Indian Urbanism

The cost and scale would be very different with importing from China or even other Asian countries with Chinese supply chains. Like the dot com was about Internet companies and cable infrastructure. The AI and data centre build out would have nicely aligned with batteries and solar.

The problem American climate change effort is that it’s less about Fox News but more about bipartisan consensus about China and how powerful domestic auto companies are. BYD and cheaper electricity due to Chinese imports would be more resilient than Biden’s IRA effort in red states.

Australia probably has the largest right-wing media empire promoting climate denial. Yet its overall impact seems modest, because imported Chinese technology is cheaper and better, and there is no domestic car industry lobbying for protectionism.

Moderating on immigration, and even on policies like tariffs and cultural issues, will work against abundant housing and energy. Some issues require fighting on the unpopular side until you win. Even if it’s by lowering its salience.

The world has really memoryholed 2022. USA and EU specifically wanted India to buy more Russian oil. They even eased insurance rules to allow it. The fear was that either the oil prices would rise or that only China would get access to the discounted crude.

This isn’t really true. Tariffs combined with dairy and ethanol issue would do well with the “dead economy” narrative. BJP doesn’t want to talk about the economy or justify their economy. It’s an issue it completely avoids. It’s why pliant media is doing the attacking but BJP isn’t confronting.

This isn’t true? The entire price cap system was based on the idea that someone would do this and ensure the prices don’t go up globally.

This is higher than Indonesia and Vietnam. It does undercut the rationale that not allowing Chinese investment and goods would make it easier to be an alternative to China. It’s the worst of both worlds to get squeezed by both China and USA.

One aspect air conditioning discourse kind of misses is the current level of air conditioning is very close falling short with the kind of heat we are facing. We saw that in May and June of 2024 in India. It did repeat itself for a fewer days in 2025.

Copper now costs way more in the U.S. than elsewhere. This could hit its economy hard The huge discrepancy in U.S. prices compared to those elsewhere is expected to have a major economic impact.

The copper tariffs are going to hit NYC construction particularly hard, since our code still requires copper water supply lines where most of the rest of the US now uses plastics (plastics are less labor-intensive to work with, and NYC codes often bow to labor interests) www.cnbc.com/2025/07/09/u...

4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system.

anti-doomer sentence of the day: "Globally, roughly a third more power is being generated from the sun this spring than last"

www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...

Tariffs on Brazil and Laos, combined with the lack of engagement in Myanmar and 50% tariffs on copper, will hurt Chile. All of this strengthens China’s supply chain in critical minerals, pushing it closer to a monopoly. Also ensures Chinese renewables and EVs will dominate the market in the future.

Our focus is housing, but the biggest victims of NIMBYism in Indian cities are public schools. If there is any residential area nearby, it becomes nearly impossible to build such schools, even when land, bureaucracy, and funding are all in place.

Sprawl and construction in city peripheries doesn’t mean NIMBYism is absent. It often happens because those areas are not populated, unlike central areas where infill construction is blocked by NIMBYs. Nearly all of India’s construction is sprawl.

A lot of Indians follow YIMBYs in the US but assume that NIMBYism doesn’t exist in India. In reality, NIMBYism gets reported in the US largely because YIMBYs are so active and vocal. India’s NIMBY tendencies are far worse, but they go unreported.

The switch itself is fair. The media reporting and how their executives talk about it publicly leads to misinformation. Also there is going to be an obvious increase when you change methodologies, which doesn’t get acknowledged.

Renewables and electric vehicles as mass products arrived much later but which also meant their supply chains had to be more sophisticated. There is a world of difference at being successful in a lab and translating their success at scale.

China doesn’t have this issue to the same scale because the waste that it gets from the supply chain is valuable industrial products. The niche technology and specialized human capital required to pull this off, isn’t available to any other country. A lesson Malaysia,Australia and Japan learnt.

REE supply chain waste isn’t that dramatic in quantity. But it’s extremely toxic to the point it won’t be only environmentalist complaining if it’s happening 50 km away from their house. The politics of this isn’t usual environmental NIMBYism, most YIMBYs will be sympathetic to anyone opposing it.

Everyone from India to the US to the EU treats Chinese control of rare earths as a consequence of listening to environmentalists, which will lead to a backlash against EVs & renewables. But China’s REE dominance is really about intricate chemistry and the ability to automate complex processes.

The main argument for free buses is that many people can’t afford fares, so making transit free seems logical. But even without a decline in service, it could take five years or more for people who currently can’t afford fares to fully benefit from free transit.

One of the successes of Abundance(book) and its following discourse is that, it’s convinced nearly all of its critics that moderate voters and dems are YIMBYs while progressives are the biggest NIMBY obstacle to increasing housing supply. The critics also largely accepted this framing.

Thanks

We are at a point where renewables and EV would win most of the market competition vs high emissions technologies. But trade barriers and protectionist regulation keeps that from happening.

The combination of geopolitics and protectionism will be the biggest challenge for climate change going forward. Many experts who recognized and sounded the alarm about the threat of climate change have deprioritized it because of (where and) who has the solutions.

2010s was spent worrying about whether the world would be able to solve the technological & economic challenges of climate change solutions. In the 2020s, it’s clear that we have ‘solved’ both, but deliberate policy intervention remains the biggest obstacle to their adoption.

Climate Change demands a global perspective while water issues it’s better to understand problems and solutions with a more local perspective, even if the end result of problem is same around the globe.

Irrespective of which water-intensive sector is causing the issue, the focus, especially with water, should be on ensuring they are located in areas where they don’t worsen existing scarcity. Where water scarcity is being worsened, efforts to relocate should be priority.

Water availability and usage are local problems that require local solutions. The excess water in Seattle cannot realistically or logistically be used to solve water scarcity issues in Chennai. Water issues aren’t like emissions and shouldn’t be analyzed as such.

Derek Thompson in an interview said that helping people has come at the cost of building and innovation. In another interview equated redistributive goals with degrowth.