In this episode, journalist David Wallace-Wells raises the alarm about how incredibly unsafe our air is, the impact it’s having on human welfare, and why it doesn’t get as much attention as it should. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Back in 2020, I wrote an article about some eye-popping new research on air pollution which found that the damage it is doing to human health is roughly twice as bad as previously thought, and moreover, that the economic benefi...
Jul 18, 2022•56 min
In this episode, Lori Lodes of Climate Power discusses how climate activists can maintain momentum when federal action feels entirely out of reach. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts It is a dark time for climate activists. The immense hope they felt at the introduction of the original Build Back Better bill has curdled. It is still possible that some kind of deal might emerge from the Senate in this final month, but if it does it will be a pale shadow of wha...
Jul 06, 2022•57 min
In this episode, lawyer Jay Duffy, who represented environmental groups in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency , explains the ins and outs and potential implications of the Supreme Court’s final ruling in the case. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts On June 30th, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the case of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency . There was a great deal of dread in the climate community in advance of the ruling...
Jul 04, 2022•56 min
In this episode, Charles Marohn of Strong Towns discusses why urban planning too often creates money-sucking suburbs, what it might look like to build healthy communities, and why there are so many barriers to doing so. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Charles Marohn — “Chuck” to his friends — grew up in a small town in Minnesota and later became an urban planner and traffic engineer in the state. After a few years, he began noticing that the projects he wa...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Readers, I am keenly aware that you subscribed to this newsletter to get articles and podcasts about clean energy, not to hear about my life and travails. And I’ve already sent you one life-and-travails message this year. So I debated with myself a long time about whether to send this one, especially given all the other horrible stuff happening in the world. But, in the end, there is an unavoidable intimacy to this format and that is one of the things I like about it. I don’t have any bosses or ...
Jun 27, 2022•9 min
In this episode, Kimberly Nicholas discusses her published research on the most effective policies to reduce car use in cities. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts In the US, the movement to get cars out of cities is … what’s the nice word? … nascent . But in Europe, where many cities were built before cars and big-box sprawl never completely dominated, there is growing agreement that cars need to be reigned in. It’s partly about fighting climate change, but b...
Jun 22, 2022•43 min
In this episode, political communications expert Dan Pfeiffer speaks to the wide influence of right-wing media, why Democrats keep losing messaging battles, and what they need to do about it. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts You probably know Dan Pfeiffer best as one of the hosts of the wildly successful Pod Save America podcast, part of the growing Crooked Media empire of which he is a co-founder. Or perhaps you know him as the author of the Message Box ne...
Jun 17, 2022•1 hr 13 min
In this episode, Johannes Ackva of Founders Pledge discusses his thinking on the most effective forms of climate philanthropy. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Say you’re a private individual (or a company, or a foundation) who cares about climate change and has some money to spend on it. What’s the best way to spend that money? How can you ensure the largest possible impact? Similar questions about maximizing philanthropic impact have led to an entire fiel...
Jun 15, 2022•1 hr 2 min
In this episode, Dr. Ye Tao discusses his vision for combatting climate change by using fields of mirrors that reflect solar radiation. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Geoengineering — using large-scale engineering projects to directly cool the Earth’s atmosphere — is an intensely controversial topic in climate circles. On one hand, such schemes strike many people as dangerous hubris, interfering with large-scale systems we don’t fully understand, risking ...
Jun 08, 2022•1 hr 4 min
In this episode, Chris Hayes of MSNBC discusses how American politics and society changed after the Obama years, where things might head in the future, and how his own views have shifted along the way. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts I often reflect on a particular moment in the summer of 2015. It was not long after the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal across the nation in Obergefell v. Hodges. And America was in the middle of one of its regular fight...
Jun 03, 2022•1 hr 3 min
In this episode, policy analyst Danny Cullenward of CarbonPlan talks about the disconnect between California’s ambitious climate goals and its actual practical plans for achieving them. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts California has long been known, nationally and internationally, as a leader on climate policy. The sheer scale of its economy and the stringency of its emissions targets have made it a model for other states with climate ambitions. As a role ...
Jun 01, 2022•1 hr 16 min
In this episode, Abigail Hopper of the Solar Energy Industries Association discusses the trade complaint that has cast a pall over the US solar industry, why she believes it should be dismissed, and the complexities of tariff policy. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Back in 2012, the Obama administration levied tariffs on solar panels from China, to punish the country for unfairly subsidizing its panels in an attempt to corner the market. In the ensuing yea...
May 25, 2022•1 hr 5 min
In this episode, Lauren Melodia and Kristina Karlsson of the Roosevelt Institute explain why it’s counter-productive to increase domestic oil and gas production when energy prices rise, and how building out clean-energy infrastructure is the actual best way to address the price volatility of fossil fuels. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Americans are struggling with two related problems: one, there’s general inflation, which means pretty much everything is...
May 23, 2022•51 min
In this episode, Jesse Morris of international nonprofit Energy Web discusses his group’s work toward building a transparent and trusted “operating system” for distributed energy resources, with an end goal of enabling a more sophisticated and resilient energy grid. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Recent years have seen an explosive rise in distributed energy resources (DERs) — energy devices that are located “behind the meter,” on the customer side, like ...
May 18, 2022•1 hr 11 min
In this episode, Doug Thompson, associate professor of political science at the University of South Carolina, sings the praises of bureaucracy and its essential role in the fight against climate change. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts It’s well-understood that the modern US conservative movement is a mix of two primary forces, fiscal and social conservatism. (See: fusionism .) Put more crudely: it’s the oligarchs and the evangelical white nationalists. The...
May 13, 2022
In this episode, Andy Frank, president and co-founder of Sealed, discusses his company’s pay-for-performance model for home electrification. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts One of the greatest riddles of the decarbonization effort is the residential sector, responsible for about 20 percent of US energy-related carbon emissions. There are about 142 million housing units in the US, around 83 million of which are “owner-occupied.” Substantially changing them ...
May 09, 2022•1 hr
In this episode, UC Davis assistant professor Fran Moore discusses her research team’s effort to construct a climate model that includes (instead of ignores) effects from the interplay of social conditions and policy change. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts One of my long-time gripes about the climate-economic models that outfits like the IPCC produce is that they ignore politics. More broadly, they ignore social change and the way it can both drive and be ...
May 04, 2022•1 hr 2 min
In this episode, Nan Ransohoff, head of carbon at Stripe, discusses the company's new spinoff, Frontier, which will pool money from partners and make it available to early contenders in the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) market. We chat about that market, the technologies that show promise in it, in the role of private industry in accelerating it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe...
Apr 29, 2022•43 min
In this episode, Google’s director of energy, Michael Terrell, explains the company's new goal of supplying all of its facilities with clean energy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We discuss how its going, what kinds of new technologies will be needed, and what new policies could help move things along. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe...
Apr 27, 2022•52 min
In this episode, I discussed swappable, rechargeable batteries in two-wheeled electric scooters with Horace Luke, the CEO of Gogoro. Luke’s company is selling subscriptions to batteries in bustling emerging-market cities like Taiwan. We talked about consumer requirements for swappable batteries, the other kinds of technologies that might use them, and his plans for expansion. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Horace Luke, April 22, 2022 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: Electric vehicles a...
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr 5 min
For years now, I’ve been dithering about getting an electric vehicle (EV). Much of that dithering has been done in public, on Twitter and for various sites I’ve worked for — just a few weeks ago I subjected you to my handwringing about an EV test drive — so I figured I might as well document how the journey finally ended. Long story short, we bought a used 2017 Chevy Bolt. That is about the least sexy sentence one can write about EVs in the year of our lord 2022, but there you have it. We though...
Apr 18, 2022•6 min
In this episode, sociologist Elizabeth Popp Berman discusses her new book, Thinking Like an Economist , about the “economic style of thinking” and how it took over in US policy circles in the post-war period. It remains embedded there to this day, but alternatives are beginning to emerge. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe...
Apr 15, 2022•1 hr 3 min
In this episode, Carnegie Mellon professor Paulina Jaramillo discusses the IPCC's working group 3 report, “mitigation of climate change,” of which she was a co-author. It's the most comprehensive look to date at the economic sectors that emit greenhouse gases, the strategies and technologies that can reduce emissions, and the state of play in climate policy around the world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www....
Apr 13, 2022
Earlier this year, I stumbled on the news videos from the team at Some More News . They are like The Daily Show , but longer, smarter, more in-depth, more profane, and free of Jon Stewart’s unfortunate navel-gazing centrism. But still funny as hell! In other words: they might as well be targeted directly at me. I’ve been gorging on them for months. (You could start with this one on critical race theory .) Anyway, imagine my delight when I discovered that Some More News also has a podcast, Even M...
Apr 11, 2022•57 min
Economist Noah Smith runs the excellent substack Noahpinion , where he writes and podcasts about … pretty much everything. Economics. Politics. The war. Housing. Technology. On and on. The guy is ludicrously productive. This week, he interviewed me! We talked about the new IPCC reports, the state of technology, some dumb tweets of mine, and NIMBYs, among other things. It was a fun and wide-ranging conversation. Check it out! (And subscribe to Noahpinion .) The video is below. The audio is posted...
Apr 08, 2022•1 hr 17 min
In this episode, activists Matthew Metz and Janelle London discuss their new report on gasoline “superusers” — the subset of drivers who drive long distances each year — and the policy recommendations around EV subsidies that it contains. It's a clever idea I haven't been able to stop thinking about. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe...
Apr 04, 2022•33 min
In this episode, activists and entrepreneurs Audrey Schulman and Zeyneb Magavi discuss their audacious plan to replace the nation's natural gas distribution infrastructure with a series of networked geothermal heat pumps. Basically, neighborhoods would be heated by warm water rather than natural gas. It would be the most efficient collective heating option available in the world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit...
Apr 01, 2022•1 hr 6 min
In this episode, entrepreneur Rob Harmon discusses his new method for tracking and monetizing energy efficiency in commercial buildings. Traditionally, efficiency policy has consisted in subsidizing equipment up front. Harmon explains how to get reliable numbers about actual performance and begin to build a market around them. Surprisingly fascinating. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe...
Mar 28, 2022•1 hr 15 min
(Hey y’all — I’m attempting to dictate this post rather than type it , so please forgive any sins of grammar or structure.) My family and I own two extremely old cars, a 2001 Honda Odyssey minivan and a 2009 Toyota Prius hybrid. The van is literally falling apart, so we have been looking around lately for a new vehicle. Obviously, we would prefer an EV. A representative from Ford saw me musing about it on Twitter, contacted me, and offered to loan me a Ford Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle for a ...
Mar 14, 2022•9 min
Hey, y’all, just a short note to catch you up on my current situation and my plans for the coming weeks. Long story short: I have tendonitis in both arms. I’ve had problems with pain in my forearms for years, but it always faded or went away after a while and was manageable. A few months after quarantine started, in 2020, it started getting worse, to the point I had to give up playing bass guitar — my one non-computer hobby. Then, a few months ago, it started getting a lot worse, quickly. I have...
Feb 18, 2022
