Aug 25, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking
Dangerous heat, more frequent and intense flooding and wildfires, and more violent hurricanes are constantly in the news cycle. What we know about the relationship between climate change and severe weather is worrying enough. We need not embellish reality with the...
Aug 20, 2024 | Blog, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
The antagonist in the 2006 film The Illusionist is a fictional 19th century Hapsburg crown prince, played by Rufus Sewell. Sewell’s prince is vain and cruel in his personal life, and a dedicated autocrat. But he is also dedicated to modernizing the empire to...
Aug 15, 2024 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate
One feature of the modern information environment is that it allows conspiracies and utopian fantasies of the left and right to grow undisturbed by reality. Utopian ideas are often the product of the irresistible notion that “if everyone thought like me, everything...
Aug 10, 2024 | Blog, Journalism, Bias & Censored News, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
As I have noted in several other posts (e.g. here and here), a second Trump presidency would represent a setback for the energy transition because of Republicans’ turn away from green energy and toward fossil fuels. If opinion polls are to be believed, a strong...
Aug 5, 2024 | Blog, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate
Sometimes, in contentious, factually-complex situations, people want simplicity and moral clarity. Those two forces — seeking moral clarity and appreciating complexity — are difficult to reconcile sometimes. In December of 2023 the presidents of Penn,...
Jul 30, 2024 | Blog, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
[NOTE: There is a post-publication update at the end of this post.] In my previous post I examined what Project 2025 — the GOP playbook for remaking the executive branch — had to say about redirecting energy policy away from renewable climate concerns....
