Looks like the quoted section "In our lawsuit, we assert that this program, scheduled to go into effect this spring, cannot be put in place without the completion of a thorough environmental impact statement that includes the potential effects of the plan on the city’s air quality." is duplicated
"One enemy of transmission lines and other grid capabilities are NIMBYs who block projects. This includes the projects that never get proposed because of anticipation that they would then be blocked, or would require time and money to not be blocked."
<rant>
WTF is the problem people have with transmission lines? There are understandable reasons for NIMBY wrt developments that e.g. funnel traffic through a residential area. But transmission lines are quiet immobile (barring winds) objects that *JUST SIT THERE AND CONDUCT ELECTRICITY*. ( disclosure - there is a high voltage transmission line a few feet from my back yard. Ok, I _personally_ like the look of transmission line pylons. )
You should try to live next to one sometime. They are not necessarily as quiet as you think they are. There is something called "60 cycle hum" which a lot of people find objectionable, And the aesthetics are all in the eye of the beholder. Not to mention all the invented concerns about EMF-induced cancer studies which seem to pop up every now and then.
I am not a luddite, by any means, but I would not buy a house that is too close to a large transmission line. I used to own a house that had a high power distribution line right next to my back yard, and my trees and other tall plants had to be trimmed regularly to prevent them from shorting out the transmission lines. My wife was very upset, and THIS was the most troubling aspect of living next to transmission lines.
"disclosure - there is a high voltage transmission line a few feet from my back yard. "
If I'm counting the number of insulating disks correctly, it is a 220kV line.
As it happens, the one tree on my lot is on the other side of the house from the transmission line, and, in any event, the line isn't _quite_ close enough to my back yard for a tree to reach close to it. For some reason, the "60 cycle hum" isn't audible for me (which may say more about my hearing than about the transmission line).
Nit-picking: Please consider spelling out the words for an acronym up front, such as "National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA", as well as the "Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ."
Quick note on the butterflies thing--I know it sounds stupid, but *you can't really move butterflies* the way you can most animals. Butterflies follow the same flight paths and return to the same locations year after year, and if something happens to that area where they were wintering, the species tends to go extinct. That's part of why that one grove of huge trees where monarchs winter in Mexico is such a huge deal--that's the *only* place they winter.
That's also why butterfly conservation efforts primarily involve volunteer planting of host plants *along migration routes*--each butterfly species only lays eggs on specific plants, and planting those plants when you're not close enough to their path is going to have no effect on the butterfly population.
I fully support Zvi's cost/benefit analysis approach to jump-start the buildout of much-needed increased energy capacity. Meeting the projected 15–50% increase in global demand by 2050 will be difficult due to multiple constraints. These include the long development time for fusion (post-2050), small modular reactors (7–15 years), political obstacles hindering further solar and wind build-out, and contentious access to natural gas reserves yielding (CNG, H2NG, LNG, RNG).
Texas is the USA's Special Economic Zone (look it up on Wikipedia if you are not familiar with the term). Highly embarrassing for the "mo' regulations, mo' better" crowd.
Unless Europe and the UK set up SEZs, their future is being historical theme parks for tourists from wealthier countries like Viet Nam and Sri Lanka. At a time when "electrify everything" is the mantra for reducing carbon emissions, Europe's and the UK's per capita electricity usage is *declining*. Abysmal policy failures throughout.
People in the comments for Yglesias' blog Slow Boring periodically make hay out of the stocks vs flows argument when comparing electrification builldout in Texas vs California...I don't quite follow all the details, but definitely came away thinking the story isn't as just-so simple as depicted here. Was a bit disappointed not to see deeper analysis.
It's sort of like comparing housing, where it's easy to add a lot in TX by continuing sprawl, but that's mostly hit sharply diminishing returns in CA because a) we already built most of the useful sprawl and b) hard geographic constraints around the most economically desired land, e.g. Bay Area. Real shame about the California HSR boondoggle too (another notable CEQA casualty, among other death-by-a-thousand-rentiers).
And yet Texas ranks very average in person capita income and in growth over the last 10 years. Not the most convincing argument for regulations are inherently failures if it results in average economic numbers over time.
And even if it was resulting in outsized short term economic growth for Texas, SEZs also have long term problems which are outlined in that very same Wikipedia article.
When you have to compare apples to oranges (nation to state) because apples to apples (state to state) shows the simplistic answer you want to believe doesn't match reality, you're just deflecting. So I'll ask you plainly, why does a state like Massachusetts that is a high regulation state rank better on per capita income and growth than the low regulation state Texas? Is it possible that the reflexive reasoning that regulations are inherently bad not supported by reality and that many factors can play a role? You're the one who proclaimed that Texas was the ideal. Back it up with facts and data, not just feelings. You can prefer low regulations because you like low regulations, but the data doesn't actually match the theory that it's inherently this unlimited economic growth that outpaces states with higher regulations. Look at the states that are the lowest in regulations in the U.S. and explain why they also tend to be poorer. Zvi falls into this same issue when he confidently declares how much ruin there is in California due to regulations, but doesn't explain why Mississippi isn't doing better than it is. Because it's easy to point at the thing you don't like and declare it bad, especially when there are some problems, but if you are ignoring the problems in the thing you do like because it undercuts your point, it's not convincing.
Also what evidence is there than Japan's problems are primarily regulatory in nature and not related more to their overall culture?
Reality is unfortunately complex and not as easy to solve as many people want to believe. Regulations can be poorly or well implemented with regards to healthy economic growth or an increasing economic inequality that represents long term unhealthy economic growth (there's only so much stuff one can buy). But when you have a single theory, everything looks like a nail. But you can't build a house with just a hammer. You can't build an economy just by gutting regulations.
I said Texas was a de-facto Special Economic Zone. I made no normative assertion other than that Europe would benefit from having some SEZs. Which position I still hold.
Europe's electricity usage is declining, but its carbon emissions are declining faster. Sure, they should have kept their nukes open to further speed up the emissions decline, but in the end result they will be OK.
We have long since passed the point where GDP and energy usage diverged. Now Europe's economy continues to grow steadily while its energy usage shrinks.
I very much appreciate these posts. I find them informative, and I feel like I learn something, but I can't help but think that reading them is bad for my mental health due to how enraging they are.
It's not really MAGA though. MAGA seems to be about banning solar and wind energy because they are gay or something, while pushing coal because it's masculine.
That's not what I was referring to, I rather explicitly referred to the feeling that things had gotten so bad there that the best course of action was to blow it all up and start again.
If you feel better calling it something other than MAGA please do.
"things may have changed on any given topic by the time you read this"...like Biden not being president anymore, or promoting a contest that closed months ago. I still appreciate the roundup, and I'll take your word that almost all of these developments are at least still directionally correct, but it's disorienting to read a whole year's worth of distilled drafts + try to merge that with knowledge of The Current Boardstate. Lot of things have changed in a year!
Support for Nuclear in Australia has increased dramatically to 61%-37%.
Would be a little hesitant to read too much into this due to the partisan nature of the question in current Australian politics. Nuclear was proposed as an alternative to new renewables by the Liberals (Right) in opposition, while Labor (Left) proposed new renewables over nuclear.
Regarding giving more power to the executive, I am skeptical that this is the way to better megaprojects. That’s how you get things like Cuomo’s wrong-way AirTrain, which was thankfully delayed until it could be killed once he was no longer in office.
Are you sure that increased energy supply is a good thing to push for, when the increased energy supply will likely go to AI compute which might otherwise be compute limited?
Sure, if one is an Aschenbrenner type accelerationist this is good, but do you really agree with that?
This is not my comment. It is a statement made by a highly respected (in environmental circles) scientist, about 40 years ago, in order to stop nuclear power. It reveals the ultimate goal of the environmental movement, which is to move ALL of us progrressively forward (not a typo) to the 16th century, in terms of tech. They want to eliminate all sorts of tech, and have done a pretty good job making it all a lot more expensive. Recently they filed a lawsuit againt the fossil fuel companies in Colorado state court, arguing that fossil fuel waste products are a nuisance, and thay they should be reimbursed for all the "harm" that has been done. One of their leaders admitted, in a statement that he will probably regret, that the whole goal of this law suit is NOT to receive compensation, but to drive the entire fossil fuel industry out of business.
They are very determined to eliminate western civilization, as we know it, from the face of the planet. To be replaced with a utopia that they only emote over, without any consideration of the very, very bad effects it will have on all of the people currently alive.
Looks like the quoted section "In our lawsuit, we assert that this program, scheduled to go into effect this spring, cannot be put in place without the completion of a thorough environmental impact statement that includes the potential effects of the plan on the city’s air quality." is duplicated
Podcast episode for this post:
https://open.substack.com/pub/dwatvpodcast/p/nepa-permitting-and-energy-roundup
"One enemy of transmission lines and other grid capabilities are NIMBYs who block projects. This includes the projects that never get proposed because of anticipation that they would then be blocked, or would require time and money to not be blocked."
<rant>
WTF is the problem people have with transmission lines? There are understandable reasons for NIMBY wrt developments that e.g. funnel traffic through a residential area. But transmission lines are quiet immobile (barring winds) objects that *JUST SIT THERE AND CONDUCT ELECTRICITY*. ( disclosure - there is a high voltage transmission line a few feet from my back yard. Ok, I _personally_ like the look of transmission line pylons. )
</rant>
It's pure, undiluted, industrial strength rent seeking. That's all. Holding projects to ransom.
That sounds very plausible! Many Thanks!
What we need is to buy these fools a film camera so they can start appreciating transmission lines
Many Thanks!
You should try to live next to one sometime. They are not necessarily as quiet as you think they are. There is something called "60 cycle hum" which a lot of people find objectionable, And the aesthetics are all in the eye of the beholder. Not to mention all the invented concerns about EMF-induced cancer studies which seem to pop up every now and then.
I am not a luddite, by any means, but I would not buy a house that is too close to a large transmission line. I used to own a house that had a high power distribution line right next to my back yard, and my trees and other tall plants had to be trimmed regularly to prevent them from shorting out the transmission lines. My wife was very upset, and THIS was the most troubling aspect of living next to transmission lines.
Many Thanks for your comment!
Re "You should try to live next to one sometime."
note that I mentioned in my original comment
"disclosure - there is a high voltage transmission line a few feet from my back yard. "
If I'm counting the number of insulating disks correctly, it is a 220kV line.
As it happens, the one tree on my lot is on the other side of the house from the transmission line, and, in any event, the line isn't _quite_ close enough to my back yard for a tree to reach close to it. For some reason, the "60 cycle hum" isn't audible for me (which may say more about my hearing than about the transmission line).
Nit-picking: Please consider spelling out the words for an acronym up front, such as "National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA", as well as the "Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ."
Quick note on the butterflies thing--I know it sounds stupid, but *you can't really move butterflies* the way you can most animals. Butterflies follow the same flight paths and return to the same locations year after year, and if something happens to that area where they were wintering, the species tends to go extinct. That's part of why that one grove of huge trees where monarchs winter in Mexico is such a huge deal--that's the *only* place they winter.
That's also why butterfly conservation efforts primarily involve volunteer planting of host plants *along migration routes*--each butterfly species only lays eggs on specific plants, and planting those plants when you're not close enough to their path is going to have no effect on the butterfly population.
I fully support Zvi's cost/benefit analysis approach to jump-start the buildout of much-needed increased energy capacity. Meeting the projected 15–50% increase in global demand by 2050 will be difficult due to multiple constraints. These include the long development time for fusion (post-2050), small modular reactors (7–15 years), political obstacles hindering further solar and wind build-out, and contentious access to natural gas reserves yielding (CNG, H2NG, LNG, RNG).
This is the sort of thing that makes people vote for Donald Trump.
If you don't like Donald Trump, stop supporting this sort of thing, and start opposing it.
Texas is the USA's Special Economic Zone (look it up on Wikipedia if you are not familiar with the term). Highly embarrassing for the "mo' regulations, mo' better" crowd.
Unless Europe and the UK set up SEZs, their future is being historical theme parks for tourists from wealthier countries like Viet Nam and Sri Lanka. At a time when "electrify everything" is the mantra for reducing carbon emissions, Europe's and the UK's per capita electricity usage is *declining*. Abysmal policy failures throughout.
This was their future 20 years ago, it is now their present (I live in France)
People in the comments for Yglesias' blog Slow Boring periodically make hay out of the stocks vs flows argument when comparing electrification builldout in Texas vs California...I don't quite follow all the details, but definitely came away thinking the story isn't as just-so simple as depicted here. Was a bit disappointed not to see deeper analysis.
It's sort of like comparing housing, where it's easy to add a lot in TX by continuing sprawl, but that's mostly hit sharply diminishing returns in CA because a) we already built most of the useful sprawl and b) hard geographic constraints around the most economically desired land, e.g. Bay Area. Real shame about the California HSR boondoggle too (another notable CEQA casualty, among other death-by-a-thousand-rentiers).
And yet Texas ranks very average in person capita income and in growth over the last 10 years. Not the most convincing argument for regulations are inherently failures if it results in average economic numbers over time.
And even if it was resulting in outsized short term economic growth for Texas, SEZs also have long term problems which are outlined in that very same Wikipedia article.
So Japan is fine, because its GDP per working age adult is growing at middle of the pack rates?
Quibbles.
When you have to compare apples to oranges (nation to state) because apples to apples (state to state) shows the simplistic answer you want to believe doesn't match reality, you're just deflecting. So I'll ask you plainly, why does a state like Massachusetts that is a high regulation state rank better on per capita income and growth than the low regulation state Texas? Is it possible that the reflexive reasoning that regulations are inherently bad not supported by reality and that many factors can play a role? You're the one who proclaimed that Texas was the ideal. Back it up with facts and data, not just feelings. You can prefer low regulations because you like low regulations, but the data doesn't actually match the theory that it's inherently this unlimited economic growth that outpaces states with higher regulations. Look at the states that are the lowest in regulations in the U.S. and explain why they also tend to be poorer. Zvi falls into this same issue when he confidently declares how much ruin there is in California due to regulations, but doesn't explain why Mississippi isn't doing better than it is. Because it's easy to point at the thing you don't like and declare it bad, especially when there are some problems, but if you are ignoring the problems in the thing you do like because it undercuts your point, it's not convincing.
Also what evidence is there than Japan's problems are primarily regulatory in nature and not related more to their overall culture?
Reality is unfortunately complex and not as easy to solve as many people want to believe. Regulations can be poorly or well implemented with regards to healthy economic growth or an increasing economic inequality that represents long term unhealthy economic growth (there's only so much stuff one can buy). But when you have a single theory, everything looks like a nail. But you can't build a house with just a hammer. You can't build an economy just by gutting regulations.
I said Texas was a de-facto Special Economic Zone. I made no normative assertion other than that Europe would benefit from having some SEZs. Which position I still hold.
Japan has bad demographics. But if a country had healthy demographics and middle-of-pack GDP per working age adult, it would indeed be define.
Europe's electricity usage is declining, but its carbon emissions are declining faster. Sure, they should have kept their nukes open to further speed up the emissions decline, but in the end result they will be OK.
We have long since passed the point where GDP and energy usage diverged. Now Europe's economy continues to grow steadily while its energy usage shrinks.
I very much appreciate these posts. I find them informative, and I feel like I learn something, but I can't help but think that reading them is bad for my mental health due to how enraging they are.
And so Zvi feels the MAGA spirit (sadly not so much the practice): we have gone so far that better to blow it all up and start again!
I agree, btw, wherever that is feasible.
It's not really MAGA though. MAGA seems to be about banning solar and wind energy because they are gay or something, while pushing coal because it's masculine.
That's not what I was referring to, I rather explicitly referred to the feeling that things had gotten so bad there that the best course of action was to blow it all up and start again.
If you feel better calling it something other than MAGA please do.
"things may have changed on any given topic by the time you read this"...like Biden not being president anymore, or promoting a contest that closed months ago. I still appreciate the roundup, and I'll take your word that almost all of these developments are at least still directionally correct, but it's disorienting to read a whole year's worth of distilled drafts + try to merge that with knowledge of The Current Boardstate. Lot of things have changed in a year!
Support for Nuclear in Australia has increased dramatically to 61%-37%.
Would be a little hesitant to read too much into this due to the partisan nature of the question in current Australian politics. Nuclear was proposed as an alternative to new renewables by the Liberals (Right) in opposition, while Labor (Left) proposed new renewables over nuclear.
Regarding giving more power to the executive, I am skeptical that this is the way to better megaprojects. That’s how you get things like Cuomo’s wrong-way AirTrain, which was thankfully delayed until it could be killed once he was no longer in office.
Are you sure that increased energy supply is a good thing to push for, when the increased energy supply will likely go to AI compute which might otherwise be compute limited?
Sure, if one is an Aschenbrenner type accelerationist this is good, but do you really agree with that?
“In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Paul Erlich
Classic ad hominem argument.
This is not my comment. It is a statement made by a highly respected (in environmental circles) scientist, about 40 years ago, in order to stop nuclear power. It reveals the ultimate goal of the environmental movement, which is to move ALL of us progrressively forward (not a typo) to the 16th century, in terms of tech. They want to eliminate all sorts of tech, and have done a pretty good job making it all a lot more expensive. Recently they filed a lawsuit againt the fossil fuel companies in Colorado state court, arguing that fossil fuel waste products are a nuisance, and thay they should be reimbursed for all the "harm" that has been done. One of their leaders admitted, in a statement that he will probably regret, that the whole goal of this law suit is NOT to receive compensation, but to drive the entire fossil fuel industry out of business.
They are very determined to eliminate western civilization, as we know it, from the face of the planet. To be replaced with a utopia that they only emote over, without any consideration of the very, very bad effects it will have on all of the people currently alive.
Classic ad hominem argument once again. Along with an unhinged rant.