Latest Articles

What do we mean when we talk about the cost of climate legislation?

As the Senate takes up climate change legislation, there’s going to be a great deal of talk about its costs, its benefits, and how they stack up against each other. These are vexed conversations, plagued with technical complexity and hidden political agendas. We’ll get to to some of those complexities and agendas in a future […]

Where do your senators stand on the Kerry-Boxer climate bill?

Get involved in the fight against climate change. The Senate is finally getting to work on climate legislation, months after the House passed its own bill. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) are pushing forward their Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. Do your senators support the bill, and action against climate […]

Barrasso seeks to block intelligence on climate change threat

Last year, Thomas Fingar, then the U.S. intelligence community’s top analyst, warned that climate change is among the gravest threats to U.S. national security (see here).  This year, John Warner, the former (GOP) chair of the Senate Armed Services committee has been repeating the same warning to anyone who would listen (see here). But some […]

Cleantech venture capital investment continues recovery

Media reports of the death of the clean tech industry have been exaggerated (see “Global recession? Must be time for the media’s alternative-energy backlash“).  The Cleantech group reported Thursday, third quarter “results for clean technology venture investments in North America, Europe, China and India totaling $1.59 billion across 134 companies.” That means total cleantech VC […]

New York Times spins the greatest nonstory ever told

Memo to status quo media:  We get it, already.  You have already written your “Copenhagen has failed” stories, and are just waiting for the flimsiest excuse to “scoop” everyone else.  Your desperation to file this as-yet-unwritten story is unbecoming and also perverse, since, as I’ve argued, prospects for a global deal have never been better. […]

AEI says conservatism conservatism isn’t dead

The brain waves of the American right continue to be erratic, when they are not flat-lining. What’s more surprising — that a leading conservative scholar would admit that his entire movement may be brain dead or that he thinks the movement’s best hope is … wait for it … Glenn Beck. Steven F. Hayward is […]

And the winner is…

  Where else but the Washington Post editorial page — that bastion of un-fact-checked disinformation – would you find a misleading and misguided piece attacking federal efficiency standards written by a guy who “teaches environmental ethics”?!  Or is that “!?” Now I can see a libertarian writing a misleading op-ed in defense of inefficient incandescent […]

AEI compares EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to Clint Eastwood

In a bizarre pop-culture flip-flop, Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute has compared the mild-mannered EPA administrator to Dirty Harry: You can just see Jackson standing there with a .44 magnum in her hand, and a steely glint in her eye, telling industry “You’ve got to ask yourself one question, ‘do I feel lucky?’ […]

Exclusive interview with Dr. Mojib Latif

Memo to media and deniers: If your “global cooling” piece revolves around Dr. Latif, you probably have the entire story backwards. But, at least for deniers, that is the goal. In an interview today, Dr. Latif told me “we don’t trust our forecast beyond 2015″ and “it is just as likely you’ll see accelerated warming” […]

Memo to George Will, Washington Post

The reason why big league journalists have to try much harder than they have been to get the climate story right is that when they get it wrong, it opens the door for the deniers to quote them and glom on to their (supposed) higher credibility, dragging the journalists down to their level in the […]