Leah Stokes

@leahstokes.bsky.social

62K followers 1.2K following 750 posts

Professor of climate + energy policy at UCSB. Alumni of MIT, Columbia and UToronto. Hosts "A Matter of Degrees" podcast. Cuts carbon pollution! Proudly 🇨🇦 Gardener 🌱 leahstokes.com

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Leah Cardamore Stokes is a Canadian-American political scientist specializing in environmental policy. She is the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition, Stokes is a senior policy consultant at Evergreen Action and Rewiring America. She also hosts the climate change podcast A Matter of Degrees. Her research focuses on political behavior, public opinion, and the politics of energy and environmental policy in the United States. .. more

Political science 32%

Environmental science 16%

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Leah Stokes @leahstokes.bsky.social · Jan 15

It's official: I'm writing a book. Should be out early fall 2026. Thrilled to be working with MIT Press.

Book announcement for "The Carbon Wave."

Reposted by Leah Stokes

John Bistline @bistline.bsky.social · 2d

"Hard-to-abate" is sometimes code for "we haven't looked closely yet." This great new report shows opportunities for clean heat (low/medium-temp industrial process heat) through electrification, which also has public health benefits.

Leah Stokes @leahstokes.bsky.social · 3d

Unbelievably inhumane conditions. No wonder the Trump administration didn't want Americans to see this reporting. Must watch.

Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · 3d

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Joanna Bryson, Naomi Klein , and 46 more Anne Applebaum, Joanna Bryson, Naomi Klein, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Nandita Sharma, Kimberly A. Prather, A. E. Dessler, Peter Thorne, Gordon Pennycook, Brendan Nyhan, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Steve Peers, John McLaren, Rosemary A. Joyce, Amir Attaran, Efrén O. Pérez, Guy Grossman, Philip Nel, Anders Nilsson, Juan Cole, Daniel W. Drezner, Clyde W. Barrow, David R. Miller, Robert Wolfe, Johann N. Neem, Michael Zimmer, Andrew L. Whitehead, Gerald Friedman, Jacob T. Levy, Robert B. Reich, Els Torreele, Jen Schneider, Paul Fisher, Ann Bartow, Leah Stokes, Greg Linden, Greg O’Brien, Gerardo Martí, Richard M. Carpiano, Joanna L. Grossman, Tim Stephens, Daxton R. Stewart, Nicole Guenther Discenza, Aviel Roshwald, John Christman, Dan Immergluck, Timothy D. McBride, Jesse R. Lasky, Pieter Vantieghem

Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · 3d

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Reposted by A. E. Dessler, Stefan Rahmstorf, Peter Thorne , and 4 more A. E. Dessler, Stefan Rahmstorf, Peter Thorne, Gavin A. Schmidt, John Fasullo, Smith, Leah Stokes

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 4d

I look forward to the legally required, transparent peer review process required by the US Global Change Research Act and the Information Quality Act. I always thought they would try to do a NCA with Judith Curry, five old men and a LLM.

It’s the gold standard of US climate research. Contrarians could write the next one.

Researchers who have downplayed the threat of global warming have been asked to author the next National Climate Assessment.

www.eenews.net

Leah Stokes @leahstokes.bsky.social · 5d

Also the evidence that people don't care about climate change is thin and best. It's just a talking point a bunch of pundits have spent a year repeating, trying to brainwash us all.

Also his points about Canadian leftists loving fossil fuels are HILARIOUSLY wrong lol.

Appreciate you!

Reposted by Leah Stokes

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 5d

Yglesias wants to take us backwards to the stale coal vs. natural gas fights of the 2000s that anchor the climate debate in fossil fuels. The debate must move forwards, beyond fossil fuels that corrupt our politics, drive inflation, harm public health, & foul our climate, air & water, public lands.

Screenshot of Yglesias post reading: "Claim here from a green NGO guy is that I am a “corporate shill” for believing that gas is cleaner than coal.

Does that make him a corporate shill for coal for arguing that I’m wrong? This is a childish way to argue. We simply disagree. Who is right?" that quote posts Aaron Regunberg post reading: "Matt Yglesias is a corporate shill. This is well attested. But he really took his hackery to the
next level in this essay for the Times. "Essay" is actually a very generous word to describe this blatant regurgitation of oil and gas industry talking points, which relies for its citations on sources like Energy In Depth, the Big Oil front group that the Times' own reporting has described as being directed by ExxonMobil. Essentially every line in this piece is wrong. And not like "I disagree with that opinion" wrong—like empirically, demonstrably false, as you'd expect from the talking points of an industry that has spent decades lying about
these issues. Yglesias claims that natural gas "is much cleaner than coal"—it isn't, according to the Times, which reported that gas "can be just as harmful to the climate" unless the industry can
"all but eliminate the leaks that plague its use.""

Reposted by Katharine Hayhoe, Gavin A. Schmidt, Scott L. Greer , and 12 more Katharine Hayhoe, Gavin A. Schmidt, Scott L. Greer, Daniel Webster, Christopher Wright, Jonathan M. Gilligan, Valerie Mueller, David G. Stewart, Dana R. Fisher, Jen Schneider, Michael Jones‐Correa, Ann Bartow, Leah Stokes, David Darmofal, Peter Jacobs

Sean Casten @seancasten.bsky.social · 5d

This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...

Opinion | Obama Supported It. The Left in Canada and Norway Does. Why Don’t Democrats?

www.nytimes.com

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 6d

It is utterly catastrophic that RFK Jr. plans to end CDC recommendations for most childhood vaccines.

It’s a betrayal of science, ethics, compassion, and the people of the United States.

And it was also a specific goal of Project 2025 (page 254).

Screenshot from project 2025 that says By statute or regulation, CDC guidance must be prohibited from taking on a prescriptive character. For example, never again should CDC officials be allowed to say in their official capacity that school children "should be" masked or vaccinated (through a schedule or otherwise) or prohibited from learning in a school building.
Such decisions should be left to parents and medical providers. We have learned that when CDC says what people "should" do, it readily becomes a "must" backed by severe punishments, including criminal penalties. CDC should report on the risks and effectiveness of all infectious disease-mitigation measures dispassionately and leave the "should" and "must" policy calls to politically accountable parties.
Conflicts of Interest. There was a time when the CDC could not take money

Reposted by Leah Stokes

Leah Stokes @leahstokes.bsky.social · 7d

♥️♥️♥️

Reposted by Leah Stokes

Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 7d

Naturally @leahstokes.bsky.social is on it:

Electricity Should Be Free at Noon

And two other ideas for lowering electricity costs

www.theatlantic.com

Reposted by Leah Stokes

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 7d

Anyway, no worries, Kash Patel is on the job, and half of FBI agents are working immigration enforcement donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

More recent data suggests that these numbers are increasing, with nearly half of FBI agents in major field offices, and about one-quarter of all FBI agents, now working on immigration enforcement.

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Katharine Hayhoe, Valerie M. Delmotte , and 22 more Joanna Bryson, Katharine Hayhoe, Valerie M. Delmotte, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Helmut Haberl, Klaus E. Meyer, Garry Peterson, Arthur Geßler, Ben Bond‐Lamberty, John Fasullo, Nancy Knowlton, Jonathan A. Foley, Steve Peers, Harvey J. Miller, Richard Waite, Éva E. Plagányi, Gernot Wagner, Sabine Pahl, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Randall A. Kramer, Andréas Nilsson, Leah Stokes, Georg Weizsäcker, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Sheila R. Foster

Science Magazine @science.org · 7d

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

Learn more about this year's #BOTY and other big advances in science: https://scim.ag/493Tpgx

Qianjiadong Reservoir in southern Hunan, China, produces a double harvest: solar energy and yellow carp. The solar farm produces up to 80 megawatts of power while the fish forage beneath the panels. With a massive scale-up of solar and wind at home and cheap exports of the technology, China is driving a worldwide surge of renewable energy—Science’s 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

Reposted by Mark D. White, Fabián Muniesa, Stacy D. VanDeveer , and 7 more Mark D. White, Fabián Muniesa, Stacy D. VanDeveer, Lisa Diedrich, Ann Bartow, Leah Stokes, Manisha Sinha, Nathan P. Kalmoe, James M. Thomas, David Darmofal

Rolling Stone @rollingstone.com · 7d

Melissa Hortman Died in a Shocking Act of Political Violence. This Is the Story of Her Life

The Minnesota Speaker’s closest friends and family open up for the first time.

Read @stephenrodrick.bsky.social's exclusive: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Reposted by Leah Stokes

Senator Martin Heinrich @heinrich.senate.gov · 8d

It's hard to believe, but we're having the public lands sell-off fight all over again.

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 9d

NSF is about to dismantle NCAR at Russell Vought's direction to protect the fossil fuel industry. It's hard to communicate just how much NCAR does, so let's take a look: I've never worked at NCAR, and I've worked with NCAR researchers once ever. What scientific discoveries has NCAR made possible? 👇

Russ Vought (piss man) tweet about doing piss man shit: The National Science Foundation will be breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country. A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.

Leah Stokes @leahstokes.bsky.social · 9d

Thanks Ross!

Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 9d

NCAR is quite literally our global mothership.

Everyone who works in climate and weather has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources.

Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.

Unbelievable.

Trump moves to dismantle major US climate research center in Colorado

The Trump administration is breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research, taking aim at one of the world's leading climate research labs.

www.usatoday.com

Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 9d

Unbelievable. This would be a terrible blow to American science, writ large. It would decimate not only climate research, but also the kind of weather, wildfire, and disaster research that has underpinned half a century of progress in prediction, early warning, and increased resilience.

USA TODAY @usatoday.com · 9d

Exclusive: The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, according to a senior White House official, taking aim at one of the world's leading climate research labs.