Articles by Paul
A quick fix from COP28 to address climate change? Mandatory methane cuts
After nearly three decades of negotiations, the annual United Nations climate talks concluded this week with a first: Its delegates finally mentioned the words “fossil fuels” in an agreement and the need to “transition away” from them…
To avert climate disaster, we need firm commitments on cutting methane at COP28
The key goal of the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) negotiations beginning in Dubai this week must be to limit fast-rising temperatures, to prevent runaway warming that could destabilize the…
Kings and Popes Attending COP28 Is Good — But Climate Crisis Requires Powerful Grassroots Movements
It’s important that older figures of religious and cultural influence like Pope Francis and the UK’s King Charles will be attending the United Nations COP28 climate change negotiations in Dubai beginning this week. However, their attendance…
Biden Must Confront China’s Xi on Looming Climate Disaster
As Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping prepare to meet in San Francisco today, extreme weather events caused by rising temperatures are increasingly wreaking havoc at home and around the world, with new studies indicating that…
How Major League Baseball undermined the regular season and the winningest teams, including the Orioles
The trait that separates major league baseball from every other game on earth is the sheer length of its regular season. At 162 games, the baseball season is twice as long as basketball and hockey, and 10 times that of pro football…
Hamas-Israel War Must Not Prevent Progress at COP 28 Climate Talks
The next United Nations climate change conference, COP28, is scheduled to begin at the end of November in Dubai. Beyond the challenges of getting the world to agree on difficult climate issues, progress…
Biden, Not Trump, Is Right on the Autoworkers’ Strike and Electric Vehicles
Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican Party, seemingly devoid of original policy ideas themselves, have tried to make Joe Biden’s advocacy of incentives for U.S. production of electric vehicles (EVs) a campaign issue in…
IN BOTH U.S. AND UK, OVERTAXING VOTERS IS BAD CLIMATE POLITICS
No political comparison is as discordant to British ears as one suggesting commonality with the American scene, particularly with Donald Trump still at large. Nonetheless, recent UK contretemps over energy taxes and climate…
Gas Is a Better Option Than Coal on Our Path to Draw Down Emissions
As the climate crisis worsens, the debate over emissions from natural gas is heating up, too. Unfortunately, both gas opponents and gas supporters have been cherry-picking the data, especially regarding the lifecycle emissions of…
Energy permitting is broken: New analytics can fix it
The energy permitting reforms included in the recent bipartisan budget agreement represented modest progress — but they didn’t fix the problem. The main challenge, and the huge economic opportunity, is the…
Sleepwalking Toward Climate Catastrophe
The last few weeks have brought unprecedented high temperatures in the U.S. and globally, including the four hottest days in a row worldwide ever in recorded history…
A Trade-Based Climate Policy Can Cut Emissions Globally
The recent reopening of diplomatic dialogue by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese leaders highlighted the enormous importance of climate change action by the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters. But it did not yield…
Biden Needs To Remind Voters He’s Always Been Pro-Business
Anew AP poll found that only 31% of Americans approve of President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, a result both shocking and familiar. Shocking because no modern president has received such poor marks during a period of…
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…
Methane Cuts Are Key for Natural Gas, Even Under Donald Trump
The politics of natural gas are again heating up as President-elect Donald Trump prepares for his second term, while domestic and international demand for U.S. gas keeps growing and…
Trump has a fighting chance to prevent Arctic meltdown. He should take it.
The Arctic Ocean could see its first ice-free day before the end of the decade, according to a new study by Céline Heuzé and Alexandra Jahn recently published in Nature. When that happens, a vast stretch of newly…
Re: Finding Hope in an Age of Resentment
Mr. Krugman’s uniquely valuable contributions to American economics and politics over the last quarter century at their core exemplified a mantra of former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan…
Chinese Methane Emissions Are Risking Climate Disaster
As climate diplomats from 200 countries gather for the annual United Nations climate negotiations beginning Monday, fast-rising global temperatures over the last year have reached…
Trump hasn’t helped working-class men — but Harris and Walz can
Former President Donald Trump makes many extravagant promises and claims on the campaign trail. But especially for his political base of working-class men, he delivered very little economically when in office…
Economists agree another Trump term would ruin the US economy — will voters listen?
In recent weeks, the U.S. economy has gotten consistently good news. New data shows prices barely rose in August — just .1 percent — with the annual inflation rate now down to 2.2 percent. This allowed the Federal Reserve to lower…
As Hurricane Helene Hits Florida, Trump’s Climate Policy Ducks for Cover
A massive storm, Hurricane Helene, made larger and more destructive due to super-heated ocean temperatures caused by climate change, is due to slam into Florida Thursday. The enormity of this storm (and others like it) is partly the inevitable result…
Don’t believe the talking points — Pennsylvania natural gas can be a winner for Harris
Pennsylvania shale natural gas production, the second largest by state in America, has become an unexpectedly important issue in the 2024 presidential campaign…
Now May Be the Time to Experiment With Mother Nature—Carefully!
When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, the volcano propelled huge amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere and cooled the planet by a half a degree Celsius (1degree Fahrenheit) for a couple of years…
How the UK’s Tory fracture may foretell a GOP break with Trump
Despite protestations to the contrary on both sides of the Atlantic, there have been several periods over the last half-century when British and American politics have seemed to align. The most obvious examples are…
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