Articles by Paul
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…
Biden must compel China and Russia to act on climate
In recent weeks, a mini-Cold War has threatened to break out, with the American officials of all types becoming increasingly critical of authoritarian actions by both China and Russia…
Washington’s Most Influential People
THE 250 EXPERTS AND ADVOCATES—OUTSIDE THE GOVERNMENT—WHO’LL BE SHAPING THE POLICY DEBATES OF THE YEARS TO COME…
Government must come clean about the total costs of climate change
The March 18 front-page article “Regulators push Wall Street for disclosure on climate risks” noted that government statistics found 22 extreme weather events last year cost the nation nearly $100 billion…
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.
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…
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