Tom Moyer

Friends in town visiting us from Florida - so we had to show them a good time.

Opinion: How do we stop seeing political opponents as enemies? Our nation is straining under the expensive, unintended consequences of hot-take policy-making.

Wonderful message from my friend, Adrielle Herring.
“No one owes us assent simply because we believe we’re right. If we want others to share our views, we must do the work of persuasion — meeting people where they are, exercising patience and wrestling with problems that rarely have easy answers.”

“Because they did it first” has got to be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard from grown men and women.

There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.

Zero conservation calls this summer for Texas, thanks to new solar and storage builds.

An ICE Raid in Georgia Becomes a Massive (and Unsurprising) U.S. Policy Failure Zero-sum thinking comes with big costs.

ICE's huge raid on a Hyundai battery plant under construction in Georgia has outraged and alienated key U.S. ally South Korea, while setting back prospects of getting successful foreign companies to manufacture in America. My colleague @scottlincicome.bsky.social has a wrap-up.

Renewable advocates launch effort to fast-track utility-scale solar — before government incentives expire The renewable advocate is urging the fast-tracking of solar & wind projects before federal tax credits expire — a move they say could save Utah ratepayers billions.

I submitted a comment to the Public Sevice Commission in favor of this action. We’re going to build the power generation anyway. Might as well do it in time to take advantage of the tax credits. www.sltrib.com/news/environ...

Liebreich: The Pragmatic Climate Reset – Part II: A Provocation | BloombergNEF As the debate on transition deepens, Michael Liebreich details how a pragmatic climate and energy reset might unfold.

Trigger warning. If you think the answer to climate change is degrowth, modern monetary theory, global revolution, 100% WWS, 100% nuclear power, the hydrogen economy, or any other Monty Python cult, please don't read the #PragmaticClimateReset. 17/n
about.bnef.com/insights/cle...

Great stuff here, informed by solid numbers.

Read it all. But if that’s too much, then read the 🧵

Great story. Thanks for flagging!

And yes - there’s a really good lesson there in how to talk about these energy projects.

We do have actual environmental challenges that we need to tackle. We can and we will address them, and we need to speed it up. If you focus your effort there instead of on energy consumption, we might actually do some good.

… we’re so far from any actual physical constraints that I have no idea how to answer it. 10,000x as much energy falls on the earth’s surface in the form of sunlight as we use from all conventional energy sources. We could 100x our energy use by harvesting 1% of it. So who knows what’s optimal. 2/3

I’m glad you asked the question. I think it’s useful for clarifying our differences. For me, the entire premise is baffling. You’re trying to use energy as a proxy for environmental impact, so you want to put limits on how much of it people can use. But it’s terrible proxy for that and … 1/2

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the distinct impression that you wouldn’t actually be happy if we could just solve the environmental harm - that’d you’d prefer it if it came with an excuse to block certain uses of energy.

Instead of trying to tell people what energy use is and isn’t necessary, you could just go after the actual environmental harms. You’d be a lot more successful.

Well that’s where we disagree. We are making massive strides on improving human well-being, driven by access to energy. Limiting energy use is a terrible goal. Minimizing pollution and other environmental impacts is a good one.

I’m concerned about those issues too. I fully agree with the importance of leaving the place better than we found it. But each one of them needs different tools.

We have a history of solving problems. Here is air pollution. We’re not done, but turning the corner *while* increasing access to energy.

Large pieces of this are unpersuasive to me (and I suspect to most people). But the direction is good. If you can talk about how you’re going to make people’s lives better, then you have a chance.

I don’t disagree. But telling people you’re going to cut access to energy is politically toxic. So you still have a gigantic hurdle to overcome. And even if you succeeded, that only takes care of a piece of the problem.

But yes - of course a decline in economic activity produces a decline in emissions. That’s exactly what you’d expect.

That isn’t the bar you have to clear. The hurdle is convincing people that this is going to improve their lives.

I was making fun of you.

Cutting energy use isn’t necessary. (We can cut emissions without it.)
It isn’t sufficient. (We have to get to zero.)
I see no non-coercive way to get there.
And your invoking of covid and the collapse of the USSR suggests that you see massive human suffering as acceptable.

LDSAT: Finding Hope in the Climate of Discouragement — LDS Creation Care Community Don't forget to join us next week as we hear from a respected friend and colleague, Tom Moyer. Tom has likely done as much work lobbying for climate consensus in one year than most of us have in a lif...

On Wednesday at 6pm MT I will be the presenter for the CCL LDS Action Team’s virtual meeting, talking about our recent lobby day in Washington DC and the current landscape for bipartisan legislation. Feel free to join us! Details here. www.ldscreationcare.org/events/ldsat...

You: looks at rapidly growing clean energy. “Hey - it hasn’t worked yet! Let’s do another Covid instead. That’ll go over well.”

You can define degrowth however you want to. But where I come from it means cutting energy use and living standards.

So yes - they are in fact defacto degrowthers, even if you don’t want them on your team.

Are you … seriously arguing for those as models to follow for reducing emissions?

Fine goals, but absolutely no one is signing up for bringing back a healthy balance through a reduction in energy use.

Thankfully we don’t have to do that to achieve sustainability.

Degrowth is not inherently pro-incumbent, but the pro-incumbents are now de-facto degrowthers.

The fastest (and probably only) way to reduce greenhouse emissions is to build the replacement clean energy infrastructure that maintains or improves living standards.

This is why clean energy advocates are becoming abundance people, and the defenders of incumbent industries are becoming degrowthers.

It’s a new political landscape.

Ouch.

Couldn’t stop in time for this thing and endoed over it. Then a couple minutes further, mama and baby moose had the trail and I had to turn around and go back the way I came.

100% agree. Letting people see the full cost of water is the best way to get incentives aligned to the right outcome.