Articles by Paul
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…
Biden must first unite the party to defeat Trump
While Super Tuesday’s dramatic results have boosted former Vice President Joe Biden more than anyone predicted, it’s still not enough, not yet. Nothing less than Biden going into the convention in Milwaukee with a sizable majority will…
To winnow primary field, Obama and other Democrats must speak out
As Super Tuesday looms, none of the seven remaining Democratic presidential candidates has signaled any intention to leave the race. If allowed to continue, this could spell disaster for Democrats, increasing the already significant…
Will Bloomberg’s Bucks Help Beat Trump — or Boost Sanders?
Many Democrats are now understandably fixated on the strong showings of former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders, or on the disappointing performances of former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren…
Our Future Depends on the Arctic
MADRID — Delegates from nearly every nation spent the last two weeks here at a United Nations climate summit struggling to chart a course to meet the extraordinarily difficult goal of net zero emissions of carbon dioxide by the year 2050. Yet long before…
Trump’s Ukraine-Gate Attacks on Biden Echo Watergate
Those viewing and participating in tonight’s Democratic debate should ignore the spin, and cut right to the chase. Trump’s Ukraine-gate outrages are about exactly the same thing Watergate was: A corrupt President of the United States…
Winning the politics of the climate crisis
Democratic presidential candidates will try to outdo one another when they participate in CNN’s “Climate Forum” Wednesday. They will propose evermore ambitious plans to fight climate change. Given the increasingly dire…
No place for fossil-centric schemes in net zero future
[Financial Times subscription required to read article.] I agree with Repsol chairman Antonio Brufau that immediate action is needed to address climate change. But his contention that slightly more efficient oil-burning cars are…
Tax Credits for Affordable Electric Vehicles Gain Speed, But Legislation Must Avoid Stop Signs
As Congress begins to turn toward tax policies to help clean energy manufacturing, electric vehicle tax credits aimed directly at more affordable vehicles are gaining speed, just as a previous Forbes column and a Progressive Policy…
Fighting climate change – Letters to the Editor
In her June 7 op-ed, “The no-brainer climate solution,” Catherine Rampell pointed out that the Democratic presidential candidates have omitted our biggest policy tool in fighting climate change: a carbon tax…
Biden’s domestic climate plan is good, but his global strategies are crucial
As many climate activists had hoped, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden came forward this week with an ambitious domestic climate change plan that proposes to cut U.S. emissions deeply while growing America’s…
Biden manages not to offend centrists or climate hawks with ‘B-plus’ plan
Joe Biden managed to please both climate change hawks and centrists with his $5 trillion “clean energy revolution” plan introduced Tuesday. Biden assuaged fears from critics to his Left who predicted he’d be too moderate on…
The Energy 202: Democrats slammed Biden on climate change. But what would a ‘middle ground’ even look like?
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote there is “no ‘middle ground’ when it comes to climate policy.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) condemned politicians seeking “a middle-of-the-road approach to save our lives.” Both standard-bearers…
Biden May Be The ‘Perfect Person’ to Enact A True Green Deal, But He Needs A Better Climate Plan
Rival Democratic Presidential candidates and climate activists continue to pounce days after the fact on the poor characterization of a “middle ground” on climate policy by an adviser to Joe Biden. The staying power of this…
EVs will have to replace oil-burning engines
[Financial Times subscription required to read this article.] In the US, coal’s share of electricity production has dropped by half in the past two decades, with not a single new coal plant built in almost a decade. Remarkably…
America Is Losing the World’s Biggest Manufacturing and Climate Race: Electric Vehicles
Suppose a Presidential candidate proposed a policy that would produce the following benefits: a resurgence of U.S. auto industry production and the creation of thousands of new, high-paying manufacturing jobs; cleaner air…
Winning the Global Race on Electric Cars
On Donald Trump’s watch, America is losing what is probably the most important new manufacturing opportunity in the world–the global race to produce affordable electric vehicles that people want…
Jam-packed primary poses a serious threat to Democrats in 2020
For tens of millions of Americans overridingly concerned with finding a presidential candidate who can beat Donald Trump in 2020, how the left-of-center and abnormally large Democratic primary field is shaping up is a topic…
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…
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