Seems like an oversight to fail to mention that the Keystone Pipeline protests were also fueled by concerns about tribal sovereignty and promises the United States made to the Standing Rock Sioux during the 19th century.
I find it interesting that this post has more "Likes" than comments (173 to 168 before I posted this comment). That doesn't appear to be typical for Matt's daily posts. It happens with Milan's afternoon posts pretty often, but those get a lot fewer comments on average.
There's a button that says "like and comment" on the emails and it was the easiest way to see the comment section. So I ended up liking a lot of posts where I didn't comment. I think there's just a "see comments" button as well now, but the "like and comment" thing is still there.
Then what would be most appropriate for me would be to write a client browser script that just auto-likes every Slow Boring post, even the ones I have disagreements with. I can't be bothered to remember to manually click every single heart.
If we really want to decarbonise we need to accelerate renewables deployment by an order of magnitude. Permitting reform is really important. One of the advantages of renewables over nukes is that they can be deployed very quickly, if you can get permitted. Speed of permitting also impacts capital costs and by extension cost of renewable energy. Based on the experience of the IRA I would expect there to be more benefits to renewables than to fossil. Just do it.
I want to caution that “NEPA reform” may not create the efficiencies it may seem to promise. The NEPA process has actually become a catch all for a whole bunch of legal compliance related to issuing an agency permit. The actually NEPA part of that process often isn’t the most important or impactful in terms of causing delays. The Administrative Procedures Act is often much more important. Also the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act are also often more consequential. Often all of those legal requirements are covered through one integrated process that is structured with a NEPA document at the center, but NEPA is not the only barrier to faster federal action on permitting. Also, something that is also under covered is that a bunch of federal permitting agencies are set up to process oil and gas permits and infrastructure in ways that they are not set up to process clean energy permits. Legal changes can help, but you’d still need a well developed bureaucracy to help the process along.
Yes. I think Matt wrote once how a geothermal well has to jump through a whole bunch of bureaucratic hooks that an oil well in the same location doesn't. It's ridiculous.
It is also useful to remember that the chum produces dollars for the activists’ payrolls so they have a dual interest: the substance and their own welfare.
Oh lord, the climate movement. My heart is with them; it really is. We need reminders every now and then of how important this issue is when our attention wanders as it will. But they simply have no head. There are the truly smart people on the climate beat: David Roberts (and most of his interviewees), Robinson Meyer, and so forth. But I don't think the rest are smart enough to think that there's a basis -- like helping organizing -- for what they do. It's just an emotional spasm. They're like the sheep in Animal Farm.
Hooray for Democratic legislators who are able to wend their way between the Scylla of Republican nihilists and the Charybdis of climate movement "allies."
This is really depressing. It implies that climate activists know that what they are pushing for doesn't make any sense but do it anyway for cynical reasons. In other words in this particular area, the right-wing attack on Progressive elitists is correct. They are making a claim they know is false for personal advantage. It like cutting taxes on the rich and running up the deficit on the bogus claim of increasing investment.
And no it does not mean shut up and help Democrats win elections. Activists should scream and yell for Congress to pass a tax on net CO2 emissions. They won't next year, but it should push the Overton window and might get putatively CO@ emissions investments vetted with cost benefit analysis as they try to do (real) good by stealth.
Speaking of bad takes, there was an absolutely moronic article in Nature Climate Change by several scientists saying that the Keystone win means that scientists need to start civil disobedience to fight climate change, completely skipping over the fact that the Keystone win was literally irrelevant in the one way that matters because it didn't effect emissions. Because apparently the problem on climate change is that nobody is sure what climate scientists think.
We both think this is a truly great article, Matt. The WV natural gas fields are enormous and could bring power to New England as well as to VA. My husband and I have been seriously concerned re climate change more than 40yrs. Also, we agree with you that our adaptation to it cannot be done all at once! Let’s see if we can all be personally responsible for our water use, trash disposal & miles driven while as a country we develop the infrastructure for a greener USA. Now we have finally gotten a real start with the recent legislation we hope your message will be read/heard by the Activists Orgs that actually slow down forward movement.
Matt has written before about the demographics of Congressional staffers influencing policy and I wonder if the educational background of activists impacts the behavior of their orgs. Specifically, my anecdotal experience with activists shows a noticeable tilt away from educational backgrounds in all the fields need to build a carbon free economy (all types of engineering, hard science needed for R&D, Community college trained electricians, etc) and towards the fields that enable or encourage political and social organizing. That may be typical of activist groups, but given that moving to clean energy requires lots of inventing/building stuff, that educational mix does not seem optimal.
But maybe my anecdotal numbers are wrong. I have no idea where to find stats to support or dispel my impression of their backgrounds.
Yes the ethos seems to be one of making people change their behavior. A more engineering focused approach would be more about fixing the problem with the least disruption. I get the sneaking suspicion a lot of are more about changing behavior than they are about fixing the problem.
If someone is charging their giant super fast Hummer EV pickup from their home’s PV setup that still an affront to them.
The behavior focus is certainly there, which I kinda understand given the history of environmentalism. Yes, some of that can get over the top. But there are also some behavior modifications that make sense, like changes that would come from time of use pricing, that do not get much love from them.
But mostly I'm pointing to the focus on law and policy as if they are the solution in the same way anti-abortion advocates focus on changing laws.
If we really wanted to solve climate change and the greenhouse effect, we would develop and build out carbon capture and sequestration as fast and as widespread as we possibly can. But along with nuclear energy, CCUS seems to be the most disliked of policies among leftist climate activists. And I think thus does have to do a lot with changing behavior than with solving problems.
"Back in the Keystone days, activists would often push back against center-left wonks by saying “look, it’s not like any of your ‘actually this other thing is more important’ points have any practical meaning — nothing is happening legislatively, there are no deals to be struck.” Ten years ago that might have been true ..."
It's definitely true that today, the IRA if far more important than campaigns built on organizing chum. But even 10 years ago, things were going on that were a bigger deal than pipeline-blocking chum!! For example:
- the massively impactful clean energy R&D funding from the Recovery Act
- various Federal regulatory actions like the ambitious new CAFE standards
- various state-level actions like RGGI
- the negotiations that produced the Paris Ageeement
Supporting any of these things would have been a better use of activist energy than pipeline blocking. And making campaigns out of them is possible. As part of a local OFA group I would organize people to post comments to Federal Register in support of good regulatory changes and opposing bad ones.
This is a great post because our North Star should always be "do impactful things."
"And I think the proximate issue in this whole fight isn’t that the activists are wrong about big-picture abstract permitting reform"
I think activists ARE wrong about using permitting to restrict fossil fuel supply instead of restricting demand. It is the wrong way to address the very real very serious problem of the hard done by emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. Please just stop. Activists should try to direct the energy and commitment of well meaning people to the most cost effective ways of reducing demand for combusting carbon atoms.
Yglesias, you are doing the lord's work here fighting against the leftwing advocacy/funding blob. Keep it up. It's a tragedy so much money and effort is being poured into politically destructive activity.
Seems like an oversight to fail to mention that the Keystone Pipeline protests were also fueled by concerns about tribal sovereignty and promises the United States made to the Standing Rock Sioux during the 19th century.
I find it interesting that this post has more "Likes" than comments (173 to 168 before I posted this comment). That doesn't appear to be typical for Matt's daily posts. It happens with Milan's afternoon posts pretty often, but those get a lot fewer comments on average.
There's a button that says "like and comment" on the emails and it was the easiest way to see the comment section. So I ended up liking a lot of posts where I didn't comment. I think there's just a "see comments" button as well now, but the "like and comment" thing is still there.
What is the purpose of liking the entire post? Does it get ranked higher in some sort of Substack-wide article list?
I don't know if it has any purpose in Substack's system. I just "Like" posts that I think are particularly good/interesting to show support.
Then what would be most appropriate for me would be to write a client browser script that just auto-likes every Slow Boring post, even the ones I have disagreements with. I can't be bothered to remember to manually click every single heart.
If we really want to decarbonise we need to accelerate renewables deployment by an order of magnitude. Permitting reform is really important. One of the advantages of renewables over nukes is that they can be deployed very quickly, if you can get permitted. Speed of permitting also impacts capital costs and by extension cost of renewable energy. Based on the experience of the IRA I would expect there to be more benefits to renewables than to fossil. Just do it.
I want to caution that “NEPA reform” may not create the efficiencies it may seem to promise. The NEPA process has actually become a catch all for a whole bunch of legal compliance related to issuing an agency permit. The actually NEPA part of that process often isn’t the most important or impactful in terms of causing delays. The Administrative Procedures Act is often much more important. Also the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act are also often more consequential. Often all of those legal requirements are covered through one integrated process that is structured with a NEPA document at the center, but NEPA is not the only barrier to faster federal action on permitting. Also, something that is also under covered is that a bunch of federal permitting agencies are set up to process oil and gas permits and infrastructure in ways that they are not set up to process clean energy permits. Legal changes can help, but you’d still need a well developed bureaucracy to help the process along.
Yes. I think Matt wrote once how a geothermal well has to jump through a whole bunch of bureaucratic hooks that an oil well in the same location doesn't. It's ridiculous.
Well said. Thank you.
It is also useful to remember that the chum produces dollars for the activists’ payrolls so they have a dual interest: the substance and their own welfare.
Preach!
Oh lord, the climate movement. My heart is with them; it really is. We need reminders every now and then of how important this issue is when our attention wanders as it will. But they simply have no head. There are the truly smart people on the climate beat: David Roberts (and most of his interviewees), Robinson Meyer, and so forth. But I don't think the rest are smart enough to think that there's a basis -- like helping organizing -- for what they do. It's just an emotional spasm. They're like the sheep in Animal Farm.
Hooray for Democratic legislators who are able to wend their way between the Scylla of Republican nihilists and the Charybdis of climate movement "allies."
This is really depressing. It implies that climate activists know that what they are pushing for doesn't make any sense but do it anyway for cynical reasons. In other words in this particular area, the right-wing attack on Progressive elitists is correct. They are making a claim they know is false for personal advantage. It like cutting taxes on the rich and running up the deficit on the bogus claim of increasing investment.
And no it does not mean shut up and help Democrats win elections. Activists should scream and yell for Congress to pass a tax on net CO2 emissions. They won't next year, but it should push the Overton window and might get putatively CO@ emissions investments vetted with cost benefit analysis as they try to do (real) good by stealth.
Speaking of bad takes, there was an absolutely moronic article in Nature Climate Change by several scientists saying that the Keystone win means that scientists need to start civil disobedience to fight climate change, completely skipping over the fact that the Keystone win was literally irrelevant in the one way that matters because it didn't effect emissions. Because apparently the problem on climate change is that nobody is sure what climate scientists think.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01461-y
We both think this is a truly great article, Matt. The WV natural gas fields are enormous and could bring power to New England as well as to VA. My husband and I have been seriously concerned re climate change more than 40yrs. Also, we agree with you that our adaptation to it cannot be done all at once! Let’s see if we can all be personally responsible for our water use, trash disposal & miles driven while as a country we develop the infrastructure for a greener USA. Now we have finally gotten a real start with the recent legislation we hope your message will be read/heard by the Activists Orgs that actually slow down forward movement.
SallyJones
Matt has written before about the demographics of Congressional staffers influencing policy and I wonder if the educational background of activists impacts the behavior of their orgs. Specifically, my anecdotal experience with activists shows a noticeable tilt away from educational backgrounds in all the fields need to build a carbon free economy (all types of engineering, hard science needed for R&D, Community college trained electricians, etc) and towards the fields that enable or encourage political and social organizing. That may be typical of activist groups, but given that moving to clean energy requires lots of inventing/building stuff, that educational mix does not seem optimal.
But maybe my anecdotal numbers are wrong. I have no idea where to find stats to support or dispel my impression of their backgrounds.
Yes the ethos seems to be one of making people change their behavior. A more engineering focused approach would be more about fixing the problem with the least disruption. I get the sneaking suspicion a lot of are more about changing behavior than they are about fixing the problem.
If someone is charging their giant super fast Hummer EV pickup from their home’s PV setup that still an affront to them.
The behavior focus is certainly there, which I kinda understand given the history of environmentalism. Yes, some of that can get over the top. But there are also some behavior modifications that make sense, like changes that would come from time of use pricing, that do not get much love from them.
But mostly I'm pointing to the focus on law and policy as if they are the solution in the same way anti-abortion advocates focus on changing laws.
If we really wanted to solve climate change and the greenhouse effect, we would develop and build out carbon capture and sequestration as fast and as widespread as we possibly can. But along with nuclear energy, CCUS seems to be the most disliked of policies among leftist climate activists. And I think thus does have to do a lot with changing behavior than with solving problems.
"Back in the Keystone days, activists would often push back against center-left wonks by saying “look, it’s not like any of your ‘actually this other thing is more important’ points have any practical meaning — nothing is happening legislatively, there are no deals to be struck.” Ten years ago that might have been true ..."
It's definitely true that today, the IRA if far more important than campaigns built on organizing chum. But even 10 years ago, things were going on that were a bigger deal than pipeline-blocking chum!! For example:
- the massively impactful clean energy R&D funding from the Recovery Act
- various Federal regulatory actions like the ambitious new CAFE standards
- various state-level actions like RGGI
- the negotiations that produced the Paris Ageeement
Supporting any of these things would have been a better use of activist energy than pipeline blocking. And making campaigns out of them is possible. As part of a local OFA group I would organize people to post comments to Federal Register in support of good regulatory changes and opposing bad ones.
This is a great post because our North Star should always be "do impactful things."
"And I think the proximate issue in this whole fight isn’t that the activists are wrong about big-picture abstract permitting reform"
I think activists ARE wrong about using permitting to restrict fossil fuel supply instead of restricting demand. It is the wrong way to address the very real very serious problem of the hard done by emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. Please just stop. Activists should try to direct the energy and commitment of well meaning people to the most cost effective ways of reducing demand for combusting carbon atoms.
Good piece. It confirms my bias that most political organizing is primarily a self-licking ice cream cone.
Amazing visual.
Yglesias, you are doing the lord's work here fighting against the leftwing advocacy/funding blob. Keep it up. It's a tragedy so much money and effort is being poured into politically destructive activity.