 People like things they like The political scientist Ben Ansell, writing on his Substack Political Calculus, makes a bold claim: People like popular things, and politicians who attack those popular things will probably not make themselves popular by doing so. This may not sound groundbreaking, but apparently it is: In the U.S., the Republican party is furiously attacking Taylor Swift (incredibly popular) and American football (even more popular). Previously it has attacked Disney World. In the U.K., the political right has picked fights with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (volunteers who save drowning people at great personal risk) and Premier League soccer players. But normies just don’t care that much about politics, and they like all those things. Political parties across the spectrum have been captured by “political hobbyists,” too-online people who have created their own vocabularies and extended universes, says Ansell. Parties need hobbyists — without their enthusiasm it is hard to run election campaigns. But politicians need to be careful not to get “high on their own supply” or risk “undermining the support of normies you need to win elections.” The useless person’s guide to being useful So you want to do something important and meaningful, but there’s a small problem: You’re not that smart and you’re not that talented. (We are speaking to a hypothetical “you” here, since clearly that does not apply to any Flagship readers.) What should you do? The blogger Adaobi has some useful advice: Remember that smart and talented people often lack other skills, and you can provide them. For instance: Be audacious! In her experience, “most people who are talented or smart are scared of doing things,” so make bold moves. And be prepared to do the grunt work and boring tasks that need doing but no one wants to do: “Smart and talented people often want to do creative work.” Work hard and work fast. And finish things: “Most people don’t finish things. They either get distracted, don’t have the motivation to or get stuck.” And don’t be afraid to ask naive questions. Coal plants up, coal use down “If I got a pound (£) for every time someone said ‘if solar and wind are so cheap, why is China building so many coal plants?’,” sighs the environmental scientist Hannah Ritchie on Sustainability by numbers, “I’d be able to fund the global energy transition myself.” But it is, she notes, a valid question. We are often told that renewables are the cheapest form of energy ever produced, and yet one of the world’s superpowers is building loads of the dirtiest power stations you can. Why is that? It’s probably bad economic planning, says Ritchie, a decision which will lead to “underused power plants and stranded assets.” China is indeed building lots of coal stations — but most of the individual stations are running less and less often. In the 2000s, coal plants were operational 70% of the time; now it’s about 50%. Despite the new plants, coal use is expected to peak soon. Partly, the new stations may be “peaker plants,” there to provide power when solar or wind fail. But there’s too much even for that. The likeliest explanation, she says, is that Chinese provincial governments approve and build them, “regardless of whether they’re needed,” because they provide “economic activity which looks good on their short-term scorecard,” even though it “leads to chronic oversupply in the long term.” |
