July 8, 2025
The Texas Flash Floods
“This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States. . . We do not have a warning system.” — Judge Rob Kelly, Kerr County, Texas, 4 July 2025 As I write this, the death toll in the Texas flash floods now exceeds 70, with 12 people still missing, including 11 girls and one camp counselor….
July 2, 2025
Cheerleading is Dumb Energy Policy
Any moment now, we will be releasing the full results of the AEI Energy/Climate Survey of the American public that my AEI colleague Ruy Teixeira and I conducted right before the election. The survey provides a fascinating snapshot of what Americans think about a wide range of climate and energy issues. Today, I share some what the…
June 27, 2025
Top Five Climate Change Narratives in the Media
Today, in cool and cloudy Washington, DC, I’ll wrap up my AEI Summer Honors Course (THB Pro subscribers have access to the syllabus and the reading packet here). The students have been absolutely fantastic and the discussions lively and informed. A highlight of the week was a chance to visit the U.S. Department of Energy and…
June 26, 2025
When and How Markets Think for Themselves
Markets as Minds Man, it’s been hot this week, and hot all over. Heat waves are like petri dishes for observing power systems and electricity markets. Every evening, just after the Texas sun dips below the horizon, the electricity market does something remarkable. Prices jump, batteries discharge, gas turbines spin up, and lights remain on…
June 26, 2025
Trump Is Half Wrong and Half Right: Eliminating FEMA, The U.S. As a Common Currency Area, The Professional Bureaucracy, and The Separation of Powers
Read the full paper below.
June 25, 2025
So You Want to Go Pro?
Ten years ago today I published a post at my sport governance blog, The Least Thing, that explored who had a greater chance of “going pro” — the men’s NCAA Division 1 basketball player or the PhD graduate seeking a tenure track job in a university? At the time it was a fun exploration of an…
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…