Sep 4, 2025 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism, Journalism, Bias & Censored News
In Climate of Contempt I lament the way today’s political information environment breeds so much interpartisan fear, anger, and distrust that we “under-attend[] to the health of our democratic institutions.”[1] But one thing I did not do in my book was to...
Aug 30, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate
Among energy and environmental policy wonks in the northeast, an obscure provision of a 1972 environmental law is at the heart of a dispute over a natural gas pipeline. The provision in question is Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, and it gives states a veto over...
Aug 25, 2025 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism, Journalism, Bias & Censored News, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
One of the consequences of our balkanized, fractured, and insular information environment is that fringe political movements can grow more efficiently, away from public view. People who share the same false beliefs and harbor the same political resentments can nurture...
Aug 19, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
As policy, the abundance agenda was inevitable. It is a reaction to a pollyanna-ish view that assumed away the complexity and hard choices of the energy transition. Its popularity is a learning story. One of the joys of teaching is helping students develop a deep...
Aug 13, 2025 | Blog, Democracy and Transitions to Authoritarianism
This year’s gerrymandering wars are a predictable consequence of the forces that are driving our political polarization: not the bogeymen imagined by populists on the left and right, but rather the amplification of the angriest, most ideologically extreme voices by...
Aug 6, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate
One of the few low-carbon energy technologies that the Trump administration is not actively trying to hobble is nuclear power. (Geothermal energy is another.) Nuclear power boosters have been heartened recently by the tech industry’s interest in 24/7 clean power to...
