Concerns about a looming glut have weighed on the price of oil, which has been hovering around $70 a barrel in the United States. U.S. companies generally need prices above $60 a barrel to profitably drill new wells, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Oil producers aren’t going to overproduce to the point that the price of a barrel of oil goes so low they can’t profitably drill new wells. Oil producers would be incentivized to increase production if demand increased significantly, but that’s not going to result in lower prices at the pump, or lower consumers prices down the supply chain.

You wanna see prices come down? You need a significant decline in demand, but that would lead to a recession.

All true. It’s a complete dead end. A nice idea, but not realistic.

I think a general strike could be the absolute most effective form of nonviolent resistance. Unfortunately, I have no idea how a nationwide general strike could possibly be organized. How do you get a couple hundred million American workers to even agree to do it, let alone actually do it? I know some people would respond that you don’t need all workers, just enough of them, but, while even just 10% of workers striking could have a huge impact, people aren’t going to direct the anger they feel about the resulting disruptions at the top, they’ll direct it toward those workers.

I want to believe we’ve reached peak stupid, but, who am I kidding, we can, and probably will, get much stupider.

Yesterday my colleague Kate Riga noted a trap Senate Democrats keep falling into: in an effort to court Republican defectors they temper their criticism of the various Trump nominees. But since there are and will be no defectors they lose on both sides of the equation, gaining no defectors and making their critiques tepid and forgettable. This is unquestionably true. But we can go a step further still. Far from courting potential defectors, they should be attacking them.

If trying to court Republican defectors is a futile effort, who should the Democrats be trying to court? This article seems deliberately vague on that point. The article implies that the Democrats should make less tepid, less forgettable critiques of Trump nominees, that they should attack them, even, but for what reason? Seemingly, it’s to court people other than Republican defectors, but who would that be? Relatively moderate, neoliberal technocrats? Do any still exist?

We are all the addict, because we all want the relative luxuries, conveniences, and comforts of a “middle class,” or higher, modern life. I’m no exception. But, the relative good life that is afforded to many in the modern world is heavily connected to fossil fuels.

As living standards have increased over the past few centuries, so has fossil fuel use. And the connection between the two is not arbitrary. The relatively high living standards of a modern, middle class lifestyle require a relatively high amount of energy. Fossil fuels are very energy dense. We need energy, fossil fuels contain a lot of energy, it’s not terribly complicated.

A lot of people posit that a modern middle class lifestyle is possible without getting any energy from fossil fuels. That would be great if true, but it is a yet unproven hypothesis. It’s entirely possible that an end to fossil fuel use also means an end to at least some of the luxuries of modern living, especially at the very upper end.

But, honestly this might all be a moot point, because modern life also seems to be dependent on an infinite growth paradigm and infinite growth isn’t possible, regardless of the energy source. It’s possible that humans just aren’t capable of living sustainably at these scales and at these levels of advancement. Sustainability requires that there be such a thing as “enough,” but is there such a thing as enough for most people? I don’t know.

Macron referred to expected changes in Washington’s foreign policy, citing the need to reduce reliance on the United States for security.

As an American, I also urge Europe to reduce its reliance on the US, for security or anything else. You’re going to want to insulate yourselves as much as possible from my unbelievably stupid, and potentially very dangerous country.

Over 90 million eligible voters didn’t vote for either Trump or Harris in 2024. If Democrats had managed to get just a few percent of those people to vote for them in key swing districts, she would have won. I think they could have done that without having to “act like Republicans.”

Another moral victory for Democrats. If only such victories mattered.