Articles by Paul
US can improve energy security and climate together
Election seasons always feature exaggerated divisions, with candidates drawing bright lines between themselves and opponents. But lasting problems come when discourse devolves into false choices between important shared goals…
Democrats’ Midterm Message Should Be Working-Class Opportunity
Conventional wisdom in cynical Washington has it, and recent history does suggest, that the easiest way for a Democratic president to be reelected is to run against a radical Republican Party who has just taken over Congress…
GOP killed permitting reform — giving Democrats a new campaign issue
Over the last two years, Congress has passed a series of landmark bills that together fund more than $500 billion in clean energy investment, by far the largest ever enacted. More importantly, generous tax incentives can spur…
Why Democrats Must Support Biden in 2024
Despite good news for Joe Biden lately, many Democrats continue to be deeply worried about his chances of reelection. These concerns are understandable given that Biden, already the oldest president in history, will be…
Streamline power line permitting to achieve IRA climate goals
One of the most important goals of the clean energy and climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden is the decarbonization of the electricity system. The core of this effort is…
A look at the policies in the Democrats’ historic climate bill
The Inflation Reduction Act is the largest investment in climate policy in U.S. history, including more than $300 billion to address global warming. It also sets a goal of reducing carbon emissions by…
Climate Change: Congress Needs to Act Now
Federal regulations have been a crucial part of U.S. efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions over the last 30 years. But such regulations are increasingly subject to reversal by Republican presidents…
Democrats: Don’t just declare a climate emergency — make clean energy a winning campaign issue
The decision by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to walk away from more than a year of negotiations over a landmark clean energy legislation is a bitter pill for President Biden and other Democrats who made passing effective…
As UK conservatives dump Johnson, most in GOP still embrace Trump’s far graver threat
Winston Churchill, the figure embattled UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson claims as his role model, once defined a politician as someone who “is asked to stand, wants to sit, and is expected to lie.” Yet in the end, Johnson’s…
Democrats in Congress, not courts or GOP, must address climate — a good bill is waiting
The Supreme Court decision this week to restrict federal regulatory authority over carbon dioxide emissions from power plants should provide Democrats in Congress the last impetus they need to finally act on comprehensive climate change legislation. And…
Democrats must limit oil shocks along with climate risks
Energy issues are defining U.S. consumer, economic and security challenges more profoundly than any time since the oil embargoes of the 1970s. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has placed enormous pressure on global oil and…
Letter: War is chance for US to drive green energy policies
Derek Brower’s Big Read (April 14) correctly details US efforts to increase near-term oil and natural gas supplies to address shortages resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But history shows that high prices and security…
War means Biden needs a more muscular energy plan
As he travels to Europe this week, President Biden seems to face nearly insurmountable new energy challenges. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spiked global oil prices, and constricted Europe’s natural gas supplies…
Manchin’s energy and deficit-reduction bill can fight inflation — and Russia
President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last week highlighted two of the greatest foreign and domestic challenges facing the United States. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has undermined decades of peace in…
Clean energy bill can curb long-term inflation
U.S. inflation hit a 40-year high in January, with prices rising 7 percent over the last year, generating deep concerns across government, industry and financial markets…
To boost economy and midterm outlook, Democrats must pass clean energy bill
Congressional Democrats are getting restless, and who can blame them. Despite a major infrastructure legislation becoming law last November, the Biden administration’s economic agenda…
One year later, Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ still dominates GOP
On this first anniversary of the Donald Trump-inspired insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last Jan. 6 during which five people died, we find the Republican Party speeding toward a new identity as the “ReTrumplican Party.”…
EU must reduce reliance on Russian gas supplies
Megan Greene’s op-ed (Opinion, December 16) is right that near-term US sanctions against Russia have very limited effectiveness. This is precisely why the EU must pursue longer-term strategies to reduce Russian sway, including cutting the EU’s costly reliance on Russian natural gas…
Can America prevent a global warming cold war?
At the 11th hour of climate negotiations in Scotland last week, the U.S. and China released a “Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s” outlining increased cooperation on a wide range of climate and clean energy topics…
How to Limit Temperature Increases in the Very Near Term
If the years of devastating droughts, floods, heat waves and wildfires since the Paris climate agreement was adopted have taught us anything, it’s that we have underestimated the pace of extreme, destabilizing climate change…
President Biden’s Earth Day promise: The incumbent has a real plan for a greener future, unlike Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis
Last week, a meeting of Florida flooding policy managers was washed out in South Florida by a deluge of 26 inches of rain in just eight hours, unprecedented rainfall made far larger due to the climate change crisis that…
Permitting reform can cut consumer energy costs and emissions
America could have cleaner, cheaper energy if only we could agree to get out of our own way. The obstacle we have created is a thicket of federal and state regulations requiring energy projects to undergo lengthy, expensive, one-by-one…
Can the UAE help get a planet-saving methane deal at COP28?
Environmental advocates are rightfully skeptical that the head of a national oil company can credibly steer the parties at the upcoming UN climate summit COP28 to the strong climate mitigation needed to meet the climate emergency, especially…
Maximizing the climate benefits of natural gas exports
A major question facing American energy and climate policymakers today is what role abundant U.S. natural gas should play in the global clean energy transition. Some environmental activists oppose all gas use. But a new…
Cutting Chinese emissions requires US and EU to work together
Thank goodness that Adam Tooze has questioned the recent EU and UK furore over America’s Inflation Reduction Act, a law that could be a turning point in global climate protection, but is hardly a protectionist disaster for western trade…
As History Shows, Incumbents Have the Edge
A key reason that Democrats should support President Biden for re-election is that history shows that a sitting president has the best chance of winning. Several recent Democrats have run again…
Cop out: Ignoring the dictatorships now causing the climate crisis at COP27
The big news out of COP 27, the UN climate negotiations, according to most media was a global agreement to create a fund to provide developing nations more aid to explicitly address rising climate change impacts…
Who wins Trump v. DeSantis? Joe Biden
Joe Biden often says, “don’t compare me to God Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” Surprisingly, midterm voters did just that. By small but crucial margins, voters consistently preferred Biden-supported Democrats over dodgy…
COP27: A global methane agreement can prevent climate catastrophe
All the parties participating in the climate negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt this week and next would do well to remember that today’s climate emergency is about two basic concepts: time and temperature. It’s too…
Call China’s climate bluff
While American climate advocates are still taking victory laps over the historic clean energy bill passed by Congress in August, the international climate challenge remains dire as diplomats gather in Egypt next week at the…
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