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Articles by Teryn Norris

Teryn Norris is a leading young policy strategist and serves as president and founder of Americans for Energy Leadership. http://leadenergy.org

Featured Article

By Teryn Norris & Daniel Goldfarb

President Obama’s exclusion of “climate change” from the State of the Union, combined with Carol Browner’s exit as the administration’s top climate advisor, has sparked wide debate across the climate movement. On one hand, many climate advocates are backing the president’s strategy. As Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) put it, “He’s trying to unify … I think it was very smart of him.”

On the other hand, climate advocates like Joe Romm of Climate Progress and David Roberts of Grist are criticizing the president for not using climate change as a central justification for his clean energy proposals. Unfortunately, even after the collapse of cap-and-trade legislation, Roberts and other critics continue to follow a type of policy literalism [PDF] that has undermined environmentalists and climate advocates for years.

The argument goes something like this. First, Roberts claims that without climate change as the central justification, the case for federal investment in the clean energy industry “is no stronger than the ... Read more

All Articles

  • Obama’s climate omission: Can we disagree on climate and win on clean energy?

    President Obama’s exclusion of “climate change” from the State of the Union has sparked wide debate across the climate movement.

  • Climate Movement at the Crossroads

    When future scholars document the history of global warming, one of the watershed years will almost surely be 2010. For over a decade, the primary goal of U.S. climate policy advocates has been to establish a strong carbon pollution cap and a binding global emissions treaty. Armed with large war chests and major electoral victories, […]

  • How America Can Lead the Clean Energy Race

    U.S. economic leadership is at a crossroads. Recent outlooks suggest we may experience long-term stagnation and unemployment comparable to Japan’s lost decade. Yet while we have suffered an economic crisis produced by our own financial sector – losing millions of jobs, trillions in economic output, and further damaging our industrial base – China has largely […]

  • A Bipartisan Strategy for Energy Leadership

    By Teryn Norris & Clifton Yin When President Obama and key Senate leaders meet today to reach a compromise on energy and climate legislation, they should strongly consider increasing federal investment in clean energy technology to at least $15 billion annually. This is a comprehensive third-way strategy to improve U.S. energy independence, economic competitiveness, and […]