Thursday Night Links

• The key word to describe 2025 so far is “uncertainty” and as a public company, our investors hate uncertainty. This has led to a marked increase in the implied cost of capital of our business, with public energy stocks down significantly more than oil prices over the last two months. This uncertainty is being caused by the conflicting messages coming from the new administration. There cannot be "U.S. energy dominance" and $50 per barrel oil; those two statements are contradictory. At $50-per-barrel oil, we will see U.S. oil production start to decline immediately and likely significantly (1 million barrels per day plus within a couple quarters). This is not “energy dominance.” The U.S. oil cost curve is in a different place than it was five years ago; $70 per barrel is the new $50 per barrel. [Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas]
• As an Australian, it amuses me that the time taken for physically plausible journeys to and from Mars on a chemically-propelled monster rocket like Starship is similar to the time taken for my ancestors to sail from Great Britain to the colonies about 150 years ago. Unlike them, though, voyagers in Starship will not have to endure hunger, disease, infant mortality, and navigational errors. While landing on Mars has yet to occur, landing back on Earth will not be a problem, as demonstrated recently by the incredible “chopstick” maneuvers of Starship test flights 5 and 7. [Casey Handmer]
  
• The uniquely dangerous side effects of the Covid vaccine were due to its having the body manufacture the most toxic, likely bioengineered portion of its anatomy, the spike protein, to produce an immune response. Significant questions remain about the mRNA vaccines, including the unexpected persistence of spike protein at six months after vaccination. This mechanism is unlike that of any standard childhood vaccines, which protect against natural rather than bioengineered pathogens and feature direct introduction of weakened virus or virus parts instead of hijacking cells to manufacture them. While perhaps not technically possible, an mRNA vaccine that targeted a less toxic portion of Covid’s anatomy might have been effective without significant side effects. [The Tom File]
• More important than the fact that a technological innovation solved Pittsburgh’s smog where political coordination failed is the following point: Even if the social coordination had worked perfectly the technological solution would still be more important. The socially optimal tradeoff between coal energy and clean air available to Pittsburgh in 1905 still leaves them in a bad situation. They had to accept either dirty air or energy poverty; they had no way to solve both problems at once. The technological solution pushes the production possibilities frontier between energy and air quality far beyond what was the optimal point when only coal was available. [Maxwell Tabarrok]
• The more uncertain we are about birth subsidies — and I agree that’s the correct view — doesn’t that mean we should all the more commit to some kind of revival of cultural conservatism on matters of family? That there’s an asymmetric pairing. Families should be expected to have three or four children, and that’s the alternative. Yes, we should try subsidies, but the more uncertain we are, we’ve just got to go the Ross Douthat route. I think he has five kids now. Good for him. [Tyler Cowen]
• For the money, nothing comes close. Is it reasonable for consumers to deny themselves Teslas’ performance, efficiency and safety just because Elon is a putz? And what about the greater good of buying a modest, zero-emission vehicle? The Model 3 is still the right thing to do, no matter how many stiff-armed salutes Musk throws around. [WSJ]
• When I say the Nicene Creed, I mean it. I am open to hidden complexities and unexpected syntheses, but in the end I think that God has acted in history through Jesus of Nazareth in a way that differs from every other tradition and experience and revelation, and the Gospels should therefore exert a kind of general interpretative control over how we read all the other religious data. I think the New Testament is just clearly different from other religious texts in a way that stands out and demands attention, that the figure of Jesus likewise stands out among religious founders, that together the sources and the story and the Nazarene Himself all seem God-touched to a degree unmatched by any of their rivals. So where there is uncertainty, tension, a wager to be made, I make my bet on Jesus. [Ross Douthat]