There aren't a lot of things I agree with Mark Carney about, but there's one area where he and I are in *total* accord: the old, US-dominated, "rules-based international order" was total bullshit:
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There aren't a lot of things I agree with Mark Carney about, but there's one area where he and I are in *total* accord: the old, US-dominated, "rules-based international order" was total bullshit:
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/20/praxis/#acceleration
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There aren't a lot of things I agree with Mark Carney about, but there's one area where he and I are in *total* accord: the old, US-dominated, "rules-based international order" was total bullshit:
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/20/praxis/#acceleration
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Unlike Carney, I never pretended to like that old order, and indeed, I spent my entire life fighting against it - literally, all the way back to childhood, organizing other children to march against Canada's participation in America's nuclear weapons programs:
All of which means that my experience of the Trump years is decidedly *weird*.
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Unlike Carney, I never pretended to like that old order, and indeed, I spent my entire life fighting against it - literally, all the way back to childhood, organizing other children to march against Canada's participation in America's nuclear weapons programs:
All of which means that my experience of the Trump years is decidedly *weird*.
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On the one hand, I exist in a near-perpetual state of anxious misery, as Trump and his chud army of Christian nationalists and degenerate gamblers pursue a program of gleeful genocide. But at the very same time, I'm living in a world in which Trump is (inadvertently) dismantling many of the worst aspects of the old order *in favor of something decidedly better*.
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On the one hand, I exist in a near-perpetual state of anxious misery, as Trump and his chud army of Christian nationalists and degenerate gamblers pursue a program of gleeful genocide. But at the very same time, I'm living in a world in which Trump is (inadvertently) dismantling many of the worst aspects of the old order *in favor of something decidedly better*.
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Take Trump's tariff policy. Back during Trump I, he decided that Americans couldn't buy Chinese solar anymore, which had the double benefit of allowing him to pursue the twin goals of throwing red meat to Sinophobic Cold War 2.0 freaks *and* delivering a giant gift to the planet-wrecking oil companies that had helped him buy his way into office.
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Take Trump's tariff policy. Back during Trump I, he decided that Americans couldn't buy Chinese solar anymore, which had the double benefit of allowing him to pursue the twin goals of throwing red meat to Sinophobic Cold War 2.0 freaks *and* delivering a giant gift to the planet-wrecking oil companies that had helped him buy his way into office.
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This was really bad for America, of course, but those solar panels had to go *somewhere*. Mostly, they ended up in Pakistan, dumped there at such a massive discount that the country solarized virtually overnight. Pakistani solar installers learned their trade from Tiktok videos set to Tamil film soundtracks, and unwired the country so thoroughly that today, the national power company is in danger of going bust because no one buys their electricity from the grid anymore.
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This was really bad for America, of course, but those solar panels had to go *somewhere*. Mostly, they ended up in Pakistan, dumped there at such a massive discount that the country solarized virtually overnight. Pakistani solar installers learned their trade from Tiktok videos set to Tamil film soundtracks, and unwired the country so thoroughly that today, the national power company is in danger of going bust because no one buys their electricity from the grid anymore.
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Pakistani bridal dowries now routinely include four panels, an inverter and a battery:
This is an inversion of the normal order of things, in which rich countries get all the good stuff first, and poor countries like Pakistan get scraps after we've gorged ourselves.
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Pakistani bridal dowries now routinely include four panels, an inverter and a battery:
This is an inversion of the normal order of things, in which rich countries get all the good stuff first, and poor countries like Pakistan get scraps after we've gorged ourselves.
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Think of vaccine apartheid, in which monsters like Howard Dean insisted that we had to prevent countries in the global south from making their own covid vaccines, because poor brown people are too stupid and primitive to run a pharma manufacturing operation:
But, thanks to Comrade Trump, Pakistan was *first* in line to become the world's solar capital.
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Think of vaccine apartheid, in which monsters like Howard Dean insisted that we had to prevent countries in the global south from making their own covid vaccines, because poor brown people are too stupid and primitive to run a pharma manufacturing operation:
But, thanks to Comrade Trump, Pakistan was *first* in line to become the world's solar capital.
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The country's LNG terminal - built with Chinese Belt-and-Road money - is now a stranded asset, because no one there needs gas.
That's gas whose supply has been choked off in the Strait of Epstein...which brings me to Trump's foreign policy and its impact on the global energy shift.
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The country's LNG terminal - built with Chinese Belt-and-Road money - is now a stranded asset, because no one there needs gas.
That's gas whose supply has been choked off in the Strait of Epstein...which brings me to Trump's foreign policy and its impact on the global energy shift.
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Transitive energy shortages have small effects: when your energy bill goes up for a while (because of extreme weather, say), it makes you angry and sad and might result in an electoral loss for whatever politician presided over the price hike. But when you get genuine, prolonged shortages - the sort that are accompanied by rationing - you make *permanent* changes.
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Transitive energy shortages have small effects: when your energy bill goes up for a while (because of extreme weather, say), it makes you angry and sad and might result in an electoral loss for whatever politician presided over the price hike. But when you get genuine, prolonged shortages - the sort that are accompanied by rationing - you make *permanent* changes.
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Rationing is so psychologically scarring that it induces people to make long-delayed investments that result in *permanent* changes to their consumption habits. Maybe you've known for a long time that an induction top would be better for your indoor air quality *and* your cooking than the gas range you have now, but you don't want to buy a whole new appliance and pay for an electrician to run a high-wattage line in expensive conduit from your breaker panel to your kitchen.
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Rationing is so psychologically scarring that it induces people to make long-delayed investments that result in *permanent* changes to their consumption habits. Maybe you've known for a long time that an induction top would be better for your indoor air quality *and* your cooking than the gas range you have now, but you don't want to buy a whole new appliance and pay for an electrician to run a high-wattage line in expensive conduit from your breaker panel to your kitchen.
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But if you're an Indian restaurateur who can no longer get *any* cooking gas - because it's being rationed for household use - then you are going out to buy whatever induction top you can lay hands on. Maybe it's a cheap, low-powered single burner one that plugs into your existing electrics, or maybe you're splashing out and swapping out your whole gas appliance. Whichever it is, you are no longer interested in your chef's insistence that *real* cooking gets done over gas.
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But if you're an Indian restaurateur who can no longer get *any* cooking gas - because it's being rationed for household use - then you are going out to buy whatever induction top you can lay hands on. Maybe it's a cheap, low-powered single burner one that plugs into your existing electrics, or maybe you're splashing out and swapping out your whole gas appliance. Whichever it is, you are no longer interested in your chef's insistence that *real* cooking gets done over gas.
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If your chef can't cook on an induction top, your chef will need to find employment elsewhere.
This is going on all over the world right now, as people buy EVs (and pay to have chargers installed at home - maybe getting a twofer on their conduit runs with two high power lines run through the same conduit infrastructure).
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If your chef can't cook on an induction top, your chef will need to find employment elsewhere.
This is going on all over the world right now, as people buy EVs (and pay to have chargers installed at home - maybe getting a twofer on their conduit runs with two high power lines run through the same conduit infrastructure).
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In Australia - where the last shipment of gas for the foreseeable came into port last week - people are calling their local EV dealers and offering to buy whatever car is on the lot, sight unseen.
Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, a series of dollar-related crises caused the country to ban imports of internal combustion engines altogether (oil and gas are denominated in dollars, which means you can only get oil if you first sell stuff to Americans or others who'll pay in dollars).
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In Australia - where the last shipment of gas for the foreseeable came into port last week - people are calling their local EV dealers and offering to buy whatever car is on the lot, sight unseen.
Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, a series of dollar-related crises caused the country to ban imports of internal combustion engines altogether (oil and gas are denominated in dollars, which means you can only get oil if you first sell stuff to Americans or others who'll pay in dollars).
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The country's fleet of noisy, dirty motorbikes is being swiftly replaced by ebikes that get eight miles to the *penny*:
Ethiopia Expands Vehicle Import Ban to Trucks, Pushing Electric Transport
• Ethiopia expands ICE vehicle import ban to include trucks• EV numbers rise amid push for carbon-neutral transport by 2030• Hydropower, LNG support
Ecofin Agency (www.ecofinagency.com)
Ebikes are insanely great technology. Cheap, rugged and reliable, they're basically bicycles that abolish *hills*. Once you've gotten accustomed to an ebike - maybe you've invested in a folding helmet and a raincoat - you'll never go back.
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The country's fleet of noisy, dirty motorbikes is being swiftly replaced by ebikes that get eight miles to the *penny*:
Ethiopia Expands Vehicle Import Ban to Trucks, Pushing Electric Transport
• Ethiopia expands ICE vehicle import ban to include trucks• EV numbers rise amid push for carbon-neutral transport by 2030• Hydropower, LNG support
Ecofin Agency (www.ecofinagency.com)
Ebikes are insanely great technology. Cheap, rugged and reliable, they're basically bicycles that abolish *hills*. Once you've gotten accustomed to an ebike - maybe you've invested in a folding helmet and a raincoat - you'll never go back.
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The advantages of an ebike commute over a car commute are legion, but my favorite little pleasure is the ability to easily make a stop at a nice coffee shop halfway between home and work, rather than being stuck buying shitty chain coffee near the office.
Four years ago, another mad emperor, Vladimir Putin, invaded Ukraine - and in so doing, catapulted Europe's energy transition into the Gretacene, with unimaginable defeats for the fossil fuel lobby.
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The advantages of an ebike commute over a car commute are legion, but my favorite little pleasure is the ability to easily make a stop at a nice coffee shop halfway between home and work, rather than being stuck buying shitty chain coffee near the office.
Four years ago, another mad emperor, Vladimir Putin, invaded Ukraine - and in so doing, catapulted Europe's energy transition into the Gretacene, with unimaginable defeats for the fossil fuel lobby.
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Not just subsidies for the energy transition, but also policy shifts in areas that were deadlocked for a decade, like approvals for balcony solar, which is transforming the continent. Even the UK, one of the oil industry's most reliable vassal states, is now greenlighting balcony solar:
Government to make 'plug-in solar' available within months
'Plug-in' solar panels to be in shops within months, offering households chance to significantly cut energy bills.
GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
This may not sound like much, but the UK is a country whose politics is composed 50% hatred of migrants and trans people, and 50% incredibly stupid planning battles.
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Not just subsidies for the energy transition, but also policy shifts in areas that were deadlocked for a decade, like approvals for balcony solar, which is transforming the continent. Even the UK, one of the oil industry's most reliable vassal states, is now greenlighting balcony solar:
Government to make 'plug-in solar' available within months
'Plug-in' solar panels to be in shops within months, offering households chance to significantly cut energy bills.
GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
This may not sound like much, but the UK is a country whose politics is composed 50% hatred of migrants and trans people, and 50% incredibly stupid planning battles.
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Great Britain is a magical land where your neighbors can ask the government to prevent you from installing double-glazing on the grounds that it will change the "historic character" of their neighborhood of terraced Victorian homes.
I once lost a fight to get permission to put a little glass greenhouse on my balcony on the grounds that it would "alter the facade" of the undistinguished low-rise 1960s industrial building I live on top of.
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Great Britain is a magical land where your neighbors can ask the government to prevent you from installing double-glazing on the grounds that it will change the "historic character" of their neighborhood of terraced Victorian homes.
I once lost a fight to get permission to put a little glass greenhouse on my balcony on the grounds that it would "alter the facade" of the undistinguished low-rise 1960s industrial building I live on top of.
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The fact that HMG is going to tell your facade-obsessed neighbors to fuck off all the way into the sun so that you can hang solar panels off your balcony is nothing short of a *miracle*.
Comrade Putin's contribution to oil-soaked Britain's energy transition can't be overstated.
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The fact that HMG is going to tell your facade-obsessed neighbors to fuck off all the way into the sun so that you can hang solar panels off your balcony is nothing short of a *miracle*.
Comrade Putin's contribution to oil-soaked Britain's energy transition can't be overstated.
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Thanks to "free market" policies that sent energy prices soaring after the Ukraine invasion, Brits installed so much solar (*despite* the existing impediments to solarization) that now the government is *begging* us to use *more* energy this summer, because the grid can't absorb all those lovely free electrons:
Great Britain households to be urged to use more power this summer as renewables soar
Incentives to absorb surplus wind and solar energy could help balance the grid and lower bills
the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
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Thanks to "free market" policies that sent energy prices soaring after the Ukraine invasion, Brits installed so much solar (*despite* the existing impediments to solarization) that now the government is *begging* us to use *more* energy this summer, because the grid can't absorb all those lovely free electrons:
Great Britain households to be urged to use more power this summer as renewables soar
Incentives to absorb surplus wind and solar energy could help balance the grid and lower bills
the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
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The UK is on a glide-path to adopting the Australian plan. Australia *also* benefited from Trump I's solar embargo, receiving a ton of cheap solar that would otherwise have ended up in America. Now Australia has so much solar that they're *giving away electricity*, with three free hours of unlimited energy every day. Stick your dishwasher, clothes-dryer and EV charger on a timer, invest in a battery or two, and fill your boots:
Free Electricity. Like, at no cost. For everyone. Now.
Let's talk about affordability, abundance, and Australia--and why thanks to Trump we can't have nice things
(billmckibben.substack.com)
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