Matt Huber

Geographer, Lifeblood (2013) @UMinnPress, Climate Change as Class War (2022) @VersoBooks

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

Very excited today is publication day w/ @VersoBooks

Get it here: https://t.co/RuFmxrrClB

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

“The contemporary ecological Left in Canada is disproportionately shaped by NGO professionals, policy wonks, & students. Its institutional base is not industry, nor the union movement, nor the diffuse “new working” class, but advocacy orgs, many of which are based in the US.”

[Damage Magazine @damagemag]

The Canadian Left’s obsession with a GND... is simply bizarre. There is no foundational event of an original New Deal to draw on, or Depression-era infrastructure to point to; it is a policy based on an imported logic, framing, history, and politics.
https://t.co/njHdy9OiEt

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

https://t.co/9h2fUS6jCo

[crisp mattman @cushbomb]

This is the stupidest day in American history, a record that will be broken by every subsequent day in American history.

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

Evergreen.

[U.S. Department of Energy @ENERGY]

A hot new bombshell has entered the villa ✨

[Matthew Zeitlin @MattZeitlin]

not exactly a new development but it's fascinating how climate has just dropped out of what sunrise likes to talk about

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

"Candidates like Mr. Forstag have the right strategy."

So thrilled to see @SamForstag won his primary last night! He's fighting for exactly the working-class agenda we need in Congress.

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

Hello, it’s me in @nytopinion. The Democratic Party is historically unpopular & hemorrhaging working class voters. Focusing on the issue of climate change —an issue mainly impt to their educated/affluent base—is not a way to reverse this. This marks the end of an era. 👇

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

Inspiring!

[Maine Labor Climate Council @ME_LaborClimate]

You can’t earn trust in rural areas for the buildout of the clean energy transition when private equity investors are literally buying whole communities and squeezing working Mainers. So we’re organizing alongside residents to help them take back control of their communities.

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

@JooBilly @DougHenwood Not the whole left! It's great you did that (not so great that the AFL-CIO came out against AOC's version in 2019 tho!). And I always cite the climate jobs model as the right approach.

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

Not a news flash: climate politics is not going well!

It can continue to take advice from the eNGOs & Aaron's of the world (who said on Bad Faith: "I live in the green, climate NGO world") or it can start letting the workers/unions lead in the sectors we need to transform.

[Aaron Regunberg @AaronRegunberg]

Hmmm count me unsurprised that the “socialist” who functionally shills for Big Oil would also functionally shill for Big Tech.

[Leigh Phillips @Leigh_Phillips]

Comparing AI to cigarettes (in order to attack Bernie’s partial nationalization proposal) would only make sense if cigarettes were also speeding up drug development, radically enhancing medical diagnosis and prognosis, revolutionizing protein-structure analysis, enabling high-throughput sequencing of microbiomes to better understand pathogenesis; and improving tracking of and thus combatting antimicrobial resistance (perhaps the single gravest medical threat humanity faces).

[Jacobin @jacobin]

Socialist Maurice Brown has served as a county legislator in the Syracuse area since 2023.

Now he is running to replace one of the New York State Assembly’s longest-serving members, who Brown describes as an obstacle to progressive change. https://t.co/ZW2GwwTf4u

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

@DougHenwood @fredstaffordcs I'm just saying we have to strategically assess putting so much energy into blocking stuff.

I'm more convinced the Left and labor can be revived with a broader politics of building/reindustrialization/decarb. Some of that building could emerge alongside the data center boom.

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

@DougHenwood @fredstaffordcs Doug, the enviro left put huge energy into blocking fracking, yet the US went on to double production & become the largest producer in the world. Do you think we'll have better luck blocking data centers? I'm also a Marxist who sees liberatory possibilities in tech development.

[Fred Stafford @fredstaffordcs]

Are you arguing that the left has a better chance gaining power by

1) eschewing labor in some of the most highly organized sectors of the economy, sectors critical to what the left otherwise wants to do with the economy (electrification and infrastructure rejuvenation),

and by

2) throwing in with anti-development coalitions that oppose virtually all kinds of industrial projects in addition to data centers, like clean energy projects,

than it does by

3) organizing a demand for capital to be invested into other necessary infrastructure along the way, for socialized costs to be minimized, and for project labor and community benefits agreements? Maybe also some of the surplus being redirected to the public, as Bernie recently argued?

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

@DougHenwood @fredstaffordcs By relentlessly trying to block industrial development, the climate mvmt has been antagonizing the very industrial workers we need to build new energy infrastructure for a generation! It's not working!

Please read @Leigh_Phillips's classic piece on this. https://t.co/mDsObOGjnM

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

@DougHenwood @fredstaffordcs This. Data center demand is *already* spurring a revival of nuclear power. A huge buildout is not going to start w/out a demand signal so long as the Left is weak and we can’t force the public sector to do it.

[Ryan Pollock @TexasBCTC]

For 20 years, flat electricity demand was the excuse for NOT building clean energy. Now we finally have huge demand AND huge capital AND political attention on the grid — all at once. That's not the threat. That's the opening.

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

@DougHenwood @fredstaffordcs Worth reading @TexasBCTC's reasoned thread on this. https://t.co/nx7WeI3UqM

[Ryan Pollock @TexasBCTC]

The most counterproductive thing a climate advocate can do right now is demand we shut down data centers. Blocking the build isn't a win for the climate. It's a gift to the fossil fuel industry. Here's why. 🧵

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

@DougHenwood It is hard to imagine how we are going build the infrastructure for a new energy system w/out the building trades at the center of it. I know the Left tends to hate them, but they have valuable skills and knowledge of these very complex technological systems.

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

@AaronRegunberg @LaborReporters July is good for me too.

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

Also tbf it's hilarious that my 'socialism' is questioned -- and I'm even called a shill! - for aligning with the labor movement/union leaders. What the hell does socialism mean if it's not grounded in the labor movement?!

[Fred Stafford @fredstaffordcs]

While two New York DSA legislators want to introduce a moratorium on new nuclear (below), several more DSA and progressives - Gonzales, Forrest, Mitaynes, Shrestha, Gallagher, as well as @AlexBores - wants to introduce a moratorium on data centers >= 20 MW while at the same time requiring mid-sized data centers >= 5 MW to source 90% of consumed energy from renewables by 2040, with statutory need to get as much as possible on site. This would of course not include nuclear, even though the CLCPA counts it for 2040 goal.

New York socialists and progressives are so wedded to the renewables industry and its partner nonprofits that they're pushing completely nonsensical energy policies. Are Zohran and AOC still the only New York elected socialists to utter a peep favorable, rather than hostile, to nuclear?

There's other fine stuff in the legislation around isolating data centers into a new utility tariff. But it's poisoned with this renewables maximalism (and, depending on who you ask, the large data center moratorium).