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...
May 20, 2025 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate
The indiscriminate cuts to the executive branch being made by Elon Musk’s DOGE operation are crippling the government’s ability to provide essential public goods to consumers, and to protect consumers from the predations of unregulated markets. As reported recently in...
May 9, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, News, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
Over the last few months Republicans in Congress have been writing strongly worded letters to each other about the various green energy subsidies created by the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. In early March, 21 House Republicans urged Speaker Mike...
May 4, 2025 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate, Journalism, Bias & Censored News, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
[This is the last post in a multi-part look at new books addressing what we know, and don’t know, about today’s politics. Part 1 is here; part 2 is here; and part 3 is here.] The Final Book: Focus on Public Debate The books we have reviewed to date have...
