David Roberts
@volts
I run a newsletter/podcast called Volts about clean energy & politics. Subscribe & join the community at !
I agree and I even had our illustrator at Vox visualize it for me once. Basically, for any given subject, most people know almost nothing, a small number know a decent bit, and a tiny sliver of people are genuine experts.
In March 2025, Trump met in the Oval Office with oil & gas executives. They listen their grievances and, on the spot, Trump leapt to address them. The executives were, in their own words, "stunned." Read these extraordinary excerpts. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/c...
An amazing quote from Lindsey Graham in this Atlantic story. It really captures an essential truth about politics that too few people ever really come to terms with. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
New analysis shows that, since Trump's OBBBA bill, 216 major clean-energy projects have been canceled, costing the US economy billions of dollars & thousands of jobs. (This contrasts with the bizarrely rosy spin other recent reports have put on the situation.)
Even within the broad renewables category, biofuels & wood still provide more primary energy than either wind or solar. That little yellow line on the bottom? That is humanity's best hope.
Some sobering graphs from the EIA today. This one shows that, while the rise of renewables lately has been notable, the real energy story of the 21st century in the US has been the large-scale replacement of coal by natural gas.
Here's the world's richest man, who runs the platform that most US officials & institutions continue to post on & support, endorsing a post that opposes universal suffrage & endorses dividing the population into "makers & takers," denying voting rights to the latter. Happy Independence Day.
I'm here at the Mariners game and the US men's soccer team is coming out for the ceremonial first pitch. It is absolute bedlam.
This is the most purely anti-American thing I've ever heard a politician say, but the media is too obsessed with 3 DSA candidates winning local elections in NY to pay any attention I guess.
That helps explain why big media, always the handmaiden of power, works so hard to frame climate concern as some fey, boutique, out-of-touch elite concern. They don't want you to know that other people are concerned too. If you knew that, you might organize & push for change! And so we get this:
You will not find a more punchable persona on all of the information highway.
Also interesting, and something of a narrative violation: the US states where load growth is *slowest* are raising electricity rates *fastest*, and vice versa. Load growth can help keep rates down!
Michael Cembalest is out with his annual energy report for JP Morgan and it's full of fascinating stuff, but this graph jumps out: Trump is succeeding in stifling America's clean energy boom. Absolutely ceding the field to China.
My favorite picture from the Missoula, MT, pride parade. (Courtesy of Mrs. Volts)
Built to Spill. Easily the best thing I saw tonight. I was so overwhelmed with joy that I cried. 30 years of doing it and Doug Martsch f'ing still rocks.