Jun 24, 2025 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism
Growing up in Rochester, New York in the 1960s and 70s most of my friends were Catholic. My family didn’t attend church, so most of what I learned about the Bible came from overhearing my friends talking about their “CCD classes,” their confirmations, etc. The...
Jun 17, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
The U.S. Senate is currently considering the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB). The version passed by the House would drastically scale back the energy infrastructure investment subsidies contained in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The Senate is trying to cobble...
Jun 15, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate, News, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
So far 2025 has seen a lot of “pivoting” away from clean energy and toward natural gas. Los Angeles Times writer Sammy Roth recently documented one such pivot, by wind energy champion and conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz. Tech industry giants who led the charge...
Jun 10, 2025 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism, News, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
A few weeks ago was graduation weekend at the University of Texas, during which I had the occasion to walk from the law school (in the northeast corner of campus) to an appointment at the business school (at the southwest corner). In that 15 minutes I passed by many...
Jun 5, 2025 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism, News, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
It is no secret that ideological and social media have amplified the worst of human nature in many ways. One away it does this is to supercharge the human instinct to blame a group for the bad acts of its individual members, and to endorse punishment of all the...
Jun 1, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate
Why can’t we be transparent about tradeoffs? The task of delivering power that is reliable, affordable, and clean is complicated. Anyone who wants to understand it can do so, but they must travel along a lengthy learning curve. When you get far enough along that...