There’s an interesting article by Michelle Lewis at Electrek on Illinois’s plans to stop using fossil fuels:

February 15, 2022, update: In less than a half year, solar companies have installed more than 2,000 rooftop and community solar projects in the state, which is enough clean energy to power 30,000 homes, the Solar Energy Industries Association reported today.

Further, Illinois businesses are expected to complete more than 8,400 rooftop and community solar projects by the end of 2022, and the state’s solar workforce is expected to increase 47% by the end of the year.

Clean energy businesses reported that they have already expanded work on diversity, equity, and inclusion by recruiting from solar job training programs, creating internal committees focused on diversity, and hiring consultants and recruiters to guide their diversity efforts.

Data was provided by members of the Solar Energy Industries Association, Illinois Solar Energy Association and the Coalition for Community Solar Access, and the Illinois Power Agency.

September 15 update: Governor JB Pritzker today signed the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act into law today. In the new bill signed into law, the Prairie State coal plant will be required to cut its emissions by 45% by 2038, and to close altogether by 2045.

A bipartisan majority in the Illinois House has voted (83 yes to 33 no) to pass the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (SB2408).

Governor JB Pritzker (D-IL) will sign the historic clean energy bill tomorrow that will shut down all of the state’s fossil fuel plants by 2045. It also sets more aggressive targets for the dirtiest plants and those in environmental justice communities.

The bill includes spending $580 million per year to increase “clean energy”.

A couple of comments. First, to put those 30,000 homes into perspective, there are about 4 million homes in Illinois (that doesn’t count multi-family dwellings). Second, $580 million sounds like a lot but by the time it has run the gauntlet of politicians, politically-connected community organizations, and cronies, I’ll be surprised if there’s anything lef to spend on increasing clean energy.

I’m reading a lot of highly emotional, heart-rending, actually, pieces about the plight of the people in Afghanistan.

Let me recap my views: I don’t think we should ever have put “boots on the ground” in Afghanistan. I think in the aftermath of 9/11 we should have mounted what amounts to an enormously damaging raid against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan—something so destructive it would be hard to imagine. Tora Bora should have been reduced to slag.

We spent the last 20 years in a futile attempt at removing the Taliban and building up the country. Now what?

In my opinion now nothing. The situation is sad, tragic even but we are under no moral obligation to to send life-saving supplies to people who want to kill us. We have no way of keeping those supplies out of the hands of the Taliban.

The people of Afghanistan are quite capable of removing the Taliban themselves but, yes, it would bear costs. The Taliban are Afghans and well-armed.

What did they think would happen when we left?

I won’t go quite so far as saying that I materially agree with Ian Hill’s analysis at RealClearDefense

What does Putin want?

Firstly, he wants to bring Ukraine back within Russia’s orbit. This is partly for emotional reasons of national identity and imperial nostalgia: Putin, like many Russians, doesn’t really accept Ukraine as a separate country and people, and resents its post-Soviet independence.

But more than this, Putin has a wider geopolitical goal. He wants to redraw Europe’s post-Cold War security architecture.

In particular, he wants to forestall and reverse NATO’s eastward expansion. And as a corollary, restore Russia’s sphere of influence around its western borders, to give it strategic depth.

but I do agree with a lot of it. I think he overstates this:

It’s also about political insecurity. The Kremlin is fearful of open democracies flourishing on Russia’s doorstep (whether in Ukraine or Belarus), providing an unhelpful model for its domestic opponents and vectors of foreign influence.

Somehow he manages to omit the possibility of stationing missiles including tactical nuclear weapons right on Russia’s border. And the persecution of ethnic Russians in some of those formerly Soviet republics. But I think this is about right:

The bigger context is Putin’s overriding aim to reassert Russia’s standing and influence globally as a great power, especially in its near neighbourhood, and rebuild Russia’s hard power – a strong Russian military – to support this ambition.

So far, coercive diplomacy seems to have worked for Putin. He’s got the West’s attention – in buckets. Russia’s security guarantee demands, accompanied by bellicose rhetoric and the menacing buildup of over 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders (and more in Belarus), have forced Western leaders to engage with Moscow on Russia’s terms.

By limiting gas supplies, Russia has reminded European leaders of the leverage it enjoys through Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

And he’s taken steps to reaffirm and deepen relations with China, to ensure Beijing has Moscow’s back in any crisis with the West.

Tactically, then, the threat of force has proved effective for Putin, securing the negotiating high ground and the ability to dial up and down the pressure on Ukraine, and the West.

which you will notice echoes what I’ve been saying around here. But I think this is open to question:

But if, as Western leaders are warning, Putin now decides actually to invade Ukraine, this could prove a strategic blunder, proving counter-productive longer-term for Russia. Far from drawing Ukraine closer to Russia, such intervention would alienate the Ukrainian people, and drive them closer to Europe. Russia’s invasion would be fiercely resisted by Ukrainians and inflame nationalist sentiment among the 43 million strong population.

Next, it would galvanise the cohesion and sense of common purpose within NATO, strengthening ties between the United States and its European allies. It would bring down far-reaching sanctions on Russia. This would badly damage the Russian economy, and worsen the livelihoods of ordinary Russians (with whom a war now with Ukraine is unlikely to play as well as the Crimea annexation did in 2014). And this would likely drive Russia into greater dependence on China.

That hasn’t happened so far. Germany has stalwartly refused to do anything that might actually bear costs for Germany. And I’m afraid this is fanciful:

Moreover, energy dependence works both ways. While Europe needs Russian gas, Russia also needs to sell it, and Europe is Moscow’s biggest customer. Cutting off gas supplies would ultimately be self-defeating for Russia.

Does he really think that Russia won’t be able to sell the natural gas it produces? Here’s a pretty good summary of the situation:

Russia has a range of options to destabilise Ukraine, short of fully-fledged invasion – including a limited military incursion ostensibly to protect Russian citizens in the separatist regions of Donbas in eastern Ukraine, waging cyber-attacks on Ukrainian institutions and infrastructure, and cutting off gas and electricity supplies to Ukraine. Or any combination of these.

which in general is what I think is likely. He concludes with what is to me an unlikely description of European steps to defuse the situation. Read the whole thing.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal consider the implications of a Russian invasion of Ukraine:

It’s worth saying what should have been obvious long ago but was forgotten after decades of relative peace in Europe: A Russian invasion of Ukraine should mean the end to illusions about shared international values and norms. The era of authoritarian imperialism is back with a vengeance.

Russia and China want to topple the U.S.-led international order and create spheres of influence they dominate. They see a retreating America, consumed with internal division, and they are going to exploit it. Ukraine is only the first target. The world may soon recall with nostalgia the decades when American power and principles enforced global peace.

I will only say that you cannot coherently speak of a rules-based liberal international order while invading other countries at will without Security Council authorization or deploy armed drones in a dozen countries to assassinate people you don’t like. We’ve been doing that for 50 years under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

At The Nation economist James Galbraith argues for leaving interest rates just where they are and engaging in a large number of policy changes including reducing the scale of our military, nationalizing the large banks, “Medicare for All”, imposing controls on prices, rents, substantial spending on infrastructure, mass transit, housing, an “rebuilding cities”.

What would be the likely outcome of such a program?

I’ll start. Since the federal government would be unable to extract sufficient taxes, the federal deficit would balloon. There would be shortages of many consumer goods and a substantial increase in homelessness and unemployment.

I return to what one of my economics profs once said all those many years ago: we don’t know how to produce prosperity but we do know how to produce shortages.

In his most recent Washington Post column Fareed Zakaria asks a very good question: why is the Biden Administration driving Russia and China closer together?

The Biden administration has handled the Ukraine crisis intelligently and effectively, formulating a policy that could be described as “deterrence plus diplomacy.” It made credible threats about the costs of a Russian invasion and rallied its European allies in an impressive show of unity. And while (correctly) refusing to promise that Ukraine will be barred from NATO, it has offered to discuss almost everything else, from arms control to missile deployments.

This crisis, however, has highlighted a larger strategic failure, one that extends beyond this administration. One of the central rules of strategy is to divide your adversaries. But, increasingly, U.S. foreign policy is doing the opposite. Earlier this month, in a more-than-5,000-word document, Russia and China affirmed a “friendship” with “no limits.” The two powers appear to be closer to one another than at any time in 50 years.

but this is the part of the column that caught my eye:

For Russia — essentially a declining power — China’s support is a godsend. The most significant reason even tough sanctions against Russia might not work is that China, the world’s second-largest economy, could help. Russia recently announced new deals to sell more oil and gas to China, and Beijing could buy even more energy and other imports from the country. It could also let Moscow use various Chinese mechanisms and institutions to evade U.S. financial restrictions. “China is our strategic cushion,” Sergey Karaganov, a Kremlin adviser, told Nikkei. “We know that in any difficult situation, we can lean on it for military, political and economic support.”

To those who would argue that this is simply a case of two autocracies ganging up, it’s worth noting that it was not always thus. In 2014 (when both countries were also autocracies), China pointedly refused to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has still not recognized the annexation of Crimea. Similarly, Beijing did not support Russia’s intervention in Georgia and has expressed its support for that country’s territorial integrity and independence.

China and Russia are both adversaries of the West, but they are very different from one another. Lumping them together is a sign that ideology has triumphed over strategy in Washington these days. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a geopolitical spoiler state. It has invaded two neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine, and occupied territory in those countries, something almost unprecedented in Europe since World War II. It has reportedly used cyberwarfare to attack and weaken more than a dozen democracies, including the United States. It has supported allies such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad with brute force. It has murdered its opponents, even when they are living in countries such as Germany and England. And as a petrostate, it actually benefits from instability, which can raise oil and gas prices.

China is different. It is a rising world power that seeks greater influence as it gains economic strength. It has been aggressive in its policies toward some nations, but as a big economic actor, it can credibly claim to want stability in the world. As Robert Manning noted in Foreign Policy in 2020, “Beijing is not trying to replace the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and other U.N. institutions; it is trying to play a more dominant role in them.”

That China has gained economic strength over the last 30 years is indisputable. Is it a “rising world power”? For that matter is Russia a “declining power”? Let’s see some objective criteria.

In China’s case its population continues to grow but its rate of increase has declined sharply—its population is expected to start declining soon. Indeed, that decline may already have started. Similarly, its GDP per capita continues to grow but that growth, too, has declined sharply. It’s just about the same as Russia’s and a fraction of ours.

In recent years China has expanded its foreign relations network. Its strongest bids for world power status may be in the several South American ports China has negotiated and presently has under construction. These include a “megaport” in Chancay, Peru and a newly-negotiated port in Argentina, on the Atlantic, a major milestone.

For years China’s “Belt and Road” strategy resulted in improving relations with many of its neighbors. Today it is embroiled in disputes with a number of them including South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, and Australia.

After a steep decline, Russia’s population is now roughly stable and its real per capita GDP is approximate stable as well. It remains the pre-eminent nuclear power in the world with a nuclear arsenal of about 4,500 warheads (compare with our 4,000).

IMO I find claims that Russia is declining suspect and, while China continues to strengthen, the rate appears to be slowing. For our part I think we’re certainly declining in a relative sense. Whether we’re declining absolutely depends on definitions. Despite some recent PR losses I still think we have the most capable military on the planet.

At The Nation Andrew J. Bacevich has penned a jeremiad against all of the warmongering from our political leaders and media these days:

While some wars may be necessary and unavoidable, a war pitting Russia against Ukraine—and potentially involving the United States—doesn’t make the cut. Yet, should such a war occur, some members of the American commentariat will cheer. They have yearned for a showdown with Vladimir Putin. The depth of their animus toward Putin and the hyperbole it inspires is a bit of a puzzle that deserves examination.

A veteran New York Times correspondent charges that Putin “has put a gun to the head of the West.” In an op-ed recently published in the Times, a former US national security official accuses President Biden of “sending the message that the United States is afraid of confronting Russia militarily.” “In an era when fascism is on the march,” a Boston Globe columnist warns, “much more may hang in the balance” than simply the security of a single country on the far eastern fringe of Europe.

A sense of impending doom punctuates the taunts: With unnamed fascists gathering outside the city gates and the very survival of the West at risk, the sitting president succumbs to cowardice. Whence does such overheated language come? What does it signify?

He attributes it first to Russophobia (likely), then American exceptionalism, before finally proposing it’s a “wag the dog” scheme:

Those eager for a showdown with Russia over Ukraine offer one answer to that question: Putting a brutal bully in his place will go far toward restoring American exceptionalism’s lost luster. It’s “wag the dog” in modified form: militarized assertiveness in faraway places promising a shortcut to redemption.

Don’t believe it. The people gunning for a showdown with Putin come from the ranks of those who two decades ago were gunning for a showdown with Saddam Hussein, while promising a happy outcome.

but I want to offer full-throated support for his next suggestion:

There is an alternative approach far more likely to yield positive results. That alternative approach posits a reformulation of American exceptionalism based not on muscle flexing in faraway places but on modeling liberty, democracy, and humane values here at home. The clear imperative of the moment is to get our own house in order. Stumbling into yet another needless war won’t help.

I do want to complain about one thing in his piece. That America is an outlier, different from other countries, is obvious. Much of what progressives object to in it are those very qualities. However, Dr. Bacevich is confusing American exceptionalism and Americanism. American exceptionalism is a fact of life; it is what makes America America. Americanism, the notion that we are superior to all other countries and have a mission to transform the world, is a curse, a blight.

David Brooks’s most recent New York Times column is a bit rambling but let me summarize it for you:

1. Our system was set up as a liberal democracy.
2. Majoritarianism erodes liberal democracy.
3. Humanity’s normal state is one of violence, authoritarianism, and oligarchy.
4. The decline or relative decline of the U. S. is returning humanity to its normal state.
5. The “Gramscian long march” through our institutions is undermining us.

I’m not sure that Mr. Brooks himself recognizes that’s what he’s saying. Here’s his conclusion:

The real problem is in the seedbeds of democracy, the institutions that are supposed to mold a citizenry and make us qualified to practice democracy. To restore those seedbeds, we first have to relearn the wisdom of the founders: We are not as virtuous as we think we are. Americans are no better than anyone else. Democracy is not natural; it is an artificial accomplishment that takes enormous work.

Then we need to fortify the institutions that are supposed to teach the democratic skills: how to weigh evidence and commit to truth; how to correct for your own partisan blinders and learn to doubt your own opinions; how to respect people you disagree with; how to avoid catastrophism, conspiracy and apocalyptic thinking; how to avoid supporting demagogues; how to craft complex compromises.

Democrats are not born, they are made. If the 21st century is to get brighter as it goes along, we have to get a lot better at making them. We don’t only have to worry about the people tearing down democracy. We have to worry about who is building it up.

Do you see what I mean? What are “the institutions that are supposed to mold a citizenry, etc.”? I don’t think that we as a country at this point let alone he and I agree on that. I would list those institutions as (in descending order of importance):

• the absolute nuclear family
• churches and religious organizations
• fraternal organizations
• schools
• the press
• state and local governments
• the federal government

Is it actually possible to “restore” the absolute nuclear family without discounting or at least offending the activists of “homosexuality and transgenderism”, something that earlier in the column he associates with autocracy. For schools and the press to play the role he envisions wouldn’t they need to be dedicated to building up liberal democracy rather than tearing it down? The questions are almost endless.

Does he imagine alternative institutions rising in the place of those I’ve listed? It took the better part of a millennium or, in some cases, millennia to build the institutions I’ve listed. You can’t just go online and get FedEx to deliver new ones.

Wednesday has passed and Thursday has passed without the predicted Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of this writing it’s presently around 4:00pm in Moscow. I see that Matt Taibbi’s take on the present situation resembles mine:

If cluelessness can be art, American journalists unveiled their Sistine Chapel this week, in a remarkable collection of misreports and hack stenography surrounding a predicted invasion of Ukraine.

The mess began last Friday, February 11th, when National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan gave an address warning American citizens to evacuate Ukraine. “If a Russian attack on Ukraine proceeds, it is likely to begin with aerial bombing and missile attacks that could obviously kill civilians without regard to their nationality,” he said. “I will not comment on the details of our intelligence information,” he added, before doing just that: “I do want to be clear: It could begin during the Olympics,” i.e. before the Beijing games end on February 20th.

Around the time of Sullivan’s comments, American reporters began telling audiences a curiously detailed story about upcoming Russian invasion plans. PBS NewsHour’s Nick Schifrin cited “three Western and defense sources” in saying Vladimir Putin had already made up his mind to invade. He then cited six sources — “US and Western officials” — who told him the U.S. expected an invasion of Ukraine the following week. These voices left little to the imagination, saying the invasion would be a “horrific, bloody campaign,” with two days of aerial bombardment, followed by electronic warfare and possible regime change:

and concludes:

It should be clear to any reporter that a national security source who whispers not only the alleged date of a coming invasion, but the number of days of aerial bombardment and the war’s expected level of horror and bloodiness, is either yanking your chain with a fairy tale, or using you, or both. Reporters on this beat nonetheless repeated this tale over and over, as if it were patriotic duty.

Will Russia invade Ukraine? It might. Putin might already be achieving his objectives without war in real Sun Tzu fashion.

Meanwhile the Associated Press reports that Russia will be conducting “nuclear drills”;

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia announced massive nuclear drills while Western leaders grasped Friday for ways to avert a new war in Europe amid soaring East-West tensions, after unusually dire U.S. warnings that Moscow could order an invasion of Ukraine any day.

Immediate worries focused on the volatile front lines of eastern Ukraine, where an upsurge of recent shelling tore through the walls of a kindergarten and basic communication was disrupted. Western officials, focused on an estimated 150,000 Russian troops posted around Ukraine’s borders, fear the long-simmering conflict could provide the spark for a broader war.

The drumbeat of warnings that a larger conflict could start at any moment continued Friday after U.S. President Joe Biden warned that Washington saw no signs of a promised Russian withdrawal — but instead saw more troops moving toward the border with Ukraine.

Short of hoisting up a Gadsden flag could hardly make his point more clearly.