Self-reflection is in short supply these days. Maybe it’s because of the acceleration of culture or because our schedules are more hectic than ever but either way it seems like the time that once was there for quiet introspection has been hijacked. I will use this episode to look back at areas where I have changed my mind. 
This is, of course, not an exhaustive list – I don’t have the time nor the emotional fortitude to cover all of my mistakes. Today, I’m going to focus on two – one trivial and the other serious.
First, the trivial. 
When I was in high school, I started downloading music. This was pre-Napster, so I would use IRC chats to try to track down MP3s that I was interested in. At the time, the download speeds (this was in the days of 56K modems) were agonizingly slow – it could take literal hours to download songs which is probably why I only had like 100 MP3s. Still, perhaps enamored with the technology, I had a Diamond Rio, which, with the expansion memory slot, held a whopping 96 MBs of memory. It wasn’t until years later, when internet speeds increased and sites like Brooklyn Vegan and The Hype Machine made finding new (and weird) music much easier that I started burning songs to CDs – probably made close to 50 CDs this way. 
A quick note on Napster – Napster was great but, unless you had really high internet speed, it wasn’t that useful. I remember, for a brief shiny moment, as a college freshman, when my download speeds (this is on a T1 connection) averaged somewhere between 500 kbps and 1 MBS. It was also filled with spam and low-quality files. The best thing about it, though, was that for the first time, you had access to rare bootlegs, b-sides, covers, and live songs that were almost never released in CD quality by major labels. Other than trolling eBAY to buy concerts or b-sides that someone had ripped to a CD-R (which were always lousy sounding), you really had no way to easily find out that these things existed, let alone get your hands on them. I could go into a long tangent about the power dynamics between artists, labels, and fans but I’ll spare you – suffice it to say, as a music fan, it was like going into a record store and having the owner lift a trap door to a 2nd store where the rare, cool stuff you never knew existed was. It had never occurred to me then (and I still don’t think it occurs to people now) just how much the decision on which music is released (especially by major artists) is driven by commercial interests and not solely a love for music. 
I definitely downloaded my share of radio singles but a lot of what I had were rarities – stuff that the record label was likely never to release officially. 
I thought that the music industry, fat from profits of the CD era, could handle piracy and that, ultimately, it would be able to right the ship because there was simply too much money in the industry for it to completely change. I thought the industry of the 1990s and early 2000s would remain, more or less, unchanged.
I was wrong about this. 
Obviously, the music business hasn’t collapses and, by some measurements, it’s doing better than ever – Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has brought in over a billion dollars. Beyonce, Springsteen, and Drake have all had huge tours over the last two years. Bob Dylan, arguably the most important musician of the last 100 years, sold his catalog for $400M dollars in 2020. The ratings for the Grammy’s, despite a series of controversies, are up over the last couple of years. Spotify is one of the most downloaded apps in the world. The ability for music fans to find new and interesting music, often times for free, is unparalleled in the history of recorded music. 
So what’s the downside? 
For recorded music, which is how most people consume music, streaming, like in television, has become ascendant. Essentially smart radio, with the added bonus of a two-tier revenue stream (subscriptions and ads), streaming has exploded in the last decade, post-Napster and post-Apple iTunes.
While great for consumers, it has been decidedly mixed for musicians. As the pianist of the jazz-pop trio The Bad Plus wrote in a 2023 article from the Nation entitled, “The end of the music business”, “No one outside of the inner corporate circles really knows how the economics of the streaming world works. It pays, but what does it pay, and to whom? Reasonably high-profile artists in many genres have not been shy about posting their meager Spotify royalty checks to social media. Many of those artists then encourage listeners to buy their music on Bandcamp as a moral choice. That’s when you know the old model is truly dead: “Buy my music as a moral choice.” The music business as we knew it lasted about a century, from 1903 to 2003… We are a long way from understanding the ramifications of having it all available at the click of a button. Still, music will survive. After all, there was plenty of music before Caruso sold a million records in 1903. If the music industry only lasted a century, so be it. It’s up to the musicians to make the music, no matter what.”
Iverson then goes on to point towards the resurgence of vinyl as a bulwark against streaming, citing it as a way to learn more about the musicians themselves, through liner notes that are often times missing from the streaming experience. There is also a question of economics – a $40 vinyl record pays substantially better than a single stream on Spotify – which pays out roughly $1 for every 250 streams. 
People will continue making music – this is true – it’s also true that there is also enough of an infrastructure for (some) musicians to continue making a living. The broader issue is the future. 
While horribly unequitable and unjust, the old system injected enough money into the system so that a diverse body of artists could reach a diverse audience. At the peak of CD sales, there were over 900M sold in a year. Compare that to the vinyl resurgence of roughly 5% that level. Yes, vinyl is typically more expensive than a $20 CD but you’d still need roughly 10X their sales to reach parity from a revenue level. 
Vinyl is also limited – there are few plants in the US and they tend to manufacture very popular titles for big box retailers as much as record stores, which is why you see a copy of Abby Road every time you’re in Barnes and Noble or Target. 
Whole books have been written on this so I won’t belabor the point but I believe that piracy and technology ultimately drove the music business to a superstar model that favors fewer and fewer stars at the expensive of mid-level artists being able to develop sounds and relationships with fans that enable them to, at least, make a living. 
Maybe even more surprising is that the music business has been unable to break new stars in the same way it used to. Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, for instance, were either Disney Kids or YouTube stars.
This is obviously anecdotal but, on Reddit, when a 17-year-old posts their top 50 records, I’m always surprised when by how many of the albums were created before this person was born. It may be farfetched to say that the music has stagnated due to the record companies atrophying but I don’t really have another explanation. Maybe it’s that Spotify, excellent at giving people choice, is terrible at coalescing taste around a handful of contemporary artists. This would explain why so many young people look to the last fifty years of music and pick and choose what they like instead of tying their personal tastes to the now. 
Is this a better system? I think categorically denying the merits of music that was made before you, be it the Beatles or Beethoven, is a bad idea but I also think that it’s important for new artists to add to the larger cultural fabric without being stifled by the works of the past.
Before we go any further, a word from our sponsor.
I remember as a senior in high school considering global warming for the first time. My science teacher downplayed its significance but, even in 2002, some students pushed back, disappointed. In the presidential election of 2008, both major parties had candidates who seemed to at least acknowledge there was a problem, with McCain calling for an expansion of nuclear power as part of an “all of the above solution” to climate change. In 2013, I read Hot, Flat, & Crowded Thomas Friedman’s look at the probable future with an eye towards technological innovations as crucial parts of the solution. In 2014, my first job out of grad school was working in the wind industry. While I wasn’t naïve enough to harbor any illusions that I or the industry was single-handedly saving the planet, I at least saw the work as moving in the right direction and I believed that, then, we were on the vanguard of a necessary change. 
I’ve changed my mind about the likelihood, without massive changes – in federal spending, available technology, political opinion (or all three) – that climate change will be tamped down enough to avoid massive upheavals, both here and abroad, within my lifetime. 
What is the root cause of the lack of progress?
There is certainly complexity to the problem – it’s easy to see a wind turbine or solar panel and think, “how hard can it be to build these everywhere?” without thinking of the infrastructure and skilled manpower needed to connect the renewable source to the grid where the electricity it generates can actually be used.
A recent article from Schroders entitled, “What are interconnectors and why are they the key to the renewable energy revolution?”, illustrates this problem: 
“The Inflation Reduction Act is stimulating a dramatic increase in renewable investment. But a 2022 Princeton report estimates that over 80% of the potential emissions reductions delivered by the IRA in 2030 would be lost if transmission expansion is limited to the recent historical pace of 1% p.a.
The US Department of Energy (Grid Deployment Office) also identify “a pressing need for new transmission infrastructure” with interregional transmission producing the greatest benefit. For example, the interregional (interconnector) capacity requirement for the MidWest is estimated to be more than 2-3x current capacity by 2035.”
In addition to the need for an expansion of transmission lines, the installation of renewables themselves aren’t happening quickly enough – per a RealClear Energy article from 2023 called “Wind and Solar Aren’t Nearly Enough: Why Biden is Suddenly Supporting Fossil Fuels”, “Progress towards an energy transition appears to be significantly lagging the optimistic projections and any reduction in government mandates and subsidies could make many investments unprofitable, and at least some elements of the energy transition appear to be driven by irrational exuberance – Michael Lynch, Energy Policy Research Foundation, 2022”. 
Of course, these technologies will not stand still and, like all technologies receiving large investments, they will improve over time. However, there is a real question as to whether the technologies (and related technologies related to combating intermittency, namely batteries) will improve quickly enough to offset the growing demand for electricity from rising economies like China and India, abroad, and the US’ own demand for greater amounts of electricity due to an increase in data centers.
Joe Biden’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act marked the largest climate change bill that has ever been passed. Even if it is able to live up to its own lofty ambitions it won’t bring the United States in line with commitments to reducing carbon. Per a Princeton University review of the bill, led by Jesse Jenkins, “Before the IRA, the U.S. was cutting its carbon emissions by about 2% per year. With the IRA, Jenkins’ team estimates that pace jumps to about 4% annually. To reach 50% below peak levels by 2030 and net-zero over the next three decades, the country would need to cut carbon emissions by about 6% per year.” The US had, before the passage of the bill, pledged to hit 50% below peak levels by 2030. 
Some may look at the IRA as a noble failure. However, it comes at a precarious time.
Politically, the winds favorable for fighting climate change may be shifting – the Biden coalition includes both tech companies (Per a CNBC article entitled, “Much of the tech world’s climate impact is still being overlooked, and it’s accelerating”, “IT-related emissions are forecast to grow 30% annually.”) and labor unions, some of whom, like the UAW, view the shift from Internal Combustion Engines to electric vehicles as possibly threatening their jobs. It’s unlikely with these partners, and the general reluctance of Republicans to pass large spending bills, that Biden, at least in his first term, will have other legislation in this area.
Americans rarely voice climate as among their top political priorities – in a Gallup poll from last month, for instance, only 2% of recipients claimed Climate Change was the most important problem facing the country today.  There are many reasons for why this is ranging from the immediacy of other pressing issues to the scientific community’s inability to educate a public to relatively low scientific knowledge. 
Whatever the reason, it doesn’t make the 2% number less depressing. 
It’s possible that some of the lack of urgency when it comes to climate change is from a perception, propagated by the media, that the IRA is the end all / be all; that after years of neglect, we managed to pass a climate change bill and that this will be enough to turn the tide. Climate change activists, after nearly two decades of fighting, seemed to have receded a bit from public perception, taken their W, and are, apparently, preparing for the next push. Even those I would be hard pressed to call activists seem to have taken this win and decided, rightly or wrongly, there are bigger fish to fry.
A larger concern I have is with society writ large. Public opinion is formed by personal experiences but it is also formed by information gathered from the outside world. Because very few people (relatively speaking) read widely, the media that is most widely consumed are television and streaming video from the internet. The news media, for years, was increasing climate coverage year over year and, while that coverage was often “doomerism”, coverage is better than non-coverage. However, that may be changing – Per a 2024 article from Media Matters entitled “How broadcast news programs covered climate and the 2024 election in 2023 — and what coverage should include going forward”, “In 2023, broadcast TV news coverage of climate change decreased by 25% from the previous year, and discussion of climate change within the context of the 2024 election appeared in just a handful of segments on broadcast Sunday morning political shows and on PBS’ nightly news program, NewsHour. Though a few stand-out segments demonstrated how news networks might better incorporate climate coverage into their election reporting and vice versa, there was an overall dearth of examples giving these issues the attention they deserve. Far more discussion will be needed in order to consistently cover the high stakes for climate in the outcome of the 2024 election.”
There is also a tendency, I believe, brought on by America’s ability to face existential crises in the past and overcome them, to believe that there is no possibility for America to be significantly weakened by climate change. I call this “The Avengers Effect”, after the superhero team. The Avengers Effect gives the impression that all problems have solutions and that, like the superhero team, something will save us in the end. While it is possible that a super technology (one that is hopefully currently being developed) will overcome the limitations of previous attempts to limit carbon and provide a society of 300 million people with clean energy sometime in the next 15 years, we simply don’t know. The Avengers Effect is multiplied when coupled with its ideological counterpart “doomerism” – the believe that the problem is too large to adequately solve given the current technology and limited time. 
The cost to get to a 100% renewable grid is high but possible – per a 2019 article from Yale Environment 360 titled “Shifting to 100 percent Renewables Would Cost $4.5 Trillion, Analysis Finds”, “Converting the entire U.S. power grid to 100 percent renewable energy in the next decade is technologically and logistically attainable, and would cost an estimated $4.5 trillion, according to a recent analysis by the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie. That’s nearly as much as the United States has spent on the war on terror since 2001.”
Imagine there is a runway that ends at the edge of a cliff. Every aircraft must reach a minimum velocity before liftoff in order to safely clear the edge of the cliff. 
Now, let’s add this wrinkle – every year part of the runway is removed, bringing your plane closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. You want to start the plane as soon as possible in order to give the plane enough time to reach the necessary speed for takeoff. 
Let’s say there is an argument between your aircraft refueler and your navigator over how much fuel the plane will need based on a disagreement about the plane’s ultimate destination. Is this important? Of course. Is it top of mind, to you, the pilot? No. You’re still very much concerned about clearing the edge of the cliff which is getting closer and closer as you sit on the tarmac. 
The cost here is obvious – the longer you wait before beginning the flight, the more power it will take to bring the plane up to the speed necessary to clear the edge. 
This is the main reason for my skepticism – it seems that in the last twenty-five years, we, as a country, have gotten bogged down in the various details of the plan and, as time has marched on, the situation has not become less dire but the resources needed to bring whatever plan is ultimately used to fruition continue to grow. 
At this point, I believe it will take a World War 2 style shift from Butter to Guns (Butter to Green?) meaning a sizable percentage of the population will have to become involved in order to move at the speed necessary to get us to the levels of clean energy and carbon removal needed to ameliorate the worst impacts of climate change while maintaining our current economic system. 
What makes me skeptical of this happening?
The above would likely require a shared sacrifice meaning that individuals would have to forego their economic best interest in order to, at least temporarily, benefit the common good.  
This would be true not only for the wealthy but also for everyone else. The top quintile of Americans, sorted by wealth, have roughly 100 trillion dollars. Assuming that they had a rate of return of 6%, after inflation, they would be able to pay the extra 3.5T it is estimated to cost every year between now and 2050 (per a World Economic Forum article “What’s the price of a green economy? An extra $3.5 trillion a year”) and have 2.5T or roughly $62,500 per person left over. 
Obviously, this is a tremendous amount of money and, despite Bill Gates’ desire to have wealthy Americans foot most of the bill for climate change, there would almost certainly be political pushback should a law pass requiring them to do so.   
Even if I believed that the wealthy had a sense of obligation (which I don’t) and acquiesced to confiscatory taxation, they would be far from the only groups effected. 
The New Republic article entitled “You Will Have to Make Sacrifices to Save the Planet”, explains the needed sacrifices of the masses this way: ”They will pay more for food as the agricultural system fails; fund more wars and more international aid; pay higher medical bills due to increased heat and pollution; and suffer greater losses—of life as well as property—from sea-level rise, flooding, wildfire, and drought.”
This all sounds more intense than wearing masks. 
COVID-19 was the catalyst for my change in thought – It ripped away the illusion that I had harbored for a long time – that there would be a time where collective action was deemed to be necessary to fix an existential threat. 
Before COVID, I thought that we were at least moving in the right direction, that we were relatively close to a consensus and there was enough time to install the technologies needed to avert the worse effects of climate change. 
I’m a lot less sure of that now. As I said above, The Avengers Effect has made us believe that a solution will jump in to save us. I believe that part of the reason for the media’s obsession with Elon Musk is that he has an exciting story. Like Steve Jobs, he’s a brilliant marketer who has used technology to sell a utopian vision of the future (at least to those who can afford it).
I was skeptical of Tesla in 2014 – I didn’t see how it could challenge the established Big Three. I missed out on the insane growth in the valuation of the company, sure, but I still believe the value of Tesla is less to do with the cars themselves and more to do with the short-sighted nature of the established American auto industry, who have dragged their feet for years to truly enter the EV market. The valuation is also, obviously, driven by Elon Musk, who I view with a mixture of appreciation, exhaustion, and trepidation. For all the talk about Musk, the world of transportation hasn’t changed as much as one would think - When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, we read a Weekly Reader with a picture of an electric car on the cover. This was roughly 1993. While in college, in 2004, I watched the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?. Today, electric cars make up roughly 8% of new car sales. 8% - so over the course of 30 years, we’ve gone from 0 to 8%. 
The Avengers Effect confuses and delays the need for real solutions to be considered with the available technology – it makes us look to the future, sure that the answer is right over the horizon, to be here in the nick of time.
The opposite of this would be a collective effort – a critical mass of support, either here or around the world, to make real deep changes. I don’t see any evidence of this happening to the level it would require for us to meet the 2050 goals mentioned earlier.
I hope for the sake of the planet that I am wrong and that this super technology exists. I also hope that a political solution is nearer than it feels now. 
I hate to leave on a somber note but hey – I’ve been wrong before.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Elegant Ramblings. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please consider liking and subscribing to the channel on iTunes or YouTube. You’ll be able to find show notes there. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Hope you enjoyed. Bye for now.