Solar power is fantastic and it is great that it is cheap. However the intermittency problem has not been solved. While it is conceivable that storage could be provided for hours and days using batteries, it will still be very expensive and require vast increases in mining, at least with current battery technology. It is possible, but not certain, that future battery technology will solve this problem.
A much more difficult problem is seasonal storage, which is needed in areas where there is very little sunshine in winter. Here there is no affordable solution yet. It is possible that hydrogen and synthetic fuel synthesis powered by solar will solve the problem, but we do not know that yet.
Given these uncertainties, it seems rash to abandon nuclear energy just because we think it may not be necessary. If the problems above are not solved or are very expensive to solve we are doomed to continue using fossil fuels or have much lower standards of living because of higher energy costs.
It relatively trivial, at least from an economic perspective, to make nuclear energy cheaper.
All that is needed is to make the regulations governing radioactivity more rational, using widely accepted data to guide this. I am qualified to write this a medical researcher who researches and teaches mechanisms of disease, including cancer.
There are four ways that the health risks of radioactivity are exaggerated.
(1) The first way is assuming the linear no-theshold (LNT) model is correct. The risks of radioactivity are currently calculated based on data that we have for harm at high doses extrapolated down to low doses. This assumes that risk decreases in a linear way with dose and that there is no threshold dose below which there is no harm. This linear no-threshold (LNT) assumption remains unproven but is probably impossible to disprove for the simple reason that the effects are so small at these low doses that they cannot be measured in any feasible real-world study. In my view there is no point in arguing about whether the LNT model is correct or not. I think, however, we can all agree that assuming the LNT model is correct is cautious.
(2) The second way that the risks of radioactivity are exaggerated is the assumption that the dose RATE does not matter. Current regulations assume that a dose received in 1 second (eg during exposure to an atomic bomb blast) is equivalent to a dose received in 1 year. We know for a fact that this is incorrect. This is why radiotherapy for cancer is given over many weeks (dose fractionation) rather than as a single dose.
The assumption that dose rate does not matter greatly exaggerates the risk of radioactivity released from nuclear reactor accidents and nuclear waste.
(3) The third way risks are exaggerated is in the ‘safe’ levels that is set by regulators. The widely accepted value for calculating the risk of radioactivity is that exposure to 1 Sievert (Sv) increases mortality by 5.5%. The safe level for public exposure to radioactivity is 0.001 Sv/year (1 mSv/year) above background. Assuming the LNT model is correct, this dose would increases mortality by (5.5/1000)% or 0.0055%. This is so low that it is impossible to detect, which is why the LNT model can never be disproved.
For comparison, the ‘safe’ level set by regulators for exposure to the most harmful form of air pollution, PM2.5 particles, is 5-15 ug/m^3. At this level PM2.5 air pollution increases mortality by 0.7%.
This is ~130 fold higher than the estimated mortality rate at the ‘safe’ level of radioactivity. In other words, our regulations value a life lost to radioactivity at least 100 times more than a life lost to air pollution.
This favours forms of energy that produce air pollution by burning stuff, such as fossil fuels and biofueld. Given that we are desperately trying to reduce fossil fuel use to avoid catastrophic climate change, this regulatory difference is unfortunate.
(4) The fourth way the risk of radioactivity are exaggerated is how regulators are required to treat breaches of the ‘safe’ limits. They treat breaches of radioactivity ‘safe’ levels far more seriously than breaches of air-pollution ‘safe’ levels.
One example is how regulators and public health officials respond when these levels are exceeded. When radioactivity from a nuclear reactor accident exceeds the safe levels, people are often forced to evacuate the area, often permanently. In contrast when PM2.5 air-pollution exceeds safe levels evacuation is not required. At most people are advised to stay indoors. One consequence of this disparity is that those forced to move from the Fukushima exclusion zone who were placed in cities like Tokyo were placed under greater overall risk of death because of higher air pollution.
A second example is how regulators require nuclear reactors to be built with numerous redundant safety mechanisms in an attempt to ensure that they never release radioactivity that breaches the ‘safe’ level, even after the worst possible (and thus unlikely) disaster. In contrast regulators do NOT require those building or operating machines (e.g. vehicles, fireplaces) or facilities (power plants, incinerators) that produce air pollution to ensure that humans are never exposed to air pollution levels that exceeds the ‘safe’ limits. Instead the ‘safe’ limits of air pollution are set as something to comply during normal operation of these machines or facilities. There is no expectation that they be designed such that the limits will not be breached even in very unlikely accidents.
This is discrepancy is particularly strange given that, as note above, the safe limit for radioactivity is at least 100 fold more cautious than the safe limit for air pollution. Regulators should, if they were rational, be far more relaxed about breaches of radioactivity limits than about breaches of air pollution limits.
Of these 4 forms of caution, the one most often debated is the LNT assumption. This is unfortunate as it is the only one that it is likely impossible to disprove. The other 3 are more easily shown to be too cautious.
What to do?
Since the safe limits for exposure to radioactivity are incredibly cautious/conservative (see 1-3), we should treat these limit the same way we treat safe limits for air pollution. They should be limits to aim for when a nuclear reactor is operating normally and when nuclear waste storage facility operates as designed under normal circumstances. Since exceeding these limits will not create significant risks, there is no obvious need to try to ensure nuclear reactors never have accidents or that nuclear waste never leaks. We do not do this for machines/facilities producing air pollution even though the safe limits are far less conservative.
This claim seems to be correct. But an intermittent renewables + batteries grid also seems like a massive rube goldberg contraption compared to a nuclear base load centric grid. Seems almost like the comparison of gas powered cars with 2000 moving parts vs EVs with 17. Yes, the former is cheaper, for now, but fundamentally the latter will blow it away in cost when done right.
I support a significant expansion of nuclear energy capacity everywhere, including in places that have excellent potential for RE production, because more "clean firm" power to displace gas and coal will make everything go faster. But honestly, using highly processed uranium to boil water to run it through a turbine seems way more Rube Goldberg than solar plus batteries.
Fundamentally renewables are so much less efficient compared to nuclear that the amount of mass that need to be moved and land that needs to be used to generate an equivalent amount of power is at least a couple orders of magnitude. And that can't change with improved tech. It's baked into physics. Due to this fact I just have a hard time believing that the cost difference isn't self inflicted.
That is part of the cost difference! French nuclear is releatively cheap because they went for economies of scale. The US nuclear regulatory regime requires each plant be bespoke, and in fact the design is frequently changed even in production. This is fantastically expensive.
Why is it a massive rube goldberg machine? Solar panels and batteries are both quite simple technologies, and there is no such thing a system that doesn't require balancing load with generation, because load is itself intermittent.
All but gas require overbuilding. Overbuilding works, but is expensive.
Batteries shouldn't be in your list, they are workable for short-term, not long-term storage. It is more feasible to pump reservoirs than use battery banks if you need storage over months.
If you are amenable to meaningful nuclear regulatory reform I doubt there is much dispute between us.
We don’t have to have only one power technology, right? “Winning” and game metaphors suggest there will be only one approach used everywhere for everything. It’s a classic Silicon Valley, VC, Peter Thiel way of looking at a market but I think [citation needed].
Existing trends suggest ground-based solar as the largest energy source, but why wouldn’t you expect a mix of other sources for specialty applications or in places with unusual resource endowments?
I am aware of that article about mining. I think it is misleading as it equate the volume of fossil fuels extracted with the amount of rock mined to make batteries. Gas and oil extraction is a question of drilling and the taking/pumping liquid and gas out of the ground. This can easily be done at enormous scales with relatively little energy and modest environmental footprint. This is not the case for the mining required for batteries. This is what makes batteries difficult to scale up to the levels needed to provide the entire world with days worth of energy storage.
Batteries are worthwhile installing even if they only store a few minutes of grid electricity because of the high cost of electricity during peak demand. The fact that they are being installed does not mean solar and batteries will replace fossil fuels.
What would be convincing was a demonstration project where all the energy for a region/country came from solar plus batteries at a reasonable cost. So far there is nothing that comes close, anywhere. There is no country or region that has come close to relying on solar and/or wind alone for all its electricity requirements for an entire year. Many have tried and all have failed dismally. Germany has spent almost a trillion dollars since 2002 on its energy transition to renewables. It remains totally dependent on coal and gas. If it had spent that money on nuclear energy it would have 100% zero emission electricity already, and this electricity would be very very cheap.
I note you ignore the issue the issue of seasonal storage, which is critical in high latitude countries. This is evident in Germany and the UK where their solar and wind operates at under 5% capacity for weeks at a time in winter.
The goal doesn't need to be to get to 100%. It's just a very useful part of the mix.
Personally, I think it will be fine to keep using natural gas for the seasonal issue. Ideally with carbon capture, but even if not, with a low duty cycle, there is probably going to be lower hanging fruit of emissions to eliminate for a long time.
It is not appreciated just how critical natural gas remains as the flexible source that makes wind and solar workable.
Nuclear is not as adjustable as gas, it takes many hours to ramp a nuclear plant up or down, and nuclear is almost all fixed cost. Unlike gas running at 100% barely costs more than running at 25%.
Totally agree that no one has succeeded at 100% solar + wind work. As a matter of engineering some gas in the mix makes it far, far, easier.
I think the battery growth in Texas shows than even without renewables, cheap batteries are desirable. Most of the battery projects aren't co-located with solar or wind, they are just selling energy on the open market cheaper than peaker plants. They also make power demand management easier due to their fast response times. Finally, they can replace equipment needed for a black start.
Solar and utility-scale batteries are "winning" because of government subsidies and mandates. On an even playing field in North America, natural gas beats nuclear and solar and batteries.
There is no actual definition of the term “clean energy.” It is a buzzword.
The reality is that the most polluting and carbon emitting fuel source is coal, which is used for much more than generating electricity. Natural gas is the only energy source that can substitute for all uses of coal in a cost-effective way:
Stop already. Willful ignorance of the obvious usage of the term to mean energy that produces low levels of GHGs is futile. And while I respect your ceaseless attempts to promote your own Substack by citing and linking what I can only assume are your own equally obtuse articles on these subjects on behalf of the oil and gas industry, the GHG-generating impacts of methane are well understood.
Current policies keep the coal plants in place. Why would not swap them out? We can do so within 5 years and it is much cheaper than IRA law.
Natural gas does not emit methane, it is methane. Burning it to generate electricity gets rid of the methane. And the oil and gas industry do not need promotion. Their product sells itself.
This is just not true. Look at installation rates of solar in poorer places like SE Asia. Those countries are not interested in subsidizing renewables for climate reasons, they just want the cheapest power. If solar needs subsides why are they building so much of it? Your argument was true once but is not longer due to the massive, real, price declines of solar and battery. Check out the Brookings research Noah cites.
Did you actually read the article that I linked to before telling me that I am wrong? It does not appear so, as you did not address a single one of my claims…
I am in the process of reading that Brookings article now. I will report back.
Yes, SE Asia are installing solar, but they are not generating much electricity, which is supposed to be the goal. Many of these type of projects in developing nations are heavily subsidized by the World Bank, so it is not based on market prices.
Love the links but until we see a comparable chart with 'reliable and comparable estimates on the total amount of rock moved or used' for oil drilling/ extraction/conveyance (Mining requirements of electricity sources, including gas), the drill-baby-drill mantra will continue from those with that economic interest. I love my rooftop solar so I've bought in to the hedge on rising electricity rates. (No batteries yet).
Drill-baby-drill will continue from those with an interest in affordable, abundant, and secure energy, which gives a critical foundation for long-term economic growth.
Solar has its uses, but it cannot substitute for fossil fuels globally at scale:
So, what to do about global warming then? The reason people are pushing for solar/wind so hard is to keep global warming under control. Standing here shouting 'it is impossible' means that we are going to destroy the ecosystem with potentially catastrophic consequences. I rather gamble on sufficient progress in battery storage, overbuilding of solar power and wind-energy and investing in research/production of small-scale nuclear power.
Great, let’s eliminate all of the subsidies for them then. Elon and Vivek might get DOGE on the case and trim these out of the IRA, but Elon may be blind to eliminating the subsidies that his salary ($TSLA) depends on.
I can already tell that I'm going to spend the next four years ignoring people who unironically say things like "get DOGE on the case". So fucking unserious.
He made his big bank on Tesla already. the incremental returns will never be as good. Space X is probably a much bigger source of new wealth for him going forward. He overpaid dearly for Twitter, but it was (and is) a vanity project. and still relatively noise to him.
I agree with your analysis of the disadvantages of solar, but natural gas beats both nuclear and solar on costs in North America, and it can be deployed far faster than nuclear.
Do we really need to decide in advance between nuclear and solar? With all of the different comparable energy jurisdictions around the world and even within North America it seems to me that we can watch and assess various real-time experiments with different mixes unfold and take our lessons accordingly. If solar + storage can out-compete nuclear, great. If not, also great (though solar-powered generation including wind is better when it comes to forestalling the waste heat problem that arises with 100x (!) energy use).
I agree. The electricity system is a large complex system and there are experts that spend their lives studying these systems, e.g., Jesse Jenkins, John Bistline. Every expert net-zero energy analysis includes some nuclear and I quote,
"Nuclear energy is used for power generation in all scenarios unless it is explicitly excluded under the constraints of a given scenario. Some net-zero scenarios point to declines in nuclear energy relative to today, whereas other scenarios point to increases in nuclear energy through growing deployment of small modular reactors."
In this comment thread you linked to a bunch of articles. This is a Substack comment thread, not your Substack. As a matter of good form observe what comments are: Comments. In Blog comments people oughtn't "expect" others to read outside articles before themselves commenting.
"I posted one, and no one has to read it. But if you reply telling me that I am wrong, I expect a good faith effort to do so." Lines like this come off as pompous and hectoring. For me personally it is not an enticing invitation to sample a new Substack.
RE Econ 102: @Noah, you REALLY need to stop repeating the lie about St. Louis.
The crime stats for STL are only for the city limits because of a wierd split between the city and county stats. When you look at the entire metro area, it drops back down to like 20th-30th among major cities.
These data are only for 2020, but there hasn't been any major divergence by the STL MSA from the rest since then, so it's a rough approximation.
STL isn't even in the top 50. It's not even the most violent place in its own state.
The problem is that the STL crime stats only get reported for a tiny slice of the metropolitan area. STL reports crime stats for a city of 300k surrounded by a MSA of 2.8M; the city is the most violent part of an otherwise average and peaceful MSA.
I believe Baltimore has this exact same problem. It'd be like if you took Harlem and the Bronx and acted like it represented the entire NYC statistical area. It's ludicrous.
I always hate that this is how the national conversation always goes with regard to StL. The problems of a - basically - small city of 270,000 are projected onto the entire region of close to 3m.
But to be fair - StL has some pretty big issues it has to deal with and it is THE city that the region is named after so it’s hard for a national audience to know about the city / county split and how that affects things.
But to be fair the other way (for the national folks) - it is an absolute gem of a city. Architecture, culture, cuisine, the zoo, forest park, etc. Visit if you have a chance.
Source: Grew up in StL county, lived in the TGS area of the city for 12 years, now back out to the country in western St. Charles county. So I get to hear all the hot takes from all areas of the region about StL.
> So what pissed off nonwhite voters, women, and young people so much? In general, polls show that Trump voters were mad about the exact three things everyone talks about them being mad about — immigration, inflation, and wokeness
The Democrats have a real problem with immigration and wokeness, and that problem is made much worse by the fact that they never actually argued for their policies, but instead just enacted those policies while claiming that they weren't doing the things they obviously were doing when anybody criticized them for it. Most Democrats won't even admit that wokeness is a real thing even though anybody with a brain can see that it is.
So if they have actually have learned their lesson and legitimately want to turn away from those unpopular policies, what can they do? If they just say they are against them, that's the same thing they have been saying the whole time they were actually for them. So who's going to believe them?
They lost by 1.4% to 2% points, if inflation had not hit under Biden (or been 50% less), it is hard to imagine them losing. And then everyone would be saying the opposite, oh look the Republican party is dead, etc etc etc.
Right? Just seems like typical media frenzy to spin things as drama. The Democratic party has deep work to do, but a lot of that is with problems that have festered for 20+ years with the entire system (housing, etc).
It also seems like whatever "wokeness" is (its nebulous and vague)... is fading away now that the fad peaked a few years ago. There always the outliers who get a lot of attention in our media system, but I don't even know what policies Democrats have done that are considered woke? Can you help me understand what Biden did that is a "woke" policy?
I think Americans just want people to be able to live their lives and not be discriminated against based on race/sex/gender. I don't know many people who don't support that.
One of the big problems that the Dems had in the last election is that their messages had a hard time reaching voters who were in the right-wing disinformation media sphere. I think I found a way through this mess:
It's tough to lose, but as Liberals we should celebrate that ethnicity/race is becoming less of a factor in elections. Ideas are supposed to be our comparative advantage.
If you come from an exclusively Radical Centrist worldview, neither is true.
And I did not ask you the question. I asked a person who self-identifies as a "Radical Centrist." The term is actually in his description to the right of his name...
Technically you asked a general question below somebody's comment. It's definitely directed in Thomas' general direction but I was not aware of any Substack etiquette against providing answers to questions.
I'm also quite familiar with his writings and his definition of "Radical Centrism" and was actually just writing about it last night. It's basically that he thinks that it's possible to design policy packages that are mainly upside and that things don't have to be particularly zero sum outside of some specific areas (e.g. tax policy on very high income earners). I think there's probably a better term for it, but overall I like his policy suggestions a lot.
Also, I want to keep this positive so I'll just say that point #1 is clearly true, and #2 is also pretty accurate depending on the definition of "grand scheme of things", and realistically even independently of that. Harris definitely didn't offer my exact preferred policy package but is far more centrist than Trump, and while she may be to the left of candidate Biden, she is closer to the center than President Biden.
Again, I would rather hear from the person that I asked, but a Radical Centrist should not be too worried about personalities, which is clearly driving a lot of the anti-Trump votes.
Personality is not driving anti-Trump conservatives. Character is. A politician of good character accepts defeat when he loses. This is central because a two-party system only survives when losers concede. I'm a liberal, but I have been carefully reading Anti-Trump conservatives for a decade now. "Personality" is not high on the list of what they care about. Character is.
As far as Kamala Harris, neither you nor I live inside her head, your certainty of what she truly believes is unsustainable except as a matter of faith. I suspect you have confidence you can divine her inner thoughts, I don't. My admittedly uninformed plunge into her psyche tells me she is not particularly ideological. She said things to placate the left without realizing how they would play out politically, partly because she is not ideologically systematic. She was hardy alone in this mistake in 2020.
You can center your political universe on this mistake, made by many Democratic politicians in response to a peculiar political moment, I think it is cherry-picking.
Perhaps Harris had difficulty distinguishing herself from Biden because... drumroll... she and Biden are politically close to each other.
Even though I agree with MattY on many issues, I’m more aligned with your takes on climate change. I’m closer to the median voter than most people in deep blue states but the two areas where I have luxury beliefs is climate change and wildlife conservation and they are linked.
I hope Democrats don’t give up on policies to deal with climate change because of some political setbacks and instead focus on an energy abundance agenda that includes fossil fuels (except coal). It reduces our dependency on other countries and cheaper and more stable energy prices will make it harder for the Republican party to attack Democrats during elections. At the same time, states like California should not have their own energy policy. High cost of energy and cost of living in general is not something to be proud of if you want the rest of the country to look up to you.
If you believe in climate change and wildlife preservation, then nuclear is better for that than solar, since the much larger area required for solar installations displaces more wildlife.
I ran the same election analysis with my civics class on Monday, starting with clips of the "Americans are just racist and sexist" from the pundit class, and then demolishing this with real data. I can confirm Musa's analysis from 2020-2024 (Harris only improved with old people and and college-educated women), but we also looked backward at exit poll data from 2004-2024. Over that range, the party realignment is glaringly obvious. I can't embed the charts since they're my own analysis, but over the last 20 years:
Whites did not alter their voting patterns significantly.
Blacks became about 5 points more Republican.
Men did not change. Women did not change. The gender gap was roughly constant.
Latinos & Asians became 20 points more liberal during Obama, then reversed.
No age cohort significantly changed from 2004 to 2024.
None of these groups changed at all. Who did change?
Income -- under $50K shifted 10 points to the GOP; $100K+ 10 points Dem.
The Middle Class didn't move appreciably.
The Educated -- 4 year degrees shifted 10 points Dem; no college, 10 points Rep.
There was no partisan divide by education in 2004; today it's 20 points.
Having crunched this myself, my take is...
1) During Obama, the Democrats hitched their cart to a pony instead of an ox. The educated and wealthy are powerful groups to have on your team, but in sheer numbers, they are dwarfed by the non-college working class. The Dems made a mistake abandoning the latter for the former.
2) Noah is correct that racial and sexual identity politics is a failure. However, these trends are tied into postmodernism, the de-facto religion of the educated-class, will make ending them hard for the Democrats.
3) 1950-2000 was weird in that politics ceased to be about class. Most nation's politics are essentially aristocracy vs everyone else. Maybe it was the Cold War, but that class-partisanship divide largely evaporated over the last half of the 20th century, which allowed American politics to reorient around race and sex and a bunch of other weird postmodernist criteria. That's over. We're back to class now.
4) The realignment is now past tense. The GOP could certainly screw it up (they're masters at that), but the Dems have systematically lost credibility with 2 generations of the working class. Their kids might rejoin the Party, but those generations are likely gone.
5) This was about much more than 2020-2024. Confining the analysis to those years misses the real story.
Noah, you are one of the few progressive folks willing to accurately and honestly look at what happened on Tuesday. Thank you! As a Trump voter, I welcome that, since I really don't like the "politics as war" and "flight 93 election" mentality any more than anyone else does. Call it "virtue" or "common sense" or something else, but a diverse society like America is only governable when there is broad agreement on what is sacred and what is profane, on what is in the common good and what is opposed to it. I very much hope the Democrats can use this election as a reason to step off the Millian/ Nietzschean/ postmodernist cliff.
As a former professor of Political Science, I agree with almost everything you said.
One point, though, class has never been that important in American politics until quite recently. American politics has always been defined by ethnicity, religion and region:
Thanks for the compliment; that means something coming from you.
I love the article. I may steal parts of it for my civics class in the future. My students are also amazed at how much the parties have realigned themselves over 2 centuries. And we're living through another one right now! What a cool time to teach poli-sci! :-)
Since the founders were almost all aristocrats, I see revolutionary era politics as more class-based. However, I see your point about how Marx's class warfare theory really doesn't map onto 19th century America particularly well. When I went to college, my Marxist training didn't explain the world well; now that I'm in my 50's, it's suddenly more relevant. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but it's where we are.
Your analysis necessarily relies on exit polls. Perhaps your conclusions are tentative, waiting to be confirmed by better data?
I think your last paragraph pulls together where you are coming from. I agree that post-modernist thought has led the left astray, where I disagree is its penetration into the wider society. Post-modernism is not the "the de-facto religion of the educated-class" unless you define the educated class very narrowly. I'm an engineer, I work with other engineers (in Seattle of all places). Post-modernism is not their de-facto religion. Numerically the people I know are far, far more numerous than Ivy league liberal arts graduates.
Post-modernism is receding because it is not popular, and the Democratic Party got the memo. You can tell this by comparing various left post-modernist stances with the positions taken by actual Democratic politicians.
On the other hand the post-truth bug has hit the Republicans hard, and has metasticized further than post-modernism ever did with Democrats. Denial that Biden won in 2020 is truly widespread
Tom, the fact that you don't see postmodernists in among your fellow engineers is a relief, but it's an anecdote, not data. I'm guessing you've been out of the university for a while, but postmodernism (specifically the belief that absolute truth does not exist and than all perspectives are therefore valid) is absolutely endemic on campuses today and has been for many years.
When I say it's the elite religion, I mean it's the set of assumptions they hold that they don't even realize are assumptions. Questioning these would be as impossible as you questioning whether 2+2=4. (Which many elite postmodernists insist isn't true BTW.) The most extreme public face of that (wokeness) is fading, but the underlying assumptions ("there is no absolute truth", for example) are still there. Our problem is a lack solidarity ("those people are deplorable bigots!") and a lack of "the common good". I see no evidence our elites are walking back the former in any significant way and when they don't believe in truth, how can they ever find a "common good"?
A John Adams quote comes to mind, "a Constitution for a moral and religious people and wholly inadequate for the governance of any other." Elites must help enforce virtue or the whole thing falls apart.
I suggest that you, living in academia, are the one out of touch. Yes, my particular co-workers are anecdotes, but do you have data, that suggests engineers (numerous members of the "educated class") are in thrall to post-modernism? Or the "educated class" in general, defined as bachelor's degree plus? (Citing some ridiculous 'woke' curriculum somewhere will not do, BTW: 1. That itself is an anecdote, and can be countered by citing something ridiculous in a red state school, and 2. You make broad claims that post-modernism is widespread in the "educated class" (130 million people).
Te Nehisi Coates is an influential public intellectual, popular among the educated class. You may or may not like his message, but it is absolutely not a denial of absolute truth. His argument regarding Israel is, at core, 'don't make excuses or give reasons, people who enforce apartheid always have excuses and reasons. Apartheid is wrong, always and everywhere.' Here is a man who speaks and thinks in terms of absolute truth, loudly and proudly, and he is lionized by the "educated class" you claim is indifferent to truth.
Your core diagnosis is out of touch. I suspect it is because it is, in your mind, religiously grounded (Coates is an atheist, BTW). Maybe I'm wrong about this, I'm going on your Adams quote. "there is no absolute truth" never caught on in the wider population. "a strong man without constraints can get things done" THAT has caught on.
Back to your key paragraph: "Elites must help enforce virtue or the whole thing falls apart." Since when did telling the truth stop being a virtue? I suspect Trump cannot distinguish truth and lies, for him words are purely instrumental. But Vance, he speaks of virtue yet defends lying (eating cats and dogs). How can such lost and twisted souls "enforce virtue"?
I'm not an academic. I'm just a father who keeps up to date about what's going on on university campuses because I have 3 late teenagers.
You keep bringing up Trump. This isn't about Trump. It's about the underlying philosophy / theology of the ruling class. Trump is a signal of how divergent that class' ideology is from the rest of America. How desperate must the middle/working class normies of America be to get behind a crude, philandering, narcissist like Trump? That's why Trump matters, as a symptom not a cause.
Since you asked about engineering specifically: https://stanfordreview.org/woke-watch-stanford-engineering/ DEI only makes sense under postmodernist assumptions. Treating people as exemplars of their group identity is abhorrent to classical liberal / Judeo-Christian assumptions. There's lots of data about the rise of DEI and wokeness on campus, some of the best looking at total salaries of diversity administrators by department.
As for the out of touchness of academics in general, this is a little hard to quantify, What kind of data would convince you? A survey of "do you believe in postmodernism?" Doesn't seem useful to me. Disinvitations (mostly from the Left but sometimes from the Right recently as well) have become common in the last 10 years, which implies at least some high-profile universities have given up on freedom of speech. The rise of anti-semitism on campus has been chronicled extensively. However, most of these are just anecdotes (at a large scale, but still anecdotes). The best actual data about the ideology of university campuses is probably from economist Dan Klein at George Mason. He's been studying this since I TAed for him 25 years ago at UC Irvine. A representative sample: https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology He's covered other departments over the years as well and would be a great place to start.
I'm also personally aware of social justice trendiness in education. My son is in a Seattle high school (Franklin) and some of his assignments are annoying. The worst was assigning Stamped: A Re-mix as the primary text in his 8th grade Black Studies class. That is a bad book, but not because it teaches there is no absolute truth.
You say DEI only makes sense under post-modern assumptions, I'm not sure. I have watched affirmative action play out in Malaysia nd Brunei, I saw no trace of post-modernist infection. The Freedmen's Bureau offered services specifically to former slaves, a group identity. Reparations was given to interned Japanese under Reagan.
DEI was at least partly a response to court decisions that forbade redress for past injustice (Bakke). That and other decisions narrowed what univertities could do to address the de facto segregated status quo. That is part of the DEI story, and it has nothing to do with post-modernism. I'm not claiming no post-modern infection, I'm arguing proportionality.
I notice you have narrowed the discussion to touchiness of academics. You don't need to convince me, I have seen enough, particulary in liberal arts at elite schools. But, again, proportionality! 37% of Americans have a bachelor's degree or higher, that is the "educated class". The discussion has shrunk to college faculty and face it, most college faculty is in non-prestigious school that don't make headlines about runaway DEI. Where I differ with you is power and influence. Faculty fights in the English department at Columbia are annoying to watch, ridiculously large DEI departments at some universities an obvious grift, but they are peripheral phenomena in society at large.
Where you see post-modernist post-truth as the core cause of voter disaffection, I see a gilded age where selfishness and greed have eroded common feeling. When I learned how the world works CEO to bottom worker ratios were 25:1. There was one billionaire in the world (J. Paul Getty). High school graduates could get solid jobs they could count on. People feel the system is rigged because... It is. US history from 1865 to 1932 sufficiently explain working class alienation. From my perspective post-modernism is an annoying but peripheral problem, in retreat in any case.
"a diverse society like America is only governable when there is broad agreement on what is sacred and what is profane"
Hmmm. How about agreement about what is true? I am old enough to remember elections where both parties largely agreed on basic facts. This seems more central to our political predicament.
How do you get there when postmodernism (the de-facto religion of the Left) explicitly denies that truth exists. When your society splits theologically, all kinds of shared definitions dissolve.
If you define "Left" so it includes something under 10% of the population you might have a point. I'm hardly the first to observe that the "Right" is now also post-truth, with deeper penetration into the population than lefty post-modernists achieved. Jonathan Last is good on this.
I'm really not interested in fringe obsessions, I find both far ends of the spectrum obnoxious. You referred to "broad agreement", I mistakenly thought you were arguing beyond fringe phenomena.
>big thing Matt misses here (though his point #9 hints at it) is patriotism.
Many years ago, there was a proto-Rush Limbaugh show on cable TV in SoCal hosted by Wally George. It was filmed in Orange County, and his Wikipedia page notes that he "call[ed] himself the 'Father of Combat TV,' ... His other nicknames were 'Mr. Conservative' and 'Mr. America.'"
I tuned in one night, and an announced guest was a local ACLU attorney, who of course was greeted with a chorus of boos and catcalls. Yet, he ended up with the audience eating out of his hand, because he framed the defense of civil liberties in patriotic terms, as part of a unique American creed.
It seems to me that there us an opportunity to do that re many issues, including immigration and especially asylum, and refugee resettlement. There is, after all, a relevant inscription on the Statue of Liberty. If an asylum seeker commits a crime (and it is inevitable that some will, just as it is inevitable that some members of any group will) the response should not just be reciting statistics on low immigrant relative criminality. It should include an acknowledgement that there are risks , but that helping those fleeing oppression, etc, is the right thing to do, and that true Americans do the right thing, even if there are dangers (insert images of D-Day, the moon landings, the military delivering famine relief supplies, etc).* It won't reverse public opinion all by itself, but it will certainly be more effective than the current standard response.
*I don't live in a swing state, but does anyone know whether any ads were run during the Haitian kerfuffle showing actual conditions in Haiti, esp for poor people?
I remember that show. I used to watch it a lot back in the 1970s (I think - I lose track). That was back where even in LA, we had only 5-6 TV channels. The big three networks, PBS and one or two local channels. Wally was on a local channel. I think the same one that used to show roller derby. Good times ...
The issue with the "Democrats are too woke" narrative is that it treats politics as a video game where only Democrats have agency. If Democrats lost, it must be because they pressed the wrong buttons. Neither Republicans nor voters, in this way of thinking, should be viewed as anything but video game bosses (Republicans) and avatars (voters), who Democrats lose to because they weren't skillful enough.
Reality is, the "wokeness" stuff isn't coming from anything Democrats are doing. It's coming from made up BS that Republicans are pushing. The "wokeness" things that Republicans push are, it can't be emphasized enough, not rooted in reality. Immigrants are not eating pets. Exactly zero anti-transgender advocates can name three real life transgender athletes off the tops of their heads if you spot them Lia Thomas and Caitlyn Jenner. These aren't real issues.
Yet they resonate. And the reason they resonate is that voters are a problem. You can see that in the ads that the Trump campaign ran. I couldn't make it through a commercial break watching an NFL game without the same transphobic BS ads. They weren't subtle or thoughtful-- they were pure hate mainlined onto the TV. The Harris campaign didn't run counter ads. And we know that the reason they didn't run counter ads wasn't that they were unaware of what the Trump ads were doing, or that they didn't prepare-- it's that they focus grouped counter ads, and they didn't resonate. Turns out, hate is what voters WANT.
Now, that doesn't mean Democrats are endlessly doomed, because if history tells us anything, it's that Republicans' capacity to materially screw things up at every opportunity is unparalleled, and Trump is uniquely unparalleled in his capacity to be utterly incompetent. But it does mean that, before the car with no driver at the wheel inevitably hurdles off the road, Democrats are (mixing metaphors) playing on an uneven playing field.
That is simply not true. Wokeness is absolutely coming from the Democrats.
DEI policies were forced on the federal bureaucracy when President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14035 in June 2021, calling on every federal agency to make “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” a “priority” when recruiting and promoting staff.
And this is just an extension of the practices under the Obama administration.
What does that concretely mean in your mind? I promise, the answer is "nothing."
If you actually dial in, it's all extremely milquetoast. At the institutional level, it means you get someone to talk about black history month every February. But look at what Republicans are actually targeting at voters-- the answer is that they're out there running ads about sex changes for transgender inmates. See if you can guess how many of those have been done.
These are non-issues. They're pushed deliberately by Republicans to spread hate. Your median voter buys in for the same reason your median voter bought into gay marriage hysteria-- because the median voter is susceptible to appeals to hate.
Recruiting and promoting staff is not nothing. It is not milquetoast. It gets to the core of how our institutions operate. And it is being pushed by the Biden administration and virtually every other Democrat. And they are pushing it in virtually every institution in American society.
So if you think it is nothing, are you willing to fire every one of these employees?
From the article:
"The Department of Health and Human Services — with a budget surpassed only by the Pentagon — employs 294 DEI staffers at an annual cost of $38.7 MILLION.
That’s doesn’t even include another $29.4 million in payroll for seven Offices of Minority Health embedded within various HHS agencies!"
Solar power is fantastic and it is great that it is cheap. However the intermittency problem has not been solved. While it is conceivable that storage could be provided for hours and days using batteries, it will still be very expensive and require vast increases in mining, at least with current battery technology. It is possible, but not certain, that future battery technology will solve this problem.
A much more difficult problem is seasonal storage, which is needed in areas where there is very little sunshine in winter. Here there is no affordable solution yet. It is possible that hydrogen and synthetic fuel synthesis powered by solar will solve the problem, but we do not know that yet.
Given these uncertainties, it seems rash to abandon nuclear energy just because we think it may not be necessary. If the problems above are not solved or are very expensive to solve we are doomed to continue using fossil fuels or have much lower standards of living because of higher energy costs.
It relatively trivial, at least from an economic perspective, to make nuclear energy cheaper.
All that is needed is to make the regulations governing radioactivity more rational, using widely accepted data to guide this. I am qualified to write this a medical researcher who researches and teaches mechanisms of disease, including cancer.
There are four ways that the health risks of radioactivity are exaggerated.
(1) The first way is assuming the linear no-theshold (LNT) model is correct. The risks of radioactivity are currently calculated based on data that we have for harm at high doses extrapolated down to low doses. This assumes that risk decreases in a linear way with dose and that there is no threshold dose below which there is no harm. This linear no-threshold (LNT) assumption remains unproven but is probably impossible to disprove for the simple reason that the effects are so small at these low doses that they cannot be measured in any feasible real-world study. In my view there is no point in arguing about whether the LNT model is correct or not. I think, however, we can all agree that assuming the LNT model is correct is cautious.
(2) The second way that the risks of radioactivity are exaggerated is the assumption that the dose RATE does not matter. Current regulations assume that a dose received in 1 second (eg during exposure to an atomic bomb blast) is equivalent to a dose received in 1 year. We know for a fact that this is incorrect. This is why radiotherapy for cancer is given over many weeks (dose fractionation) rather than as a single dose.
The assumption that dose rate does not matter greatly exaggerates the risk of radioactivity released from nuclear reactor accidents and nuclear waste.
(3) The third way risks are exaggerated is in the ‘safe’ levels that is set by regulators. The widely accepted value for calculating the risk of radioactivity is that exposure to 1 Sievert (Sv) increases mortality by 5.5%. The safe level for public exposure to radioactivity is 0.001 Sv/year (1 mSv/year) above background. Assuming the LNT model is correct, this dose would increases mortality by (5.5/1000)% or 0.0055%. This is so low that it is impossible to detect, which is why the LNT model can never be disproved.
For comparison, the ‘safe’ level set by regulators for exposure to the most harmful form of air pollution, PM2.5 particles, is 5-15 ug/m^3. At this level PM2.5 air pollution increases mortality by 0.7%.
This is ~130 fold higher than the estimated mortality rate at the ‘safe’ level of radioactivity. In other words, our regulations value a life lost to radioactivity at least 100 times more than a life lost to air pollution.
This favours forms of energy that produce air pollution by burning stuff, such as fossil fuels and biofueld. Given that we are desperately trying to reduce fossil fuel use to avoid catastrophic climate change, this regulatory difference is unfortunate.
(4) The fourth way the risk of radioactivity are exaggerated is how regulators are required to treat breaches of the ‘safe’ limits. They treat breaches of radioactivity ‘safe’ levels far more seriously than breaches of air-pollution ‘safe’ levels.
One example is how regulators and public health officials respond when these levels are exceeded. When radioactivity from a nuclear reactor accident exceeds the safe levels, people are often forced to evacuate the area, often permanently. In contrast when PM2.5 air-pollution exceeds safe levels evacuation is not required. At most people are advised to stay indoors. One consequence of this disparity is that those forced to move from the Fukushima exclusion zone who were placed in cities like Tokyo were placed under greater overall risk of death because of higher air pollution.
A second example is how regulators require nuclear reactors to be built with numerous redundant safety mechanisms in an attempt to ensure that they never release radioactivity that breaches the ‘safe’ level, even after the worst possible (and thus unlikely) disaster. In contrast regulators do NOT require those building or operating machines (e.g. vehicles, fireplaces) or facilities (power plants, incinerators) that produce air pollution to ensure that humans are never exposed to air pollution levels that exceeds the ‘safe’ limits. Instead the ‘safe’ limits of air pollution are set as something to comply during normal operation of these machines or facilities. There is no expectation that they be designed such that the limits will not be breached even in very unlikely accidents.
This is discrepancy is particularly strange given that, as note above, the safe limit for radioactivity is at least 100 fold more cautious than the safe limit for air pollution. Regulators should, if they were rational, be far more relaxed about breaches of radioactivity limits than about breaches of air pollution limits.
Of these 4 forms of caution, the one most often debated is the LNT assumption. This is unfortunate as it is the only one that it is likely impossible to disprove. The other 3 are more easily shown to be too cautious.
What to do?
Since the safe limits for exposure to radioactivity are incredibly cautious/conservative (see 1-3), we should treat these limit the same way we treat safe limits for air pollution. They should be limits to aim for when a nuclear reactor is operating normally and when nuclear waste storage facility operates as designed under normal circumstances. Since exceeding these limits will not create significant risks, there is no obvious need to try to ensure nuclear reactors never have accidents or that nuclear waste never leaks. We do not do this for machines/facilities producing air pollution even though the safe limits are far less conservative.
Batteries aren't that expensive, and the amount of mining required isn't that big:
https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-technologies-need-far-less-mining-fossil-fuels
This is why batteries are already being installed in huge amounts in Texas:
https://x.com/scienceisstrat1/status/1815512710542708881/photo/1
None of the arguments against solar and batteries hold up. They're winning, and they're going to continue winning.
This claim seems to be correct. But an intermittent renewables + batteries grid also seems like a massive rube goldberg contraption compared to a nuclear base load centric grid. Seems almost like the comparison of gas powered cars with 2000 moving parts vs EVs with 17. Yes, the former is cheaper, for now, but fundamentally the latter will blow it away in cost when done right.
I support a significant expansion of nuclear energy capacity everywhere, including in places that have excellent potential for RE production, because more "clean firm" power to displace gas and coal will make everything go faster. But honestly, using highly processed uranium to boil water to run it through a turbine seems way more Rube Goldberg than solar plus batteries.
Solar and battery technologies are both pretty simple and easy to install and maintain. Not true of nuclear (though it has many virtues).
Fundamentally renewables are so much less efficient compared to nuclear that the amount of mass that need to be moved and land that needs to be used to generate an equivalent amount of power is at least a couple orders of magnitude. And that can't change with improved tech. It's baked into physics. Due to this fact I just have a hard time believing that the cost difference isn't self inflicted.
You have a hard time believing that technologies that benefit from economies of scale can be cheaper than those that don't?
That is part of the cost difference! French nuclear is releatively cheap because they went for economies of scale. The US nuclear regulatory regime requires each plant be bespoke, and in fact the design is frequently changed even in production. This is fantastically expensive.
Why is it a massive rube goldberg machine? Solar panels and batteries are both quite simple technologies, and there is no such thing a system that doesn't require balancing load with generation, because load is itself intermittent.
How to address the seasonal production problem at northern latitudes?
Long distance transmission, wind, batteries, nuclear, natural gas.
All but gas require overbuilding. Overbuilding works, but is expensive.
Batteries shouldn't be in your list, they are workable for short-term, not long-term storage. It is more feasible to pump reservoirs than use battery banks if you need storage over months.
If you are amenable to meaningful nuclear regulatory reform I doubt there is much dispute between us.
We don’t have to have only one power technology, right? “Winning” and game metaphors suggest there will be only one approach used everywhere for everything. It’s a classic Silicon Valley, VC, Peter Thiel way of looking at a market but I think [citation needed].
Existing trends suggest ground-based solar as the largest energy source, but why wouldn’t you expect a mix of other sources for specialty applications or in places with unusual resource endowments?
Not only *can* we have a diverse mix of energy sources, it is itself a good thing, for resilience.
I am aware of that article about mining. I think it is misleading as it equate the volume of fossil fuels extracted with the amount of rock mined to make batteries. Gas and oil extraction is a question of drilling and the taking/pumping liquid and gas out of the ground. This can easily be done at enormous scales with relatively little energy and modest environmental footprint. This is not the case for the mining required for batteries. This is what makes batteries difficult to scale up to the levels needed to provide the entire world with days worth of energy storage.
Batteries are worthwhile installing even if they only store a few minutes of grid electricity because of the high cost of electricity during peak demand. The fact that they are being installed does not mean solar and batteries will replace fossil fuels.
What would be convincing was a demonstration project where all the energy for a region/country came from solar plus batteries at a reasonable cost. So far there is nothing that comes close, anywhere. There is no country or region that has come close to relying on solar and/or wind alone for all its electricity requirements for an entire year. Many have tried and all have failed dismally. Germany has spent almost a trillion dollars since 2002 on its energy transition to renewables. It remains totally dependent on coal and gas. If it had spent that money on nuclear energy it would have 100% zero emission electricity already, and this electricity would be very very cheap.
I note you ignore the issue the issue of seasonal storage, which is critical in high latitude countries. This is evident in Germany and the UK where their solar and wind operates at under 5% capacity for weeks at a time in winter.
The goal doesn't need to be to get to 100%. It's just a very useful part of the mix.
Personally, I think it will be fine to keep using natural gas for the seasonal issue. Ideally with carbon capture, but even if not, with a low duty cycle, there is probably going to be lower hanging fruit of emissions to eliminate for a long time.
It is not appreciated just how critical natural gas remains as the flexible source that makes wind and solar workable.
Nuclear is not as adjustable as gas, it takes many hours to ramp a nuclear plant up or down, and nuclear is almost all fixed cost. Unlike gas running at 100% barely costs more than running at 25%.
Totally agree that no one has succeeded at 100% solar + wind work. As a matter of engineering some gas in the mix makes it far, far, easier.
I think the battery growth in Texas shows than even without renewables, cheap batteries are desirable. Most of the battery projects aren't co-located with solar or wind, they are just selling energy on the open market cheaper than peaker plants. They also make power demand management easier due to their fast response times. Finally, they can replace equipment needed for a black start.
Yep, batteries are just really useful. It's not surprising. Storage is useful for every commodity, electricity is no different.
Please take a look at my article on the disadvantages of solar that seriously constrain its ability to substitute for fossil fuels:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-solar-cannot-displace-fossil
Solar and utility-scale batteries are "winning" because of government subsidies and mandates. On an even playing field in North America, natural gas beats nuclear and solar and batteries.
Missing the point? The task is to produce "clean" power...
There is no actual definition of the term “clean energy.” It is a buzzword.
The reality is that the most polluting and carbon emitting fuel source is coal, which is used for much more than generating electricity. Natural gas is the only energy source that can substitute for all uses of coal in a cost-effective way:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/16-reasons-why-greens-should-love
If you want to rapidly reduce carbon emissions and pollution in a cost-effective way, the best method is replacing coal with natural gas.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/a-simple-and-cost-effective-plan
Stop already. Willful ignorance of the obvious usage of the term to mean energy that produces low levels of GHGs is futile. And while I respect your ceaseless attempts to promote your own Substack by citing and linking what I can only assume are your own equally obtuse articles on these subjects on behalf of the oil and gas industry, the GHG-generating impacts of methane are well understood.
If you read the articles, you might change your mind.
Natural gas is low carbon, so Greens should regard it as clean and in the 1990s, they did.
A new Combined Cycle Natural gas plant emits 1/3 the carbon as an existing coal plant and with virtually no pollution.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-wonders-of-ccgt
Current policies keep the coal plants in place. Why would not swap them out? We can do so within 5 years and it is much cheaper than IRA law.
Natural gas does not emit methane, it is methane. Burning it to generate electricity gets rid of the methane. And the oil and gas industry do not need promotion. Their product sells itself.
This is just not true. Look at installation rates of solar in poorer places like SE Asia. Those countries are not interested in subsidizing renewables for climate reasons, they just want the cheapest power. If solar needs subsides why are they building so much of it? Your argument was true once but is not longer due to the massive, real, price declines of solar and battery. Check out the Brookings research Noah cites.
Did you actually read the article that I linked to before telling me that I am wrong? It does not appear so, as you did not address a single one of my claims…
I am in the process of reading that Brookings article now. I will report back.
Yes, SE Asia are installing solar, but they are not generating much electricity, which is supposed to be the goal. Many of these type of projects in developing nations are heavily subsidized by the World Bank, so it is not based on market prices.
Here are some more examples:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/more-evidence-that-solar-wind-cannot
Many governments spend money wastefully in other domains. Why should we be surprised when they do the same in energy policy?
Love the links but until we see a comparable chart with 'reliable and comparable estimates on the total amount of rock moved or used' for oil drilling/ extraction/conveyance (Mining requirements of electricity sources, including gas), the drill-baby-drill mantra will continue from those with that economic interest. I love my rooftop solar so I've bought in to the hedge on rising electricity rates. (No batteries yet).
You are correct.
Drill-baby-drill will continue from those with an interest in affordable, abundant, and secure energy, which gives a critical foundation for long-term economic growth.
Solar has its uses, but it cannot substitute for fossil fuels globally at scale:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-solar-cannot-displace-fossil
So, what to do about global warming then? The reason people are pushing for solar/wind so hard is to keep global warming under control. Standing here shouting 'it is impossible' means that we are going to destroy the ecosystem with potentially catastrophic consequences. I rather gamble on sufficient progress in battery storage, overbuilding of solar power and wind-energy and investing in research/production of small-scale nuclear power.
I have written many articles on the subject. The first step is to abandon policies that cannot work:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/a-simple-and-cost-effective-plan
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/there-is-a-better-alternative-to
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/lets-leverage-american-lng-exports
Great, let’s eliminate all of the subsidies for them then. Elon and Vivek might get DOGE on the case and trim these out of the IRA, but Elon may be blind to eliminating the subsidies that his salary ($TSLA) depends on.
I can already tell that I'm going to spend the next four years ignoring people who unironically say things like "get DOGE on the case". So fucking unserious.
He made his big bank on Tesla already. the incremental returns will never be as good. Space X is probably a much bigger source of new wealth for him going forward. He overpaid dearly for Twitter, but it was (and is) a vanity project. and still relatively noise to him.
Congress will decide that not a new made-up department
Anton van der Merwe did not argue against batteries.
Seasonal production is a big problem in northern latitudes, the only semi-feasible seasonal storage I know of is pumping water into reservoirs.
Batteries are winning, but they are winning because natural gas is there to fill the gaps.
Great points. You should publish your thinking more widely.
Noah is right
If you are interested in the subject, you might be interested in my article on the subject:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-solar-cannot-displace-fossil
well said
I agree with your analysis of the disadvantages of solar, but natural gas beats both nuclear and solar on costs in North America, and it can be deployed far faster than nuclear.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/16-reasons-why-greens-should-love
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-solar-cannot-displace-fossil
Do we really need to decide in advance between nuclear and solar? With all of the different comparable energy jurisdictions around the world and even within North America it seems to me that we can watch and assess various real-time experiments with different mixes unfold and take our lessons accordingly. If solar + storage can out-compete nuclear, great. If not, also great (though solar-powered generation including wind is better when it comes to forestalling the waste heat problem that arises with 100x (!) energy use).
I agree. The electricity system is a large complex system and there are experts that spend their lives studying these systems, e.g., Jesse Jenkins, John Bistline. Every expert net-zero energy analysis includes some nuclear and I quote,
"Nuclear energy is used for power generation in all scenarios unless it is explicitly excluded under the constraints of a given scenario. Some net-zero scenarios point to declines in nuclear energy relative to today, whereas other scenarios point to increases in nuclear energy through growing deployment of small modular reactors."
https://www.gti.energy/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Meta-Analysis-of-U.S.-Economy-Wide-Decarbonization-Studies_Feb2024.pdf
Yes! After all, experimentation is one of the beauties of the American federalist system in general.
I agree that we do not need to choose between solar and nuclear. We have more immediate solutions that work better than both.
If you go based on cost, natural gas would beat both nuclear and solar. Plus we can scale it up far faster than either.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/16-reasons-why-greens-should-love
Climate change is real. Solar is cheaper than gas.
Did you actually read the article that I linked to?
Obviously not.
Here is another article for you to ignore:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-solar-cannot-displace-fossil
Your mindless slogans are not convincing.
Asking us to read a bunch of articles you are unwilling to summarize is unconvincing.
I never asked anyone to " read a bunch of articles."
I posted one, and no one has to read it. But if you reply telling me that I am wrong, I expect a good faith effort to do so.
And I did summarize the first linked article with this statement:
"I agree that we do not need to choose between solar and nuclear. We have more immediate solutions that work better than both.
If you go based on cost, natural gas would beat both nuclear and solar. Plus we can scale it up far faster than either."
My guess is that you would not be interested in a longer summary...
In this comment thread you linked to a bunch of articles. This is a Substack comment thread, not your Substack. As a matter of good form observe what comments are: Comments. In Blog comments people oughtn't "expect" others to read outside articles before themselves commenting.
"I posted one, and no one has to read it. But if you reply telling me that I am wrong, I expect a good faith effort to do so." Lines like this come off as pompous and hectoring. For me personally it is not an enticing invitation to sample a new Substack.
RE Econ 102: @Noah, you REALLY need to stop repeating the lie about St. Louis.
The crime stats for STL are only for the city limits because of a wierd split between the city and county stats. When you look at the entire metro area, it drops back down to like 20th-30th among major cities.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/433603/us-metropolitan-areas-with-the-highest-violent-crime-rate/
These data are only for 2020, but there hasn't been any major divergence by the STL MSA from the rest since then, so it's a rough approximation.
STL isn't even in the top 50. It's not even the most violent place in its own state.
The problem is that the STL crime stats only get reported for a tiny slice of the metropolitan area. STL reports crime stats for a city of 300k surrounded by a MSA of 2.8M; the city is the most violent part of an otherwise average and peaceful MSA.
I believe Baltimore has this exact same problem. It'd be like if you took Harlem and the Bronx and acted like it represented the entire NYC statistical area. It's ludicrous.
I always hate that this is how the national conversation always goes with regard to StL. The problems of a - basically - small city of 270,000 are projected onto the entire region of close to 3m.
But to be fair - StL has some pretty big issues it has to deal with and it is THE city that the region is named after so it’s hard for a national audience to know about the city / county split and how that affects things.
But to be fair the other way (for the national folks) - it is an absolute gem of a city. Architecture, culture, cuisine, the zoo, forest park, etc. Visit if you have a chance.
Source: Grew up in StL county, lived in the TGS area of the city for 12 years, now back out to the country in western St. Charles county. So I get to hear all the hot takes from all areas of the region about StL.
Agreed. Grew up in the county too, went to school at Illinois, worked at Wash U for a decade, and now living in Connecticut (Greater NYC area).
> So what pissed off nonwhite voters, women, and young people so much? In general, polls show that Trump voters were mad about the exact three things everyone talks about them being mad about — immigration, inflation, and wokeness
The Democrats have a real problem with immigration and wokeness, and that problem is made much worse by the fact that they never actually argued for their policies, but instead just enacted those policies while claiming that they weren't doing the things they obviously were doing when anybody criticized them for it. Most Democrats won't even admit that wokeness is a real thing even though anybody with a brain can see that it is.
So if they have actually have learned their lesson and legitimately want to turn away from those unpopular policies, what can they do? If they just say they are against them, that's the same thing they have been saying the whole time they were actually for them. So who's going to believe them?
They lost by 1.4% to 2% points, if inflation had not hit under Biden (or been 50% less), it is hard to imagine them losing. And then everyone would be saying the opposite, oh look the Republican party is dead, etc etc etc.
Right? Just seems like typical media frenzy to spin things as drama. The Democratic party has deep work to do, but a lot of that is with problems that have festered for 20+ years with the entire system (housing, etc).
It also seems like whatever "wokeness" is (its nebulous and vague)... is fading away now that the fad peaked a few years ago. There always the outliers who get a lot of attention in our media system, but I don't even know what policies Democrats have done that are considered woke? Can you help me understand what Biden did that is a "woke" policy?
I think Americans just want people to be able to live their lives and not be discriminated against based on race/sex/gender. I don't know many people who don't support that.
> Democrats won't even admit that wokeness is a real thing
...
> whatever "wokeness" is (its nebulous and vague)
Always interesting when someone replies and manages to reinforce the point without intending to.
TIL if something is nebulous, it isn't a real thing
How so?
Can you explain as I am not following?
One of the big problems that the Dems had in the last election is that their messages had a hard time reaching voters who were in the right-wing disinformation media sphere. I think I found a way through this mess:
https://kathleenweber.substack.com/p/dems-can-win-by-selling-one-big-idea
It's tough to lose, but as Liberals we should celebrate that ethnicity/race is becoming less of a factor in elections. Ideas are supposed to be our comparative advantage.
Why would a Radical Centrist support Kamala Harris?
She is about as far from Centrism as any presidential nominee in American history…
To be clear, I am not interested in hearing the opinion of anyone who does not define their ideals as "Radical Centrist."
1. She was running against Trump.
2. She's still reasonably centrist in the grand scheme of things.
If you come from an exclusively Radical Centrist worldview, neither is true.
And I did not ask you the question. I asked a person who self-identifies as a "Radical Centrist." The term is actually in his description to the right of his name...
Technically you asked a general question below somebody's comment. It's definitely directed in Thomas' general direction but I was not aware of any Substack etiquette against providing answers to questions.
I'm also quite familiar with his writings and his definition of "Radical Centrism" and was actually just writing about it last night. It's basically that he thinks that it's possible to design policy packages that are mainly upside and that things don't have to be particularly zero sum outside of some specific areas (e.g. tax policy on very high income earners). I think there's probably a better term for it, but overall I like his policy suggestions a lot.
Also, I want to keep this positive so I'll just say that point #1 is clearly true, and #2 is also pretty accurate depending on the definition of "grand scheme of things", and realistically even independently of that. Harris definitely didn't offer my exact preferred policy package but is far more centrist than Trump, and while she may be to the left of candidate Biden, she is closer to the center than President Biden.
Again, I would rather hear from the person that I asked, but a Radical Centrist should not be too worried about personalities, which is clearly driving a lot of the anti-Trump votes.
Personality is not driving anti-Trump conservatives. Character is. A politician of good character accepts defeat when he loses. This is central because a two-party system only survives when losers concede. I'm a liberal, but I have been carefully reading Anti-Trump conservatives for a decade now. "Personality" is not high on the list of what they care about. Character is.
As far as Kamala Harris, neither you nor I live inside her head, your certainty of what she truly believes is unsustainable except as a matter of faith. I suspect you have confidence you can divine her inner thoughts, I don't. My admittedly uninformed plunge into her psyche tells me she is not particularly ideological. She said things to placate the left without realizing how they would play out politically, partly because she is not ideologically systematic. She was hardy alone in this mistake in 2020.
You can center your political universe on this mistake, made by many Democratic politicians in response to a peculiar political moment, I think it is cherry-picking.
Perhaps Harris had difficulty distinguishing herself from Biden because... drumroll... she and Biden are politically close to each other.
Her 2024 campaign was quite centrist. Her 2019 campaign was not (but I don't understand why I should care).
Exactly this...
Even though I agree with MattY on many issues, I’m more aligned with your takes on climate change. I’m closer to the median voter than most people in deep blue states but the two areas where I have luxury beliefs is climate change and wildlife conservation and they are linked.
I hope Democrats don’t give up on policies to deal with climate change because of some political setbacks and instead focus on an energy abundance agenda that includes fossil fuels (except coal). It reduces our dependency on other countries and cheaper and more stable energy prices will make it harder for the Republican party to attack Democrats during elections. At the same time, states like California should not have their own energy policy. High cost of energy and cost of living in general is not something to be proud of if you want the rest of the country to look up to you.
If you believe in climate change and wildlife preservation, then nuclear is better for that than solar, since the much larger area required for solar installations displaces more wildlife.
I’m very supportive of nuclear.
I think he is arguing for abundance and that we should do it all.
100% agreed Siddhartha
"focus on an energy abundance agenda that includes fossil fuels (except coal)"
So what Biden did?
Yes but also promote the fact that US is the largest producer of oil and not try to hide it from progressives.
I ran the same election analysis with my civics class on Monday, starting with clips of the "Americans are just racist and sexist" from the pundit class, and then demolishing this with real data. I can confirm Musa's analysis from 2020-2024 (Harris only improved with old people and and college-educated women), but we also looked backward at exit poll data from 2004-2024. Over that range, the party realignment is glaringly obvious. I can't embed the charts since they're my own analysis, but over the last 20 years:
Whites did not alter their voting patterns significantly.
Blacks became about 5 points more Republican.
Men did not change. Women did not change. The gender gap was roughly constant.
Latinos & Asians became 20 points more liberal during Obama, then reversed.
No age cohort significantly changed from 2004 to 2024.
None of these groups changed at all. Who did change?
Income -- under $50K shifted 10 points to the GOP; $100K+ 10 points Dem.
The Middle Class didn't move appreciably.
The Educated -- 4 year degrees shifted 10 points Dem; no college, 10 points Rep.
There was no partisan divide by education in 2004; today it's 20 points.
Having crunched this myself, my take is...
1) During Obama, the Democrats hitched their cart to a pony instead of an ox. The educated and wealthy are powerful groups to have on your team, but in sheer numbers, they are dwarfed by the non-college working class. The Dems made a mistake abandoning the latter for the former.
2) Noah is correct that racial and sexual identity politics is a failure. However, these trends are tied into postmodernism, the de-facto religion of the educated-class, will make ending them hard for the Democrats.
3) 1950-2000 was weird in that politics ceased to be about class. Most nation's politics are essentially aristocracy vs everyone else. Maybe it was the Cold War, but that class-partisanship divide largely evaporated over the last half of the 20th century, which allowed American politics to reorient around race and sex and a bunch of other weird postmodernist criteria. That's over. We're back to class now.
4) The realignment is now past tense. The GOP could certainly screw it up (they're masters at that), but the Dems have systematically lost credibility with 2 generations of the working class. Their kids might rejoin the Party, but those generations are likely gone.
5) This was about much more than 2020-2024. Confining the analysis to those years misses the real story.
Noah, you are one of the few progressive folks willing to accurately and honestly look at what happened on Tuesday. Thank you! As a Trump voter, I welcome that, since I really don't like the "politics as war" and "flight 93 election" mentality any more than anyone else does. Call it "virtue" or "common sense" or something else, but a diverse society like America is only governable when there is broad agreement on what is sacred and what is profane, on what is in the common good and what is opposed to it. I very much hope the Democrats can use this election as a reason to step off the Millian/ Nietzschean/ postmodernist cliff.
As a former professor of Political Science, I agree with almost everything you said.
One point, though, class has never been that important in American politics until quite recently. American politics has always been defined by ethnicity, religion and region:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-american-political
Thanks for the compliment; that means something coming from you.
I love the article. I may steal parts of it for my civics class in the future. My students are also amazed at how much the parties have realigned themselves over 2 centuries. And we're living through another one right now! What a cool time to teach poli-sci! :-)
Since the founders were almost all aristocrats, I see revolutionary era politics as more class-based. However, I see your point about how Marx's class warfare theory really doesn't map onto 19th century America particularly well. When I went to college, my Marxist training didn't explain the world well; now that I'm in my 50's, it's suddenly more relevant. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but it's where we are.
Your analysis necessarily relies on exit polls. Perhaps your conclusions are tentative, waiting to be confirmed by better data?
I think your last paragraph pulls together where you are coming from. I agree that post-modernist thought has led the left astray, where I disagree is its penetration into the wider society. Post-modernism is not the "the de-facto religion of the educated-class" unless you define the educated class very narrowly. I'm an engineer, I work with other engineers (in Seattle of all places). Post-modernism is not their de-facto religion. Numerically the people I know are far, far more numerous than Ivy league liberal arts graduates.
Post-modernism is receding because it is not popular, and the Democratic Party got the memo. You can tell this by comparing various left post-modernist stances with the positions taken by actual Democratic politicians.
On the other hand the post-truth bug has hit the Republicans hard, and has metasticized further than post-modernism ever did with Democrats. Denial that Biden won in 2020 is truly widespread
https://www.prri.org/spotlight/after-three-years-and-many-indictments-the-big-lie-that-led-to-the-january-6th-insurrection-is-still-believed-by-most-republicans/
You voted for Trump, I can only wonder how you have mentally justified overlooking Trump's unwillingness to hand over power after losing an election.
Tom, the fact that you don't see postmodernists in among your fellow engineers is a relief, but it's an anecdote, not data. I'm guessing you've been out of the university for a while, but postmodernism (specifically the belief that absolute truth does not exist and than all perspectives are therefore valid) is absolutely endemic on campuses today and has been for many years.
When I say it's the elite religion, I mean it's the set of assumptions they hold that they don't even realize are assumptions. Questioning these would be as impossible as you questioning whether 2+2=4. (Which many elite postmodernists insist isn't true BTW.) The most extreme public face of that (wokeness) is fading, but the underlying assumptions ("there is no absolute truth", for example) are still there. Our problem is a lack solidarity ("those people are deplorable bigots!") and a lack of "the common good". I see no evidence our elites are walking back the former in any significant way and when they don't believe in truth, how can they ever find a "common good"?
A John Adams quote comes to mind, "a Constitution for a moral and religious people and wholly inadequate for the governance of any other." Elites must help enforce virtue or the whole thing falls apart.
I suggest that you, living in academia, are the one out of touch. Yes, my particular co-workers are anecdotes, but do you have data, that suggests engineers (numerous members of the "educated class") are in thrall to post-modernism? Or the "educated class" in general, defined as bachelor's degree plus? (Citing some ridiculous 'woke' curriculum somewhere will not do, BTW: 1. That itself is an anecdote, and can be countered by citing something ridiculous in a red state school, and 2. You make broad claims that post-modernism is widespread in the "educated class" (130 million people).
Te Nehisi Coates is an influential public intellectual, popular among the educated class. You may or may not like his message, but it is absolutely not a denial of absolute truth. His argument regarding Israel is, at core, 'don't make excuses or give reasons, people who enforce apartheid always have excuses and reasons. Apartheid is wrong, always and everywhere.' Here is a man who speaks and thinks in terms of absolute truth, loudly and proudly, and he is lionized by the "educated class" you claim is indifferent to truth.
Your core diagnosis is out of touch. I suspect it is because it is, in your mind, religiously grounded (Coates is an atheist, BTW). Maybe I'm wrong about this, I'm going on your Adams quote. "there is no absolute truth" never caught on in the wider population. "a strong man without constraints can get things done" THAT has caught on.
Back to your key paragraph: "Elites must help enforce virtue or the whole thing falls apart." Since when did telling the truth stop being a virtue? I suspect Trump cannot distinguish truth and lies, for him words are purely instrumental. But Vance, he speaks of virtue yet defends lying (eating cats and dogs). How can such lost and twisted souls "enforce virtue"?
I'm not an academic. I'm just a father who keeps up to date about what's going on on university campuses because I have 3 late teenagers.
You keep bringing up Trump. This isn't about Trump. It's about the underlying philosophy / theology of the ruling class. Trump is a signal of how divergent that class' ideology is from the rest of America. How desperate must the middle/working class normies of America be to get behind a crude, philandering, narcissist like Trump? That's why Trump matters, as a symptom not a cause.
Since you asked about engineering specifically: https://stanfordreview.org/woke-watch-stanford-engineering/ DEI only makes sense under postmodernist assumptions. Treating people as exemplars of their group identity is abhorrent to classical liberal / Judeo-Christian assumptions. There's lots of data about the rise of DEI and wokeness on campus, some of the best looking at total salaries of diversity administrators by department.
As for the out of touchness of academics in general, this is a little hard to quantify, What kind of data would convince you? A survey of "do you believe in postmodernism?" Doesn't seem useful to me. Disinvitations (mostly from the Left but sometimes from the Right recently as well) have become common in the last 10 years, which implies at least some high-profile universities have given up on freedom of speech. The rise of anti-semitism on campus has been chronicled extensively. However, most of these are just anecdotes (at a large scale, but still anecdotes). The best actual data about the ideology of university campuses is probably from economist Dan Klein at George Mason. He's been studying this since I TAed for him 25 years ago at UC Irvine. A representative sample: https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology He's covered other departments over the years as well and would be a great place to start.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
I'm also personally aware of social justice trendiness in education. My son is in a Seattle high school (Franklin) and some of his assignments are annoying. The worst was assigning Stamped: A Re-mix as the primary text in his 8th grade Black Studies class. That is a bad book, but not because it teaches there is no absolute truth.
You say DEI only makes sense under post-modern assumptions, I'm not sure. I have watched affirmative action play out in Malaysia nd Brunei, I saw no trace of post-modernist infection. The Freedmen's Bureau offered services specifically to former slaves, a group identity. Reparations was given to interned Japanese under Reagan.
DEI was at least partly a response to court decisions that forbade redress for past injustice (Bakke). That and other decisions narrowed what univertities could do to address the de facto segregated status quo. That is part of the DEI story, and it has nothing to do with post-modernism. I'm not claiming no post-modern infection, I'm arguing proportionality.
I notice you have narrowed the discussion to touchiness of academics. You don't need to convince me, I have seen enough, particulary in liberal arts at elite schools. But, again, proportionality! 37% of Americans have a bachelor's degree or higher, that is the "educated class". The discussion has shrunk to college faculty and face it, most college faculty is in non-prestigious school that don't make headlines about runaway DEI. Where I differ with you is power and influence. Faculty fights in the English department at Columbia are annoying to watch, ridiculously large DEI departments at some universities an obvious grift, but they are peripheral phenomena in society at large.
Where you see post-modernist post-truth as the core cause of voter disaffection, I see a gilded age where selfishness and greed have eroded common feeling. When I learned how the world works CEO to bottom worker ratios were 25:1. There was one billionaire in the world (J. Paul Getty). High school graduates could get solid jobs they could count on. People feel the system is rigged because... It is. US history from 1865 to 1932 sufficiently explain working class alienation. From my perspective post-modernism is an annoying but peripheral problem, in retreat in any case.
"a diverse society like America is only governable when there is broad agreement on what is sacred and what is profane"
Hmmm. How about agreement about what is true? I am old enough to remember elections where both parties largely agreed on basic facts. This seems more central to our political predicament.
How do you get there when postmodernism (the de-facto religion of the Left) explicitly denies that truth exists. When your society splits theologically, all kinds of shared definitions dissolve.
If you define "Left" so it includes something under 10% of the population you might have a point. I'm hardly the first to observe that the "Right" is now also post-truth, with deeper penetration into the population than lefty post-modernists achieved. Jonathan Last is good on this.
I'm really not interested in fringe obsessions, I find both far ends of the spectrum obnoxious. You referred to "broad agreement", I mistakenly thought you were arguing beyond fringe phenomena.
>big thing Matt misses here (though his point #9 hints at it) is patriotism.
Many years ago, there was a proto-Rush Limbaugh show on cable TV in SoCal hosted by Wally George. It was filmed in Orange County, and his Wikipedia page notes that he "call[ed] himself the 'Father of Combat TV,' ... His other nicknames were 'Mr. Conservative' and 'Mr. America.'"
I tuned in one night, and an announced guest was a local ACLU attorney, who of course was greeted with a chorus of boos and catcalls. Yet, he ended up with the audience eating out of his hand, because he framed the defense of civil liberties in patriotic terms, as part of a unique American creed.
It seems to me that there us an opportunity to do that re many issues, including immigration and especially asylum, and refugee resettlement. There is, after all, a relevant inscription on the Statue of Liberty. If an asylum seeker commits a crime (and it is inevitable that some will, just as it is inevitable that some members of any group will) the response should not just be reciting statistics on low immigrant relative criminality. It should include an acknowledgement that there are risks , but that helping those fleeing oppression, etc, is the right thing to do, and that true Americans do the right thing, even if there are dangers (insert images of D-Day, the moon landings, the military delivering famine relief supplies, etc).* It won't reverse public opinion all by itself, but it will certainly be more effective than the current standard response.
*I don't live in a swing state, but does anyone know whether any ads were run during the Haitian kerfuffle showing actual conditions in Haiti, esp for poor people?
I remember that show. I used to watch it a lot back in the 1970s (I think - I lose track). That was back where even in LA, we had only 5-6 TV channels. The big three networks, PBS and one or two local channels. Wally was on a local channel. I think the same one that used to show roller derby. Good times ...
Wow, roller derby. That takes me back.
The issue with the "Democrats are too woke" narrative is that it treats politics as a video game where only Democrats have agency. If Democrats lost, it must be because they pressed the wrong buttons. Neither Republicans nor voters, in this way of thinking, should be viewed as anything but video game bosses (Republicans) and avatars (voters), who Democrats lose to because they weren't skillful enough.
Reality is, the "wokeness" stuff isn't coming from anything Democrats are doing. It's coming from made up BS that Republicans are pushing. The "wokeness" things that Republicans push are, it can't be emphasized enough, not rooted in reality. Immigrants are not eating pets. Exactly zero anti-transgender advocates can name three real life transgender athletes off the tops of their heads if you spot them Lia Thomas and Caitlyn Jenner. These aren't real issues.
Yet they resonate. And the reason they resonate is that voters are a problem. You can see that in the ads that the Trump campaign ran. I couldn't make it through a commercial break watching an NFL game without the same transphobic BS ads. They weren't subtle or thoughtful-- they were pure hate mainlined onto the TV. The Harris campaign didn't run counter ads. And we know that the reason they didn't run counter ads wasn't that they were unaware of what the Trump ads were doing, or that they didn't prepare-- it's that they focus grouped counter ads, and they didn't resonate. Turns out, hate is what voters WANT.
Now, that doesn't mean Democrats are endlessly doomed, because if history tells us anything, it's that Republicans' capacity to materially screw things up at every opportunity is unparalleled, and Trump is uniquely unparalleled in his capacity to be utterly incompetent. But it does mean that, before the car with no driver at the wheel inevitably hurdles off the road, Democrats are (mixing metaphors) playing on an uneven playing field.
That is simply not true. Wokeness is absolutely coming from the Democrats.
DEI policies were forced on the federal bureaucracy when President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14035 in June 2021, calling on every federal agency to make “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” a “priority” when recruiting and promoting staff.
And this is just an extension of the practices under the Obama administration.
Here is just one example:
https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/diversifying-doulas-hhs-spends-hundreds
What does that concretely mean in your mind? I promise, the answer is "nothing."
If you actually dial in, it's all extremely milquetoast. At the institutional level, it means you get someone to talk about black history month every February. But look at what Republicans are actually targeting at voters-- the answer is that they're out there running ads about sex changes for transgender inmates. See if you can guess how many of those have been done.
These are non-issues. They're pushed deliberately by Republicans to spread hate. Your median voter buys in for the same reason your median voter bought into gay marriage hysteria-- because the median voter is susceptible to appeals to hate.
Recruiting and promoting staff is not nothing. It is not milquetoast. It gets to the core of how our institutions operate. And it is being pushed by the Biden administration and virtually every other Democrat. And they are pushing it in virtually every institution in American society.
So if you think it is nothing, are you willing to fire every one of these employees?
From the article:
"The Department of Health and Human Services — with a budget surpassed only by the Pentagon — employs 294 DEI staffers at an annual cost of $38.7 MILLION.
That’s doesn’t even include another $29.4 million in payroll for seven Offices of Minority Health embedded within various HHS agencies!"
Yeahhh wrong on every count again. You’re using buzzwords and can’t offer anything conference.
And pointing to the headline number is laughable. Have you seen the federal budget…? $40 million is a rounding error. Quite literally.
This is not a serious take.