13/ For a generation, climate was the hardest collective-action problem. That problem is dissolving—not because multilateralism worked, but because the transition stopped being a sacrifice and became an advantage. Countries act for themselves, and the climate benefits.

I have a new essay on place-based economic development policies as "broadly-shared abundance policy" at Site Selection magazine: siteselection.com/incentives-s... Key pt: econ dev policies can boost abundance IF targeted at distressed areas/non-employed, & if local housing policies accommodate.

Seeing this chart a bunch. As tempting as it is, it pretty dramatically undervalues US oil & gas exports (I think it just looks at crude oil & LNG exports). Here's what I get with UN Comtrade data:

Ed King@ed-king.bsky.social · 11mo ago

In the era-defining US fossil fuels v China clean tech export race there's only one winner, reports @Bloomberg www.bloomberg.com/ne...

New piece from @arnabdatta.bsky.social and @petereharrell.bsky.social goes through the good and bad in the Trump MP Materials deal. They note it improves on past industrial policy (e.g. Tesla) while not addressing some current challenges. www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

What the Pentagon’s Rare Earths Deal Gets Right and Wrong

Hello and welcome to the newsletter, a grab bag of daily content from the Odd Lots universe. Sometimes it's us, Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway, bringing you our thoughts on the most recent developme...

bloomberg.com

"The material basis of the global production, consumption and information systems are being remade. One doesn’t have to be a Marxist to think that will imply a radical transformation in global politics." @katemac.bsky.social & I on the new globalization: phenomenalworld.org/analysis/bri...

"Even in 2024, the EU was spending more money on Russian oil and gas (€22 billion) than on financial aid to Ukraine (€19 billion)" 👀

Kate Mackenzie@katemac.bsky.social · 2y ago

If you’re wondering how on earth Europe navigates the post-transatlantic era of defense spending, self imposed fiscal restraint, energy vulnerability and climate goals… so are @70sbachchan.bsky.social and I www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/eur...

Worth a read. Terrifying that it might be true. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Marginal REVOLUTION

The Trump administration has issued a blizzard of Executive Orders, and set many other potential changes in the works.  They might rename Dulles Airport (can you guess to what?).  A bill has been intr...

marginalrevolution.com

Not saying this is comforting, but here’s our look at what other world powers might & could do, while the US is a source of chaos and volatility. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/pol... www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/pol...

Polycrisis 2025 | Kate Mackenzie & Tim Sahay

Diplomacy, finance, and extraction in the year ahead

phenomenalworld.org

The most surreal and maddening feature of the campaign was that everyone agreed that high prices were the main issue but the guy explicitly, consistently running on a platform of raising everyone’s prices won voters most concerned about high prices. We hammered this time and time again and yet.

I will never stop saying this: Biden should have given this as the reason for halting permits for new LNG export terminals. Everyone knew it would raise domestic prices, even with the ports already in the works.

Jonathan Buonocore@jjbuonocore.bsky.social · 2y ago

Well this is rough news from EIA. Natural gas prices may close to double over the next couple years as we start exporting LNG? Who knew? Who possibly could've predicted this? Did we make our own "national energy emergency"? 🔌💡 www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/... In the @nybooks.com I offer historical perspectives on the political failure of Bidenomics: a massive program built thru business and nonprofit welfarism. Market-making, as I call it, has its place, but it must be embedded within more direct social benefits.

Bidenomics: Farewell to an Idea?  | Brent Cebul

As the Democratic Party reckons with another loss to Donald Trump, no issue looms larger than its continued hemorrhaging of working-class voters. It’s not

nybooks.com

Climate advocates might feel hopeless with Pres-elect Trump returning to the WH. They shouldn’t. I wrote about how to make progress for NYT 1. Focus on innovation and industrial strategy 2. Be pragmatic about fossil fuels 3. Expand the interests that gain from decarbonization

US power demand now projected to grow by 128 GW by 2029! Last year, Grid Strategies broke the news that utilities and system operators had doubled their forecasts for electric demand growth from 2022 – a sudden jump driven by data centers and industrial load, among other factors.🧵 1/4 🔌💡

Hey @bsky.app , all these great posts and no bookmark button to save them for later?

Norway's road transport energy use is now highlighting a really important effect: primary energy consumption falling even while people travel more. Why? Because electrification is energy efficiency. Chart by @robbieandrew.bsky.social

Chart of the Day. Fun fact - New York City has a bigger GDP than the state of New York.

A more than doubling during the Biden Administration 🔌💡

Chart of the Day: New Clean Investment Monitor data is out, so time to update the IRA growth chart. SAF and carbon management are now so far off the chart it's starting to look silly. EV supply chain manufacturing, solar, and hydrogen continue to grow rapidly, as do EV sales and storage deployment.

Chart of the Day: The number of federal government employees has increased by 6% since 1970, while federal government spending has increased by over 3,000%.

Well this jumped out at me: "the value of China’s clean technology exports is set to exceed USD 340 billion in 2035, based on today’s policy settings. This is roughly equivalent to the projected oil export revenue of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates combined in 2024." -IEA ETP, 2024

EU plans to flip the script on China with new tech transfer requirements for Chinese companies seeking EU subsidies. 1/ www.ft.com/content/f4fd...

EU to demand technology transfers from Chinese companies

New requirements will apply to batteries but could be expanded to other green sectors

ft.com

There’s a real risk of over interpreting what happened in a way that sends D’s backwards on so many fronts not least of which is climate/clean energy

Andy Kaczynski@kfile.bsky.social · 2y ago

Mandate? Trump is now under 50% in the popular vote with his margin ranking 44th out of 51 elections since 1824. 4 Democrats won Senate seats in states Trump carried—compared to zero in 16 and 20. GOP poised for its smallest House majority since the U.S. had 50 states. - CNN’s Harry Enten reports

Chart of the Day: Required Critical Mineral Supply w/ and w/o Recycling. Source: IEA, 'Recycling of Critical Minerals' Note how copper and cobalt barely budge w/ recycling. Huge challenge building out lithium and nickel supply out to 2040.

Very cool paper from @conorwalsh.bsky.social & Arkolakis. This really stood out: "when energy is provided by accumulable capital, as in the case of renewables, rather than exhaustible fossil fuels, innovation resources can be redirected to broad innovation and increase the aggregate growth rate"

NBER@nber.org · 2y ago

The economic impacts of moving to a renewable-dominated grid in the US, from Costas Arkolakis and Conor Walsh https://www.nber.org/papers/w33028

This might be the chart that explains the election imo The whole post is super wonky but v v interesting jzmazlish.substack.com/p/yes-inflat...

Experimenting with ways to show the breadth of clean energy investment across the US. Here's announcements over just the last two years aggregated by Economic Area as a share of the local economy. Big impacts in parts of TX, LA, NV, GA, SC, MI and IL www.datawrapper.de/_/KAQ83/

Clean Energy Investments Are Benefitting Almost Every Region of the US | Created with Datawrapper

Almost every region of the country has seen major new clean energy, industry, or manufacturing project announcements over 2022 and 2023. The size of these investment announcements relative to local ec...

datawrapper.de