Articles by Paul
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…
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…
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…
How Kamala Harris can beat Donald Trump and unify America
The stunning speed with which Democrats have rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee indicates their profound desire to beat former President Donald Trump in November and prevent a…
For years, Trump fanned the flames of political violence. Then it nearly killed him.
The political career of former President Donald Trump has been marked most notably by attempts to divide the American people against one another. Even when rejected by the voters, as he was in 2020, his instincts…
Biden must talk up the consumer benefits of his energy policy
Daniel Yergin (“Petrol prices may still pose problems for Biden”, Opinion, June 25) is right that keeping petrol prices low has always been critical to the re-election of an incumbent US president. But he neglected to credit Joe Biden for his aggressive…
Costly Climate Impact Must Be Key Topic in Presidential Debate
More than 260 million Americans suffered last week under an unprecedented early summer “heat dome,” with indices over 100 degrees — even in New England, where dozens of locations hit record temperatures. This climate change-fueled heat is…
O’s must step it up to beat Yankees for AL’s best record
The Orioles are off to another fantastic start this year. More than a third of the way through the season they are, amazingly, on pace to win even more games than last year’s AL-leading 101. Their biggest problem comes from the…
How Biden is outflanking Trump on China trade, clean energy and climate change
When it comes to China, President Biden is taking a series of actions to explicitly contrast his trade and climate policies from those of his predecessor, Donald Trump, in the razor-tight 2024 election campaign. If successful, Biden’s actions can…
It’s easy to be romantic about this Orioles team
In “Moneyball”, the best movie about modern baseball, Brad Pitt portrays Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane who cleverly uses analytics and shrewd talent judgment to propel his low-rent A’s to the playoffs…
Biden’s new energy rules must stop an existential climate threat: Donald Trump
In his first three years in office, Joe Biden has done more through legislation, regulation, and diplomacy to combat catastrophic climate change than any president in history. But Biden knows all too well that much of this…
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