What’s great about Abundance by Klein & Thompson – and what’s missing

Ten points from an internationalist energy nerd

Abundance is terrific. I listened to the audiobook by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson on my daily walk and ripped right through it.

Here’s what I love:

1. Abundance makes a compelling case for (what else?) abundance. More is better. More housing, more energy, more innovation all make our lives longer, healthier, and more satisfying. Yes, more of this, please.

2. Scarcity is a choice. Supply side shortages of energy (or housing) are not an accident. They’re the predictable outcome of the accumulation of lots of small decisions, many well-meaning in isolation, like environmental impact studies. The maddening cumulative result: nothing gets done.

3. Deliberate scarcity is a political loser. No one wants anyone else taking away their favorite stuff. Making energy more expensive or banning gas stoves or mandating the end of big pickup trucks that are for many people a core part of their identity will all end in tears. Voters don’t want that.

4. We can opt for abundance. The good news: those scarcity choices can be reversed. We can build, baby, build. NIMBY can become YIMBY. Small-is-beautiful romanticism and reflexive technology favoritism can give way to all-of-the-above energy abundance. Boom!

5. They’re speaking to their own left flank. One lesson that seems obvious from the recent election is that we all could use less in-group virtue signaling and more critical reflection among our peers. Real friends criticize friends. (That’s how Charles Kenny and I have stayed close for three decades.) Klein & Thompson direct their fire at fellow liberals and environmentalists. The same dynamic applies to the right. My favorite energy podcaster Tisha Schuller is on a mission to convince oil & gas execs that they need their own Truth Bombs right now. More of all this too.

What I thought was missing from Abundance:

6. The book mostly ignores 96% of humanity. Nearly all humans live outside the United States. So nearly all the action on energy and climate is outside America’s borders too. I know the authors know this, so I would have hoped the book would have been less 🇺🇸-centric.

7. The big gains from energy abundance are in Asia and Africa, not California. Yes, we want Americans to have more, cheaper, and cleaner energy. As we electrify our economy, I would like my energy bill to go down and I could probably boost my use from ~12,000 kWh per year today to, say, maybe 15,000 kWh so I can stay cool, cook my dinner, use AI whenever I wish, and maybe charge my car without worrying too much about the environmental footprint. That would be nice. But the human welfare benefits of me using an extra 3,000 kWh of clean power are pretty much nothing compared to an extra 1,000 or 3,000 kWh for someone living in Senegal on 467 kWh today. The extra electrons let me use a fancier new stove and maybe drive an EV. A Senegalese person’s life would be utterly transformed by energy abundance. We should be trying to reap the biggest gains for human progress.

8. As are the opportunities for our government and our businesses. If energy demand growth is mostly outside our borders, so too are the windows to make the world better – or, if you prefer, to make money. Advanced nuclear is a good example. It’s a highly promising clean energy technology that is wholly consistent with an abundance ethos and can help to decarbonize the global economy. Yet I’ve been struck how often American nuclear advocates are focused on relatively small gains inside their own country (or even their own state). Yes, I know, we have to get through the domestic demonstration pilots first. But nearly all of the world’s electricity demand growth over the next several decades will be outside the US, especially in Asia.

9. Scarcity abroad is a political loser too. Governments everywhere ultimately prioritize jobs and cost of living. That’s just as true in Indonesia or Senegal as it is in California or Texas. Finger-wagging lectures about climate have been a diplomatic debacle. So the opposite — helping allies deliver energy abundance to their people — would reap major geostrategic benefits. Energy abundance is good economics and good politics.

10. Choosing scarcity is not just dumb, it’s a self-indulgence of the rich who lack self awareness of what it means to be really poor. I recall in grad school in London a (very on-brand for SOAS) debate over the surge of luxury goods like televisions in poor countries. Do poor people need TVs? Some students were adamant that it was a waste of time and money, proudly sharing that they had no telly in their flat. My professor responded, “Well, aren’t you lucky to have that choice.” That line stuck in my head years later when I did surveys with Ben Leo and Jared Kalow across a dozen African countries and found television was by far the most common aspirational appliance. Why mention this here? Because people mostly know what they want. Imposed scarcity is patronizing. Abundance is freedom.

Final thought: Is abundance having a moment… or has it already peaked?

I’m thrilled that energy abundance seems to be all the rage right now. When I launched the Energy for Growth Hub eight years ago, that was definitely not true. People asked me, in all honesty, whether putting “growth” in the org name was too provocative. Others wondered whether we were too unapologetic about embracing higher energy consumption for the world’s poor. I’d like to think the current moment is vindication that we were right to stand fast. But I’m also slightly worried that the meaning of abundance will be debated to death, misappropriated to the point of meaninglessness, or (worst of all) become a cliché.

For now, I’m going to worry less about labels and more about outcomes. The big lesson from Klein & Thompson is that we can and must take steps to build more stuff to allow people to live better, happier lives. Demand is demand. We can have a bigger positive impact on humans and the planet by enabling supply. Policy can make this easier or harder, cheaper or more expensive. We should choose easier & cheaper. In California and especially in Senegal.