Kate Aronoff

I spent months talking to many, many people for this long post-mortem of the Inflation Reduction Act: What forces were responsible for creating it, and how could it be gutted so unceremoniously? What might come next? No easy answers ofc but hopefully a bit of clarity newrepublic.com/article/2027...

Last fall, the CEO of the country's largest "quartz" countertop manufacturer donated to FL Sen. Ashley Moody A few months later she introduced a bill that'd keep his company from being sued by workers who cut quartz & keep getting silicosis, a horrific lung disease newrepublic.com/article/2169...

This is very wonky and utterly infuriating. Logging companies (w/help from IKEA!) say *literally cutting down trees* should count as carbon negative and be credited as good for the planet. And they might get away with it. newrepublic.com/article/2157...

Astute comment at the end of this that a big problem in the world of voluntary corporate accounting/standards is that it always had as a backdrop a belief that binding regulations might come in the future. And they are looking less likely. newrepublic.com/article/2157...

I wrote about why dismantling fuel efficiency standards may not actually be good for a US auto industry that is rapidly losing ground against more fuel efficient cars newrepublic.com/article/2159...

If you are for some reason interested in the perils of industries being allowed to self-regulate then please enjoy this ~3,000 word story I just wrote about a case where that is actively going really, really bad newrepublic.com/article/2157...

I don't think self-regulation can be managed without the credible threat of government policy. As @katearonoff.bsky.social writes, it's too easy for companies to walk away from purely voluntary regulation. newrepublic.com/article/2157...

I think this has a lot of explanatory power, at least with respect to WRI. (WBCSD isn't hiding its industry-aligned advocacy.) But there's more to it. Some people genuinely believe that theoretical accounting principles require outcomes that make no physical, scientific, or policy sense.

Really helpful thread on my piece from a few days ago from @greenprofgreen.bsky.social, who may know more about the GHG Protocol than anyone on earth!

Amodei and Altman are probably not building a Machine God. They might reasonably want to stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year making machines they don’t fully understand, which they also believe could kill everyone newrepublic.com/article/2154...

Not saying this is what's happening, but it'd obviously be strategic for AI companies to push for something called AI safety policy while Republicans still control Congress and the White House

"Well downstream of all that, local data center activists are tapping into a cross-partisan frustration with politicians of all stripes for—as they see it—prioritizing corporations’ interests over those of constituents who feel blindsided by the massive new developments cropping up around them."

One thing that strikes me is about data centers is that communities that oppose them might have been able to organize earlier if we had robust local newspapers with reporters who had been reporting on the early approval and planning processes from the start. newrepublic.com/article/2149...

I spent a bunch of this summer writing a feature for @newrepublic.com about the fight over the hyperscale data center being built down the road from my parents' house in South Jersey, looking at some of the many reasons why people hate data centers newrepublic.com/article/2149...

SORRY BUT I JUST WENT TO LOOK AT THE COVER... "THE POPE OF FEMA" There's no fucking way.

This is a great story from @katearonoff.bsky.social on the new UNEP emissions gap report and a recent ERL paper from @arvindpawan1.bsky.social and @hdaigle.bsky.social

I wrote a quick goodbye to what may well have been the most normal summer of the rest of our lives newrepublic.com/article/2150...

Desperately want to read a 6,000 world profile of Mark Carney's transition from net-zero finance guru to fossil fuel boosting Canadian nationalist from someone appropriately cynical about both eras

So is the point here to keep a bunch of Democratic candidates who've just won their primaries from winning in the general

At this point gotta imagine that, for people who know better, not acknowledging climate change is somewhat damaging at a psychic level

The people who wanna pick dumb fights over historical accuracy in period films never make the case that audiences should look at gnarly boils and rotting brown teeth for three hours

B Reathing in wildfire smoke Aggressive diarrhea Ticks everywhere Brat summer is back 🍏🔥

"Our societies are navigating a climate-changed world with last century’s infrastructure. That’s not the result of some surplus of climate policies but of a profound lack of them." newrepublic.com/article/2125...

I wrote about heat waves, the bizarre culture wars around air conditioning in Europe, and why Democrats shouldn't let Republicans be the only ones talking about all the suffering the climate crisis is doling out newrepublic.com/article/2125...

" If left-of-center politicians and ostensibly fact-based news organizations aren’t willing to accurately interpret our climate-changed reality, however, the right will be more than happy to do it for them." newrepublic.com/article/2125...

Genuinely nauseating how much discourse about the European heat wave on X is people in the US blaming cultural preferences, emissions concerns, degrowth etc for Europeans not having AC. Whipped-up culture war sociopathy seemingly designed to blame a whole continent for their own suffering & death

I wrote about the irony of Trump going to war with the Reflecting Pool algal bloom as his administration tries (again) to defund the institutions that keep people, pets and economies safe from harmful algal blooms newrepublic.com/article/2122...

Would love to know the origins of liberal politicians referring to multilateral funding commitments as "reparations," which has been a longtime favorite jab from the US at the UNFCCC. Moynihan?