Matt, I think you over-rate the importance of the Fed chair and Powell in particular. The Fed operates by institutional consensus, and there are plenty of competent alternatives to Powell should Biden so choose. The biggest issues for Biden seem more politics than economics: Is it worth expending political capital on a nomination fight for someone else when Powell is a sure thing? On the other hand, would a different nominee be a bargaining chip to get the progressive wing to accept a compromise on the reconciliation bill?
I think it is unreasonable to ignore the prudential regulation aspect of the Fed's duties. It has always been part of the Fed's mandate to ensure the stability of the financial system, and part of that is telling banks not to make dumb loans.
Right now, you can find regional commercial banks that are lending money to fossil fuel projects that are almost certainly going to go bust. They're using risk models from 30+ years ago, before renewables became so cheap as to out-compete coal and oil-fired power. It absolutely is the Fed's role to tell them to _cut that sh*t out_. If Powell isn't going to do that, then for all that he's been good on monetary policy, we should replace him with somebody that also cares about the other parts of the job.
But these companies were able to continue drawing lines of credit, financing receivables, and so on, right up until things got so bad that they had to declare bankruptcy (at which point their banks presumably took non-trivial losses on outstanding loans). This was somewhat understandable in the cases a decade back. But the recent one? Come on. Bankers _should_ have started telling them five years ago that they needed to present good evidence of a sustainable business plan, or draw up plans for an orderly wind-down -- under threat that if they couldn't do either, they would be cut off immediately. Instead, the banks continued extending credit to insolvent businesses.
Most of the stuff in the news is around big banks like Barclays or JP Morgan Chase. Those banks actually _have_ made moves towards starting to price in the risk to fossil fuel businesses, and there's been some conversation around getting them to do more of that voluntarily, under threat of possible regulations -- to the point that now we have coal-state Republicans threatening to try to use regulation to force them to keep those businesses on life support.
But if you go to the level of mid-size commercial banks that nobody but corporate execs in the region have heard of, _many_ are just blithely continuing to operate like everything is business-as-usual.
Fine, you want specific projects, the developers behind the Two Elk were somehow persuading banks to back their new coal plant as late as 2016 -- until it turned out they were massively cooking the books and got brought up on charges.
University of Alaska has invested in a new coal combined heat and power plant, rather than at least doing gas, or finding a way to do something actually clean like wind, hydro, or one of the promising new geothermal techniques. (Or even one of the new compact nuclear designs, for that matter.)
One _hopes_ that even in the absence of Fed intervention, these kinds of coal projects will henceforth be un-fundable, and that banks will start forcing coal companies to face reality, about their existing lines of business. But we shouldn't have to wait for stodgy bankers to catch up with reality. (The Fed also should've been more on the ball about pointing out that something was fishy about the wave of mortgage back security investment in the mid-aughts.)
Your complaint was that “regional commercial banks” are lending to fossil fuel projects and you propose that the Fed should regulate that activity. And your examples:
Two Elk:
“The Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against the developer of the proposed Two Elk power plant in Campbell County. The project received almost $8 million in federal stimulus money…”
Maybe the Fed should regulate “stimulus” spending.
Sunflower:
“‘Fifteen years ago, the price of natural gas was high, and wind generation was in its infancy,’ said Stuart Lowry, president and CEO of Sunflower on Wednesday.”
Maybe the Fed should regulate loans retroactively.
University of Alaska:
“Building a coal fired plant was a radical choice in today’s regulatory climate, but it was the only economically feasible option. A natural gas plant would have been less expensive to construct but cost four times more to operate than a coal plant. By contrast, coal that is low in sulfur and mercury, is inexpensive and mined locally.”
The article does not mention financing, but maybe the Fed should for it commercial banks from financing projects for public institutions.
in that case though more scrutiny should be brought to bear on the FDIC and OCC, those offices have huge prudential regulation portfolios but no responsibilities for the economy.
"preferences of the electorate, which is loosely favorable to climate action but very averse to anything that smacks of personal sacrifice or disruption. "
THIS
People want something done, but they don't want it to cost themselves extra. Therefore, the low carbon option MUST be the most cost effective one.
I think Jay Powell has done a great job. He is one of only three excellent personnel actions by Trump (in addition, firing that bastard Comey and hiring Scott Gottlieb). He has helped us weather some tough economic times.
Biden should thank him profusely, pat him on the back, and appoint a new Fed Chair, probably Brainard.
This has nothing to with "credibility" or finreg or climate. It has to do with the credibility of the Democratic party and how it values its most capable members. As the party of government, the Democrats have seemed awfully gun shy about entrusting the most important posts in government to actual loyal Democrats. We worry about "credibility" in national security so our Presidents appoint Chuck Hagel and Bob Gates as SecDef to reassure the world that our security will be safe in trustworthy Republican hands. We worry about "credibility" on managing the economy so our Presidents reappoint Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to reassure the world that the economy will be safe in trustworthy Republican hands.
Bah. Republicans don't do that, and nor should we.
Biden should appoint someone as Fed Chair that best understands monetary policy because you can't predict events and how that might change the monetary policy environment. So obviously he should appoint a market monetarist. Scott Sumner would be best, but claims he wouldn't take the job, so that leaves David Beckworth. In a lot of ways Beckworth is similar to Powell (both right of center but principled and non-partisan) except that he is an actual monetary economist and has better theoretical underpinnings for his views. If Biden really needs to appointment someone that is more Democratic Party affiliated then I would propose Christina Romer or Jason Furman, who have absorbed a lot of the MM perspective.
I wanted to read the linked rationalist article, but apparently, that's private according to Substack. I believe someone named madasario had the same problem earlier.
A classic! Thanks for the direct link here, I also couldn't get into it from my email so was not sure. IIRC MY also talked about this on Julia Galef's podcast.
I'm no expert on the rationalist community, more rationalist-curious. But trying hard, every day, to be less full of shit seems really important right now.
I'm a little confused as to what the stress test scenario where just fossil fuel investments go to zero is supposed to be. If climate change destroys the economy doesn't pretty much everything go down? How's a bank supposed to pass a "the modern economy is over" stress test? It seems that the scenario in which specifically fossil fuel investments collapse and everything else is fine is actually the "we do something about climate change" scenario. You'd essentially be asking banks to hedge against the risk that you accomplish your political program. Which seems... weird? Idk, I guess if you got a Fed chair in there that did all these aggressive stress tests that would be signal to the market that the climate agenda might actually succeed and maybe that lowers their willingness to invest in fossil fuels? Hardly seems likely to be a game changer.
As someone active in the bank stress test world, climate stress testing is dumb. Slow moving or policy based events are slow burn, not shocks. Climate is a strategic planning exercise. Banks have been dealing with things like droughts and hurricanes forever.
Out of curiosity, how do these stress tests work? I can't imagine any climate-related event that would dramatically devalue large quantities of assets that banks currently hold on their balance sheets. Do people just run climate stress tests and say "as expected, there is negligible risk of a climate-driven financial crisis"?
You can track fossil fuel contribution to industries with input/output tables and simulate industry level impacts of a carbon tax. That's asymmetric, but not game changing in any industry outside of energy. You can create a weather event that hits concentrations in your portfolio, but a chunk of that is insured so you probably need to assume insurance failures or large regional increases in insurance costs. Finally I've seen blanket productivity shocks, but I find those completely arbitrary. Climate change doesn't change my knowledge and ability to build widgets or cut hair.
If the impact of marginal you'd just tell your regulator all the terrible things on your scenario and that thankfully your diversification and strong underwriting allows you to weather the storm.
>>>some of it has been the surprising (to me, at least) decision to stick with Trump’s tariffs<<<
Can't say I'm too surprised. Although this would help the supply side of the economy, the administration, I'd guess, thinks the pro-China optic are bad.
But this is (yet another) area where I think they're erring excessively on the side of caution. I hate to sound too critical, because on a few areas — swinging for the fences on the two big legislative proposals now before Congress, say, or the hard-assed shut down of America's Afghanistan War — they've been anything but timid.
But there are quite a number of areas where I fear this White House is too worried about Republican attacks: vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, prosecutions for sedition and Trumpian corruption, student loan forgiveness, etc. And yes, China tariffs. They do politics for a living and I don't. So maybe I'll be proven wrong. But I do believe they could be a bit bolder on one or two of these things (Even the evictions moratorium extension was a cave-in to the party's left, not a proactive measure).
I see Sunrise Movement's new position is the useless, non-starter "Abolish the Senate". No doubt they're holding "Abolish the USA" back in response to a similar trivial non-issue. If Sunrise was actually a GOP false flag operation, it would be hard to distinguish from their current motivations.
Two points. Inflation is a sustained general increase in prices. My view, and the view of the Fed, is that there are sectoral imbalances leading to rapid price increases in particular portions of the economy. This is why the Fed is sanguine about the current inflationary environment. They have adopted a Bunker Hill approach, don't shoot until you can clearly see the target.
As for whether fossil fuel investment is risky, tell anyone who put money into the coal industry fifteen years ago that coal wasn't risky. Then duck! Coal, of course, lost in economic terms because natural gas became a less expensive way to generate electricity. The improvements in wind and solar have resulted in both being cheaper than natural gas. The support for vehicle electrification in the infrastructure should start to reduce the demand for petroleum products soon. I see lots of risks in the fossil fuel sector.
Exactly. Investment in fossil fuel infrastructure trials creating lots of stranded assets which after incapable of earning a return because they are uneconomic to use.
It would be awesome if the oil companies, with all their drilling experience, led a big push on geothermal energy. As David Roberts writes, it's an exciting source of virtually unlimited, zero-carbon energy.
The simple answer to the last question seems to be that a large fraction of Squad-adjacent self-styled progressives really enjoy fighting, and the actual making of progress is a distant second.
The National Ignition Facility just made a major fusion breakthrough going from 3% to 70%. If they got it to work a lot of climate activists would be distraught. You mean it has been fixed? Noooooo!!!!
There has been unbounded optimism that we're just about to turn the corner on fusion energy probably longer than you've been alive, I'd wager. Wake me up when we're there.
It’s a hard engineering problem sure. But the physics is sound. It will work. We just need fast enough computers, lasers, etc.
Just as an example, the largest transoceanic cable transmits 5,547 GB per second along a glass fiber that utilizes lasers controlled to an almost unimaginable degree. When your story was written the best we could do was 0.2 GB/second.
NIF is useful, but it isn't going to lead directly to reliable fusion power for the masses. A lot of other things have to be worked out first. Even if you had reliable fusion power, you would still have to electrify the car/truck/aircraft fleets. Lots of work to do.
True. My point was more that when it works* people will be able to drive their electric Suburbans that go 0-60 in 2 seconds, live in their McMansions with the AC set to 60. Fly to Europe 5 times a year, etc.
And that will drive a certain segment of society nuts.
I don't know what you are accusing me of. I'm not ideologically opposed to fusion power. I just, after looking at the science and talking to the five fusion physicists I know, don't expect to see widespread fusion power in the next 30 years at least.
There will always be some people who are incapable of being happy(although I thought they were mostly Conservatives). What percentage of people do you think would actually be displeased by Climate change being solved? A few percent at most I would think.
5%? Sort of like the percentage of surgeons who disapproved of anesthesia when it was discovered. I think there is a solid 5% that would be opposed to anything.
* at this point it has been confirmed that it will work and at this point it’s entirely an engineering problem. A huge engineering problem, sure. But that’s a solvable problem.
On what timeline? Fusion power proponents have been promising fusion power in 10 years every decade since the 50s. Unless large-scale fusion power is available in the next 40 years, it's not relevant to the climate problem of preventing catastrophic climate change.
I think the AOC quote highlights something important about what's going on here. I think it's not really that people believe the Fed is an important or particularly effective tool to fight the battles at the forefront of the progressive movement right now (against climate change, racism, etc.). However, the objective of people like AOC isn't really to identify the institutions that would be best suited for the task. People on the far left want to consolidate political power by ensuring that progressive priorities are the central organizing principle of EVERY important institution. In this instance, progressives' idea is that failing to effectively manage inflation is fine as long as we have another institution on our side against the greatest threats to American society.
This isn't because progressives are particularly evil-- it's natural for any political movement to try something like this if it has the chance. Evangelical Christians, for instance, want creationism taught in schools and want the Supreme Court to make laws that adhere to their religious principles. I'm sure they'd also prefer it if the corporations were run in accordance with the teachings of Jerry Falwell. But now that the left seems to have disproportionate power in many (but not all) institutions, thinking about how progressive ideology will shape the priorities of those institutions is going to be more important than thinking about how they're influenced by hardcore Christians.
Giving Powell the thumbs up for inflation fighting credibility is an interesting take. Relevant only because I had just read Manchin's oped and it seemed so utterly lame with just reference after reference to inflation.
Progressives were wrong that Manchin wouldn't barf all over the $3.5T. Now, everybody just needs to ask if the infrastructure bill is all he thinks is appropriate, or if not, what number he likes for a reconciliation bill. Then Dems need to vote yes to both and move on. That's the way its supposed to work supposedly or he's not the most powerful person in Washington now.
The great thing about Manchin is his oped was so bad that I sort of felt that a Chris Coons has to pretty well go along with anything Manchin agrees to just because the argument was so bad that he can't get on that bandwagon with him. Sinema is a wild card.
Matt, I think you over-rate the importance of the Fed chair and Powell in particular. The Fed operates by institutional consensus, and there are plenty of competent alternatives to Powell should Biden so choose. The biggest issues for Biden seem more politics than economics: Is it worth expending political capital on a nomination fight for someone else when Powell is a sure thing? On the other hand, would a different nominee be a bargaining chip to get the progressive wing to accept a compromise on the reconciliation bill?
I think it is unreasonable to ignore the prudential regulation aspect of the Fed's duties. It has always been part of the Fed's mandate to ensure the stability of the financial system, and part of that is telling banks not to make dumb loans.
Right now, you can find regional commercial banks that are lending money to fossil fuel projects that are almost certainly going to go bust. They're using risk models from 30+ years ago, before renewables became so cheap as to out-compete coal and oil-fired power. It absolutely is the Fed's role to tell them to _cut that sh*t out_. If Powell isn't going to do that, then for all that he's been good on monetary policy, we should replace him with somebody that also cares about the other parts of the job.
“Right now, you can find regional commercial banks that are lending money to fossil fuel projects that are almost certainly going to go bust.”
Such as?
Look up who was the commercial banker for Stallion Energy or Lighthouse Resources, both of which filed for bankruptcy last December.
https://www.powermag.com/continued-toll-on-coal-more-companies-file-bankruptcy/
Coal companies have been dropping like flies for a decade:
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/news/us-coal-company-bankruptcies/
But these companies were able to continue drawing lines of credit, financing receivables, and so on, right up until things got so bad that they had to declare bankruptcy (at which point their banks presumably took non-trivial losses on outstanding loans). This was somewhat understandable in the cases a decade back. But the recent one? Come on. Bankers _should_ have started telling them five years ago that they needed to present good evidence of a sustainable business plan, or draw up plans for an orderly wind-down -- under threat that if they couldn't do either, they would be cut off immediately. Instead, the banks continued extending credit to insolvent businesses.
Most of the stuff in the news is around big banks like Barclays or JP Morgan Chase. Those banks actually _have_ made moves towards starting to price in the risk to fossil fuel businesses, and there's been some conversation around getting them to do more of that voluntarily, under threat of possible regulations -- to the point that now we have coal-state Republicans threatening to try to use regulation to force them to keep those businesses on life support.
https://www.axios.com/states-banks-drop-coal-warning-biden-carbon-278bb3fb-2254-41b2-9b94-f986c1c9a3d2.html
But if you go to the level of mid-size commercial banks that nobody but corporate execs in the region have heard of, _many_ are just blithely continuing to operate like everything is business-as-usual.
You wrote that banks are lending to “projects.” Lines of credit are not projects.
Fine, you want specific projects, the developers behind the Two Elk were somehow persuading banks to back their new coal plant as late as 2016 -- until it turned out they were massively cooking the books and got brought up on charges.
https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/natural-resources-energy/2016-10-07/two-elk-developer-faces-criminal-fraud-charges
The Sunflower Holcomb project managed to keep pretending everything was fine right up until last year.
https://www.powermag.com/sunflower-finally-scraps-plans-for-895-mw-kansas-coal-plant/
University of Alaska has invested in a new coal combined heat and power plant, rather than at least doing gas, or finding a way to do something actually clean like wind, hydro, or one of the promising new geothermal techniques. (Or even one of the new compact nuclear designs, for that matter.)
https://www.akbizmag.com/monitor/ua-coal-fired-power-plant-wins-power-magazine-top-plant-award/
One _hopes_ that even in the absence of Fed intervention, these kinds of coal projects will henceforth be un-fundable, and that banks will start forcing coal companies to face reality, about their existing lines of business. But we shouldn't have to wait for stodgy bankers to catch up with reality. (The Fed also should've been more on the ball about pointing out that something was fishy about the wave of mortgage back security investment in the mid-aughts.)
Things remain significantly worse in Australia: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48618774
Your complaint was that “regional commercial banks” are lending to fossil fuel projects and you propose that the Fed should regulate that activity. And your examples:
Two Elk:
“The Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against the developer of the proposed Two Elk power plant in Campbell County. The project received almost $8 million in federal stimulus money…”
Maybe the Fed should regulate “stimulus” spending.
Sunflower:
“‘Fifteen years ago, the price of natural gas was high, and wind generation was in its infancy,’ said Stuart Lowry, president and CEO of Sunflower on Wednesday.”
Maybe the Fed should regulate loans retroactively.
University of Alaska:
“Building a coal fired plant was a radical choice in today’s regulatory climate, but it was the only economically feasible option. A natural gas plant would have been less expensive to construct but cost four times more to operate than a coal plant. By contrast, coal that is low in sulfur and mercury, is inexpensive and mined locally.”
The article does not mention financing, but maybe the Fed should for it commercial banks from financing projects for public institutions.
in that case though more scrutiny should be brought to bear on the FDIC and OCC, those offices have huge prudential regulation portfolios but no responsibilities for the economy.
why_not_both.gif
"preferences of the electorate, which is loosely favorable to climate action but very averse to anything that smacks of personal sacrifice or disruption. "
THIS
People want something done, but they don't want it to cost themselves extra. Therefore, the low carbon option MUST be the most cost effective one.
I think Jay Powell has done a great job. He is one of only three excellent personnel actions by Trump (in addition, firing that bastard Comey and hiring Scott Gottlieb). He has helped us weather some tough economic times.
Biden should thank him profusely, pat him on the back, and appoint a new Fed Chair, probably Brainard.
This has nothing to with "credibility" or finreg or climate. It has to do with the credibility of the Democratic party and how it values its most capable members. As the party of government, the Democrats have seemed awfully gun shy about entrusting the most important posts in government to actual loyal Democrats. We worry about "credibility" in national security so our Presidents appoint Chuck Hagel and Bob Gates as SecDef to reassure the world that our security will be safe in trustworthy Republican hands. We worry about "credibility" on managing the economy so our Presidents reappoint Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to reassure the world that the economy will be safe in trustworthy Republican hands.
Bah. Republicans don't do that, and nor should we.
Nice job, Jay. Step on up, Lael.
Biden should appoint someone as Fed Chair that best understands monetary policy because you can't predict events and how that might change the monetary policy environment. So obviously he should appoint a market monetarist. Scott Sumner would be best, but claims he wouldn't take the job, so that leaves David Beckworth. In a lot of ways Beckworth is similar to Powell (both right of center but principled and non-partisan) except that he is an actual monetary economist and has better theoretical underpinnings for his views. If Biden really needs to appointment someone that is more Democratic Party affiliated then I would propose Christina Romer or Jason Furman, who have absorbed a lot of the MM perspective.
"“re-imagine a Federal Reserve focused on eliminating climate risk ....”"
"re-imagine a FBI focused on eliminating climate risk ...."
"re-imagine an Office of the Comptroller of the Currency focused on eliminating climate risk ...."
"re-imagine a Social Security Administration focused on eliminating climate risk ....”
"re-imagine the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services focused on eliminating climate risk ....”
All make about the same amount of sense. It's like they have a pre written press release of buzzwords.
I wanted to read the linked rationalist article, but apparently, that's private according to Substack. I believe someone named madasario had the same problem earlier.
It's this one: https://www.slowboring.com/p/predictions
A classic! Thanks for the direct link here, I also couldn't get into it from my email so was not sure. IIRC MY also talked about this on Julia Galef's podcast.
I'm no expert on the rationalist community, more rationalist-curious. But trying hard, every day, to be less full of shit seems really important right now.
I was wondering, but I couldn't be sure.
I'm a little confused as to what the stress test scenario where just fossil fuel investments go to zero is supposed to be. If climate change destroys the economy doesn't pretty much everything go down? How's a bank supposed to pass a "the modern economy is over" stress test? It seems that the scenario in which specifically fossil fuel investments collapse and everything else is fine is actually the "we do something about climate change" scenario. You'd essentially be asking banks to hedge against the risk that you accomplish your political program. Which seems... weird? Idk, I guess if you got a Fed chair in there that did all these aggressive stress tests that would be signal to the market that the climate agenda might actually succeed and maybe that lowers their willingness to invest in fossil fuels? Hardly seems likely to be a game changer.
As someone active in the bank stress test world, climate stress testing is dumb. Slow moving or policy based events are slow burn, not shocks. Climate is a strategic planning exercise. Banks have been dealing with things like droughts and hurricanes forever.
Out of curiosity, how do these stress tests work? I can't imagine any climate-related event that would dramatically devalue large quantities of assets that banks currently hold on their balance sheets. Do people just run climate stress tests and say "as expected, there is negligible risk of a climate-driven financial crisis"?
You can track fossil fuel contribution to industries with input/output tables and simulate industry level impacts of a carbon tax. That's asymmetric, but not game changing in any industry outside of energy. You can create a weather event that hits concentrations in your portfolio, but a chunk of that is insured so you probably need to assume insurance failures or large regional increases in insurance costs. Finally I've seen blanket productivity shocks, but I find those completely arbitrary. Climate change doesn't change my knowledge and ability to build widgets or cut hair.
If the impact of marginal you'd just tell your regulator all the terrible things on your scenario and that thankfully your diversification and strong underwriting allows you to weather the storm.
>>>some of it has been the surprising (to me, at least) decision to stick with Trump’s tariffs<<<
Can't say I'm too surprised. Although this would help the supply side of the economy, the administration, I'd guess, thinks the pro-China optic are bad.
But this is (yet another) area where I think they're erring excessively on the side of caution. I hate to sound too critical, because on a few areas — swinging for the fences on the two big legislative proposals now before Congress, say, or the hard-assed shut down of America's Afghanistan War — they've been anything but timid.
But there are quite a number of areas where I fear this White House is too worried about Republican attacks: vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, prosecutions for sedition and Trumpian corruption, student loan forgiveness, etc. And yes, China tariffs. They do politics for a living and I don't. So maybe I'll be proven wrong. But I do believe they could be a bit bolder on one or two of these things (Even the evictions moratorium extension was a cave-in to the party's left, not a proactive measure).
What's been most surprising to me has been the continuation of tariffs that don't have anything to do with China (e.g. Canadian Lumber tariffs).
I see Sunrise Movement's new position is the useless, non-starter "Abolish the Senate". No doubt they're holding "Abolish the USA" back in response to a similar trivial non-issue. If Sunrise was actually a GOP false flag operation, it would be hard to distinguish from their current motivations.
Two points. Inflation is a sustained general increase in prices. My view, and the view of the Fed, is that there are sectoral imbalances leading to rapid price increases in particular portions of the economy. This is why the Fed is sanguine about the current inflationary environment. They have adopted a Bunker Hill approach, don't shoot until you can clearly see the target.
As for whether fossil fuel investment is risky, tell anyone who put money into the coal industry fifteen years ago that coal wasn't risky. Then duck! Coal, of course, lost in economic terms because natural gas became a less expensive way to generate electricity. The improvements in wind and solar have resulted in both being cheaper than natural gas. The support for vehicle electrification in the infrastructure should start to reduce the demand for petroleum products soon. I see lots of risks in the fossil fuel sector.
Exactly. Investment in fossil fuel infrastructure trials creating lots of stranded assets which after incapable of earning a return because they are uneconomic to use.
It would be awesome if the oil companies, with all their drilling experience, led a big push on geothermal energy. As David Roberts writes, it's an exciting source of virtually unlimited, zero-carbon energy.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/21515461/renewable-energy-geothermal-egs-ags-supercritical
The simple answer to the last question seems to be that a large fraction of Squad-adjacent self-styled progressives really enjoy fighting, and the actual making of progress is a distant second.
The National Ignition Facility just made a major fusion breakthrough going from 3% to 70%. If they got it to work a lot of climate activists would be distraught. You mean it has been fixed? Noooooo!!!!
Fusion is never ever ever going to be a thing. We've been down this "major fusion breakthrough" road many times before.
When was the last time you got caught up on the latest research?
https://news.mit.edu/2020/physics-fusion-studies-0929
Never! I just go back and read sentences like this: "the Japanese expect to have a prototype commercial fusion reactor in operation by 1993."
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/09/20/Fusion-energy-seen-closer/2271401342400/
There has been unbounded optimism that we're just about to turn the corner on fusion energy probably longer than you've been alive, I'd wager. Wake me up when we're there.
It’s a hard engineering problem sure. But the physics is sound. It will work. We just need fast enough computers, lasers, etc.
Just as an example, the largest transoceanic cable transmits 5,547 GB per second along a glass fiber that utilizes lasers controlled to an almost unimaginable degree. When your story was written the best we could do was 0.2 GB/second.
NIF is useful, but it isn't going to lead directly to reliable fusion power for the masses. A lot of other things have to be worked out first. Even if you had reliable fusion power, you would still have to electrify the car/truck/aircraft fleets. Lots of work to do.
True. My point was more that when it works* people will be able to drive their electric Suburbans that go 0-60 in 2 seconds, live in their McMansions with the AC set to 60. Fly to Europe 5 times a year, etc.
And that will drive a certain segment of society nuts.
Climate change doesn't care if you want to own the degrowth environmentalists or not.
I don't know what you are accusing me of. I'm not ideologically opposed to fusion power. I just, after looking at the science and talking to the five fusion physicists I know, don't expect to see widespread fusion power in the next 30 years at least.
There will always be some people who are incapable of being happy(although I thought they were mostly Conservatives). What percentage of people do you think would actually be displeased by Climate change being solved? A few percent at most I would think.
Actually now that you mention it you’d have to add the luddites who would oppose the move away from fossil fuels on principle.
5%? Sort of like the percentage of surgeons who disapproved of anesthesia when it was discovered. I think there is a solid 5% that would be opposed to anything.
* at this point it has been confirmed that it will work and at this point it’s entirely an engineering problem. A huge engineering problem, sure. But that’s a solvable problem.
On what timeline? Fusion power proponents have been promising fusion power in 10 years every decade since the 50s. Unless large-scale fusion power is available in the next 40 years, it's not relevant to the climate problem of preventing catastrophic climate change.
It’s very relevant. Google it - tremendous progress has been made recently.
+1. They are the opposite of popularists.
Climate change's political function is to develop alternative sources of energy. You got to let the true believers run with it to a certain point.
I think the AOC quote highlights something important about what's going on here. I think it's not really that people believe the Fed is an important or particularly effective tool to fight the battles at the forefront of the progressive movement right now (against climate change, racism, etc.). However, the objective of people like AOC isn't really to identify the institutions that would be best suited for the task. People on the far left want to consolidate political power by ensuring that progressive priorities are the central organizing principle of EVERY important institution. In this instance, progressives' idea is that failing to effectively manage inflation is fine as long as we have another institution on our side against the greatest threats to American society.
This isn't because progressives are particularly evil-- it's natural for any political movement to try something like this if it has the chance. Evangelical Christians, for instance, want creationism taught in schools and want the Supreme Court to make laws that adhere to their religious principles. I'm sure they'd also prefer it if the corporations were run in accordance with the teachings of Jerry Falwell. But now that the left seems to have disproportionate power in many (but not all) institutions, thinking about how progressive ideology will shape the priorities of those institutions is going to be more important than thinking about how they're influenced by hardcore Christians.
They control the Supreme Court, and can paralyze the Senate now.
Giving Powell the thumbs up for inflation fighting credibility is an interesting take. Relevant only because I had just read Manchin's oped and it seemed so utterly lame with just reference after reference to inflation.
Progressives were wrong that Manchin wouldn't barf all over the $3.5T. Now, everybody just needs to ask if the infrastructure bill is all he thinks is appropriate, or if not, what number he likes for a reconciliation bill. Then Dems need to vote yes to both and move on. That's the way its supposed to work supposedly or he's not the most powerful person in Washington now.
The great thing about Manchin is his oped was so bad that I sort of felt that a Chris Coons has to pretty well go along with anything Manchin agrees to just because the argument was so bad that he can't get on that bandwagon with him. Sinema is a wild card.
I LOVE your suggested headline!