June 20, 2025
The Invisible Price Tag of Yesterday’s Regulation
Two snapshots, one static institution In 1915, Kansas City Power & Light convinced regulators that stringing copper wires across the prairie would bring “abundant, cheap light for every home”. Today, a data center developer requesting 300 MW for a new facility is instructed to join a five-year interconnection queue. While the physical infrastructure has expanded…
June 16, 2025
The Most Amazing Climate Policy Figure
You’d be hard pressed to find a more fascinating straight line. The figure below is one of the most amazing graphs in all of climate policy.1 It shows the decarbonization of the U.S. economy from 1992 to 20252 — with decarbonization is defined as the ratio of carbon dioxide emissions (from fossil fuels) to GDP (in 2025$). I was…
June 16, 2025
“The Global Fertility Crisis is Worse Than You Think”
The title of today’s post comes from an excellent recent talk in London given by my AEI colleague (and University of Pennsylvania professor), Jesús Fernández-Villaverde. Today I look at the simple math of population projections to clarify the nature of the “crisis” — which is indeed worse than I thought. On X/Twitter, JFV summarized his talk as follows: The…
June 11, 2025
Whose Experts?
In an op-ed yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced that he was sacking all of its members of “to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.” He explained: [W]e are taking a bold step in restoring public trust by totally reconstituting the Advisory…
June 4, 2025
What is a “Worst Case” Climate Scenario?
The implausibly extreme and hugely popular climate scenario RCP8.5 made it into President Trump’s executive order last week on “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” Ironically, the Trump administration’s characterization of RCP8.5 did not quite reach the “gold standard,” and maybe not even a “bronze standard. “ The EO states: [Federal a]gencies have used Representative Concentration Pathway…
June 3, 2025
The Politicization of Intelligence, Part 2
In Part 1 of this two-part series I discussed the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and its role iin synthesizing and summarizing intelligence from across the U.S. government’s intelligence gathering agencies. Today, in Part 2 I take a broader look at the challenges of securing reliable intelligence in an environment characterized by ever-present politics. Intelligence in decision making “includes…
May 30, 2025
Atlantic Hurricanes Preseason 2025
There has been no tropical cyclone of hurricane strength anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere so far in 2025. If we get to June 5th — which looks quite possible if not probable — then 2025 will have the latest date on record (since 1970) for the first NH hurricane, breaking the record of Ava, which…
May 29, 2025
Twenty‑Five Years of Lessons on Electricity Competition in the United States
Why the Electricity Competition Debate Just Flipped—Again In 1998 California’s Power Exchange wholesale power market went live, symbolizing the then-new impetus for efficiency through electricity markets. The promise then was disarmingly simple: generation prices that reflected actual costs, customer choice, and an information revolution that would make your toaster as smart as your telephone. California, Pennsylvania, New…
May 27, 2025
Taking Institutional Neutrality Seriously on Campus
In 2024, Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called for colleges and universities to formally adopt institutional neutrality, defined as: “When a contested social issue arises that does not directly concern the academic mission of our college or university, institutional leadership will not issue a position statement on that issue. On…
May 23, 2025
Heavy Metal
More than 7,000 years ago, humans first began mining copper. Since then, humans have mined more than 700 million tonnes. According to a fascinating study of the metals requirements of a net zero energy transition, the world will need to produce another 700 million tonnes of copper over the next 22 years. The study, by Simon Michaux of the…