Articles by Paul
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…
America needs a climate plan compromise
President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda is making its way through Congress via a budget reconciliation bill — a once-in-a-generation opportunity for America to reassert its leadership in combating the climate crisis…
All Democrats must compromise to pass economic plans, just like 1993
With the benefit — and the challenge — of very narrow Democratic majorities in Congress, a first-year president attempts to pass his major economic plan to reanimate the American middle-class…
Congress must ensure electric vehicles are within reach for all American drivers
There is growing consensus in the auto industry, the Biden administration and among Democrats in Congress that electric vehicles are critical to both the future of American manufacturing and to cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions…
We need Biden’s economic plan to rebuild the middle class
For more than 40 years, a central narrative of American politics, successfully pushed by the Republican Party, has been that government is ineffectual at best, and counterproductive more often than not. Or, as President Ronald Reagan, a former…
Climate devastation is upon us. Congress must act.
Last week, on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida unleashed 150 mile-an-hour winds and slammed into New Orleans, super-fueled to huge size and rain-making power by the Gulf of Mexico whose temperatures are 3 to 5 degrees higher…
Letter: Autocratic states are thwarting climate action
Leslie Hook’s insightful story on G20 climate action (July 26) noted that autocratic regimes in China, Russia and Saudi Arabia deliberately prevented a decision to end fossil fuel subsidies…
VIDEO: Paul Bledsoe discusses extreme heat and climate change
California State Senator Melissa Hurtado and former Communications Director for the White House Climate Change Task Force Paul Bledsoe talk to Kendis Gibson and Lindsey Reiser about the dangerous new reality of extreme heat.
Radio Interview: Reality Check
Paul Bledsoe joined Charles to discuss his op-ed, It’s Time to Build the Clean Grid of the Future.
Major climate win that tees up more in reconciliation bill
Some far-left environmental activists are criticizing the bipartisan infrastructure deal that President Biden has reached with senators of both parties…
The Arctic is ground zero in the climate battle
Tony Barber’s important column on the growing rivalry of great powers over the Arctic rightly notes that Arctic climate change “is an urgent matter for everyone”. Since the Arctic is warming at twice as fast as the global average…
Attacks from far-right and far-left only prove Biden’s energy plan occupies sensible center
Republican critics are using the excuse of a cyberattack from Russian hackers on a key gasoline pipeline to show that somehow President Biden must move to the far right on energy and climate policy.
China’s emissions now eclipse the developed world — preventing climate protection
At the recent White House climate change summit President Biden made the extraordinarily ambitious pledge of reducing U.S. emissions by 50 percent over 2005 levels by 2030…
Slashing emissions by 2050 isn’t enough. We can bring down temperatures now.
Even as President Biden prepares to host a White House global climate summit on Earth Day, April 22, new science shows that the climate crisis is accelerating and demanding greater emergency measures…
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…
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…
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