US government is now making snuff films. Cool cool cool.

When do we just decide that the Internet had a good run and all get dumb phones?

Yep. They’ve been quite adept at union busting

4/ As I argue in Existential Politics, this fixation on emissions is the wrong model for climate policy. It allows industry to pretend like it’s taking action AND walk away when that action becomes too costly. It's time to change course. FIN

2/ The recent scandal abt the GHG Protocol shows another weakness of voluntary standards – they can be co-opted by industry. Indeed, the incentives for so-called “green” standard-setters to allow undue industry influence are huge – otherwise these green groups lose their followers.

1/ Some enviros / academics have been very big on voluntary standards. But this enthusiasm hasn’t withstood the test of time. Voluntary climate action is unsurprising. It works best under the threat of gov’t regulation, which is ahem, limited, these days. I made this argument 11 years ago here 👇

Starbucks’ rollback of its climate commitments is just the latest example of why voluntary climate standards like net zero are only useful when coupled w/ credible threats of regulation or (gasp!) *actual* rules on climate action. Mini 🧵

IMHO this piece vastly understates the shitshow that currently constitutes space governance. there is no functional multilateral space agreement & the US-sponsored Artemis Accords are fundamentally at odds with basic principles of int'l space law. carving up of this global commons is coming soon

Like I have said many times before, tax policy is climate policy. Data centers are driving a huge demand for natural gas. US tax policy is turbo-charging this demand.

A dubious distinction indeed 🤓

This 1000% PLUS the fact that private standards often get formally recognized / adopted by governments, thus becoming binding regulation, often without any administrative legal processes

Yah, ISO is all behind closed doors, unless you are part of the drafting process. This is a problem for sure

No I have not! Can you point me to it?

5/ This whole mess is managing tons at its worst – an obsessive focus on carbon accounting that literally fails to see the forest for the trees. Managing tons justifies the status quo thru technical processes that can easily slide under the radar. FIN

5/ This whole mess is managing tons at its worst: an obsessive focus on carbon accounting that literally fails to see the forest for the trees. Managing tons justifies the status quo thru technical processes that can easily slide under the radar. This is why so much climate policy has failed.

3/ Why did WRI push this very questionable approach? Because private rulemakers have no authority unless someone adopts their rules. So the pressure is on WRI to ensure that the revisions were palatable to business interests.

2/ Industry captured the process of revising forest methodologies, resulting in an insane proposal that would allow firms to claim emissions reductions credits even as their emissions increased. @worldresources.bsky.social, the institutional home of the GHG-P, backed this new methodology.

1/ GHG Protocol is how firms measure their emissions. It’s a form of private authority – created by non-state actors and now the de-facto global standard for firm level carbon accounting. My first book explains the history of this now ubiquitous set of rules.