If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)
Renewables outpace fossil fuels despite US policy shift: IEA (Laurent Thomet and Catherine Hours, 11/12/25, AFP)
Renewable energy is still expanding faster than fossil fuels around the world despite policy changes in the United States, with oil demand possibly peaking “around 2030”, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.
Economics trumps ideology.
This AI Aced Hurricane Season in 2025. Here’s What That Means (Ellyn Lapointe, November 9, 2025, Gizmodo)
Though Google DeepMind’s Weather Lab only began releasing forecasts in June, it was by far the best model for predicting hurricane track and intensity this season, according to a preliminary analysis by Brian McNoldy, a meteorologist and senior researcher at the University of Miami. Meanwhile, America’s flagship weather model—the Global Forecast System—was the worst performing.
There’s a $10 Trillion Antidote to Trump’s Climate Backlash (Laura Millan, November 4, 2025, Bloomberg)
Annual energy transition investment surpassed $2 trillion for the first time in 2024, more than double the rate in 2020, according to research by BloombergNEF examining the deployment of net zero-aligned technologies and infrastructure.
Investment between 2014 and last year totalled $10.3 trillion, though the scope of the analysis has been widened since 2020 to capture additional categories. Spending on renewable energy alone hit a record in the first half, jumping 10% on the same period a year earlier.
Additions of clean power generation like solar and wind farms are finally beginning to catch accelerating demand for electricity, meaning carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector — the most significant man-made contributor to global warming — may have peaked last year and already be in decline, BNEF analysis suggests. That outlook could be challenged, however, if forecasts of continued stronger-than-anticipated demand for coal, oil and gas prove correct.Road transport emissions are on track to peak around 2029, and one in every four passenger vehicles sold this year will be a plug-in hybrid, a range-extended electric, or fully electric, the BNEF data shows. China, the source of almost 30% of all global emissions, has potentially already begun to lower its climate footprint from this year, after pollution growth slowed to less than 1% in 2024.
In a new assessment ahead of COP30 negotiations that begin Nov. 10, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change made its first ever forecast for total global emissions to decline, projecting a 10% reduction from 2019 levels by 2035.
Election Day Was a Win for the Climate (Sophie Hurwitz, 11/08/25, MoJo)
In races from New York to Georgia to Washington, voters backed funding renewables, reining in energy costs, and building out mass transit—and the people promising to deliver those policies. On the whole, the results suggest Americans are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back climate action.
“This election was a decisive rejection of the Trump Administration’s ban on clean energy, multimillion-dollar taxpayer bailouts for expensive dirtier energy sources like coal, and other ineffective proposals that will make costs go even higher,” Sara Schreiber of the League of Conservation Voters said in a statement.
Don’t Tell Donald Trump, but Texas Is Deep Into Wind and Solar Power (Arcelia Martin, 11/05/25, MoJo)
Solar power has generated 45 terrawatt hours of electricity so far this year—50 percent more than the same period in 2024 and nearly four times more than the same period in 2021.
The availability of solar generation in ERCOT also has reduced the need for gas-fired generation during midday hours, according to the EIA. This energy production comes despite attempts by some Texas lawmakers earlier this year to restrict renewable development across the state.
For Dennis Wamsted, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, ERCOT’s growing share of renewables shows that it’s the preferred resource type when an energy market is open, like Texas’ deregulated market.
“People are going to build solar and wind, and now battery storage, essentially as quickly as they possibly can,” Wamsted said. “It’s economic—it is what customers want.”
Coupert: smart shopping extensions are changing the way people save money online (Jon Stojan, November 3, 2025, Digital Journal)
The core advantage is automation. Instead of copying and pasting codes from coupon sites, smart tools like Coupert apply discounts instantly. Cashback rewards are layered in, and price history helps users identify better deals.
Honey: Applies automatic coupons but lacks integrated cashback features.
Rakuten: Provides strong cashback rates but requires manual activation and no coupon testing.
Capital One Shopping: Useful for price tracking, weaker in coupon coverage.
Ibotta: Well-known in groceries, but its receipt-based model is less efficient for online shopping.
RetailMeNot: Popular coupon site, but prone to expired and unverified codes.
Coupert integrates all of these features. Users save an average of $180.12 annually on coupons, $86.92 through cashback, and $333.74 via price tracking.
The end of the rip-off economy: From finance and medicine to used cars, artificial intelligence is radically improving market efficiency (The Econmist, 10/27/25)
IF YOU KNOW how to use artificial intelligence, it can save you a lot of time and money. Leasing a new car? Be sure to upload a photograph of the contract to ChatGPT first. Need help with a leaky tap? AI often understands the issue—and at a lower cost than a handyman. Parents with a fussy baby can now use chatbots to answer questions in seconds, rather than waiting for a doctor’s appointment. Giving Claude a PDF of a wine list is a great way to find the best-value bottles.
These examples add up to something bigger. As AI goes mainstream, it will remove one of the most enduring distortions in modern capitalism: the information advantages that sellers, service providers and intermediaries enjoy over consumers. When everyone has a genius in their pocket, they will be less vulnerable to mis-selling—benefiting them and improving overall economic efficiency. The “rip-off economy”, in which firms profit from opacity, confusion or inertia, is meeting its match.
Information advantages have existed for as long as markets themselves. In medieval England grocers used fake scales to dupe customers; pub landlords put salt in beer to make patrons thirstier. Such squalid practices are not just annoying. In a paper published in 1970, George Akerlof, a Nobel-prizewinning economist, discussed the market for used cars. It is hard for a buyer to know if such a car works properly or is a “lemon” with hidden problems. Buyers thus assume the worst. As a result, honest brokers, worried about being suspected of exploitative behaviour, stay away. The quality of service declines. Fewer consumers fulfil their needs.
The internet has made it harder to screw over customers. With Carfax and other providers of vehicle data, customers can check the history of a vehicle, overcoming some of the problems identified by Mr Akerlof. Taxi drivers now struggle to take people on circuitous but profitable routes, since apps such as Lyft and Uber tell them exactly where to go. Tripadvisor, a reviews website, sends tourists to restaurants that will provide a decent meal. In the early 2000s there were more than 20 branches of Angus and Aberdeen Steak Houses, a notorious tourist trap, in London. Today there are four, and the ones that remain are better than before.
Efficiency is deflationary.
AI Pessimism Fades as Reality Takes Hold (Brent Orrell, 10/30/25, AEIdeas)
In a large-scale Harvard Business School survey of 2,357 adults evaluating AI usage in 940 occupations, they found that reactions depend on how AI’s role is described. When AI was presented as a tool that augments rather than replaces human labor, a majority of Americans supported its use in 94 percent of occupations. Even when AI was described as fully automating core job tasks, respondents favored its use in 58 percent of occupations if it could outperform humans at a lower cost.
The key is specificity. When AI’s potential benefits are explained concretely—faster diagnoses, fewer repetitive tasks and injuries, better scheduling—attitudes shift from fear to interest. In the abstract, AI feels threatening; in context, it often looks like a gift.
Q&A: How speciality retailers are winning the holiday season with agility and AI (yDr. Tim Sandle, October 28, 2025, Digital Journal)
Stern: Independent retailers plan for the holidays with precision, not prediction. They don’t have the purchasing power or storage space typically needed to pre-purchase on a large scale before the holidays. Their budgets are tighter, which forces smarter buying: every order has to earn its place on the shelf, and business owners have to be flexible to find the right product at the right price.
What’s changed in the past few years is how technology makes that kind of precision possible. AI tools can now surface insights that used to take hours of manual tracking: showing which products are trending, how pricing shifts might affect demand, or when to reorder based on sell-through velocity. For a specialty retailer, that kind of intelligence helps them compete with enterprise retailers that have dedicated analytics teams. This technology gives small retailers the same visibility into market trends and customer behavior that big chains have, but with the speed and context that fits how they actually operate.
Most ‘gluten sensitivity’ is not actually caused by gluten (Bronwyn Thompson, October 24, 2025, New Atlas)
“Across recent studies, people with IBS who believe they’re gluten-sensitive react similarly to gluten, wheat, and placebo,” said Biesiekierski. “This suggests that how people anticipate and interpret gut sensations can strongly influence their symptoms.”