Kevin J. Kircher

I wrote about how BAAJA, the federal permitting bill, might impact the buildout of power plants. I looked at the midwest transmission grid operator's updated interconnection queue, which MISO overhauled in 2024, as a leading indicator of what people are trying to build. TL;DR: It's mostly gas.

Right on schedule... "a person protesting could be held liable to pay up to €10,000 for damage and vandalism even if they did not directly cause it themselves, if they were continuing to demonstrate nearby or as part of the same group as perpetrators." www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

Monstrous beyond all reckoning. The US is using remote sensing *designed for humanitarian purposes* for the opposite purpose, potentially drowning civilians en masse. Trump hates Somalis. His troops appear to be exploiting the weather to help slaughter them. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

In other words, don't do what the current national Democratic leadership does.

Attracting investment for oil and gas often entails forfeiting sovereignty/democracy www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

According to @earthjustice.org, BAAJA actually gives behind-the-meter gas turbines a boost. earthjustice.org/feature/bipa...

Tomorrow, Tues. 10/27, Trump and Zeldin are expected to unveil an EPA proposal to gut methane regulations. To learn more about how the oil & gas industry has been asking them to do exactly this, check out @fieldnotes.co's recent investigation: fieldnotes.co/investigatio...

In Alberta a big part of the strategy is data centres as "digital refining" to produce value from additional natural gas use (and leverage the cold weather). This is not some kind conspiracy theory but clearly stated on the website describing the data centre strategy www.alberta.ca/datacentres/...

Republicans, they're not like us.

😡😡😡 “Meta employees acknowledged in internal communications that the Instagram accounts of Brazilian ​President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were hindered by ‌restrictions during [Brazil’s] election” & that Meta “recommended the profile ​of challenger…Flavio Bolsonaro” & “his ​WhatsApp channel…” 1/

“Tech giant Meta said on Tuesday it has complied with an order of Brazil's electoral court for it to give equal treatment in its platforms to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and….Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of the Oct. 25 runoff for the nation's top job.” (IT TOOK A COURT ORDER.) 10/20/26 … 1/

“At a moment when many doubted Lula could reverse the result, a WhatsApp channel called Lula's Army emerged, and rapidly grew to 10.8 million followers. Led by Congressman André Janones, the operation encouraged supporters to share videos, promote hashtags and recruit new voters.” 1/

We have come to the point in the year (ie the weeks before the climate negotiations begin) when everyone releases their state-of-the-planet reports. This year, the perspective is overwhelmingly bad:

Raise your hand if you are an Arab scientist. 👋🏽 I say this with all the disrespect intended. Fuck you.

"In a series of interviews with Democratic staff on the House Judiciary Committee, Beatrice Keul said Trump raped her that year in 'brutal' fashion in a hotel room at Trump’s Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City after the pair spent time with Jeffrey Epstein ..."

I am so sick of data center & AI pitches in my inbox. I miss when the cleantech community was focused on decarbonization.

Am I right in thinking this means BAAJA helps stop regulation of off-grid fossil gas power plants for data centres? Also I didn't know there was an off-grid gas turbine lobby and it's called COMET (you know, like the comet metaphor destroying Earth often used for climate) lnkd.in/p/ea8Xw4kQ

Real talk? I teared up when I heard about Lula's win. Same goes for when Vučić conceded. Voting really does matter, and I hope I get to cry happy tears about the upcoming elections in Israel and the United States too.

What does the Democracy for All Project teach us about protest and civic engagement in America? A heck of a lot! Check out our new research brief! @kettering.org @gallup.com @au-cece.bsky.social kettering.org/online-and-i...

In his acceptance speech, Lula says he will work to regulate digital platforms in Brazil. “Digital crimes must be dealt with like real-life crimes.” This comes after Meta directly interfered with the Brazilian elections, favouring Flávio Bolsonaro.

This is in reference to my study with @jmijin.bsky.social on the US Powder River Basin, which produces about half of US coal, under a “mine until existing generators that use it reach end of lifespan” scenario—not ”mine all the coal.” I want to stress how wild it is that we have been socialized to

The lessons from Brazil and Serbia? Don't concede one inch of ground to the far right. Don't appease. Don't triangulate. Don't grovel. Don't say they have "legitimate concerns". Mobilise your base, and fight them with all the democratic means at your disposal.

This is devastating. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

This is a great article by @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social and @adambonica.bsky.social FWIW many of us have been researching and writing about these problems on the Left for decades. Perhaps the incessant texts (vs the phone calls and mailers) may finally wake people up? newrepublic.com/article/2163...

European Parliament voted for a three-year delay of the EU Methane Regulation, undermining the credibility of the program gasoutlook.com/analysis/cre...

Nerds may well build truly open LLMs - open training data, algorithms, workflows, weights - and drive down the compute they need by 10x, 100x, or 1000x. Writing on the wall for tech oligopolies, data center developers, and those entangled in their webs of weird finance?

The world needs a high-quality, truly open language model. I wrote about why it’s necessary and why it’s easier to build than you might think.

as a long time fan of paris's work i absolutely loved HYPERSCALE, his new book, which really pulls together so many disparate threads of the data center convo—past, present, in the us and abroad—into a ripping narrative caught up with him about it for my latest power play newsletter!

One week before Election Day, and we already have Trump’s justice department inserting itself into the elections in Alaska and California… www.cnn.com/2026/10/25/p...

This article is an important corrective to the claim that Federal environmental laws are holding back clean-energy development. Their empirical finding: "environmental reviews and permitting rarely delay or block utility-scale renewable energy projects." Link in next tweet.

"Empirical studies have long found that EISs [Environmental Impact Statements] are required in only about 1% of the federal actions subject to NEPA." May I say that I am truly embarrassed that I believed the claim that federal environmental legislation was blocking the development of clean energy.

RELATED: "EPA has given major U.S. emitters another six-month reprieve from tallying their 2025 greenhouse gas pollution as it works to permanently remove the reporting requirements." subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026...

The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

all you fascists bound to lose ❤️

Lula’s win is the first good news for the planet in a while! I bet it shaves a tenth of a degree off how hot our earth eventually gets, which will save millions of lives Thank you Brazil!

"In total, since taking office again, Mr. Trump exempted 202 facilities in 39 states & Puerto Rico from clean-air regulations that were going into effect. Some were among the country’s worst industrial polluters, including chemical manufacturers, copper smelters & coal-burning power plants." MAHA!

To folks who follow me on Bluesky & appreciate the journalism I do. Can you please read the EPA story and post on social media platforms if you are so moved. This kind of work is important. But it only matters if people read it and engage with it. Here's the link. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

At COP17 in Durban, the then Obama administration negotiator Todd Stern famously remarked "If equity’s in, we're out." It's a belief that underlies mitigation words said by rich country coalitions at climate talks. Because in practice, equitable action means the wealthiest emitters are in trouble

There are plenty of other reasons to question this merger, but the $4 million donation (bribe?) and the political history of NextEra subsidiary Florida Power and Light alone should be disqualifying: www.utilitydive.com/news/nextera...

"Environmental groups sued over the detention center, saying Florida officials never got the proper permits or did required reviews on its impact." Environmental lawsuits have played important roles in fighting Trumpists' push to build ICE prisons. BAAJA would weaken these tools. Story from June.