Recent Interviews

Climate change: Biden’s next big political gamble?
After a string of setbacks on getting his priorities through the deeply divided US Congress, President Joe Biden may set his sights on climate change in a bid to save the planet — and his imperiled legacy…

GOP, eyeing Hill takeover, mulls energy and climate agenda
It may seem early, but Republicans are already plotting out a climate and energy agenda should they win control of Capitol Hill come 2023. But whether a Republican-controlled Congress would work with President Biden on those issues is another matter altogether…

To boost economy and midterm outlook, Democrats must pass clean energy bill
Congressional Democrats are getting restless, and who can blame them. Despite a major infrastructure legislation becoming law last November, the Biden administration’s economic agenda…

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.”…

Hill climate hawks plot next steps after bill’s collapse
Democrats are hoping to revive their climate and social spending bill after Sen. Joe Manchin rejected it over the weekend, but hot tempers and uncertain politics have left legislation key to President Biden’s climate goals hanging in the balance…

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…

Biden walks a careful line on climate after tornadoes
President Biden is navigating a politically fraught path on climate change after last weekend’s deadly tornadoes, stopping short Monday of directly blaming global warming for the disaster but emphasizing the storms’ extreme nature and ordering officials to get more definitive answers…

Solar industry wages multi-front campaign against tariffs
The U.S. solar industry is working a multi-front campaign against tariffs on imported cell and module products in an effort to maintain a high rate of growth and carry its load towards President Joe Biden’s climate targets…

Russian gas is a climate and security disaster
With Russian troops massing on Ukraine’s border, and President Biden urging Russia’s Vladimir Putin not to invade, the geopolitics of Russian natural gas are growing increasingly intolerable…

U.N. climate boss: ‘We need to understand’ young people’s frustration
The European Union could miss its 2030 climate targets because of its reliance to imported Russian natural gas, which releases massive quantities of heat-trapping methane, according to a report shared exclusively with The Climate 202…

Biden Promised to Stop Oil Drilling on Public Lands. Is His Failure to Do So a Betrayal or a Smart Political Move?
As a candidate, President Joe Biden never embraced the strict curbs on fossil fuel development that progressives sought, like a ban on fracking. But his climate plan included a clear pledge to halt any further advance of the oil and gas industry on federal lands or offshore…

Missing from Biden EV plan: State support for charging
If state regulators approve, 5,100 households in Kansas and Missouri will get one-time rebates of up to $500 over the next five years to help wire their homes for electric vehicle chargers — a missing piece in the Biden administration’s drive for EV dominance by the end of the decade…

Cop27 is in Egypt next year … but will anyone be allowed to protest?
Concern is growing over plans to host a UN climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh next year, in what will be a crucial summit if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C…

Canada and Mexico pose obstacle to Biden’s union-built electric vehicle plans
President Joe Biden has a difficult task today handling opposition from Canada and Mexico, America’s two largest trading partners, to his push to promote U.S. manufacturing of electric vehicles…

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…

Democrats eye curbs on fossil fuel exports as price fix
Congressional Democrats look increasingly interested in supporting a curb on U.S. oil, coal, and natural gas exports as a means of lowering energy prices at home…

Mung beans, bunnies and the Muppets: PM’s green rhetoric ‘insulting and divisive’
Boris Johnson took the stage at Glasgow as the Cop26 summit neared its conclusion last Wednesday, aiming to galvanise the conference into a deal that would stave off climate breakdown….

How Kerry’s announced US-China climate agreement falls short
The new agreement between the U.S. and China to collaborate on curbing climate change by enhancing action reducing emissions this decade lacks concrete pledges, emissions targets, or timeframes…

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…

Unlocking the Transition: Biden, Congress aim to fill gap from clean electricity plan’s demise
The collapse of a controversial plan to prod utilities to rapidly decarbonize has scrambled the Biden administration’s blueprint for slashing power sector emissions…

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…
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