Leigh Phillips
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leighphillips.bsky.social
Leigh Phillips
@leighphillips.bsky.social
Journalist & science writer (Nature, Sci Am, New Scientist, Guardian, Telegraph, Jacobin). Almost a geologist. Co-author of People’s Republic of Walmart (Verso, 2019). Author of Austerity Ecology (Zer0 Books, 2014).
Reposted by Leigh Phillips
@fredstaffordcs.bsky.social knocks it out of the park with this. The NYPA nuclear announcement should be celebrated as one of the most critical experiments in rebuilding state capacity in the country. The way we win is with big public investment at all scales:

jacobin.com/2025/07/hoch...
Atomic Abundance and Its Enemies
Wrangling over the construction of nuclear power in New York State has revealed the priorities of some of the state’s biggest environmental lobbies. For them, creating bureaucratic procedures they can...
jacobin.com
July 16, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Leigh Phillips
"Those of us... who come from the Left and remain connected to industrial labor — can tell you plainly: it’s both unaccountable markets *and* an unaccountable NGO-academia-legal bureaucratic class that are stalling public progress."
August 3, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Leigh Phillips
I was confused by the wholesale Left rejection of "Abundance" both bc it's central to the general socialist project & bc the book itself has valuable insights.

So here finally is our sympathetic/critical review of the book & its critics (w @leighphillips.bsky.social & @fredstaffordcs.bsky.social).
August 3, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Leigh Phillips
If the left analysis goes no further than "sticks vs de-risking subsidies" and openly embraces all of the above, maybe the left is fetishizing the particular consumer product too much, at the expense of clear thinking.
May 1, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Leigh Phillips
This will add to new home costs; will necessitate means tested loans for buyers; will create a vampiric dependency on solar services firms to make the most of the panels; and will require subsidies from utility rate base to compensate exported energy, whose value decreases the more there is.
May 1, 2025 at 12:14 PM
As Trump targets NASA with 20% budget cuts, & deeper cuts to planetary science, earth science & any research remotely sniffing of climate, the Guardian asked me to write a defence of space exploration against the emerging anti-space ideology on the liberal-left.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
How space exploration can improve life on Earth | Leigh Phillips
There is a cynical, ‘anti-space’ ideology emerging, especially on some parts of the left. But this is misguided
www.theguardian.com
April 26, 2025 at 5:29 PM
March 11, 2025 at 5:23 PM
I don’t have a lot of time right now with all the coursework of my exploration geology MSc, but I managed to squeeze out a left defence of an independent Canada in the face of Trump’s tariffs & annexationist threats: jacobin.com/2025/02/cana...
The Beaver and the Eagle: A 200-Year-Old Argument
The left case for an independent Canada.
jacobin.com
February 2, 2025 at 10:29 AM
How do you titillate an ocelot?
November 27, 2023 at 8:19 PM