Articles by Paul
Natural gas and America’s clean energy transition
President Biden has set the ambitious, important climate goal of achieving net zero emissions from the nation’s electric power sector by 2035. Already, natural gas has playing a key role in lowering U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in the past 15 years, in part by displacing higher emitting coal.
Electric cars are the future. Here’s how to get American drivers interested in them.
EVs are key to manufacturing jobs and reducing climate change emissions. The on-ramp to these benefits is exciting drivers the way the Model T did…
Biden’s climate plans can cut emissions and also be good politics
After a campaign in which climate change played a more prominent role than ever before, expectations for president-elect Joe Biden are nearly as daunting as the climate problem itself…
Biden knows healing the US means addressing pandemic and economy first
As President Joe Biden said in his inaugural address, “To restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words, it requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy, unity…”
Biden’s defeat of Trump is the most important win since FDR
As the nation awoke the morning after Election Day, reactions seemed to suggest Democrats had lost nearly every office in the land…
Five myths about the Paris climate agreement
[The Washington Post subscription required to read this article.] Five years ago this month, negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed at a conference near Paris to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”
Biden’s climate plans can cut emissions and also be good politics
After a campaign in which climate change played a more prominent role than ever before, expectations for president-elect Joe Biden are nearly as daunting as the climate problem itself…
Biden’s defeat of Trump is the most important win since FDR
As the nation awoke the morning after Election Day, reactions seemed to suggest Democrats had lost nearly every office in the land. Numerous news stories recorded “huge Democratic disappointment…”
Gov. DeWine must prepare voters for possible delays in real election results
The plots uncovered recently to abduct and possibly assassinate Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and to kill law enforcement officials and storm the Michigan State Capitol, and a separate plot that may have targeted Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, should be shocking to all Americans…
Trump and Republicans are putting a Supreme Court seat ahead of America’s recovery
President Trump’s COVID diagnosis is cruelly ironic, coming as it does just as the president and Senate Republicans have decided to impede a national COVID and economic recovery bill and instead push through an unprecedented Supreme Court opening immediately before the election…
LETTER: A Biden win would be a chance to press China on climate goals
[Financial Times subscription required to read this article.]
Changing the climate of presidential debates
When future generations — or simply young people today — look back at the topics of recent U.S. presidential debates, they will be stunned that America’s political journalists ignored climate change, the issue that will overwhelm most others in coming years…
Raising the Sunken Road of American Politics
The bloodiest day in American history was not inflicted by Al Qaeda on 9/11, or the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, or Nazi Germany on D-Day June 6, all among the most famous dates in U.S. history. Instead, we did it to ourselves…
Amid Trump economic debacle, Biden’s central message must be his plan for American recovery
The beleaguered economy is far and away most Americans’ main concern. Yet Trump recently held an absurd and dangerous 10-point advantage on the issue…
Denier-in-chief: Trump, COVID and climate change
It is a tale of two worlds. In Real World, the COVID scourge continues to inflict massive human suffering and economic costs on the American people. More than 177,000 Americans have died. More than 5.7 million have been infected…
BP plan is chance to shed ‘Beyond Parody’ tag
[Financial Times subscription required to read article.] In the late 1990s when then BP chief executive John Browne claimed he was moving the oil company “Beyond Petroleum”, industry wags dubbed it “Beyond Parody”. They were entirely…
Letter: Shift to clean energy investment offers gains for shareholders
[Financial Times subscription required to read this article.]
Tackle unemployment, trade, manufacturing and environment: Invest in green infrastructure
More than 42 million workers have filed unemployment claims during the coronavirus pandemic, the jobless rate is over 13% and minorities are bearing a disproportionate share of the economic pain, just as people have taken to the streets…
Is Crying a Sign of Weakness? Tell That to Churchill
I was struck by Donald Trump’s simplistic and unsympathetic view that crying by men is a sign of “weakness.” In contrast, a recent biography, “Churchill: Walking With Destiny,” by Andrew Roberts, catalogs dozens of times both before…
Why Klobuchar should be Biden’s vice presidential pick
After Joe Biden’s strong debate performance on March 15 and third straight huge primary night two days later, it is increasingly obvious he will be the Democratic nominee. Even without the Ohio vote, the March 17 primaries all…
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…
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