Aug 30, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking
We have known for some time that climate change can increase the intensity and frequency of wildfires. And in recent years wildfires sparked by electric utility infrastructure have become more common. California, Hawaii and Texas have experienced particularly...
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...
Jun 15, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking
Modern information flows shield the good news about the energy transition from conservatives, and the bad news from liberals. Our insulated realities make us too certain too quickly that our preferred truth is THE truth. In fact, we don’t know how technology will...
Jun 5, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition
Some people, particularly those at the ideological poles of each party, reject the idea that congressional majorities are built by winning the ideological middle. They see engaging the dwindling set of potentially-persuadable voters as a largely futile exercise....
May 15, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Journalism, Bias & Censored News
Steve Levine’s 2015 book, Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World, tells the story of one of the laboratories competing for federal (2009 ARRA) stimulus money targeting battery development. Along the way the book illustrates the...
May 10, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking
In chapters 2 and 3 of Climate of Contempt I describe the gap between folk wisdom about corporate dominance of the policymaking process and what empirical political science research says about that issue. That gap is fairly large. As a general matter, well-resourced...