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Kate Aronoff

@katearonoff.bsky.social
11K followers 184 following 347 posts

staff writer @ The New Republic

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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I understand that everyone’s just a squirrel trying to get a nut but it’s feeling glaringly obvious who is being paid by a guy with a very particular axe to grind
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Algorithm on X really making it seem like permitting reform is a tertiary goal in a campaign to shit on like 4 non-profits
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Lisa Song @lisalsong.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This is very wonky and utterly infuriating. Logging companies (w/help from IKEA!) say *literally cutting down trees* should count as carbon negative and be credited as good for the planet. And they might get away with it. newrepublic.com/article/2157...
newrepublic.com
Did the Forestry Industry Just Get to Write Its Own Emissions Rules?
Accusations of industry capture, allegedly secret working groups, and the resignations of two researchers—a scandal is rocking the world of carbon emissions accounting.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Sick of people pretending these guys have an interesting/novel/defensible moral economy!!
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Ultimately just not that mysterious why guys who've reheated the Gospel of Wealth with fake math, want legal impunity and believe economic growth will solve every problem known to man also get along with Trump newrepublic.com/article/2161...
newrepublic.com
Trump Just Pledged to Let AI Companies Do Whatever They Want
Trump and the tech CEOs have a lot in common—not least their sense of total impunity.
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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Astute comment at the end of this that a big problem in the world of voluntary corporate accounting/standards is that it always had as a backdrop a belief that binding regulations might come in the future. And they are looking less likely. newrepublic.com/article/2157...
newrepublic.com
Did the Forestry Industry Just Get to Write Its Own Emissions Rules?
Accusations of industry capture, allegedly secret working groups, and the resignations of two researchers—a scandal is rocking the world of carbon emissions accounting.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I wrote about why dismantling fuel efficiency standards may not actually be good for a US auto industry that is rapidly losing ground against more fuel efficient cars newrepublic.com/article/2159...
newrepublic.com
Trump Isn’t Helping Out the Auto Industry. He’s Helping to Tank It.
The Trump administration is touting its recent rollback of Biden-era fuel efficiency standards as a win for American car manufacturers. It couldn’t have things more backward.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If you are for some reason interested in the perils of industries being allowed to self-regulate then please enjoy this ~3,000 word story I just wrote about a case where that is actively going really, really bad newrepublic.com/article/2157...
newrepublic.com
Did the Forestry Industry Just Get to Write Its Own Emissions Rules?
Accusations of industry capture, allegedly secret working groups, and the resignations of two researchers—a scandal is rocking the world of carbon emissions accounting.
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Danny Cullenward @ghgpolicy.org · 29/09/2026
I don't think self-regulation can be managed without the credible threat of government policy. As @katearonoff.bsky.social writes, it's too easy for companies to walk away from purely voluntary regulation. newrepublic.com/article/2157...
Screenshot of text: "Generally only states can force that kind of change, and the credible threat of regulation is essential for voluntary initiatives like the GHG Protocol. At a time when it’s easier than ever for companies to abandon their climate commitments—and to stop funding green nonprofits—GHG Protocol secretariat staff may be understandably anxious to keep industry on side. Faced with the prospect of these hotly contested accounting methods being drafted into law, well-meaning environmentalists may have to decide between keeping corporate stakeholders engaged and happy, and maintaining scientific integrity."
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Danny Cullenward @ghgpolicy.org · 29/09/2026
I think this has a lot of explanatory power, at least with respect to WRI. (WBCSD isn't hiding its industry-aligned advocacy.) But there's more to it. Some people genuinely believe that theoretical accounting principles require outcomes that make no physical, scientific, or policy sense.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Really helpful thread on my piece from a few days ago from @greenprofgreen.bsky.social, who may know more about the GHG Protocol than anyone on earth!
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Rising interest rates and a fuel crisis with no foreseeable end will surely work out well for automakers that have opted to hyper-specialize in making luxury trucks and SUVs
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Can't think of a better time to be betting on diesel and V-8 engines
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Amodei and Altman are probably not building a Machine God. They might reasonably want to stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year making machines they don’t fully understand, which they also believe could kill everyone newrepublic.com/article/2154...
newrepublic.com
Trump’s Rabid Refusal to Regulate AI Isn’t Even Good for AI
The Trump administration’s wildly permissive attitude toward the AI industry isn’t just bad for the environment and public health (and maybe our collective survival). It’s bad for the companies too.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Not saying this is what's happening, but it'd obviously be strategic for AI companies to push for something called AI safety policy while Republicans still control Congress and the White House
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Danny Groner @dannygroner.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
"Well downstream of all that, local data center activists are tapping into a cross-partisan frustration with politicians of all stripes for—as they see it—prioritizing corporations’ interests over those of constituents who feel blindsided by the massive new developments cropping up around them."
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Monica Potts @monicapotts.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
One thing that strikes me is about data centers is that communities that oppose them might have been able to organize earlier if we had robust local newspapers with reporters who had been reporting on the early approval and planning processes from the start. newrepublic.com/article/2149...
newrepublic.com
The Big Greedy Data Center Next Door
Data centers may be the perfect encapsulation of an economy built to benefit the already rich. After construction started on a vast facility in Vineland, New Jersey, residents didn’t just get mad; the...
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Definitely! Local papers have been really hollowed out there over the last decade, meaning anti-DC activists are the ones filing open records requests and piecing together basic information about how and why the project is being built
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I spent a bunch of this summer writing a feature for @newrepublic.com about the fight over the hyperscale data center being built down the road from my parents' house in South Jersey, looking at some of the many reasons why people hate data centers newrepublic.com/article/2149...
newrepublic.com
The Big Greedy Data Center Next Door
Data centers may be the perfect encapsulation of an economy built to benefit the already rich. After construction started on a vast facility in Vineland, New Jersey, residents didn’t just get mad; the...
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
What a happy coincidence that they got so much funding from Meta board members
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Maybe the real next US growth model was the friends we made along the way
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
A little funny that Abundance basically functioned as an ideological transitional program between green Bidenomics and AI boosterism
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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
SORRY BUT I JUST WENT TO LOOK AT THE COVER... "THE POPE OF FEMA" There's no fucking way.
A cover of a book that is 100% AI-generated that reads "Texas Flood: Power Money, Politics, History, Bureaucracy, and tragedy" by David Richardson -- the pope of FEMA. The photo is of a thunderstorm over a shreded Texas flag and flooded streets/houses.
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Danny Cullenward @ghgpolicy.org · 09/09/2026
This is a great story from @katearonoff.bsky.social on the new UNEP emissions gap report and a recent ERL paper from @arvindpawan1.bsky.social and @hdaigle.bsky.social
newrepublic.com
Carbon Capture Won’t Save Us Anytime Soon
A new U.N. climate report says ​that massive amounts of carbon capture and storage can keep a long-shot climate goal within reach. ​But nobody should be counting on it.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I wrote a quick goodbye to what may well have been the most normal summer of the rest of our lives newrepublic.com/article/2150...
newrepublic.com
Goodbye to the Least Apocalyptic Summer of the Rest of Your Life
It’s been one disaster after another. And it may pale compared to what’s coming.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Desperately want to read a 6,000 world profile of Mark Carney's transition from net-zero finance guru to fossil fuel boosting Canadian nationalist from someone appropriately cynical about both eras
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
It's straightforwardly very lucrative to tell wealthy people the best thing they can do for our collective well-being is to keep getting wealthier!
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Hard to escape the feeling that effective altruism often functions as a way for some smart and usually well-intentioned people to do mental gymnastics around political economy
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
So is the point here to keep a bunch of Democratic candidates who've just won their primaries from winning in the general
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
At this point gotta imagine that, for people who know better, not acknowledging climate change is somewhat damaging at a psychic level
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Democratic Party*
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I think it’s morally bankrupt to build a political faction around the cause of courting tech executives who have become progressively more dependent on fossil capital back into the Democrat Party, then pretend there is some objective reason to be scared of mentioning climate change
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
It’s important to have an accurate account of our changing material reality and what to do about it
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
The line between climate hushing and climate denial is getting awfully thin
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Political spending to tailor-make AI regulations are where this stuff most clearly comes home to roost. But hard to imagine there isn't strategy baked into frontier lab execs casting themselves as benevolent philosopher-kings who are too concerned about the future to engage with the material world
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Fascinating how much of a firewall there seems to be between mainstream reporting on local anti-data center fights, and on frontier labs debating the ethics of AGI, open source models, automation, etc. Arguably these things are very related!
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
The people who wanna pick dumb fights over historical accuracy in period films never make the case that audiences should look at gnarly boils and rotting brown teeth for three hours
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Infuriating how much rich world climate advocacy over the last decade has focused on climate change primarily as an investment opportunity for lower-carbon tech and not as a thing that is actually happening
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Republicans threatening tariffs on Canada over wildfire smoke and gloating about Europeans dying because they don't have air conditioning are really bad omens for what happens as the climate crisis becomes undeniable and goes unexplained
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
The question of whether politicians should talk about climate change is a weird stand-in for the question of how to govern like it exists, and help people make sense of the fact that the climate they grew up in no longer exists
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
B Reathing in wildfire smoke Aggressive diarrhea Ticks everywhere Brat summer is back 🍏🔥
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
fellas is it ruggedly masculine to freak out about being warmer than 78 degrees
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Right-wingers yelping about being told (as in past heatwaves!) to set their AC to 78—so a grid that serves >8.5 million people doesn't shut down—really illustrating what AFAIK is a pretty US-specific pathology: being militantly proud of your extreme sensitivity to mild discomfort
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sixmile.bsky.social @sixmile.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
"Our societies are navigating a climate-changed world with last century’s infrastructure. That’s not the result of some surplus of climate policies but of a profound lack of them." newrepublic.com/article/2125...
newrepublic.com
This Is the Week for Democrats to Start Saying “Climate Change” Again
The party has gone quiet on the issue. As a heat wave sends temperatures soaring past 100, they can’t remain mum any longer.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
I wrote about heat waves, the bizarre culture wars around air conditioning in Europe, and why Democrats shouldn't let Republicans be the only ones talking about all the suffering the climate crisis is doling out newrepublic.com/article/2125...
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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
" If left-of-center politicians and ostensibly fact-based news organizations aren’t willing to accurately interpret our climate-changed reality, however, the right will be more than happy to do it for them." newrepublic.com/article/2125...
newrepublic.com
This Is the Week for Democrats to Start Saying “Climate Change” Again
The party has gone quiet on the issue. As a heat wave sends temperatures soaring past 100, they can’t remain mum any longer.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Genuinely nauseating how much discourse about the European heat wave on X is people in the US blaming cultural preferences, emissions concerns, degrowth etc for Europeans not having AC. Whipped-up culture war sociopathy seemingly designed to blame a whole continent for their own suffering & death
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I wrote about the irony of Trump going to war with the Reflecting Pool algal bloom as his administration tries (again) to defund the institutions that keep people, pets and economies safe from harmful algal blooms newrepublic.com/article/2122...
newrepublic.com
Trump’s Algae Problem Is a Lot Bigger Than the Reflecting Pool
The Trump administration is trying to further defund the monitoring of harmful algal blooms. It’s fitting that the president would be faced with an algal bloom in his own backyard.
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Would love to know the origins of liberal politicians referring to multilateral funding commitments as "reparations," which has been a longtime favorite jab from the US at the UNFCCC. Moynihan?
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Kate Aronoff @katearonoff.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Anyway there's a lot of willful misinformation going around about the MOU to end the war in Iran
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