David Roberts

I run a newsletter/podcast called Volts about clean energy & politics. Subscribe & join the community at (@volts.wtf on bsky, ahem.)

[David Roberts @drvolts]

Today on Volts: Home batteries are useful, but not everyone can afford a Powerwall, or wants to deal with an electrician. A company called @PilaEnergy is selling small (1.6kWh) batteries that can plug into a normal wall outlet and back up appliances or pair with rooftop solar. I talk with the CEO.
https://t.co/LdR6QlJXyK

[David Roberts @drvolts]

Today on Volts: I interview @fvmaisano, media relations guy for the natural gas (and, ok, offshore wind) industry, consummate insider, about how he keeps reporters happy, power dynamics in DC, fights over data centers and permitting, and much more.
https://t.co/wvm8I8dOfS

[David Roberts @drvolts]

@dfirgs @KingsmillBond @ember_energy @JaneAFlegal @wang_seaver Sounds like "nuh uh" to me.

[David Roberts @drvolts]

Tomorrow, I'm interviewing @KingsmillBond of @ember_energy about this report, which argues that the energy revolution & the information revolution are converging & mutually supporting, with enormous economic & geopolitical implications.

What should I ask him?
https://t.co/THuoYNtYrj

[David Roberts @drvolts]

I too am hesitant to engage here for about about a million reasons, among them that I've been ranting the same rant for 20+ years & can't get anyone to give a shit, but, briefly:

The information environment -- the ways & channels through which information & attitudes are conveyed & reach people -- matters vastly more than position-taking as such, IMO. Put another way: what matters is less what pols *say* than what people *hear*, which are vastly different things. What topics & issues are salient? What things are people talking about? How are they being framed? Trans participation in high school sports -- a marginal fringe issue that literally affects maybe a few dozen people in the entire f'ing country -- did not simply emerge from the ether as an obsession of the media & political class. The right shoved it to the front, through a coordinated campaign!

I could go on for hours with examples like this. The left, broadly speaking, has *completely* lost control of the information environment. Reactionaries are choosing what we talk about, how it's framed (why trans in sports & not basic trans rights to bodily autonomy or healthcare?), who gets heard, who gets asked to "denounce" what, etc. etc. The right is shaping the vibes.

Dems just react, react, react. Retreat & retreat. Glumly accept that they all need a position on this dumbass nothingburger issue, the latest in a long line of them. "I guess we're all talking about trans in sports rather than bona fide fucking fascism dismantling the democracy around our ears, oh well."

I have been watching this process happen -- slowly & then all at once, as they say -- for decades, yelling & yelling about it, and I can't get the Very Serious Centrist cabal to discuss it, even to *acknowledge* it. I listen Ezra pod after Ezra pod where "how people view Democrats" is dicussed with nary a word about *why*, about where & how people are forming their impressions. The billionaires who fund one org like Searchlight after another refuse to address it or do anything about it or fund any kind of counter-effort. We are all now fighting on terrain entirely defined by the right & I can't get people in your circles to care, even to see.

The fact that you're all still on X -- where the voices who get heard & the topics that get discussed are all shaped by the algorithms of an increasingly deranged white supremacist -- is a case in point, one of many. You're still here pretending that tweaking position papers is going to somehow counteract all this. I despair.

Anyway I was only dropping by here to shill Volts content, I shouldn't get sucked into this. I wish you luck with your supermajority project (genuinely! we need one!). I hope Dems turning their minority oppression dial from a 4 to a 7 does the trick.

[David Roberts @drvolts]

Today on Volts: Verrus wants to build data centers that use very little water, run quietly, & rely on giant batteries rather than diesel or natgas generators, which can make them grid assets that help reduce power prices. It hasn't overcome local opposition. I talk with the CEO.
https://t.co/19UIiH0NRo

[David Wallace-Wells @dwallacewells]

Fantastic conversation about all the messiness, complexity, and urgency of decarbonization and climate politics (with @janeaflegal and @drvolts). https://t.co/uMddoph2WE

[David Roberts @drvolts]

On Wednesday I'm talking with Pila Energy, a company that's making small DIY plug-and-play batteries for the home. In addition to backing up appliances in case of blackouts, they can also monitor appliance health & "mesh" together to do basic energy arbitrage.

Got any questions?
https://t.co/SNdwSMEy6B

[Brendon Slotterback @bslotterback]

This is definitely worth two hours of your time.

Main point synopsis IMO: there is no one in charge of planning the grid, and that's a problem.

[David Pomerantz @DavidPomerantz]

A really great one, predictably.

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

Great ep! At the end, DR asks a good Q about the lack of an enviro coalition around sensible decarb. May I suggest the organized constituency most aligned w/ @JaneAFlegal's vision of building a 'grid for growth' - and oft ignored by enviros - is *unions*. See: @climatejobs.

[David Roberts @drvolts]

What I took from that era is that there is nothing the Republican Party can do that's awful enough, disastrous enough, to bring it any real accountability, because the whole system is wired to defend & excuse it. The Trump Era has only made that more nakedly obvious. </fin>

[David Roberts @drvolts]

Here's what I think about when I think back on 9/11. The attack happened on the watch of a Republican president who had been warned, repeatedly & explicitly, that an attack was coming. He dismissed those warnings.

[David Roberts @drvolts]

Even when the public turned against the war & elected Obama (who actually killed bin Laden), the GOP was never held responsible in any enduring way. It was back to full strength within few years of Obama's election. It brushed the whole thing off, flushed it down the memory hole, & the press helped.