Telling stories about climate, food, land in sound and print. Former NPR.
Washington DC
Joined December 2011
- Tweets6.8K
- Following1.1K
- Followers8.2K
- Likes849
Dan Charles retweeted
It is simultaneously true that in most cities the low-income schools have higher per student spending and *also* that the schools in richer neighborhoods have better staffing and a wider range of classes and extracurriculars.
Dan Charles retweeted
D.C. has been an interesting test case in the opposite approach, though, and it has its own problems. Charter schools are by and large not unionized. Some have done great, others less so. Turnover in the charter sector has been higher, which isn’t ideal for school stability.
Dan Charles retweeted
I’m so mad about the Perriello transmission opposition that I basically can’t look at my phone. I assume every climate activists and NGO is accusing him of climate denial, right?
Dan Charles retweeted
Huge 1.2 GW offshore wind farm, Baltic Power, delivers Poland its first power from offshore wind.
History made!
Fifty-four of 76 Vestas 15 MW turbines are erected. Wind, including offshore wind, is growing well around the world.
Wonderful. offshorewind.biz/2026/07/10/…
Dan Charles retweeted
As Brazil cracks down on the illegal clearing of forests, farmers and ranchers are moving into Bolivia, helping to fuel a wave of deforestation in a country where land is cheap and enforcement lax.
e360.yale.edu/digest/brazil-…
Dan Charles retweeted
The fastest way to get new generation online to serve load is to let generators connect without waiting for completion of the comprehensive grid upgrades needed for their full deliverability under severely stressed system conditions.
Such generators become designated as “energy-only” per administrative definition, but they can supply capacity to electrically proximate load, put downward pressure on real-time energy prices, and provide supply ready to upgrade immediately to full capacity status upon completion of comprehensive grid upgrades.
This is what Texas does (ERCOT), which is partly why its generator interconnection processing is ~2X faster than national average and how it has added 2.5X more generation than PJM in recent years.
FERC tried to provide such a pathway in the early 2000s, but in a recent study of >36,000 interconnection requests and 4,500 cost studies, we found that this option (called "ERIS," Energy Resource Interconnection Service) offers neither cheaper nor faster interconnection today.
This is what @SenatorHeinrich's (Ranking Member of Senate ENR) new bill seeks to fix by creating a Texas-style interconnection service option called Basic Access Service for Energy-only Delivery (BASED).
Dan Charles retweeted
At a moment when only an outcry will do, the silence of EU leaders - who otherwise can't stop themselves from making grandiose pronouncements on war and peace, where they have no authority or mandate - is deafening.
Dan Charles retweeted
3/ If you are threatening to obliterate an entire civilization, you have lost your own — as @gerardtbaker put it earlier this morning.
Dan Charles retweeted
Just sitting here listening to Tom Lehrer and hyperventilating how’s everyone else doing
Dan Charles retweeted
👀 Who owns the Heartland? New data reveals more than half of principal landlords having never farmed and a third now aged 75 or older.
agweb.com/news/business/1-7-…
Dan Charles retweeted
Democratic House bill aims to overturn Trump electricity policies
The bill, backed by 122 House members, would reinstate clean energy tax credits and grants while aiming to speed grid interconnection to an expanded transmission system. utilitydive.com/news/democra…
Here's the legacy media doing its job. I guess it's my civic duty to spread it through non-legacy media. But I'd love to see a graphic showing the reach of such reporting.
wsj.com/us-news/immigration-…
Dan Charles retweeted
Colman McCarthy, the longtime peace activist and Washington Post columnist, has died at 87.
“He wrote about principles — peace and nonviolence — and he lived by those principles,” said Don Graham, the paper's former publisher. “He made The Post better.”
washingtonpost.com/obituarie…
Dan Charles retweeted
I’ve Been Laid Off. I’m Not Done. open.substack.com/pub/roncha…
Dan Charles retweeted
It is astounding, and yet in keeping with Will Lewis's tenure leading the Washington Post, that he did not take part in today's announcement to the Post newsroom and has not offered a vision for the path forward.
The @washingtonpost layoffs are a five-alarm fire for governance and community in this city. A metro desk of a dozen people for a major metro area? No sports reporting? Will Lewis has no idea what he's doing.
Dan Charles retweeted
The Washington Post cuts would be a tad more tolerable if the people who ran it into the ditch over the past three years were given the sack along with journalists covering sports, books, foreign, and metro. But no, Will Lewis, survives.
Dan Charles retweeted
A staggering statement from former Washington Post editor Marty Baron: "This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."
Dan Charles retweeted
On a personal level, I know how much these reporters loved their work & were committed to readers. ♥️
On a civic level, this is so harmful. Sports is a fabric that ties us together. And an anemic Metro section will lead to more corruption and dysfunction in local government.
What if Democracy dies in indifference?
Deep cuts at behest of Bezos.
Exec Editor Matt Murray announces:
Sports desk killed.
Metro desk down to about a dozen (previously 40+)
Hope to keep presence in 12 foreign bureaus (currently 70+ staffers)
My story:
npr.org/2026/02/04/nx-s1-569…
