The stupidity is just breathtaking. And enervating. I just don't even know how to start with the kind of irrational, non-factual, non-scientific, wantonly destructive idiocy that Trump and his minions spew.
Most importantly, it's a squandered opportunity--and one that the U.S. has been working very VERY hard to squander for half a century. When Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House, he was sending a signal that renewable were the future and the U.S. should become the leader in developing that technology.
Ronald Reagan removed those solar panels, and every Republican president since then has done everything he could to thwart U.S. investments in developing renewable technology.
Despite those efforts, the U.S. still made some investments. But I think we're now at the point where Republicans under Trump will begin actively dismantling what progress we've made. It's beyond ironic that the very people who chant "USA Number One!!!!" are working so hard to keep us from being the global leaders in the most important technology mankind will ever develop.
Oh yes. The revered Ronald Reagan who rolled back renewable energy and started us in the path to astronomical wealth inequality. He did manage to bankrupt the Soviets in chasing his Star Wars (Father of Dome) idiocy. But that was an accident.
We were in an equilibrium with the Soviets by then, and approached respecting each other, especially during Khruschev's administration. Yes I'm that age. No one talked about war any more; they talked about cultural exchanges and sports, etc.
Ironically, capitalism's glorious victory over communism in the Cold War has given us the world of today. Look around. Like where we're at? Happy with Trump? Happy with Putin? And so on. Capitalism is safe. It won.
Ronald Reagan was an actor hired to play President of the United States by Republicans who have morphed into Trumpists. Sure, Reagan did evil, and sent us in an evil direction, but he was an actor, a woodenheaded puppet.
Both the Soviet Union, as a rival, and the Cold War served as a critical break on our worst impulses. The U.S. winning the Cold War and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union was the biggest monkey’s paw ever.
It is because Reagan was an actor hired to do a job. Whether the main or mediocre actor is beside the point. He was an actor acting out a role called "President of the United States". The screenplay was written by a Republican faction that now write for Trumpism.
Donald Trump is just another actor playing "President of the United States", at the moment. Reagan's scriptwriters were ideological intellectuals largely from Chicago's Leo Strauss, and not completely mad.
Bush II was following the PNAC script, complete with its call for a new Pearl Harbor, and had become merely deranged.
Now Trump is following the "Project 2025" script, Trumpism achieving full bloom, and what were merely ideologues are now actual madmen, dangerously ignorant bullies and clowns, caricatures of mobsters and their molls and made men.
Folks are so baffled by all the bullshit flying around hour by hour that many, if not most, cannot see the forest because trees are in the way.
Clinton promoted both renewables and energy efficiency. Gore was the most climate friendly and tech friendly candidate ever but he bored the media with all his talk about serious issues while Bush was “more fun to have a beer with”. Obama significantly increased wind power and massively increased solar power capacities. Biden continued the work. In between those Democratic presidencies the reactionary Republicans have done their best to undo those the green energy policies of all those Democratic presidents as well as efforts to increase health care and other safety net programs for ordinary Americans while the mainstream media continued to claim Dems are a bunch of elitist snobs who have nothing to offer those Americans.
Meanwhile China is aggressively moving to green energy. 2/3 of China’s electrical power comes from renewables and its affordable, fast charging EV cars are outselling gasoline powered cars. As China and other countries are heading toward the Jetsons’ world, Trump and the Republicans are pushing the US into the Flintstones era.
“June Electric Vehicle Sales in China Exceed U.S. Vehicle Sales’
Bush was a self inflicted punishment, so to speak. If the fools who voted for Nader, because Gore wasn't "green" enough, or was too corporate, or whatever, had voted for the lessor of the two electable evils, the US wouldn't be in anywhere near the mess that it's in now.
I never understood why Mr. Nader let his ego so terribly get away with him. Al Gore needed every vote after Clinton had damaged the presidency, and apparently could not campaign for him (?) It was obvious that Gore had won. But he handed the win to Bush and everyone commented what a gentleman he was. I had a completely different opinion. What was he given/promised? Would Gore have kept a cooler head after 9-11 ?
Given the disaster of GW Bush, which sort of led to Trump, its hard to see any upside to Gore's gentlemanly behavior. On the other hand the voters have had multiple opportunities to not pick the worst of two evils, and have failed to do so.
The USofA became a different country after 9-11. On top of that the dot-com implosion, a big financial crisis, two wars. The arrival of unmitigated cable "news" channels. Stores disappearing. Fb, Twitter(nowX), YouTube, etc. You know it all probably better than I do (being an outsider).
The public did not see Clinton’s presidency as damaging. He left office with a 66% approval rating. The public knew all his supposed wrongdoing — Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, Vince Foster’s death, Chinagate — were fake scandals that we taxpayers were forced to spend $70 + million dollars worth of investigations to prove there was nothing there except the fact he had a consensual affair. After all the revelations of media idol JFK’s reckless promiscuity the public shrugged it off despite the mainstream media hysteria. During the Clinton administration 20+ million people moved out of poverty into the middle class helped by not only a strong economy but also the “making work pay” policies that allowed people to move off welfare without losing health coverage and with the support of increased EITC.
Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy. He had a budget surplus that was paying down the national debt that the media and Republicans claim to be so worried about. The highly respected Republican (former) tax expert Bruce Bartlett told the Pitchfork Economics podcast that had Bush just left Clinton’s policy in place (as Gore had wanted to do) by the end of Bush’s term the debt would have been erased. Bush deliberately destroyed the surplus with tax cuts.
Under Clinton we also ended the genocide in Bosnia without boots on the ground. In the UK Clinton is widely admired for the role he played in getting the Good Friday agreement signed. He worked the phones until the very last minute convincing the people on both sides who were getting cold feet to stay on board.
Clinton and other Dems voted for the 1996 "anti poor people" bill and also the "anti immigrant" legislation. The cause of many of the current issues. His initiative to wean people from Fed. aid, based on the WW program in WI, indeed helped a large number of people. And left a lot of other people very much behind.
I am not debating Prez Clintons achievements. I just saw that when Al Gore was campaigning, Clinton did not come out to speak for him. Gore could not profit from Clinton's successes as much as he should have been able to.
I did not say that "his presidency was damaging", I said he damaged the presidency (as an institution). Newspapers were reporting where he had deposited his semen. Where he had put his cigar. And how he lied, unless blow-jobs are indeed not "real sex". In France, the whole thing would have blown over, but this was (and is) the USofA.
There is difference in what people say in a poll and how they act later on.
Also, there were "boots on the ground" in Bosnia. UN peacekeepers, followed by a major NATO intervention and after that stabilization forces.
JFK's peccadillos were indeed not mentioned during his campaigns, during his presidency, or in the years after. The "boys on the bus" kept it under wraps. But that happened in a different time.
I am glad you linked to Dean Baker! He is another economist who makes things understandable to people like me. He is one person who points out that if we wanted to deal with the national debt, we would just let the Trump tax cuts expire. The media doesn’t talk much about revenue, only spending.
Almost the entire mainstream media is owned by plutocrats. The writers aren't allowed to mention taxes, only spending. They're seemingly not allowed to mention how, in other countries, things often actually work, and public goods are often delivered fairly effectively. With Fox, this is glaringly obvious, but it's pervasive. WAPO has gone over to the dark side. Writers are bailing out of the NYT. While tax evasion is absolutely rampant, they're not allowed to look into this area either, unless someone dumps the files of some Panamanian bank somewhere public. In this case, there's a brief mention, then it's on to Musk's tweets.
Another reliable source and very good reference on this subject states: “Fossil fuels now make up less than half of China’s total installed generation capacity, a dramatic reduction from a decade ago when fossil fuels accounted for two-thirds of its power capacity.” March 2024
That provides a realistic measurement of the unreliability of wind and solar. If fossil fuels make up less than half of China's total installed generation capacity and yet provide 70% of the electricity—and hydro is producing half of that 30%—then the capacity factors of their wind and solar are, predictably, lousy. Nameplate capacity is a useless indicator of where the power is actually coming from, particularly with intermittent sources like wind and solar.
Other sources claim that as the number for 2022, up from 2019, and short of 2025, so there's a curve. One source claims 50% today but that can't be right. But nowhere near 2/3.
We will be number 1, but it will be in coal and oil fired electrical generation... MAGA is the composed of a bunch of nihilistic Luddites clutching and grasping at old technology against their own best interest.
We're going to be living in thr movies "District Nine" and " Elysium". Earth as a hellhole while the elites live in colonies orbiting the planet, with mercenaries employed by thr elites to keep the proles down.
If you watch "Soylent Green", from 1973, you will see the climate hell hole depicted as well. But that part was ignored over the big shock over dietary innovations in the future. Charlton Heston meets climate change — just the place for a man's man.
That was one of my favorite movies ever. It predicted where we are quickly heading: housing shortages, people sharing living quarters, people living in cars, food shortages, no AC because of limited electricity, riots because there are just too many people for the space available. The ultra rich still had AC and steaks to eat, but the average person could not afford such luxuries. That movie needs to be re-released.
I thought he personified a man's man more in The Omega Man. Soylent Green is the movie in which the dying actor Edward G. Robinson plays a man who dies. And then gets processed - into food. The movie can be rented for a few bucks on Amazon Prime, Apple TV.
But Heston was always the man, he even talked to God in Ten Commandments, not to mention his time as an NRA spokesman. In case you know the Ten Commandments story you should check out the song "Charlton Heston" by Stump on Youtube. "Then Charlton Heston put his vest on. Classic
Science Fiction has had the drop on the oligarchs for quite a while. David Brin wrote about them in one book. And Babylon 5 had the concept of rule by Oligarchs and the Megacorps.
Being from an earlier generation, I also remember "Logan's Run", depicting a future society where population and consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by killing everyone who reaches the age of 30.
The Luddites had a point, they lost everything when the machines took over. Their highly skilled labor was no longer needed, women and children were hired to replace them.
Maybe we will now see similar with the introduction of AI ? Real journalists going the way of the dodo.
James Earl Carter was an engineer, submarine commander, and farmer. There was no room for foolishness in his is character. He told us the truth. He encouraged us to do better. And we sent him packing after one term. (And he was betrayed by the military. But that's another story.) The American people are responsible for the collapse of this country. Not any president or politician, just "we the people" who are on average, stupid, fat, greedy, lazy and scared. A third of us voted for these grifters; a third of us didn't vote at all. The billionaires own the political system and put in place a crazed old man to distract us from what we've lost...Democracy.
Yes. Jimmy Carter did not have the swagger the actor Ronald Reagan had. He farmed peanuts. He was true to his wife - whom he met when she was a baby en he a young boy. The Iranians released the hostages as soon as Reagan was in office. I always thought they had played the US voters as little fiddles. And that is when I got scared - because the most powerful country on earth should not be conned that easily.
They forget that they can stop something here, but the world moves on. The world's progress will leave us behind, eventually too far to catch up if we have a sudden burst of sanity.
Krugman is wrong about almost all of this. The only reason China is putting in a lot of wind and solar is because China is is huge economy. What Krugman doesn't tell you is that China is also building huge amounts of coal. In 2024 they approved new coal equal to 1.5x the entire generation capacity of California or the UK.
China burns the most coal and has the largest CO2 emissions of any country by far. In 2023 they used 11 times as much coal as the US and they emitted 2.7 as much greenhouse gas as the US. China accounted for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions while the US only accounted for 11%. While US emission are flat since 1990, Chinese emissions have quadrupled and they continue to grow.
That doesn’t mean they’re not investing in renewables. It means they’re transitioning as had been the US—until a bill that actively handicaps solar & wind to the benefit of fossil fuels and specifically subsidizes coal.
That's the story you have heard from mainstream media...the data tells a very different story. At the bottom of the first table that I link to below you will find numbers for the European Union, which show a 34% decline in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since 1990. That's what an energy transition looks like. The same source shows 311% growth in Chinese emissions over the same time period. That's what coal fueled economic development looks like.
India is the third largest GHG emitter and the story there is the same. Coal fueled economic development has produced a 199% increase in emissions since 1990. India now emits more GHG than the whole EU.
The Chinese would probably say that the reason their emissions are high is that they produce energy intensive goods that are then exported to consumers in the US and the EU. There is some truth to that, although a lot of Chinese emissions come from producing steel and cement for the construction industry. Some of the reduction in EU emissions probably results from environmental laws that moved energy intensive manufacturing (and jobs) from the EU to China. I'm not aware of any data that shows the GHG emissions required to produce goods that are imported into the US and EU. That is an aspect of the problem that nobody wants to talk about.
Totally misleading. GHG emissions per capita has the US at number 17 in the world, China at 34, double the level of that of China. Change in GHG emissions from 1990 to 2023, US at -4%, China -68%.
This graphic provides a good global overview of CO2 emissions. While there is an energy transition underway in the EU, that is more than offset by massive emissions growth in China, India and the rest of Asia. Global emissions continue to grow quite quickly.
US GHG emissions per capita are higher than China, but so what? It is the absolute level of emissions that matters for global climate. US emissions per capita are down 34% since 2000, while EU emissions per capita are down 32% over the same time period. China's emissions per capita have increased by 223% over that time period.
Viewed at a global level, climate change policy has been a complete failure. GHG emissions continue to increase rapidly. The main impact has been to transfer wealth to industries which are closely linked to the environmental movement.
"US GHG emissions per capita are higher than China, but so what? It is the absolute level of emissions that matters for global climate."
When you're caught misleading others, you switch the parameters of measurement from per capita to absolute values. You can't compare countries by ignoring the size of their populations and their economies. That's why we put the figures into "per capita" for the sake of comparison.
Keep an eye on news about China’s coal use over time. Renewables are cheaper to get electricity from, and China is installing them even faster than coal power plants.
David Roberts is an environmental advocate, not a reliable information source.
As of 2021, coal provided 60% of China's electricity output, while wind and solar combined provided 12%. If you add hydroelectricity then total renewables were 29%. Coal output is continuing to grow.
India is the third largest GHG emitter. They are even more coal dependent than China. In 2023-24 66% of their electricity came from coal and that had increased by 73% over the past ten years.
If you scroll down at this link you will find a table showing India's generation by fuel source.
If wind and solar are really cheaper than fossil fuels, as Krugman claims, then why are India and China still building coal? This is a lot easier to understand if you stop thinking of electricity as a commodity and start thinking of it as a service. The service the power grid provides is as much energy as people want whenever they need it. Providing that service requires power plants that can be switched on when needed. Uncontrollable sources of energy like wind and solar are only useful as secondary energy sources for grids dependent on hydroelectricity or fossil fuels.
You've missed the point and nuance of this. China overbuilds everything because they have to give a billion people to something to do so they don't revolt. Yes, 1.5x capacity but you've provided zero information on ENERGY. capacity x hours of run time. Those coal plants? they sit idle. You only produce energy for the demand you have. the annual capacity factors (MWh/MWx8760) are in the realm of 60%. The reality is, yes, you can approve 1,000 new coal plants but when the rubber meets the road, maybe 200 of those actually get built and commissioned. Go check the GI queues of the US ISO/RTOs and see how many generators are in the queue and how many actually put steel in the ground.
I'm not going to defend China's greenhouse gas emissions. They are polluting more. And India has a dirty fuel course problem as well. But the Wikipedia data on coal usage is a few years old, pre-dating the exponential increase of China's recent investment in solar.
The fuel for coal plants is being used less during this economic downturn. Solar and wind are staying on.
Exactly right. You nailed it. The Republican party is owned by the fossil fuel industry, specifically, the Koch Network. It is tragic for our nation that they were able to gain unmitigated power.
Frankly, I seriously question the 2024 election results and want them verified. There is much evidence that the election was hacked, in addition to the massive voter suppression and interference from bomb threats and rampant disinformation (aka information warfare). We need to verify the vote with hand recounts and forensic audits (see electiontruthallinace.org). If we want free and fair elections, again, we must work to ensure our future elections are secure and protected from hacking, now.
It is almost as though Trump and the GOP are working systematically to destroy the future of the US. Occams razor says that there must be some sort of anti-American evil genius behind all this, as it's the simplest explanation. On the other hand, Napoleon said "Never attribute to malevolence that which can be explained by stupidity." So the choices appear to be that the admin is either stupid or actively malevolent. And a substantial number of voters seem to like this situation.
It has more to do with big money owning politics in the US. Right now, more money is flowing into the Republican coffers from oil and gas than solar and wind.
Paul, the MAGAts are incredibly stupid. In the late 1700’s, the Brit James Watt invented the steam engine and for the first time in human history humanity had a dependable source of power and England became the strongest industrial power on Earth! This first major influx of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is still there because it takes the atmosphere 400 years to break down carbon dioxide. The Orange Idiot plays golf while a huge storm in Texas creates a huge wall of water that has taken over 80 lives and counting! The hurricanes are now monster storms because of the massive heat of the ocean waters! In the American southwest, we are in the midst of a 25-year severe drought and the Colorado River continues to dry up! The Orange Idiot is insane!!!
For the upcoming midterms, two new bumperstickers:
-Dems for STEM
-Blind the Palantir
Like the flat-earthers of their time, the anthropogenic-climate change deniers of our time will be shamed and made to pay, one way or another.
Suicide by tailpipe inhalation, just another MAGA method of plebeian genocide. Perhaps more humane than the inevitable climatological extremes forcing mass migration, hot wars, starvation and extinction.
It is across his agenda. Energy, vaccines etc. hate, bigotry, and a belief that they were victims seem to be driving forces behind their irrational behavior. But the fact is they are harming all of us in the US (America is not the USA) as well as rest of world. It is late to consider why this happened. Now we need damage control and begin the road to recovery. If we do not turn this around (perhaps yesterday, unfortunately), our children will only believe in Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth that is now infesting main stream media and it’s sanewashing.
Thank you, my friend for noting that "Anerica is not the USA). An insight beyond the comprehension of most USA folks and especially Brits! Note that Canadians, who also live in America, never use that term to describe their southern neighbor. It's always "the US" or "the states". Of course, in recent months we have been using ruder epithets!
Actually, I do think Canadians refer to us as Americans. What else can you call us, Staters...Citizens of the United States of America. I agree that it's presumptuous for us to be Americans while North America is Canada, US and Mexico. But still...
Put simply, in the 20th Century access to oil was critical to national power. For the reasons cited in this column, the 21st Century will be controlled by countries controlling alternative and clean energy. This and other Trump policies ensure America will lose the 21st Century.
I too have noticed Krugman's observations about destructive masculinity and the oppression of feminism, and have wondered about this because:
GOP policy always seems like the statement made by Donkey to Shrek when he first saw Lord Farquaad's castle... it always seems to be compensating for something... I mean, think about Trump's flag poles and parade...and even his tower with his name in giant letters and his supporters who have flags with him with actual muscles instead of flab tucked into a girdle so tight that he can't even stand up straight.
A TYRANT is a ruler who exercises power or control in a CRUEL, unreasonable, or arbitrary way without regard for the law or the rights of others.
They are often associated with despotism, autocracy, and dictatorship, where they rule with absolute authority and often through violence or intimidation!
Yes, one way might also be to expose him as a weakling in bad ass clothing - or compensating. Yes he is a tyrant, but also seem to be trying to cover for things obviously lacking. Real strength does not require "accessories" or an image makeover or props.
Comsider that in addition to funding feom the fossil fuel industry Trump and Project 2025 have strong backing by religious zealots who want to bring on the End Times. Thry aren't concerned with real life and human beings, but with their imagined salvation when religious Big Brother comes back and burns their enemies to a crisp.
Living in a Blue City in a Red State I feel like I am constantly being exposed to an alternate reality constructed from the imagination of those who believe these sorts of things. And because people like Jordan Peterson wear a suit and say "its a hoax" all the manosphere people nod and agree, glad that one of the suits is saying what they already believed.
The breathtaking part is the intentional stupidity. Pretty much everyone involved at the policy level knows full well that what they are doing is wrong and will have severely adverse consequences. They just don't care.
To carry this argument a bit further, I have a hypothesis that much of what drives the Trump movement is HATE. They hate their political opponents with a white hot fury, which leads them to oppose everything that their opponents like. Here, since their opponents like clean energy, the Trump Gang must oppose it.
It certainly explains Trump's moves vis-a-vis Iran. First canceling "Obama's" deal, followedby ineffective posturing, a meaningless show of military force and yet further blustery. In the meantime the enrichment level of Iranian U235 has tripled.
Well, you have three choices: 1) use uranium enriched to 5% U235 in your reactors. 2) use uranium enriched to 90-95% U235 in your reactors. 3) don't have nuclear energy.
Option #1 has the unfortunate side effect of producing Plutonium as a by-product. Anyone who's seen the movie "Oppenheimer" knows what can be done with that.
Option #2 doesn't produce usable quantities of Plutonium, but one can use the reactor fuel directly to produce bombs such as that used on Hiroshima.
Not quite. Regarding #1, there are three complicating factors: 1 That normal reactors use moderators to slow the neutrons so as to keep the chain reaction going and thus produce only tiny quantities of Pu; 2 That a special reprocessing facility is required to separate the Pu; and 3 The Persian reactors are operated by the Russians. Iran has no reprocessing facility and no fast breeder reactors, which are much more efficient producers of Pu.
Regarding #2 it makes no sense to enrich to 90%, or even to the current 60% enrichment level if the sole purpose is for energy production.
Regarding #3 I think it would be wonderful if everyone did away with fission reactors. That would solve a number of intractable problems, not the least of which is the obscene numbers of nuclear weapons.
The US Navy uses 95% enrichment to keep their reactors small and to eliminate the problems with Plutonium buildup. You are correct that special processing must be done to separate the Plutonium, but special processing must be built to enrich uranium in the first place. Iran could create this if they want to.
I agree with you on preferring #3. Heinlein wrote that Thorium reactors would be much safer, but the US wanted to create reactor fuel and bomb material in the same facilities. I do not know if he was correct on that.
Of course the Iranians could build reprocessing facilities but unlike the centrifuges used to enrich U235 the spent fuel reprocessing to extract PU is pretty unambiguous and would almost certainly be detected.
Re Thorium I had much hope, but my (for Substack, anyway) deep dive led to disappointment. I discovered that the post was missing from my archive so reposted it a few minutes ago:
I've read that, when Plutonium builds up above a certain concentration, it will explode. Not an atomic reaction but a conventional explosion. So you basically must use 5% U235 or 95% U235 in your reactors. If you use, say, 20%, you're dancing with the Devil.
No, it is disappointment and insecurity. For some reason most writers here do not acknowledge what happened about 20 years ago, when banks and investors were allowed to rob steal & plunder. Many people who had played by the rules, worked hard, paid their taxes, etc. saw their life ruined. Not from on day to the next, but over the years after. They lost their savings, their house, their job. The people who caused the misery got money otherwise the economy would have collapsed(?) Pretty soon they were getting big bonuses again. No one was ever taken to task for the fraudulent actions that happened. For ordinary people, nothing was done. Many never recovered. For some reason the Dems did not want to hear about it. So the man who said he felt their pain became Prez of the US (in 2016).
That propensity has always been put in service for some goal by people with interests and money. What is scary, is how easily people are convinced to hate, or at least immensely dislike.
Seeing what China has done with their Green Revolution while we turn our backs on the new tech is depressing indeed.
Most interestingly Elon Musk, who used to epitomize the Tech Bro renewable revolution before he took off his normal person mask to reveal a Nazi, is right now in the cross hairs of Trump's ire.
This sets up a test of sovereignty vs. oligarchic wealth.
Can Trump crush the wealthiest man in the world and if so, what do the other oligarchs do?
A crooked government can simply sic the tax authorities on whoever they want to destroy. Oligarchs have no chance against government powers, which is why they spread their money around. If one government turns on them, they flee to more favorable climes, where their assets can't be seized.
Yep. Tesla is way overvalued. It has no "moat" as the analyst call it. They had a big head start on the EV market for a while because the major automakers knew that they couldn't make nearly as much profit on EVs as on big gas-powered SUVs. That's over now.
And a lot of Tesla's stock price is functionally a bet on Musk himself, which may or may not be simply a bribe, because there is no other explanation for it.
Of course the state can crush the oligarch. Musk has done himself major damage. Now his only supporters are MAGAs who bought into solar before it was uncool.
I would also argue that doing away with EV incentives and locking Chinese EV's out of the USA is also going to retard American progress towards clean and renewable energy.
I think its a bit different, its that real mean want cars to make loud vroom-vroom noises. This was Majorie Taylor-Green's principal concern about EV cars.
Part of that is also hatred. Some in the manosphere drive muscle cars with cut-mufflers, and sound systems turned up to deafen anyone within 100 yards, precisely because it annoys everyone else. Demonstrates their alleged dominance.
Consider how many decades of propaganda - aka advertising - you’ve been deluged with associating that sound with freedom, sex, fun, and the rest. Don’t forget that the original campaign to get women to smoke cigarettes was “Torches of Freedom.” Not the nicotine buzz (and subsequent addiction), but an abstract idea that associated one thing with another.
Agree with your points, but you omitted one key point that drives right wing resistance to renewable energy: hatred of “big government.” These government incentives to boost RE are “socialist” in their view. Also, right wingers don’t want to acknowledge climate change, because then they’d have to agree to change their behavior. And right wingers can’t stand the thought of being “forced” to change their behavior, especially if it means inconveniencing themselves. They essentially have a very self-centered worldview wherein they don’t want to do anything for the common good.
Once, there was a pigeon perched on a tree. A hungry cat spotted the pigeon and began to stealthily approach it. The pigeon, seeing the cat coming closer, started to feel afraid. But instead of flying away or defending itself, the pigeon closed its eyes tightly.
The pigeon thought, If I can't see the cat, then it can't see me.
The cat pounced on the pigeon and caught it easily. The pigeon’s belief that ignoring the danger would make it disappear proved to be its downfall.
Moral of the Story
Closing your eyes to danger or problems doesn't make them go away. Ignorance or denial often leads to worse consequences. It's better to face challenges head-on and take proper actions to address them.
Everyone is experiencing higher utility costs. It's just another way to keep us poorer and jeopardize our health as climate change escalates.
The insanity doesn't end at the government.
I live in an apartment building that provides gas stoves and gas water heaters. Management sent out an email that was obviously copied from some site that included "helpful hints" on cutting down energy costs. One item was to replace gas stoves with electric induction stoves. I got all excited.
I asked management if they were planning to make that change as I would dearly love to get rid of the gas stove with all its environmental and health issues.
Thanks. That would work in one's own home. We have a gadget that is plugged into the electrical outlet that shuts off the gas when there's a power outage. We have to manually reset it when the power comes back on. It's supposed to be a safety feature.
How many amps does an electric stove draw? Several of the new EVs on the market (and still under the $7,500 tax credit for a limited time) offer vehicle to load capability. This serves the same function as a home battery backup to power your home in an outage. An EV can run a full house worth of electric consumption for three days on a full charge. There are amp limits though in the draw so it can’t do everything at once. But it can run the fridge and lights and a few other things simultaneously.
Joan, absolutely right, me neither. And induction adjusts temperature as quickly as gas, the surface is so simple to clean, and it doesn’t heat the kitchen as much as other stoves, because it heats only your pans.
I see a market opening here for an induction cooktop that has a picture of flames built into it somehow. Like the heater in the lounge bar at the pub that consists of a bunch of hidden gas jets arranged around some fake logs and coals.
Professor Krugman: clean energy is, as you say, the way forward. it is the ONLKY way forward, as a matter of fact. i say this as a scientist who is deeply worried (indeed, suffering nightmares) about the future of humanity and our very planet. already, the climate news is terrible: of the 25 climate tipping points so far identified (9 of which are the familiar to most of us "core" or global tipping points), we've already crossed four global tipping points, and are in imminent danger of crossing two more, leaving ever greater numbers of people, wildlife, insects and farms to cooked alive, or drown in massive sudden floods or (massive numbers of people) become impoverished. presumably, 2030 is "the point of no return" according to this scenario. i dunno about you, but this is deeply, horribly concerning to me
...and the droughts, and the floods, and the ever larger more powerful storms, and the disease - between antibiotic [strikeout] impervious [/strikeout] resistant bacteria and the next viral pandemic, etc., etc.
the antibiotic resistant superbugs are the result of global intensive animal farming -- overcrowded animals being physically and emotionally tortured in this system where they live in their filth (never mind the physical abuse and violence they face from their so-called carers daily), leading up to the moment of their invariably violent premature deaths at the slaughterhouse so humans can cram their flesh into gaping, never satisfied pieholes -- this institutionalized abuse and violence requires a constant steady dose of antibiotics to prophylactically keep them from becoming ill and to keep them gaining weight at a profitable rate. the corporatocracy (fascism) is the party of greed and extinction of all animal life.
That said, I do not think climate activists really help their cause by exaggerating the likely effects of climate change. Nor do they help their cause by ignoring the progress that's already been made.
Note that I said "activists," not scientists. And most of the worst-case scenarios assume emissions are held constant, which we know is not happening even if "they're not meeting their commitments under Kyoto."
And more generally, making the solution sound worse than the problem it's purporting to solve is bad which I guess is why, if you're going to suggest everybody returning to a pre-industrial age as a solution, you have to make extinction be the alternative.
A Voice from Europe — Why Renewables Terrify Authoritarians and Capitalists Alike
Thank you, Paul, for this brilliant piece. Reading from Austria, I’d like to add one more layer to your analysis — one that goes beyond masculinity or fossil-fueled nostalgia.
Renewable energy is, at its core, democratic. Once I put solar panels on my roof, I become a producer. No permission needed. No centralized authority controlling my supply. No oligopoly setting the price. That’s a seismic shift — not just economically, but politically.
Just look at Putin. His global leverage rests almost entirely on controlling oil and gas pipelines. Energy centralization equals power. Renewables, in contrast, decentralize control — and that terrifies those whose power depends on scarcity and gatekeeping. I believe this is the deeper reason why Trump, MAGA, and similar authoritarian movements around the world fight clean energy. They sense the loss of structural power, not just profit.
And then there’s Rifkin’s “zero marginal cost society.” Once solar infrastructure is built, electricity flows at near-zero cost. Like the internet, where information can be shared freely, solar threatens the very foundation of traditional capitalism: centralized production, high transactional costs, profit from scarcity.
In short: clean energy is not just cleaner — it’s liberating. And that’s the real threat. Not to birds. Not to whales. But to those clinging to 20th-century power structures — economic, political, and cultural.
I’d love to hear your take on this deeper economic and systemic threat that renewables pose — not just to fossil fuel profits, but to the very logic of control that underpins much of today’s right-wing backlash.
One more strategic layer— especially relevant from a European vantage point:
Putin’s power doesn’t just rest on fossil fuels. It also extends to food. For over 2,000 years, Ukraine’s black soil has been one of the world's most fertile breadbaskets. Its grain, shipped via the Black and Baltic Seas, has fed millions. Controlling this agricultural artery is Putin’s second pillar of influence — especially as climate change erodes arable land in regions like the U.S.
Energy and food — the two essentials of modern civilization — are being weaponized. And renewables, alongside decentralized and regenerative agriculture, are the antidote. That’s why the stakes in the battle over clean energy are even higher than they seem.
Acting like Stalin in 1932/33 when he sent "Kulaks" to the gulags and brought a population to its knees with a man-made famine, the Holodomor. Millions perished.
Thank you for your clear assessment! I was just now starting to appreciate just how much power there is in controlling oil and gas, commodities, that can be turned off and on and traded for money or power compared to sunshine and wind that are there for everyone to use without fear of being cut off. The future is in batteries, not plastics……..
The reason the technology costs have fallen dramatically is precisely because China decided to go all in on renewable. Solar panel prices plummeted and made it easier for the rest of the world. They've done the same for EVs. And perhaps that is part of the problem. Some people don't like China leading in a technology. Huawei led the world in 5G , and so had to be taken down by exaggerated claims of security issues, leading to delays and use of poorer technology.
This is something people never fully appreciate. Energy distribution requires significant infrastructure investment. Improvements in technology reduce the cost of that infrastructure, but outdated and obsolete technology like coal and oil see fewer and fewer technology improvements because manufacturers have no incentive to continue pouring resources into them - the world is moving on from these forms of energy.
Clinging to ailing infrastructure that costs an arm and a leg to maintain is beyond ludicrous. The cost of maintaining such ailing infrastructure is invariably passed on to the rate payers, and for what - so MAGA types can feel better about their masculinity? I'd rather save money than fret about whether someone thinks I'm a wimp, thanks.
When the kleptocrats have destroyed the American economy, hollowed out the population and retreated to their island or underground havens how are they going to fuel them? Who is going to stoke their boilers with coal nobody is digging out of the ground or the oil which has run dry and Canada and the Middle East aren't selling to them? How are they going to keep the lights on and the air conditioning cooling their isolation? What are they going to eat when their canned and ration packed food has run out? How will they purify their water? F..king deluded idiots.
Gasoline stays good for only two years in a drum; about one year in a vehicle. Diesel is a bit longer. I saw a fellow giving a tour of one of the bunkers. He claimed they had a ten year supply of food for their subscribers. If you pick a good spot, the water there will be pure enough.
We had a feral show up in our back yard 25 years ago. He was obviously someone's discarded pet, because he was fairly tame. He went through four small cans of Friskies and then took a Sparrow on the wing for desert. I caught him the next day and he never was outside again.
My adult feral cat who moved in would bring us birds - alive. They all went to WildCare. Yes they may do it for sport.
Other cats do it to eat. Leave the cats alone. These living beings were created by a higher being than any here on earth. Take your complaints about cats to their maker and see how far you get.
"These living beings were created by a higher being than any here on earth." Oh please, leave religion out of the discussion. Too many cats, that situation is caused by irresponsible owners. Who did not have their cat(s) spayed/neutered. Complaints need not be taken to the "maker", but to the owner!
The remark "for sport" was not correct. I meant that cats have skills that they will practice even when not needed at that moment.
Thanks very helpful comment and which red state is blessed with this type of stupidity. You are not God and decide which of his creatures are worthy of living.
There is a fundamental reason as to why these neo-fascists oppose the transition to a much more efficient, cleaner and limitless source of energy, the renewables.
It’s its decentralised nature. Solar and wind are fundamentally democratic, fundamentally impossible to be usefully attacked by missiles and drones, fundamentally opposite to mega corporations.
Sure, even renewables depend on a functioning grid that is vulnerable to the “old” diseases. However, in case of very bad developments, renewables assure independence, in most cases at least. Neo nazi theologists cannot square them with their endless appetite for power and control. To me, this is the number 1 reason to transition to 100% renewables, ASAP.
Brilliant. Those psychosexual issues you mention, ie the panic over role loss among the less flexible, more misogynistic among MAGA males, might well, if those men have their way, result in a smog and soot-fouled world, and worse, massive flooding, stronger hurricanes, more destructive and frequent tornadoes, etc. They need serious help, and instead of getting it, they are egged on by Trump&Co. Sad, and bad, and mad.
Please show us data on how much OBBB is going to increase electricity bills by taking cheaper renewables off the table. I was watching this clip the other day on how the energy spot market in states takes the cheapest electricity first--which is invariably solar or wind--which sets the baseline. Then the more expensive fossil fuel-generated sources enter the mix. So if you can limit renewable power, consumer electricity pricing devolves to the more expensive sources first, driving up prices.
The stupidity is just breathtaking. And enervating. I just don't even know how to start with the kind of irrational, non-factual, non-scientific, wantonly destructive idiocy that Trump and his minions spew.
Most importantly, it's a squandered opportunity--and one that the U.S. has been working very VERY hard to squander for half a century. When Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House, he was sending a signal that renewable were the future and the U.S. should become the leader in developing that technology.
Ronald Reagan removed those solar panels, and every Republican president since then has done everything he could to thwart U.S. investments in developing renewable technology.
Despite those efforts, the U.S. still made some investments. But I think we're now at the point where Republicans under Trump will begin actively dismantling what progress we've made. It's beyond ironic that the very people who chant "USA Number One!!!!" are working so hard to keep us from being the global leaders in the most important technology mankind will ever develop.
Oh yes. The revered Ronald Reagan who rolled back renewable energy and started us in the path to astronomical wealth inequality. He did manage to bankrupt the Soviets in chasing his Star Wars (Father of Dome) idiocy. But that was an accident.
Exactly. Also the father of student loans.
But bankrupting the Soviets led to what?
We were in an equilibrium with the Soviets by then, and approached respecting each other, especially during Khruschev's administration. Yes I'm that age. No one talked about war any more; they talked about cultural exchanges and sports, etc.
Ironically, capitalism's glorious victory over communism in the Cold War has given us the world of today. Look around. Like where we're at? Happy with Trump? Happy with Putin? And so on. Capitalism is safe. It won.
Ronald Reagan was an actor hired to play President of the United States by Republicans who have morphed into Trumpists. Sure, Reagan did evil, and sent us in an evil direction, but he was an actor, a woodenheaded puppet.
Both the Soviet Union, as a rival, and the Cold War served as a critical break on our worst impulses. The U.S. winning the Cold War and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union was the biggest monkey’s paw ever.
As in W W Jacobs?
Gorbatchev's Perestroïka and Glasnost were the instruments of change in the last years of the USSR.
But Reagan claimed that he was the main actor. I remember wondering then how that mediocre actor could have seduced the US.
Since Trump 2016, I no longer wonder.
It is because Reagan was an actor hired to do a job. Whether the main or mediocre actor is beside the point. He was an actor acting out a role called "President of the United States". The screenplay was written by a Republican faction that now write for Trumpism.
Donald Trump is just another actor playing "President of the United States", at the moment. Reagan's scriptwriters were ideological intellectuals largely from Chicago's Leo Strauss, and not completely mad.
Bush II was following the PNAC script, complete with its call for a new Pearl Harbor, and had become merely deranged.
Now Trump is following the "Project 2025" script, Trumpism achieving full bloom, and what were merely ideologues are now actual madmen, dangerously ignorant bullies and clowns, caricatures of mobsters and their molls and made men.
Folks are so baffled by all the bullshit flying around hour by hour that many, if not most, cannot see the forest because trees are in the way.
You need to include the vowel in your name, shouldn’t it be barf?
Report the spammer. The report function doesn’t work on my iPhone so I can’t.
SPAM! Bull-$#!+
I tried to REPORT this message but it didn’t work.
Do not click that link! It is probably dangerous.
As near as I can tell, reporting it to Substack just hides it for you.
I successfully reported it. The link appears harmless. Just your usual conspiracy stuff.
Clinton promoted both renewables and energy efficiency. Gore was the most climate friendly and tech friendly candidate ever but he bored the media with all his talk about serious issues while Bush was “more fun to have a beer with”. Obama significantly increased wind power and massively increased solar power capacities. Biden continued the work. In between those Democratic presidencies the reactionary Republicans have done their best to undo those the green energy policies of all those Democratic presidents as well as efforts to increase health care and other safety net programs for ordinary Americans while the mainstream media continued to claim Dems are a bunch of elitist snobs who have nothing to offer those Americans.
Meanwhile China is aggressively moving to green energy. 2/3 of China’s electrical power comes from renewables and its affordable, fast charging EV cars are outselling gasoline powered cars. As China and other countries are heading toward the Jetsons’ world, Trump and the Republicans are pushing the US into the Flintstones era.
“June Electric Vehicle Sales in China Exceed U.S. Vehicle Sales’
DEAN BAKER
https://deanbaker22.substack.com/p/june-electric-vehicle-sales-in-china?utm_source=publication-search
Bush was more fun to have a beer with but also famously stopped drinking 15 years before he became President.
The media was well aware of that but they used that as a symbol of what they thought was important. For example:
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/think-again-the-times-frank-bruni-or-how-to-succeed-in-journalism-without-really-caring-about-issues/
Yeah, but who cares. He is a war criminal.
I blame Dick (Cheney) and Donald (Rumsfeld) more.
Bush was a self inflicted punishment, so to speak. If the fools who voted for Nader, because Gore wasn't "green" enough, or was too corporate, or whatever, had voted for the lessor of the two electable evils, the US wouldn't be in anywhere near the mess that it's in now.
I never understood why Mr. Nader let his ego so terribly get away with him. Al Gore needed every vote after Clinton had damaged the presidency, and apparently could not campaign for him (?) It was obvious that Gore had won. But he handed the win to Bush and everyone commented what a gentleman he was. I had a completely different opinion. What was he given/promised? Would Gore have kept a cooler head after 9-11 ?
Given the disaster of GW Bush, which sort of led to Trump, its hard to see any upside to Gore's gentlemanly behavior. On the other hand the voters have had multiple opportunities to not pick the worst of two evils, and have failed to do so.
The USofA became a different country after 9-11. On top of that the dot-com implosion, a big financial crisis, two wars. The arrival of unmitigated cable "news" channels. Stores disappearing. Fb, Twitter(nowX), YouTube, etc. You know it all probably better than I do (being an outsider).
The public did not see Clinton’s presidency as damaging. He left office with a 66% approval rating. The public knew all his supposed wrongdoing — Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, Vince Foster’s death, Chinagate — were fake scandals that we taxpayers were forced to spend $70 + million dollars worth of investigations to prove there was nothing there except the fact he had a consensual affair. After all the revelations of media idol JFK’s reckless promiscuity the public shrugged it off despite the mainstream media hysteria. During the Clinton administration 20+ million people moved out of poverty into the middle class helped by not only a strong economy but also the “making work pay” policies that allowed people to move off welfare without losing health coverage and with the support of increased EITC.
Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy. He had a budget surplus that was paying down the national debt that the media and Republicans claim to be so worried about. The highly respected Republican (former) tax expert Bruce Bartlett told the Pitchfork Economics podcast that had Bush just left Clinton’s policy in place (as Gore had wanted to do) by the end of Bush’s term the debt would have been erased. Bush deliberately destroyed the surplus with tax cuts.
Under Clinton we also ended the genocide in Bosnia without boots on the ground. In the UK Clinton is widely admired for the role he played in getting the Good Friday agreement signed. He worked the phones until the very last minute convincing the people on both sides who were getting cold feet to stay on board.
Clinton and other Dems voted for the 1996 "anti poor people" bill and also the "anti immigrant" legislation. The cause of many of the current issues. His initiative to wean people from Fed. aid, based on the WW program in WI, indeed helped a large number of people. And left a lot of other people very much behind.
I am not debating Prez Clintons achievements. I just saw that when Al Gore was campaigning, Clinton did not come out to speak for him. Gore could not profit from Clinton's successes as much as he should have been able to.
I did not say that "his presidency was damaging", I said he damaged the presidency (as an institution). Newspapers were reporting where he had deposited his semen. Where he had put his cigar. And how he lied, unless blow-jobs are indeed not "real sex". In France, the whole thing would have blown over, but this was (and is) the USofA.
There is difference in what people say in a poll and how they act later on.
Also, there were "boots on the ground" in Bosnia. UN peacekeepers, followed by a major NATO intervention and after that stabilization forces.
JFK's peccadillos were indeed not mentioned during his campaigns, during his presidency, or in the years after. The "boys on the bus" kept it under wraps. But that happened in a different time.
I am glad you linked to Dean Baker! He is another economist who makes things understandable to people like me. He is one person who points out that if we wanted to deal with the national debt, we would just let the Trump tax cuts expire. The media doesn’t talk much about revenue, only spending.
Almost the entire mainstream media is owned by plutocrats. The writers aren't allowed to mention taxes, only spending. They're seemingly not allowed to mention how, in other countries, things often actually work, and public goods are often delivered fairly effectively. With Fox, this is glaringly obvious, but it's pervasive. WAPO has gone over to the dark side. Writers are bailing out of the NYT. While tax evasion is absolutely rampant, they're not allowed to look into this area either, unless someone dumps the files of some Panamanian bank somewhere public. In this case, there's a brief mention, then it's on to Musk's tweets.
In early 2025 39% of China's electricity generation was from renewables.
https://carboncredits.com/china-sets-clean-energy-record-in-early-2025-with-951-tw/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
China is also spending big on battery technology which enhances the utility of wind and solar.
"2/3 of China’s electrical power comes from renewables..."
I call BS on that. In 2024 30.4% came from renewables, half of which came from hydro power. 67.8% came from coal.
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/
Another reliable source and very good reference on this subject states: “Fossil fuels now make up less than half of China’s total installed generation capacity, a dramatic reduction from a decade ago when fossil fuels accounted for two-thirds of its power capacity.” March 2024
https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-renewable-energy
That provides a realistic measurement of the unreliability of wind and solar. If fossil fuels make up less than half of China's total installed generation capacity and yet provide 70% of the electricity—and hydro is producing half of that 30%—then the capacity factors of their wind and solar are, predictably, lousy. Nameplate capacity is a useless indicator of where the power is actually coming from, particularly with intermittent sources like wind and solar.
There's different data.
Other sources claim that as the number for 2022, up from 2019, and short of 2025, so there's a curve. One source claims 50% today but that can't be right. But nowhere near 2/3.
We will be number 1, but it will be in coal and oil fired electrical generation... MAGA is the composed of a bunch of nihilistic Luddites clutching and grasping at old technology against their own best interest.
And with no markets for our exceedingly expensive extraction tar oil.
We're going to be living in thr movies "District Nine" and " Elysium". Earth as a hellhole while the elites live in colonies orbiting the planet, with mercenaries employed by thr elites to keep the proles down.
If you watch "Soylent Green", from 1973, you will see the climate hell hole depicted as well. But that part was ignored over the big shock over dietary innovations in the future. Charlton Heston meets climate change — just the place for a man's man.
That was one of my favorite movies ever. It predicted where we are quickly heading: housing shortages, people sharing living quarters, people living in cars, food shortages, no AC because of limited electricity, riots because there are just too many people for the space available. The ultra rich still had AC and steaks to eat, but the average person could not afford such luxuries. That movie needs to be re-released.
Excellent idea!
With the amount of food thrown out in the US every day, you are a long way from "food shortage". Sorry to say so.
It is on streaming services - Apple TV, Amazon Prime - costing a few bucks in rent.
I thought he personified a man's man more in The Omega Man. Soylent Green is the movie in which the dying actor Edward G. Robinson plays a man who dies. And then gets processed - into food. The movie can be rented for a few bucks on Amazon Prime, Apple TV.
But Heston was always the man, he even talked to God in Ten Commandments, not to mention his time as an NRA spokesman. In case you know the Ten Commandments story you should check out the song "Charlton Heston" by Stump on Youtube. "Then Charlton Heston put his vest on. Classic
Blade Runner, as well.
OK, that's My favorite SF film.
Science Fiction has had the drop on the oligarchs for quite a while. David Brin wrote about them in one book. And Babylon 5 had the concept of rule by Oligarchs and the Megacorps.
I was posting the same things not too long ago. Elysium is especially apt.
Being from an earlier generation, I also remember "Logan's Run", depicting a future society where population and consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by killing everyone who reaches the age of 30.
I remember that one, too. Rollerball was another one.
The Luddites had a point, they lost everything when the machines took over. Their highly skilled labor was no longer needed, women and children were hired to replace them.
Maybe we will now see similar with the introduction of AI ? Real journalists going the way of the dodo.
James Earl Carter was an engineer, submarine commander, and farmer. There was no room for foolishness in his is character. He told us the truth. He encouraged us to do better. And we sent him packing after one term. (And he was betrayed by the military. But that's another story.) The American people are responsible for the collapse of this country. Not any president or politician, just "we the people" who are on average, stupid, fat, greedy, lazy and scared. A third of us voted for these grifters; a third of us didn't vote at all. The billionaires own the political system and put in place a crazed old man to distract us from what we've lost...Democracy.
Yes. Jimmy Carter did not have the swagger the actor Ronald Reagan had. He farmed peanuts. He was true to his wife - whom he met when she was a baby en he a young boy. The Iranians released the hostages as soon as Reagan was in office. I always thought they had played the US voters as little fiddles. And that is when I got scared - because the most powerful country on earth should not be conned that easily.
They forget that they can stop something here, but the world moves on. The world's progress will leave us behind, eventually too far to catch up if we have a sudden burst of sanity.
Krugman is wrong about almost all of this. The only reason China is putting in a lot of wind and solar is because China is is huge economy. What Krugman doesn't tell you is that China is also building huge amounts of coal. In 2024 they approved new coal equal to 1.5x the entire generation capacity of California or the UK.
https://www.enr.com/articles/60469-china-doubles-down-on-coal-fired-power-with-record-plant-capacity-planned#:~:text=Construction%20of%20plants%20to%20produce,seen%20between%202015%20and%202021.
China burns the most coal and has the largest CO2 emissions of any country by far. In 2023 they used 11 times as much coal as the US and they emitted 2.7 as much greenhouse gas as the US. China accounted for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions while the US only accounted for 11%. While US emission are flat since 1990, Chinese emissions have quadrupled and they continue to grow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions
That doesn’t mean they’re not investing in renewables. It means they’re transitioning as had been the US—until a bill that actively handicaps solar & wind to the benefit of fossil fuels and specifically subsidizes coal.
That's the story you have heard from mainstream media...the data tells a very different story. At the bottom of the first table that I link to below you will find numbers for the European Union, which show a 34% decline in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since 1990. That's what an energy transition looks like. The same source shows 311% growth in Chinese emissions over the same time period. That's what coal fueled economic development looks like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions
India is the third largest GHG emitter and the story there is the same. Coal fueled economic development has produced a 199% increase in emissions since 1990. India now emits more GHG than the whole EU.
The Chinese would probably say that the reason their emissions are high is that they produce energy intensive goods that are then exported to consumers in the US and the EU. There is some truth to that, although a lot of Chinese emissions come from producing steel and cement for the construction industry. Some of the reduction in EU emissions probably results from environmental laws that moved energy intensive manufacturing (and jobs) from the EU to China. I'm not aware of any data that shows the GHG emissions required to produce goods that are imported into the US and EU. That is an aspect of the problem that nobody wants to talk about.
Totally misleading. GHG emissions per capita has the US at number 17 in the world, China at 34, double the level of that of China. Change in GHG emissions from 1990 to 2023, US at -4%, China -68%.
You are misquoting the data. US GHG emissions are down 4% since 1990, while China's are up by 311%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
This graphic provides a good global overview of CO2 emissions. While there is an energy transition underway in the EU, that is more than offset by massive emissions growth in China, India and the rest of Asia. Global emissions continue to grow quite quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#/media/File:Annual_CO2_emissions_by_region,_2022.png
US GHG emissions per capita are higher than China, but so what? It is the absolute level of emissions that matters for global climate. US emissions per capita are down 34% since 2000, while EU emissions per capita are down 32% over the same time period. China's emissions per capita have increased by 223% over that time period.
Viewed at a global level, climate change policy has been a complete failure. GHG emissions continue to increase rapidly. The main impact has been to transfer wealth to industries which are closely linked to the environmental movement.
"US GHG emissions per capita are higher than China, but so what? It is the absolute level of emissions that matters for global climate."
When you're caught misleading others, you switch the parameters of measurement from per capita to absolute values. You can't compare countries by ignoring the size of their populations and their economies. That's why we put the figures into "per capita" for the sake of comparison.
Keep an eye on news about China’s coal use over time. Renewables are cheaper to get electricity from, and China is installing them even faster than coal power plants.
The coal seems to be back up.
https://x.com/drvolts/status/1757879144292225451?s=46
David Roberts is an environmental advocate, not a reliable information source.
As of 2021, coal provided 60% of China's electricity output, while wind and solar combined provided 12%. If you add hydroelectricity then total renewables were 29%. Coal output is continuing to grow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#Production_and_capacity
India is the third largest GHG emitter. They are even more coal dependent than China. In 2023-24 66% of their electricity came from coal and that had increased by 73% over the past ten years.
If you scroll down at this link you will find a table showing India's generation by fuel source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
If wind and solar are really cheaper than fossil fuels, as Krugman claims, then why are India and China still building coal? This is a lot easier to understand if you stop thinking of electricity as a commodity and start thinking of it as a service. The service the power grid provides is as much energy as people want whenever they need it. Providing that service requires power plants that can be switched on when needed. Uncontrollable sources of energy like wind and solar are only useful as secondary energy sources for grids dependent on hydroelectricity or fossil fuels.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/how-renewable-energy-can-turn-cost-of-living-crisis-into-cost-of-living-miracle-5212403
Solar, wind and batteries are cheaper than gas, which is cheaper than coal and nuclear.
Turkey is discovering this, just like California and Texas.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/turkeys-clean-power-growth-is-bad-news-gas-market-bulls-2025-07-09/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html
You've missed the point and nuance of this. China overbuilds everything because they have to give a billion people to something to do so they don't revolt. Yes, 1.5x capacity but you've provided zero information on ENERGY. capacity x hours of run time. Those coal plants? they sit idle. You only produce energy for the demand you have. the annual capacity factors (MWh/MWx8760) are in the realm of 60%. The reality is, yes, you can approve 1,000 new coal plants but when the rubber meets the road, maybe 200 of those actually get built and commissioned. Go check the GI queues of the US ISO/RTOs and see how many generators are in the queue and how many actually put steel in the ground.
Or does China need non-renewables to stabilize the grid? (Just asking.)
28 new nuclear reactors in construction (more than the restoftheworldcombined), renewable energy 28% in 2022. You need to look at trends.
I'm not going to defend China's greenhouse gas emissions. They are polluting more. And India has a dirty fuel course problem as well. But the Wikipedia data on coal usage is a few years old, pre-dating the exponential increase of China's recent investment in solar.
The fuel for coal plants is being used less during this economic downturn. Solar and wind are staying on.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-coal-exports-2025
In May China put up more name plate solar power than California's grid. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-23/china-solar-additions-surge-to-record-in-may-ahead-of-deadline
And China is doubling-down on utility batteries as well.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/20/tesla-agrees-to-build-chinas-largest-grid-scale-battery-power-plant.html#:~:text=Tesla%20has%20signed%20its%20first,the%20first%20quarter%20of%202025.
Batteries are rapidly cleaning up California's grid:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/18/a-gamechanger-how-giant-batteries-are-making-californias-power-grid-stronger-and-reducing-the-risk-of-blackouts-during-heat-waves/
Texas is all in on batteries, too:
https://www.sacurrent.com/news/more-solar-and-battery-storage-were-added-to-texas-grid-than-any-other-power-source-last-year-36769947
I salute your refusal to put the phrase 'per capita' or indeed 'historic emissions' anywhere in your less than balance post. Nice try.
The orange felon is stupid. Stupid cannot be fixed.
Exactly right. You nailed it. The Republican party is owned by the fossil fuel industry, specifically, the Koch Network. It is tragic for our nation that they were able to gain unmitigated power.
Frankly, I seriously question the 2024 election results and want them verified. There is much evidence that the election was hacked, in addition to the massive voter suppression and interference from bomb threats and rampant disinformation (aka information warfare). We need to verify the vote with hand recounts and forensic audits (see electiontruthallinace.org). If we want free and fair elections, again, we must work to ensure our future elections are secure and protected from hacking, now.
It is almost as though Trump and the GOP are working systematically to destroy the future of the US. Occams razor says that there must be some sort of anti-American evil genius behind all this, as it's the simplest explanation. On the other hand, Napoleon said "Never attribute to malevolence that which can be explained by stupidity." So the choices appear to be that the admin is either stupid or actively malevolent. And a substantial number of voters seem to like this situation.
Malevolent and stupid--why not both?
Evil is the best label.
As James Carville said, if it’s cruel and stupid, it’s the fondest desire of the GOP
Comrade Krasnov is executing Vlad's plan to bury the US from the inside. The speed he is doing it at is spectacular.
I don't doubt the contribution of stupidity in MAGA, but there is more than a little malevolence involved.
Hey Napoleon! Right on the money (as it were).
It has more to do with big money owning politics in the US. Right now, more money is flowing into the Republican coffers from oil and gas than solar and wind.
Both - for sure - plus male-volent cronies
Paul, the MAGAts are incredibly stupid. In the late 1700’s, the Brit James Watt invented the steam engine and for the first time in human history humanity had a dependable source of power and England became the strongest industrial power on Earth! This first major influx of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is still there because it takes the atmosphere 400 years to break down carbon dioxide. The Orange Idiot plays golf while a huge storm in Texas creates a huge wall of water that has taken over 80 lives and counting! The hurricanes are now monster storms because of the massive heat of the ocean waters! In the American southwest, we are in the midst of a 25-year severe drought and the Colorado River continues to dry up! The Orange Idiot is insane!!!
For the upcoming midterms, two new bumperstickers:
-Dems for STEM
-Blind the Palantir
Like the flat-earthers of their time, the anthropogenic-climate change deniers of our time will be shamed and made to pay, one way or another.
Suicide by tailpipe inhalation, just another MAGA method of plebeian genocide. Perhaps more humane than the inevitable climatological extremes forcing mass migration, hot wars, starvation and extinction.
Thanks OBBBA.
James Watts improved the steam engine as developed by Thomas Newcomen.
It is across his agenda. Energy, vaccines etc. hate, bigotry, and a belief that they were victims seem to be driving forces behind their irrational behavior. But the fact is they are harming all of us in the US (America is not the USA) as well as rest of world. It is late to consider why this happened. Now we need damage control and begin the road to recovery. If we do not turn this around (perhaps yesterday, unfortunately), our children will only believe in Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth that is now infesting main stream media and it’s sanewashing.
Thank you, my friend for noting that "Anerica is not the USA). An insight beyond the comprehension of most USA folks and especially Brits! Note that Canadians, who also live in America, never use that term to describe their southern neighbor. It's always "the US" or "the states". Of course, in recent months we have been using ruder epithets!
😮💨🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦😮💨🇨🇦
It's like when people say England when they mean Britain or the UK. It's amazing the number of people who don't know the difference between the three.
How about GREAT Britain! Will we be great again?
We still have a Democracy... So I would say we still are!
I believe James Watt had Scottish ancestry....
Actually, I do think Canadians refer to us as Americans. What else can you call us, Staters...Citizens of the United States of America. I agree that it's presumptuous for us to be Americans while North America is Canada, US and Mexico. But still...
Traditionally, we used "people from the states" or "Southern neighbors "
Put simply, in the 20th Century access to oil was critical to national power. For the reasons cited in this column, the 21st Century will be controlled by countries controlling alternative and clean energy. This and other Trump policies ensure America will lose the 21st Century.
I too have noticed Krugman's observations about destructive masculinity and the oppression of feminism, and have wondered about this because:
GOP policy always seems like the statement made by Donkey to Shrek when he first saw Lord Farquaad's castle... it always seems to be compensating for something... I mean, think about Trump's flag poles and parade...and even his tower with his name in giant letters and his supporters who have flags with him with actual muscles instead of flab tucked into a girdle so tight that he can't even stand up straight.
It is all so nonsensical, and yet revealing.
The definition of a Tyrant:
A TYRANT is a ruler who exercises power or control in a CRUEL, unreasonable, or arbitrary way without regard for the law or the rights of others.
They are often associated with despotism, autocracy, and dictatorship, where they rule with absolute authority and often through violence or intimidation!
trump IS the TYRANT America is up against now!
Read all you can about how we OVERCOME a TYRANT!
There ARE ways forward!
Yes, one way might also be to expose him as a weakling in bad ass clothing - or compensating. Yes he is a tyrant, but also seem to be trying to cover for things obviously lacking. Real strength does not require "accessories" or an image makeover or props.
Comsider that in addition to funding feom the fossil fuel industry Trump and Project 2025 have strong backing by religious zealots who want to bring on the End Times. Thry aren't concerned with real life and human beings, but with their imagined salvation when religious Big Brother comes back and burns their enemies to a crisp.
I hope the Rapture comes soon and takes them all!
Living in a Blue City in a Red State I feel like I am constantly being exposed to an alternate reality constructed from the imagination of those who believe these sorts of things. And because people like Jordan Peterson wear a suit and say "its a hoax" all the manosphere people nod and agree, glad that one of the suits is saying what they already believed.
The breathtaking part is the intentional stupidity. Pretty much everyone involved at the policy level knows full well that what they are doing is wrong and will have severely adverse consequences. They just don't care.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Then why post at all? You've said nothing that couldn't apply to anything.
To carry this argument a bit further, I have a hypothesis that much of what drives the Trump movement is HATE. They hate their political opponents with a white hot fury, which leads them to oppose everything that their opponents like. Here, since their opponents like clean energy, the Trump Gang must oppose it.
It certainly explains Trump's moves vis-a-vis Iran. First canceling "Obama's" deal, followedby ineffective posturing, a meaningless show of military force and yet further blustery. In the meantime the enrichment level of Iranian U235 has tripled.
Well, you have three choices: 1) use uranium enriched to 5% U235 in your reactors. 2) use uranium enriched to 90-95% U235 in your reactors. 3) don't have nuclear energy.
Option #1 has the unfortunate side effect of producing Plutonium as a by-product. Anyone who's seen the movie "Oppenheimer" knows what can be done with that.
Option #2 doesn't produce usable quantities of Plutonium, but one can use the reactor fuel directly to produce bombs such as that used on Hiroshima.
DonnyJon is insisting on option #3 for Iran.
Not quite. Regarding #1, there are three complicating factors: 1 That normal reactors use moderators to slow the neutrons so as to keep the chain reaction going and thus produce only tiny quantities of Pu; 2 That a special reprocessing facility is required to separate the Pu; and 3 The Persian reactors are operated by the Russians. Iran has no reprocessing facility and no fast breeder reactors, which are much more efficient producers of Pu.
Regarding #2 it makes no sense to enrich to 90%, or even to the current 60% enrichment level if the sole purpose is for energy production.
Regarding #3 I think it would be wonderful if everyone did away with fission reactors. That would solve a number of intractable problems, not the least of which is the obscene numbers of nuclear weapons.
The US Navy uses 95% enrichment to keep their reactors small and to eliminate the problems with Plutonium buildup. You are correct that special processing must be done to separate the Plutonium, but special processing must be built to enrich uranium in the first place. Iran could create this if they want to.
I agree with you on preferring #3. Heinlein wrote that Thorium reactors would be much safer, but the US wanted to create reactor fuel and bomb material in the same facilities. I do not know if he was correct on that.
Thanks for reminding me that the Navy uses HEU.
Of course the Iranians could build reprocessing facilities but unlike the centrifuges used to enrich U235 the spent fuel reprocessing to extract PU is pretty unambiguous and would almost certainly be detected.
Re Thorium I had much hope, but my (for Substack, anyway) deep dive led to disappointment. I discovered that the post was missing from my archive so reposted it a few minutes ago:
https://stephenschiff.substack.com/p/fissions-last-gasp-thorium-ads
White I was at it I also reposted my two earlier pieces on Gen4/SMRs.
I've read that, when Plutonium builds up above a certain concentration, it will explode. Not an atomic reaction but a conventional explosion. So you basically must use 5% U235 or 95% U235 in your reactors. If you use, say, 20%, you're dancing with the Devil.
No, it is disappointment and insecurity. For some reason most writers here do not acknowledge what happened about 20 years ago, when banks and investors were allowed to rob steal & plunder. Many people who had played by the rules, worked hard, paid their taxes, etc. saw their life ruined. Not from on day to the next, but over the years after. They lost their savings, their house, their job. The people who caused the misery got money otherwise the economy would have collapsed(?) Pretty soon they were getting big bonuses again. No one was ever taken to task for the fraudulent actions that happened. For ordinary people, nothing was done. Many never recovered. For some reason the Dems did not want to hear about it. So the man who said he felt their pain became Prez of the US (in 2016).
That propensity has always been put in service for some goal by people with interests and money. What is scary, is how easily people are convinced to hate, or at least immensely dislike.
The same veneer that is so easily removed with alcohol?
Seeing what China has done with their Green Revolution while we turn our backs on the new tech is depressing indeed.
Most interestingly Elon Musk, who used to epitomize the Tech Bro renewable revolution before he took off his normal person mask to reveal a Nazi, is right now in the cross hairs of Trump's ire.
This sets up a test of sovereignty vs. oligarchic wealth.
Can Trump crush the wealthiest man in the world and if so, what do the other oligarchs do?
Take a look at Putin's playbook.
A crooked government can simply sic the tax authorities on whoever they want to destroy. Oligarchs have no chance against government powers, which is why they spread their money around. If one government turns on them, they flee to more favorable climes, where their assets can't be seized.
Unless they've destroyed the tax authorities, as they've done in this case.
A better term would have been "tax henchmen " I guess. They don't have to be authorities, just crooked.
They certainly are crooked these days - what's left of them anyway.
Musk's wealth is mostly on paper, Tesla stock. Probably the most overvalued company of all time and due for a MAJOR correction.
Yep. Tesla is way overvalued. It has no "moat" as the analyst call it. They had a big head start on the EV market for a while because the major automakers knew that they couldn't make nearly as much profit on EVs as on big gas-powered SUVs. That's over now.
Down $22/share so far today. I guess a lot of people read my post and decided to sell.
And a lot of Tesla's stock price is functionally a bet on Musk himself, which may or may not be simply a bribe, because there is no other explanation for it.
The next step is reading that Musk fell out of a skyscraper window…
Or drank the wrong cup of tea.
Actually, it sets up a test of monarchic power vs. oligarchic wealth. Trumpkopf is trying to destroy our sovereignty - and keep it all for himself.
The other oligarchs toss people out of windows.
It can't happen here? Anything that has happened, CAN happen!
Of course the state can crush the oligarch. Musk has done himself major damage. Now his only supporters are MAGAs who bought into solar before it was uncool.
I would also argue that doing away with EV incentives and locking Chinese EV's out of the USA is also going to retard American progress towards clean and renewable energy.
I think its a bit different, its that real mean want cars to make loud vroom-vroom noises. This was Majorie Taylor-Green's principal concern about EV cars.
Part of that is also hatred. Some in the manosphere drive muscle cars with cut-mufflers, and sound systems turned up to deafen anyone within 100 yards, precisely because it annoys everyone else. Demonstrates their alleged dominance.
Also, at least a bit of smoke, if not actually a coal roller.
Half of MAGA is Harley Davidson crowd
And the other half are qnon conspiracy theorists!
Not nice to say that about the fat boys on the Fat Boys !
Yes, but…
Consider how many decades of propaganda - aka advertising - you’ve been deluged with associating that sound with freedom, sex, fun, and the rest. Don’t forget that the original campaign to get women to smoke cigarettes was “Torches of Freedom.” Not the nicotine buzz (and subsequent addiction), but an abstract idea that associated one thing with another.
Bikes are considered to have helped liberate women from the home as the could travel greater distance under their own power.
But it needed a lot of government subsidy and intervention to build roads and car dependant developments.
But remember...government can't do anything. If it takes government subsidy then it's not worth it. (sarcasm)
Hi Dr Krugman,
Agree with your points, but you omitted one key point that drives right wing resistance to renewable energy: hatred of “big government.” These government incentives to boost RE are “socialist” in their view. Also, right wingers don’t want to acknowledge climate change, because then they’d have to agree to change their behavior. And right wingers can’t stand the thought of being “forced” to change their behavior, especially if it means inconveniencing themselves. They essentially have a very self-centered worldview wherein they don’t want to do anything for the common good.
They like big government when it comes to tariffs and immigration.
and heavy subsidies for oil and gas and coal ...
Or abducting "illegals" off the street and putting them in concentration camps.
And other people’s sex lives.
Absolute "freedom" for them, death for the rest of us.
Yeah, but libertarians don't really mean it when they say that, especially when it comes to corporate freedom.
As you said, Carlos. “. . very self-centered worldview.” They have largely made selfishness respectable again.
The Pigeon and the Cat
Once, there was a pigeon perched on a tree. A hungry cat spotted the pigeon and began to stealthily approach it. The pigeon, seeing the cat coming closer, started to feel afraid. But instead of flying away or defending itself, the pigeon closed its eyes tightly.
The pigeon thought, If I can't see the cat, then it can't see me.
The cat pounced on the pigeon and caught it easily. The pigeon’s belief that ignoring the danger would make it disappear proved to be its downfall.
Moral of the Story
Closing your eyes to danger or problems doesn't make them go away. Ignorance or denial often leads to worse consequences. It's better to face challenges head-on and take proper actions to address them.
Thank you for this.
Everyone is experiencing higher utility costs. It's just another way to keep us poorer and jeopardize our health as climate change escalates.
The insanity doesn't end at the government.
I live in an apartment building that provides gas stoves and gas water heaters. Management sent out an email that was obviously copied from some site that included "helpful hints" on cutting down energy costs. One item was to replace gas stoves with electric induction stoves. I got all excited.
I asked management if they were planning to make that change as I would dearly love to get rid of the gas stove with all its environmental and health issues.
They said no.
WTF. Why send out that email??? 🤔
Private equity mandate most likely.
We have a gas grill. Great for cookouts and a means to cook when the power goes out.
Well, in New Orleans the folks have hurricane cook-outs after a flood with no power. They cook everything in their freezers so it doesn't go to waste.
If they can celebrate their surviving, then you can too.
Thanks. That would work in one's own home. We have a gadget that is plugged into the electrical outlet that shuts off the gas when there's a power outage. We have to manually reset it when the power comes back on. It's supposed to be a safety feature.
Same for landline phones! You can still use them when the electricity goes out!
Lucky for you. Ours goes out 6 or 7 times a year, with average outage being 8 hours. It's not unusual for our power to be out for a day or two.
How many amps does an electric stove draw? Several of the new EVs on the market (and still under the $7,500 tax credit for a limited time) offer vehicle to load capability. This serves the same function as a home battery backup to power your home in an outage. An EV can run a full house worth of electric consumption for three days on a full charge. There are amp limits though in the draw so it can’t do everything at once. But it can run the fridge and lights and a few other things simultaneously.
Typically a cooktop requires a 30 amp 220 volt circuit and a full range takes a 60 amp circuit.
Dangerous indoors though, isn’t it?
Righto! No decent cooking with electric stove
Except if you go Induction. It’s soooo fast. I’ve had an induction cooktop for almost 2 years and I’ll never go back to gas.
Joan, absolutely right, me neither. And induction adjusts temperature as quickly as gas, the surface is so simple to clean, and it doesn’t heat the kitchen as much as other stoves, because it heats only your pans.
I am a "masculine" Stone Age cook. I need to see the fire. It must be psychological :)
I see a market opening here for an induction cooktop that has a picture of flames built into it somehow. Like the heater in the lounge bar at the pub that consists of a bunch of hidden gas jets arranged around some fake logs and coals.
Haha. Or living proof of Prof Krugman’s essay — guys like burning stuff 🤷♂️
Professor Krugman: clean energy is, as you say, the way forward. it is the ONLKY way forward, as a matter of fact. i say this as a scientist who is deeply worried (indeed, suffering nightmares) about the future of humanity and our very planet. already, the climate news is terrible: of the 25 climate tipping points so far identified (9 of which are the familiar to most of us "core" or global tipping points), we've already crossed four global tipping points, and are in imminent danger of crossing two more, leaving ever greater numbers of people, wildlife, insects and farms to cooked alive, or drown in massive sudden floods or (massive numbers of people) become impoverished. presumably, 2030 is "the point of no return" according to this scenario. i dunno about you, but this is deeply, horribly concerning to me
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62838627
...and the droughts, and the floods, and the ever larger more powerful storms, and the disease - between antibiotic [strikeout] impervious [/strikeout] resistant bacteria and the next viral pandemic, etc., etc.
The GOP is the party of human extinction.
the antibiotic resistant superbugs are the result of global intensive animal farming -- overcrowded animals being physically and emotionally tortured in this system where they live in their filth (never mind the physical abuse and violence they face from their so-called carers daily), leading up to the moment of their invariably violent premature deaths at the slaughterhouse so humans can cram their flesh into gaping, never satisfied pieholes -- this institutionalized abuse and violence requires a constant steady dose of antibiotics to prophylactically keep them from becoming ill and to keep them gaining weight at a profitable rate. the corporatocracy (fascism) is the party of greed and extinction of all animal life.
It's even worse than that. They inject them with antibiotics to fatten them up.
That said, I do not think climate activists really help their cause by exaggerating the likely effects of climate change. Nor do they help their cause by ignoring the progress that's already been made.
do they? i think you have the corporate media to blame for those criticisms, rather than the scientists themselves.
notice that I said "activists," not scientists.
Note that I said "activists," not scientists. And most of the worst-case scenarios assume emissions are held constant, which we know is not happening even if "they're not meeting their commitments under Kyoto."
And more generally, making the solution sound worse than the problem it's purporting to solve is bad which I guess is why, if you're going to suggest everybody returning to a pre-industrial age as a solution, you have to make extinction be the alternative.
A Voice from Europe — Why Renewables Terrify Authoritarians and Capitalists Alike
Thank you, Paul, for this brilliant piece. Reading from Austria, I’d like to add one more layer to your analysis — one that goes beyond masculinity or fossil-fueled nostalgia.
Renewable energy is, at its core, democratic. Once I put solar panels on my roof, I become a producer. No permission needed. No centralized authority controlling my supply. No oligopoly setting the price. That’s a seismic shift — not just economically, but politically.
Just look at Putin. His global leverage rests almost entirely on controlling oil and gas pipelines. Energy centralization equals power. Renewables, in contrast, decentralize control — and that terrifies those whose power depends on scarcity and gatekeeping. I believe this is the deeper reason why Trump, MAGA, and similar authoritarian movements around the world fight clean energy. They sense the loss of structural power, not just profit.
And then there’s Rifkin’s “zero marginal cost society.” Once solar infrastructure is built, electricity flows at near-zero cost. Like the internet, where information can be shared freely, solar threatens the very foundation of traditional capitalism: centralized production, high transactional costs, profit from scarcity.
In short: clean energy is not just cleaner — it’s liberating. And that’s the real threat. Not to birds. Not to whales. But to those clinging to 20th-century power structures — economic, political, and cultural.
I’d love to hear your take on this deeper economic and systemic threat that renewables pose — not just to fossil fuel profits, but to the very logic of control that underpins much of today’s right-wing backlash.
Kind regards from Europe,
Hans
I find the argument with solar panels on the roof is more appealing to libertarians and MAGA, not to people concerned about (loss of) democracy.
Very interesting take.
One more strategic layer— especially relevant from a European vantage point:
Putin’s power doesn’t just rest on fossil fuels. It also extends to food. For over 2,000 years, Ukraine’s black soil has been one of the world's most fertile breadbaskets. Its grain, shipped via the Black and Baltic Seas, has fed millions. Controlling this agricultural artery is Putin’s second pillar of influence — especially as climate change erodes arable land in regions like the U.S.
Energy and food — the two essentials of modern civilization — are being weaponized. And renewables, alongside decentralized and regenerative agriculture, are the antidote. That’s why the stakes in the battle over clean energy are even higher than they seem.
Acting like Stalin in 1932/33 when he sent "Kulaks" to the gulags and brought a population to its knees with a man-made famine, the Holodomor. Millions perished.
This makes a lot of sense.
Thank you for your clear assessment! I was just now starting to appreciate just how much power there is in controlling oil and gas, commodities, that can be turned off and on and traded for money or power compared to sunshine and wind that are there for everyone to use without fear of being cut off. The future is in batteries, not plastics……..
China burns massive amounts of coal to produce those panels, as it is the only way it can be done.
Where was the silicon smelted?
The reason the technology costs have fallen dramatically is precisely because China decided to go all in on renewable. Solar panel prices plummeted and made it easier for the rest of the world. They've done the same for EVs. And perhaps that is part of the problem. Some people don't like China leading in a technology. Huawei led the world in 5G , and so had to be taken down by exaggerated claims of security issues, leading to delays and use of poorer technology.
This is something people never fully appreciate. Energy distribution requires significant infrastructure investment. Improvements in technology reduce the cost of that infrastructure, but outdated and obsolete technology like coal and oil see fewer and fewer technology improvements because manufacturers have no incentive to continue pouring resources into them - the world is moving on from these forms of energy.
Clinging to ailing infrastructure that costs an arm and a leg to maintain is beyond ludicrous. The cost of maintaining such ailing infrastructure is invariably passed on to the rate payers, and for what - so MAGA types can feel better about their masculinity? I'd rather save money than fret about whether someone thinks I'm a wimp, thanks.
When the kleptocrats have destroyed the American economy, hollowed out the population and retreated to their island or underground havens how are they going to fuel them? Who is going to stoke their boilers with coal nobody is digging out of the ground or the oil which has run dry and Canada and the Middle East aren't selling to them? How are they going to keep the lights on and the air conditioning cooling their isolation? What are they going to eat when their canned and ration packed food has run out? How will they purify their water? F..king deluded idiots.
The kleptocrats will be using the latest innovations in renewable energy technology while the rest pay the price for these regressive policies.
Ever see the movie “Soylent Green”?
That was about a "solution" to a population surplus. This will be the opposite.
Actually, maybe it's the same. Just that the surplus is a bit more specific.
Gasoline stays good for only two years in a drum; about one year in a vehicle. Diesel is a bit longer. I saw a fellow giving a tour of one of the bunkers. He claimed they had a ten year supply of food for their subscribers. If you pick a good spot, the water there will be pure enough.
Number of birds killed each year by wind turbines: about 1M (https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds)
Number of birds killed each year by cats: 2-4 Billion https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/
Maybe we can get the manosphere to hate cats (too feminine?) and do the whole world a favor and get rid of domestic cats.
Sorry, I'm with the cats. 100%.
So am I, but none of mine go outside. As far as I know, only two of my five have ever been outside, and those two have no desire to return.
My two outdoor feral cats never touch a bird. They are too full of meow mix. While my indoor cat prefers Fancy Feast.
We had a feral show up in our back yard 25 years ago. He was obviously someone's discarded pet, because he was fairly tame. He went through four small cans of Friskies and then took a Sparrow on the wing for desert. I caught him the next day and he never was outside again.
Oh. I love stories where an animal finds its home. Thank you.
My adult feral cat who moved in would bring us birds - alive. They all went to WildCare. Yes they may do it for sport.
Other cats do it to eat. Leave the cats alone. These living beings were created by a higher being than any here on earth. Take your complaints about cats to their maker and see how far you get.
Sorry, no. Even when well-fed many cats will hunt for sport. They are very much like modern humans in that regard.
Nope. not true
"These living beings were created by a higher being than any here on earth." Oh please, leave religion out of the discussion. Too many cats, that situation is caused by irresponsible owners. Who did not have their cat(s) spayed/neutered. Complaints need not be taken to the "maker", but to the owner!
The remark "for sport" was not correct. I meant that cats have skills that they will practice even when not needed at that moment.
Number of birds killed every year by windows: over 1B (https://abcbirds.org/news/bird-building-collisions-study-2024)
Cats kill common birds at the bottom of the food chain. Turbines kill large raptors at the top. Very huge difference between the two.
Song bird populations are declining, thanks to feral cats and windows.
1. Keep your cats inside. Not having cats is an option too.
2. Make your windows safe. Sometimes decals will not work and you have to install waving ropes.
Thanks very helpful comment and which red state is blessed with this type of stupidity. You are not God and decide which of his creatures are worthy of living.
Dear Paul
There is a fundamental reason as to why these neo-fascists oppose the transition to a much more efficient, cleaner and limitless source of energy, the renewables.
It’s its decentralised nature. Solar and wind are fundamentally democratic, fundamentally impossible to be usefully attacked by missiles and drones, fundamentally opposite to mega corporations.
Sure, even renewables depend on a functioning grid that is vulnerable to the “old” diseases. However, in case of very bad developments, renewables assure independence, in most cases at least. Neo nazi theologists cannot square them with their endless appetite for power and control. To me, this is the number 1 reason to transition to 100% renewables, ASAP.
We need all the reasons to be in all of our faces. You never know what may change a doubter’s mind.
Brilliant. Those psychosexual issues you mention, ie the panic over role loss among the less flexible, more misogynistic among MAGA males, might well, if those men have their way, result in a smog and soot-fouled world, and worse, massive flooding, stronger hurricanes, more destructive and frequent tornadoes, etc. They need serious help, and instead of getting it, they are egged on by Trump&Co. Sad, and bad, and mad.
Please show us data on how much OBBB is going to increase electricity bills by taking cheaper renewables off the table. I was watching this clip the other day on how the energy spot market in states takes the cheapest electricity first--which is invariably solar or wind--which sets the baseline. Then the more expensive fossil fuel-generated sources enter the mix. So if you can limit renewable power, consumer electricity pricing devolves to the more expensive sources first, driving up prices.