Alex Trembath
@atrembath
Deputy Director @TheBTI. Ecomodernist. Promethean Hamiltonian Schumpeterian meliorist.
If you can't decide whether you're an ecomodernist, consider that the degrowthers, climate doomers, and people who think we should all be farmers describe ecomodernism as the opposite of what they believe.
“The question is whether to prioritize the needs of the existing system or the needs of the public it is supposed to serve.” via @robertmgordon @pahlkadot nytimes.com/2025/07/22/opi…
Building US critical mineral supply chains is hard enough - market volatility and export dumping only makes it harder So Im excited to release @TheBTI 's report that maps 15 US mineral supply chains and which commodities would be best to stockpile under a strategic reserve 🧵
WaPo going full ecomodernist? "Maybe the idea of protecting every ecosystem at any cost should be reconsidered...America needs a new debate over how it interacts with the environment." washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/…
Carbon intensity: CO₂ emissions per dollar of GDP (not the same as emissions, of course, since GDP increases, but evidence that affluence need not be locked to emissions). ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-in…
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With enough clean energy, you can solve basically all problems slowboring.com/p/theres-plent…
If you work on agriculture, food systems, carbon removal, methane emissions, animal welfare, deforestation, habitat and biodiversity loss, regenerative solutions, ag biotechnology... this is the webinar for you! One week left to RSVP: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…
"In contrast to apocalyptic sermons, at no point in human history have humans had less risk of death related to extreme weather and climate." via @RogerPielkeJr
We were really thrilled and grateful to release this report with a launch briefing at the Capitol yesterday featuring remarks from Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks @RepMMM and a great panel discussion with @IrvingSwisher, @GraceBaskaran, @royhouseman, and Scott Gemperline.
In our new @TheBTI report, colleagues @PeterCookBTI @wang_seaver and I outline a policy framework and recommend best practices for a critical mineral reserve that would promote market stability and global competitiveness for US advanced energy industries thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/…
Should a US national critical minerals reserve program act more like the National Defense Stockpile or more like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? A major new report by my team does a deep dive into this question, looking at 15 minerals relevant to energy. My thoughts🧵:
Uncomfortable truth that limiting support to “green” fertilizer projects that use exclusively zero-emissions technologies locks African producers into high-cost agricultural inputs, exacerbating problems like low local yields & food insecurity. Great stuff from @RyanAlimento ⤵️
"If the development community is serious about combating hunger by funding fertilizer chemical plants local to SSA, they cannot continue to dogmatically discard petrochemical solutions without giving them serious consideration." Read @RyanAlimento: breakthroughjournal.org/p/sub-saharan-…
Sometimes I feel close to being a doomer when it comes to #climatechange @_HannahRitchie and @TheBTI are a good break from pessimism (liked by the Household Guru too). I wish @PatrickTBrown31 hadn't taken himself off to other waters.
Very interesting thread and article about a plan to build up nuclear power in NY state. Complicates a lot of complacent views, including my own perhaps overly-negative view of our governor.
NEW from me, on Kathy Hochul's atomic abundance. Last month she made an exciting announcement of new nuclear development in New York State. Unlike other governors, she is directly appealing to state capacity - the public power authority, NYPA - to drive it. It's a big deal. 🧵1/
Fracking is obviously super politicized which is a shame because it’s actually sort of an amazing American success story.
An irony about climate change policy is that if you look at US emissions over the last few decades, we actually have done a better job than lots of other places, but much of that success is because of natural gas, which environmentalists hate.
I watch as the planet turns And the old stars die As the young stars burn
A sign of the times: antinuclear organizations with "Environment" in their names are being explicitly called antinuclear rather than environmental by the New York Times. From an obituary of an antinuclear activist who served in the Clinton administration.
By 2050, we’re going to need twice as much energy as we make right now because of all the robots and stuff. Wind and solar alone won’t get us there. So we’ll still be leaning on natural gas unless we zoom nuclear and geothermal
The thing to remember is that households don’t use that much water.
This A1 story on Meta’s data centers, and others, use of water in an age of AI is incredible. /1
For my money, @MikeGrunwald's We Are Eating the Earth is the most eye-opening, most convincing, and most-likely-to-spark controversy book of the year. You should all read it ! amazon.com/We-Are-Eating-…
“Industrial agriculture may cause emissions, pollution, and poor animal welfare, but the more efficient agriculture is, the less of it we need.” @robert_yaman on @MikeGrunwald’s excellent new book.
“As Marx recognized, rapid technological advancement has shown humanity for the first time a glimpse of real human freedom.” via @AshleyAFrawley @compactmag_ compactmag.com/article/a-worl…
