Blake Shaffer 🇨🇦

Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change Abstract. Climate change policy is generally modeled as a global collective action problem structured by free-riding concerns. Drawing on quantitative data, archival work, and elite interviews, we rev...

Matto Mildenberger’s paper

direct.mit.edu/glep/article...

See, the thing is, where #3 applies, we’re not going HAM. In many areas we are actively preventing change, not because change harms us, but because it’s disruptive to incumbents.

I get the cost of forcing things that aren’t ready, but there’s a tipping point where obstruction is more costly.

I suppose it depends on the time frame of our self-interest.

I totally get your sentiment, and was relevant 10 years ago, but in many areas the tide is shifting to new options being cheaper and less risky, eg solar and storage in China.

At some point your analogy is more about protecting the arms dealers.

Nobel Committee should declare the winner of the World Cup.

Justice Colin Feasby was not pleased: "Changing legislation to circumvent a valid legal process commenced by the independent officer of the Legislative Assembly ... is the antithesis of the stable, predictable, and ordered society that the rule of law contemplates, and democracy demands."

It will soon be easier to count how many MLAs are *not* facing a recall petition #ableg

Alberta’s latest changes to industrial carbon pricing make MOU commitments harder to achieve - Canadian Climate Institute Seven days after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with federal government, Alberta changes regulations that make the $130 minimum effective carbon credit price harder to achieve

Just one week after signing an MOU with the federal govt agreeing to strengthen industrial carbon pricing, Alberta has changed its regulations, making the agreement harder to achieve.

Read our full statement from Principal Economist @enveco.bsky.social ⬇️

climateinstitute.ca/news/alberta...

They’re killing people as a twitter joke. It’s depraved. Can’t let yourself lose the capacity to be appalled and disgusted and outraged by this.

ANALYSIS | Why a tonne of industrial carbon costs $95 in Alberta but credits sell for less than $20 | CBC News A key part of the pipeline deal between Alberta and Ottawa is a “minimum effective credit price of $130 per tonne” on industrial carbon emissions, but already the two levels of government are talking ...

Great breakdown of the details of "the price" when it comes to carbon pricing by @robsonfletcher.com
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

A new report diagrams how Flexible Interconnection and Bring-Your-Own-Capacity (BYOC) can connect data centers to the grid faster while avoiding shifting costs to other electricity consumers.

How do we connect data centers to the grid quickly and avoid driving up costs for other electricity consumers?

The solution: a 2-part combo of flexible interconnection agreements & bring-your-own-capacity (BYOC) arrangements, according to a new report out today from Camus, my ZERO Lab, and encoord.

The West’s Last Chance How to build a new global order before it’s too late.

The always thoughtful Alex Stubb, Finnish President, writing in Foreign Affairs on the new world order www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

An entire room full of powerful old white people smiling and laughing as the president dehumanizes black immigrants and the first black president.

Just fucking pathetic.

It is how TIER works for electricity. Uniform benchmarks. Issue right now is oversupply of credits but that can be corrected.

That the benchmarks are uniform within the electricity sector, not facility specific. And that credits are recoupled with the headline price, trading at something close to it. The proposed “financial instrument” is in line with the CfDs I’ve long been advocating to do so.

To me, saying “the price would need to get to $400 to match the CES” is not the flex those saying it think it is. It’s an admission that it’s a costly policy.

Better to get the bulk of reductions across *all sectors* at $170 than squeezing the last from one at $400.

Exactly. To knock out the last few GJ of gas burn you’d need to regulate, or go to a much higher C price. But as you note, going after the last few GHGs at a very high cost, implied or explicit, is bad policy.

Distribution grids may be a barrier to residential electrification Replacing fossil-fueled machines with electric alternatives can reduce emissions, but Priyadarshan et al. find that reinforcing United States distribution grids to accommodate complete home and vehicl...

1) The editor of Cell Reports Sustainable, a new open-access journal from Cell Press, graciously invited me to do a short Q&A about our new paper, "Distribution grids may be a barrier to residential electrification." Pasting the Q&A in a short 🧵 if anyone's interested.

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

"Captain Gains" on Capitol Hill Shang-Jin Wei & Yifan Zhou WORKING PAPER 34524 DOI 10.3386/w34524 ISSUE DATE November 2025 Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension. Leaders' superior performance arises through two mechanisms. The political influence channel is reflected in higher returns when their party controls the chamber, sales of stocks preceding regulatory actions, and purchase of stocks whose firms receiving more government contracts and favorable party support on bills. The corporate access channel is reflected in stock trades that predict subsequent corporate news and greater returns on donor-owned or home-state firms.

令 1 1 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 Year Figure 2: Estimated dynamic quasi-difference-in-differences coefficient, di, of equation(3), with vertical dashed lines representing 90 percent confidence intervals. The point estimate of the year in which the lawmaker became a congressional leader (Year 0) is normalized to zero. BHAR over the 250 days following each trade is the dependent variable and calculated using the Fama-French five-factor plus momentum as the benchmark model.

After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts

www.nber.org/papers/w34524

via @florianederer.bsky.social

Opinion | A sickening moral slum of an administration Regarding Venezuela, Ukraine and much more, Trump and his acolytes are worse than simply incompetent.

George Will: "Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement. ... The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself" www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

I can’t imagine a costlier and dirtier way to serve growing power demand.

The pace of change, and magnitude, on this chart is 🤯

I noticed that too. Keller, whom I always enjoy, seems to have forgotten about that, and that this is not the first “Grand Bargain”, that we must be on at least the 2nd or 3rd by now…

Giggles GIF ALT: Giggles GIF

I too have always felt that providing data and evidence to inform important debates is met with nothing but appreciation and cool heads.

a man in a suit and tie is asking the question why are you the way that you are . ALT: a man in a suit and tie is asking the question why are you the way that you are .

Why do you have to be so darn reasonable! ;)

My favourite "let's build export capacity" pet project is:

**Retrofit Roberts Bank to export Canadian crude rather the American coal!**

Overcomes capacity limits in YVR harbour, also less risk (no bridges!). Could even justify expansion of TMX (TMXX).

Thoughts?

And, as I’ve said before to anyone who will listen, a spur line to Roberts Bank (Deltaport) to avoid Vancouver Harbour and displace US thermal coal exports!

Make Money Not War: Trump’s Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine The Kremlin pitched the White House on peace through business. To Europe’s dismay, the president and his envoy are on board.

I still can’t get over this piece. The US is giving up any claim to its status as “leader of the free world” in exchange for straight up grifting.

This is the most damning thing I’ve read about this admin.

www.wsj.com/world/russia...

spend years fanning the flames, don’t expect it to be easy to put out the forest fire

Make Money Not War: Trump’s Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine The Kremlin pitched the White House on peace through business. To Europe’s dismay, the president and his envoy are on board.

Quite the deep dive by the WSJ.

www.wsj.com/world/russia...