It is quite challenging to convince people that this really is more or less what every macroeconomics textbook says, even when you are teaching them out of one of those textbooks.

As decentralised adoption outpaces centralised statistics, much of the solar revolution is going unrecorded in emerging markets according to chinese export data. #solar

no inflation. you're the inflation.

Same thing happened to the Canadian judge on the ICC. Canada has said little or nothing about it.

"A confidential new US intelligence analysis details how China is exploiting the war in Iran to maximize its advantage over the US across fields... Beijing has also assisted countries around the world struggling to meet their energy needs" @katemac.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

FT": "Protests erupted overnight in Cuba after the government said it had completely run out of diesel and fuel oil, the energy supplies essential to its power generation." “We have absolutely no fuel [oil] and absolutely no diesel,” said Cuba's energy minister, blaming Trump's" blockade of Cuba

“The postwar order rested on three pillars: American hegemony, the fossil-fuel energy system, and an open, multilateral trading order. America has now attacked each pillar at the foundation of its hydrocarbon global order" @katemac.bsky.social & I last year. With Iran War? bsky.app/profile/pari...

They are!

People in the comments dunking on Trump but Xi is citing an airport-bestseller-level theory here

Xi told Trump that a major question for the two countries was whether they could avoid the “Thucydides Trap,” according to an official English translation of his remarks broadcast by CCTV. @cnbc.com www.cnbc.com/2026/05/14/t...

still can't believe larry summers called this one in like 2023, before trump was even re-elected to do the oil shock. now thats real foresight, like how yield curves predicted the pandemic

10/ We live in the Prince of Darkness MBZ world Why we called it "OPEC Drama Kings" ...episode 2 of our Polycrisis podcast bonus season is out: pod.link/1884213852

8/ For more, last week @katemac.bsky.social Drama Kings episode 1 ECONOMIC: Long standing differences between UAE and Saudis on the endgame of the Oil Age, to pump the barrels or keep prices up 2 GEOPOLITICAL: UAE wants US+Israel to "finish the job" with Iran. Saudi Arabia seeks detente with Iran

Lmao

I volunteer as tribute to romantic environmentalism, but I'm also remembering back to early climate action when like old environmentalism, it focused on remote places, polar bears, etc. But then it became a global environmental justice movement and dots were properly connected.....

New pod from me and @70sbachchan.bsky.social on what we think the war will lead to, how “hyperagency of consumers” is an energy transition vector, and Do Markets Matter pod.link/1884213852/e...

At Polycrisis 2023 panel, @alexbhturnbull.bsky.social explained enormous stockpiling of oil that China had done (its size was deliberately kept obscure) and how it was a major swing provider to oil markets - demand then, and supply now... @katemac.bsky.social www.phenomenalworld.org/interviews/o...

Extremely niche surfer take, but for Surfer Magazine to run an article about the coming El Niño that doesn't salivate over the potential for monster surf but instead focuses almost entirely on risk to human life feels like a significant inflection point.

On UAE's shock OPEC exit, @katemac.bsky.social Drama Kings episode 1 ECONOMIC: Long standing differences between UAE and Saudis on the endgame of the Oil Age, to pump the barrels or keep prices up 2 GEOPOLITICAL: UAE wants US+Israel to "finish the job" with Iran. Saudi Arabia seeks detente with Iran

3 actual quotes from this piece: “Can I afford the tax? Yes. Is it going to deter me? No. But I think it’s shameful. I provide a lot of money to people who are blue-collar workers who work for me, servers in restaurants." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

well that's fuckin bleak

there was a good article about this a few months ago:

my mom told me if I wait for things like good things will happen to me dude

7 months to go

*Political Econoptimist amirite 😅

Do many people know that the ICC judges, once sanctioned by the US, almost immediately lost access to credit cards, google, amazon & microsoft cloud, etc. www.ft.com/content/4c3a...

Points we make in this essay: Why exactly is this shock different What are policy & mkt response China and electrotech order All energy transitions are driven by geopolitical energy shocks Hyperagency of Consumers who want solar,EV,battery Counterarguments-Oil will win!Coal will entrench!- don't fly

Unless they’re tracking Chinese clean tech export data - which I think only Ember does consistently? - all the energy scenarios models etc are just plain wrong.

this is my life

This is something fundamental happening in both demand and supply side of energy: people can now just buy gear, absent policy support, at a scale that shifts the energy system! It’s gone well beyond rooftop solar panels for rich households getting FiTs.

this could be us

Points we make: Why this shock is different What are policy & mkt response China and electrotech order All energy transitions are driven by geopolitical energy shocks Hyperagency of Consumers who want solar,EV,battery Counterarguments -Oil will win! Coal will entrench!- don't fly

have now given 5 public talks on the iran war accelerating the energy transition, and the look on people's faces (😍) when you show them Hormuz.... slides: tinyurl.com/PolycrisisWe... Polycrisis essay with @katemac.bsky.social: www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/daw...

Absolute fucking clown shoe

i just found out about early modern epigrams. they're just tweets! books full of epigrams! the mind has always lusted for short form content!!!

NEW: “Once a climate project, electrification is now a geopolitical insurance policy. A fossil fuel supremacist government has made oil and gas costly and unreliable—and accelerated the turn to the electric world order.” @katemac.bsky.social & I @phenomenalworld.bsky.social

“Many oil and gas importing countries are now being forced to triage: how much LNG goes to power generation versus fertilizer plants?” But unlike past energy shocks, we now have “a superior alternative,” say Ember analysts. @katemac.bsky.social and Tim Sahay www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/daw...

now thats an anecdote with a punch, from Gillian Tett www.ft.com/content/c0ae...

Every three minutes on Bluesky today: oh that's a delightful name for a town! Dudly-on-Friendton. I see they have voted for the Murdering Orphans party.

Chrome silently installs a 4 GB local LLM on your computer

just spoke to @volts.wtf with @70sbachchan.bsky.social about our entire Polycrisis project and it actually helped me think through and clarity a few things. Sign of a good interview! Thanks Dave

“climate people overestimate the political impact of discrete disasters — and that we process even mind-bending catastrophes largely by normalizing them… What comes next, as ever, would be as much a matter of political economy as climate.” @katemac.bsky.social & I agree w @dwallacewells.bsky.social!

In Brazil the electric buses are growing in numbers due to local tech and production, fleet of smaller trucks and delivery vans are increasing and it's only a matter of time when the big ones join the movement. So with ethanol and EVs Brazil might just skate away from the worst of this fuel crisis

This was from a year ago when the Gulf Kings were investing heavily across Africa in energy transition and in carbon offsets. wonder if the Gulf war and funding crunch mean that the Kings don't follow through on their landgrabbing carbon offset MOUs with African countries.

electric trucks are coming (I think this is actual trucks not the oversized passenger cars)

How badly does the Canadian auto industry want to remain shackled to the US market, while the rest of the world moves on?

Whose barrels are going to be kept in the ground? Kate and I gab about the DRAMA KINGS....dollar, air defense, oil, blood, peak demand, you know... our favourite topics

The world's biggest oil producers are taking different positions on the future of energy @70sbachchan.bsky.social & I chat about UAE's shock OPEC exit Listen here: pod.link/1884213852

The world's biggest oil producers are taking different positions on the future of energy @70sbachchan.bsky.social & I chat about UAE's shock OPEC exit Listen here: pod.link/1884213852

Stagflation www.economist.com/britain/2026...