Electricity

 Yglesias makes one of his arguments that I actually agree with: We should focus on building MORE clean energy, not on making LESS hydrocarbon-based energy. Basically, there is a strong degrowth element to a lot of environmental activism. This is fundamentally a moral or ethical choice from people who want to rollback capitalism, consumer consumption and the impact that has on the planet. Yglesias is right that is so politically toxic, it's not even worth considering. Yet that is a big part of climate and environmental activism. 

A great example of this is nuclear power. Since Three Mile Island, environmentalists have advocated for shuttering nuclear power plants. Germany - for some damned reason - did exactly this and became dependent on Russian natural gas. Nuclear power, however, is carbon neutral and can produce a TON of electricity. There is a ceiling on renewables like solar and wind and batteries. Nuclear can punch through that ceiling. 

What's more, Yglesias is also right that we should not be trying to get "enough" energy for 2030. We should be trying to have so much electrical generation power that we can do things like create hydrogen to make cement and steel - two processes that are big carbon polluters but have no feasible way to decarbonize until we become awash in electricity.

Of course, this is one of those columns that makes a lot of us go "Really dude?" Trump has actively been trying to kill even basic renewables. He has a pathological hatred of wind power and doesn't seem to like solar either. A lot of this is that he is trying to actively resurrect the fortunes of coal mine owners and fossil fuel companies. Killing the tax credit for rooftop solar is just terrible policy.

The reality is that we are increasingly electrifying our economy. Add in the massive demands from data centers and AI and we saw electrical costs go from roughly $0.13 a KwH in August of 2020 to $0.19 five years later. That's an almost 50% increase. If you further constrain supply, that price will continue to rise, which is really bad! Unless you're a fossil fuel company, I guess.

And isn't that the point?