Fred Stafford

I've been profoundly depressed seeing so many leftists either joke about or celebrate the murder of someone for political speech. Glad to see this political clarity from @benburgis.bsky.social and Meagan Day in @jacobinmag.bsky.social.

jacobin.com/2025/09/char...

Asking again for clarification on your analysis @jrfhanger.bsky.social

For ex, right now when I look at PECO suppliers for fixed rate and sort by price, lowest one is $0.0689/kWh. But add in that plan's monthly fee and, assuming 500 kWh/mo as you did, get adjusted price $0.1594. Lowest such adjusted price is another plan, $0.0729 with no monthly fee. Which did you use?

Can you share your data on the retail supplier prices for 2025? If not, can you say how determined the values given for the retail suppliers? What is annual averaging? Was it a snapshot? Did you look at $/kWh price or estimated monthly bill (including any monthly fees)?

Kudos for asking McKibben about his groups' opposition to nuclear in NYS. His answer is total BS though. He claims not to know anyone saying nuclear is too risky, and yet that's exactly his groups' position. Why can't he take any responsibility here? Why not say he'll course correct?

Why are two of Bill McKibben's own organizations, 350 and Third Act, actively opposed to new nuclear plants in New York State?

Of course, the left critics raise plenty of good points in their critiques as well. We agree with these critics in large part! Anyone trying to paint the intellectual terms of debate as "Klein & Thompson, good or bad?" is doing a disservice to everyone, but it gets Likes.

In particular, if "Abundance authors don't recognize the power of the New Deal" is a critique of the book that appeals to you, then read the various concrete counterpoints we offer. The sad truth is Klein, Thompson, et al are right to identify barriers w/in progressivism itself.

Some thinkers on the left have convinced everyone there's nothing to see here, the ideas expressed in Abundance are just neoliberalism rebranded, etc.

They're wrong. Read our review essay to understand what left critics miss, what problems they conspicuously refuse to recognize.

Recommend @matthuber.bsky.social @leighphillips.bsky.social @fredstaffordcs.bsky.social in @jacobinmag.bsky.social as a key intervention on abundance. Both private market interests + an NGO-govt-legal bureaucracy hinder abundance. Class struggle must overcome both to deliver a plentiful future.

Jacobin's socialist case for abundance With notes and astonishments from a reader who expected to disagree

A really nice engagement with our Abundance piece (in the context of a stale/toxic debate).

"I’ve seen so much online discourse devolve into purity tests, tactical pessimism, and knee-jerk hostility. This piece cuts through that." stephnakhleh.substack.com/p/jacobins-s...

"Those of us... who come from the Left and remain connected to industrial labor — can tell you plainly: it’s both unaccountable markets *and* an unaccountable NGO-academia-legal bureaucratic class that are stalling public progress."

I was confused by the wholesale Left rejection of "Abundance" both bc it's central to the general socialist project & bc the book itself has valuable insights.

So here finally is our sympathetic/critical review of the book & its critics (w @leighphillips.bsky.social & @fredstaffordcs.bsky.social).

Abundance for the 99 Percent Abundance is the precondition of socialism, but socialism is also the precondition of abundance.

Abundance is the precondition of socialism, but socialism is also the precondition of abundance.

Is your position then that privatization, at least of the transmission system, might be a positive change? I noticed you guys didn't sign on that letter from various other groups opposing it.

Atomic Abundance and Its Enemies Wrangling over the construction of nuclear power in New York State has revealed the priorities of some of the state’s biggest environmental lobbies. For them, creating bureaucratic procedures they can...

@fredstaffordcs.bsky.social knocks it out of the park with this. The NYPA nuclear announcement should be celebrated as one of the most critical experiments in rebuilding state capacity in the country. The way we win is with big public investment at all scales:

jacobin.com/2025/07/hoch...

2. Decarbonization as a longterm goal = eventually need to replace the gas (nuclear, geothermal, gas+CCS, hydrogen). That something’s big competitor is precisely the solar/storage/gas combo. Establishing the clean alternative to gas probably requires reshaping market rules favoring solar/gas today.

For more neoliberal center-left Abundance stans:

1. Private independent solar power producers’/asset managers’ interests are not going to be neatly aligned with clean, reliable energy abundance. Be warned.

Part of me has been feeling the time is approaching for a reckoning with the implicit solarmaxxing of both much of the Abundance movement *and* its critics.

The next 10 yrs is when these political groups must grapple deeply with the grid and power markets. 🧵

Scoop on @latitudemedia.bsky.social: Utah is betting on a new developer to revive its nuclear dreams a year and a half after the NuScale deal collapsed.

Holtec is setting up a permanent hub in the state to train a workforce and deploy projects to build its SMR-300 reactor across the Mountain West.

If the left analysis goes no further than "sticks vs de-risking subsidies" and openly embraces all of the above, maybe the left is fetishizing the particular consumer product too much, at the expense of clear thinking.

There will then be a political fight over the prices paid for exported solar energy, just as there have been in California and Germany, with the affluent and greens arguing for protected higher subsidies. All the while people pay to upgrade utility infra to support it.

This will add to new home costs; will necessitate means tested loans for buyers; will create a vampiric dependency on solar services firms to make the most of the panels; and will require subsidies from utility rate base to compensate exported energy, whose value decreases the more there is.

1/ NEW from me & @matthuber.bsky.social from the new Damage Magazine print issue, Responsibility:

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE
THINK OF THE GRID?

Now online for all to read. 🧵 damagemag.com/2025/04/28/w...

Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Grid? Liberals and the Left tend to ignore the importance of a reliable electricity system, pushing visions of rooftop solar and 100% renewables out of line with the reality of our electrical grid. A respon...

Great new piece from @matthuber.bsky.social @fredstaffordcs.bsky.social in @damagemag.bsky.social

Are we optimizing for GW of wind/solar by 2030, CO2 by 2050, or degrees C by 2100? Rather we strive for a society more fair, just, free + prosperous, now + in the future.

damagemag.com/2025/04/28/w...

17/ The release of our article on the day of major nationwide blackouts in Spain, requiring full "black start" like we allude to in the opening paragraph, is purely a coincidence that I'm just now seeing. Godspeed to the people of Spain, electrical workers, and grid operators.

Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Grid? Liberals and the Left tend to ignore the importance of a reliable electricity system, pushing visions of rooftop solar and 100% renewables out of line with the reality of our electrical grid. A respon...

16/ WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE GRID? Read it now for free at Damage: damagemag.com/2025/04/28/w...

15/ In closing, too many undermine the achievement of the grid in their zeal for "the planet," effectively *individualizing* the responsibility for reliable electricity that has been *socialized* over the past century.

The Left's path forward should be TVA, not Bill McKibben.

14/ At the Tennessee Valley Authority, my major focus, progressives motivated by climate ideas and 100% renewables ignore the tremendous contribution of nuclear to TVA's actually-quite-low-carbon grid, while dismissing new gas, largely to replace coal, as simply unnecessary.

13/ Many rightly see a return to the old-fashioned progressive idea of public power as a key part of expanding our energy system. But today's climate-motivated public power proponents focus exclusively on fossil-vs-renewables and not enough on reliability, as in New York.