Recent Interviews
Why the defeat of Manchin’s energy bill could be a loss for the climate
On Tuesday, when Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) announced he was pulling his proposal to expand energy development across the country from a must-pass government operations bill, many environmental…
Washington’s latest energy drama: ‘Permitting reform’
Boring and technocratic as it sounds, “permitting reform” may be just about the most significant barrier facing the clean energy revolution Joe Biden wants to bring to America. Yesterday, Congress began debating it in earnest…
Manchin’s permitting reveal
The Progressive Policy Institute is out with a new report this morning that offers some support for Manchin’s efforts and disputes some of the criticism from progressives who argue the permitting changes would…
Why Republicans support Kigali
The Senate could ratify a major climate treaty by the end of the week. And it’s being pushed across the finish line by conservative Republicans and industry. The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol has long been a standout in…
Clean energy bosses urge permit reforms to meet US climate goals
Senator Joe Manchin to unveil bill revamping regulatory approvals for pipelines and power systems. A lobbying group has estimated that clean energy installations could be 100 gigawatts less without permitting…
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…
California hits the gas on electric cars
California regulators approved a rule today banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. The move could accelerate the electric vehicle transition and reshape the nation’s auto market, but meeting that deadline will bring…
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…
Joe Biden’s signature legislation passes the Senate, at last
This has been decades in the making, and it will reshape the decades ahead.” That is how Fred Krupp, a longtime champion of congressional action on climate change as head of the Environmental Defence Fund, a green group…
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…
Five Decades in the Making: Why It Took Congress So Long to Act on Climate
The Senate bill avoided the political pitfalls of past legislative attempts by offering only incentives to cut climate pollution, not taxes. In 1969, President Richard Nixon’s adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a memo describing a startling…
A closer look at Manchin’s asks on permitting
Manchin’s asks: The legislative agreement between Sen. Joe Manchin and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calls for Congress to take up “comprehensive” permitting reform in a bill separate from their reconciliation deal…
Biden’s climate agenda faces yet another obstacle: Kyrsten Sinema
The most ambitious attempt yet to pass climate legislation in the US may have surprisingly won the crucial backing of a senator who owns a coal company. Now it faces a further, deeply ironic, obstacle – a lawmaker who was once a member of…
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…
Holy Shit, Democrats Might Actually Pass a Climate Change Bill
So maybe we’re not just going to hurtle headlong into a fiery climate doom without the U.S. government lifting a finger to save us, after all. Senate Democrats shocked Washington D.C. and climate activists by unveiling plans for the largest…
Fears over US energy security help unlock historic $369bn climate bill
Environment experts welcome emissions reductions promised as ‘significant and unprecedented’ President Joe Biden’s original Build Back Better plan had originally earmarked $555bn but at $369bn the new bill will still be the largest…
Climate activists’ plot to make liberal politicians squirm
Jennifer Falcon, a climate and Indigenous rights organizer in San Antonio, Texas, worries constantly about the impacts of climate change on her community, such as water restrictions and a possible collapse of the electric grid…
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…
Dems stare into climate abyss
Democrats have had a week to digest the demise of their climate bill. They’re facing the prospect of yet another decade of congressional inaction at a time when consequences of global warming are growing more…
RADIO: BBC Climate Change Legislation
Starting at minute 31:23 Paul Bledsoe discusses what it will take to cut emissions in the US…
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…
US receives stinging criticism at Cop27 despite China’s growing emissions
The US, fresh from reversing its 30 years of opposition to a “loss and damage” fund for poorer countries suffering the worst impacts of the climate crisis, has signaled that its longstanding image as…
World still ‘on brink of climate catastrophe’ after Cop27 deal
The world still stands “on the brink of climate catastrophe” after the deal reached at the Cop27 UN climate summit on Sunday, and the biggest economies must make fresh commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions…
US Fossil Fuel Pledge Seen as Political Dynamite
The COP27 global climate summit in Egypt will continue on Saturday, adding an extra day to negotiations, to allow delegates more time to agree on divisive issues such as how to compensate…
GOP’s House Majority Complicates Podesta’s Climate Spending Role
Clean energy czar John Podesta’s task in overseeing $369 billion under the climate and tax law got several degrees tougher now that Republicans have won control of the House—and the power to closely scrutinize his…
Cop27: EU agrees to loss and damage fund to help poor countries amid climate disasters
A breakthrough looked possible in the deadlocked global climate talks on Friday as the European Union made a dramatic intervention to agree to key developing world demands on financial help for poor countries…
What a Republican House means for energy
Ahead of the midterm elections, many Republicans hoped a red wave would put pressure on the Biden administration’s energy agenda and help reverse it. But any plan to slow down clean energy spending looks more…
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…
Biden’s Message on Climate Might Not Be the One the World Wants
When President Biden walks into the United Nations climate summit here on Friday, he could fairly boast of returning the United States to the global fight to keep the planet from dangerously overheating, and of turbocharging America’s…
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…
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