This week I talk with Dan Stein, whose organization Giving Green seeks to align climate philanthropy with the principles of effective altruism. But what does "effective" mean in the face of fossil fuel autocracy? We discuss the difficulties of measuring systems change and debate the limits of technocratic solutions.

Movement veterans Bill McKibben and Jamie Henn have been thinking about where climate activism goes from here. They argue for a new focus on celebrating and accelerating the miraculous global boom in solar power. We get into what it looks like to fight for building stuff, how to win the online information war for clean energy, and why the sun offers not just cheaper power, but a form of liberation.

In this episode, I'm joined by Frank Rambo of the Horizon Climate Initiative to discuss "uneconomic dispatch" — the costly and polluting practice of running coal plants even when cheaper, cleaner options are available. We dig into why utilities get away with this, how the Trump administration is now trying to force them to continue via bogus "reliability" claims, and why fighting this practice at the state level is a huge, bipartisan win for both the climate and consumer pocketbooks.

In this episode, I'm joined by Jake Higdon and Isabel Munilla, who helped develop the original "foreign entity of concern" (FEOC) standards for the Inflation Reduction Act, which sought to encourage domestic supply chains. We explore the security risks that prompted FEOC policy, the delicate balance required to do it right, and the absolute hash that Republicans made of it in their recent budget bill, to the point that it may kill the domestic manufacturing they claim to support.

In this episode, recorded live back in May, I'm joined by the one and only Jigar Shah to discuss Washington state climate policy and post-IRA policy in general. Jigar argues that to build political durability, the climate movement must shift its focus from shiny tech to solving everyday cost-of-living problems and that smart finance is the real key to scaling the energy transition for everyone.

I'm joined by Alon Levy of NYU's Transit Costs Project, whose work documents how expensive it is to build transit in the US relative to the rest of the world. We discuss how countries like Spain and Italy build cheaply by relying on in-house public expertise and standardized designs, while the Anglosphere is captured by a costly ideology of privatization. Levy explains how applying these lessons could make ambitious projects like high-speed rail in the Northeast not just possible but affordable.

Ann Arbor voted to create a parallel, municipal electric utility that offers only distributed renewables, and Missy Stults is the woman making it real. We explore the nuts and bolts: buying existing solar for seed revenue, building microgrids in a city still served by DTE, and why DTE is — so far — more curious than threatened. If it works, the SEU could become the blueprint for every climate-ambitious town trapped in IOU territory.

In this episode, Arc CEO Mitch Lee explains why the jump from gas-powered boats to electric boats is even bigger, in terms of quality and user experience, than the jump from gas-powered cars to EVs. EBs are strikingly quieter, have greater torque, and require much less maintenance. Oh, and despite what Trump says, they are also much safer and less likely to strand their occupants.

I chat with Kostantsa Rangelova and Dave Jones, authors of a new Ember report, who find that solar-plus-storage costs have declined so much that it can now provide baseload-level power in sunny cities for less than the cost of new nuclear or even new gas. We discuss why even energy pros are behind the curve on this, how quickly the technology is improving, and why most of the world doesn't see natural gas as a viable option the way the US does.

In this "What the F is Happening" episode, I'm joined by Jane Flegal and Jesse Jenkins to perform a wake for the Inflation Reduction Act after the passage of the GOP's "Big Beautiful Bill." We sift through the wreckage to see what was saved versus what was buried, analyze the political forces that determined the outcome, and debate the core theory of change behind the IRA — and what lessons advocates should and shouldn't learn as they chart a path forward.