energy policy
-
![]()
![]()
How we can end our addiction to oil
It’s time we moved on to something else, or this is going to kill us. Not only are world oil supplies running out, but what oil is still left is proving very dirty to obtain. We need to kick our oil addiction now if we expect to preserve any hopes of economic prosperity, or unspoiled […]
-
Clearing the Clean Energy Innovation Threshold
The latest from the Brookings Institution’s Mark Muro is a perfectly succinct summary of how one should judge the coming Kerry-(Graham?)-Lieberman Senate climate and energy bill, reportedly scheduled for release this Wednesday: What is clear, though, is this: To get to a good bill senators need to deal properly with the revenue–whether from offshore oil […]
-
The choices we'll have to make to save the world
I was in the rec center pool on a snowy May afternoon recently talking to my friend Dave as my kids sloshed around in what struck me as a massive inoculation tank. As usual, nerds that we are, we talked about energy efficiency in our houses. Dave recently had an energy an audit, and like […]
-
![]()
![]()
Time for Obama to embrace another GOP energy plan
By Jesse Jenkins and Yael Borofsky With President Obama’s announcement Wednesday that the administration would support expanded offshore oil and gas extraction, it’s now apparent that price pressures on oil make political pressures on politicians impossible to ignore and that some expansion of offshore drilling is inevitable. But despite Green backlash against the Obama administration’s […]
-
![]()
![]()
Dems more trusted on energy than any other issue, continue pursuing polluter-friendly GOP ideas
In new polling focused primarily on healthcare, Washington Post-ABC asked the following question: Which political party, the (Democrats) or the (Republicans), do you trust to do a better job handling (ITEM)? Here are the results: Democrats Republicans The Economy 44 36 Health Care 47 34 Immigration Issues 38 35 The Situation in Afghanistan 43 […]
-
Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 8
U.S. energy and environmental policy sucks. We burn too much fuel, we emit too much pollution and we do so under a set of rules that cause us to spend far too much on energy, even as we use it in volumes that poison our planet, our geopolitics and our economy. We deserve better. That […]
-
Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 5
Now we come to the fun part. If you could build a dream spouse, what would he or she look like? Describe their personality, sense of humor, and relative similarity to Kelly LeBrock. It’s fun to think about, and utterly unrealistic. So too with the question we now build to. If you were king, had […]
-
Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 3
In Part 1, I outlined the five questions that we ought to answer before we can have any informed debate on energy policy reform. In Part 2, I provided my answer to the first of those questions: namely, what are the key existing regulatory barriers to clean energy deployment (Answer: utility regulation, environmental regulation and […]
-
![]()
![]()
Never mind what people believe — how can we change what they do? A chat with Robert Cialdini
When it comes to energy, policymakers are often confronted with human behavior that seems irrational, unpredictable, or unmanageable. Advocates for energy efficiency in particular are plagued by the gap between what it would make sense for people to do and what they actually do. Efforts to change people’s behavior have a record that can charitably […]
