes.com/california/s...

8/ Read Tooze on why the Fertilizer shock during planting season is going to cause a lot of pain. Guess where most people in the world live & farm - Asia! Most people don't know -I didnt!- Gulf countries as a whole are 2nd largest fertilizer exporters adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

4/ The weakest people will suffer the most. Again, just as after Ukraine. "Pakistan gets 99% of its LNG from Qatar. Fertilizer plants are shutting across the country because they can’t get feedgas Industries are warning of higher input costs from gas and oil" www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This is a pretty great job! Ask me how I know

The data economy has made us dumber in ways that also make us vulnerable to authoritarian takover. We are have become both cynical and gullible in the sense we think we are too jaded be fooled and as a result are tricked more easily www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

I've wanted to go to Isfahan ever since my junior year of college, when I had an amazing history professor who taught the Safavid dynasty. I've never figured out how to get a visa and see these amazing pieces of history and culture. I am so sorry that my country is an instrument of ruin.

Prediction markets, like prior forms of political gambling, are incompatible with democracy and must be outlawed. This one isn't nuanced.

One of the best people i know, @gruberte.bsky.social came on this podcast to talk about the work she is doing with two of the other best people i know, @jmijin.bsky.social and @jlappen1.bsky.social. One big takeaway for me is this...

The late 2010s push to build climate desks at media outlets was great - but now the challenge (for those outlets who haven't subsequently sacked them all!) is to integrate them into literally any other desks

It must change because the real-world is ripe for fossil fuel industries to exploit a very real fear Americans have - based on our past history! - about societal abandonment. They talked about many good cases of this. Fossil fuel companies exploit this fear, and have limitless resources to do so.

Trying to do my part by holding a teach-in screening of Inextinguishable Fire next week.

I'm late to read it, but this is a fantastic review - both an incisive examination and critique of Fressoz's work, and illuminating in its own right.

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

Emmanuel Damas, 56, died in ICE custody on Monday. Damas came to the U.S. from Haiti seeking asylum. After six months in ICE custody—the last four at CoreCivic's Florence Correctional Center—he died from complications from a tooth infection. A tooth infection. 1/3 tucson.com/news/local/b...