obama

White House climate policy

President Obama’s science and technology advisors have released a new set of recommendations on climate policy that are indicative of a growing consensus around pragmatic, commonsense actions.[read more]

tar sands emissions

The March 11 editorial in the New York Times says the overriding reason President Obama should reject the Keystone XL pipeline is climate change.[read more]

Ernest Moniz

Obama called Moniz a “brilliant scientist” who “knows that we can produce more energy and grow our economy while still taking care of our air, our water, and our climate.”[read more]

s_bukley / Shutterstock.com

The State Department issued an recklessly insufficient environmental review of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline on Friday, despite the President’s tough talk on confronting climate change.[read more]

The world's climate is heating up due to human-caused, carbon-based emissions. Scientists are confirming that more clearly every year, and their calls to action are only growing stronger with the storms.[read more]

The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn’t work and indeed is actually counterproductive![read more]

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The State Department's decision on the cross-border permit is expected within a few months. But Keystone could prove a Pyrrhic victory for either environmentalists or the energy industry.[read more]

It has not taken long for Barack Obama to face the first big test of his resolve on combating global climate disruption.[read more]

As some 35,000 opponents to the Keystone Pipeline gathered in front of the White House yesterday trying to persuade President Obama to just say no to the pipeline, I reflected upon some of the myths about the pipeline that have been bandied about by both sides on the issue.[read more]

Obama went all climate hawk on America in his second inaugural address: "We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations."[read more]

Piotr Wawrzyniuk / Shutterstock.com

President Obama’s climate change legislation may have no chance of passing through Congress, and it could be the fault of environmental activists.   recent research paper by Harvard Professor Theda Skocpol places the responsibility for the climate legislation’s failure to pass on climate change activists. Skocpol argues that...[read more]

by Daniel J. WeissBarack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was built on “hope and change.” Millions of Americans went to the polls hoping that the federal government would change its approach to many of the nation’s challenges after eight years of retreat, neglect, and inertia under President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick...[read more]

When President Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, clean energy was largely a policymaking afterthought. Federal investment in clean energy research and development (R&D) stood at just over $4 billion a year – less than 40 percent of its peak in the 1970’s. It’s an understatement to say a lot has changed in the four years since.[read more]

A recent column by Daniel Sarewitz in Nature on bridging the "partisan divide" with respect to public perception of science inspired some spirited debate over on my twitter feed yesterday. Scientists are often perceived as being in the thrall of Democrats, , exposing the greater scientific enterprise to being undermined as simply another partisan front. But is it really that simple?[read more]

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Now that the presidential election is over, perhaps we’ll see some reality injected into our energy policy.  The existing energy policy professes to encourage “energy independence”.  That policy in action embeds permanent subsidies, tax credits, and tax breaks in the US federal tax code for highly profitable fossil fuel...[read more]