Battery Technology and EVs Take Off: A Timeline
These interlinked technologies are crucial to the energy transition. Here’s their history.
To fight global warming, we need to largely eliminate the internal combustion engine as a form of transportation. We need battery technology for this and to store electricity, because wind and solar power are intermittent. These technologies didn’t appear out of thin air. Here’s the story of their rise. 1800. Alessandro Volta invents a battery by stacking disks of copper and zinc., 1859. Lead-acid battery invented by Gaston Planté in France. 1888. Andreas...
CONTINUE READINGInterview with a Yale “JD”
The climate is changing rapidly, but not as fast as some people’s views have U-turned.
The Scene: An imaginary recording studio in a secret location. The Actors: A host and a guest you’ll never be able to identify. Warning: Only the statements by the unnamed guest are real. The host is fictitious. Host: Welcome to the podcast. Guest: Happy to be here. Host: I know you’re tired of getting questions about cat ladies. So let’s turn to another subject: climate change. Guest: Everything I’m going to say today I’ve said before. ...
CONTINUE READINGReflections from a Member of the SCoPEx Advisory Committee
Sharing my lessons
After many years of work, the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiments (SCoPEx) Advisory Committee concluded our work earlier this year after the research team at Harvard made the decision to cancel the experiment. I was a member of the Advisory Committee for much of its time, serving as chair and co-chair of the committee for portions of our work. This week, the Advisory Committee members published an article in Science describing the tensions encount...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Policy, Minnesota-Style
Tim Walz’s selection as a VP candidate has put the state’s policies in the limelight.
Although Minnesota isn’t considered a swing state, it’s not Deep Blue either. Biden got 52% of the vote in 2020. Control of the legislature has been contested, with Democrats having a narrow margin in both Houses recently. The state adopted a forward-looking climate policy in 2007, but by 2015 progress had stalled. Given this background, the state’s progress during the time Walz has been in office (2018-2024) has been impressive. Perhaps most interesting of all, ...
CONTINUE READINGDid Democrats Follow Through?
The 2020 Democratic Platform made some big promises. Four years later, where do things stand?
The 2020 Democratic Platform made a lot of promises about climate change. As this year's Convention approaches, it’s worth looking back at the last one, to compare what was promised and what was actually done. Platforms are often considered so much hot air. That seems a bit less true in this case: the Administration seems to have made efforts in the areas covered in the 2020 Platform, with varying degrees of success. Thus, the energy and climate programs of the t...
CONTINUE READINGThe Impoundment Gambit
Trump plans to use this unconstitutional strategy to reverse congressional priorities and gut environmental agencies.
One of Trump’s plans for a new presidency is to “use the president’s long-recognized Impoundment power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.” Refusing to spend money that Congress has appropriated is, he says, an inherent presidential power. “Bringing back Impoundment will give us a crucial tool with which to obliterate the Deep State.” Among the targets being discussed are green energy spending and support for the World Health O...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Would Climate Policy Look Like Under One-Party Conservative Rule?
You only need to look at Texas or Florida for the answer: a complete erasure of climate action.
We haven’t seen at the national level what climate policy would look like under a government completely controlled by today's hard-right -- one possible outcome of the 2024 election. Trump did have a Republican Congress at one point, but more moderate conservatives still held the balance of power there. Today’s hard-right Republican Party has left more conventional conservatives like Mitch McConnell in the dust. So what would a GOP trifecta look like today? We can...
CONTINUE READINGSchedule F and the Future of the Regulatory State
What is Schedule F? Would it be legal? And why does it matter so much?
Trump has vowed to destroy the “deep state” and to wreak vengeance on his enemies. Something called “Schedule F” is one of the key tools he plans to use as soon as he takes office to “remove rogue bureaucrats,” and he promises to use that tool “very aggressively.” Trump's plan would replace thousands of government experts with MAGA ideologues and partisan hacks. Despite its sweeping consequences, Trump's plan relies on an obscure technicality. Schedu...
CONTINUE READINGJustin Pidot: Manchin’s Latest and Last Run at Promoting Fossil Fuels through a Permitting Reform Bill
His proposal is a bad deal on climate and an afront to environmental justice
Last week, Senator Manchin unveiled his latest permitting bill, negotiated with Senator Barrasso and set to be marked up by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Wednesday. After recently completing a 3 ½ year stint as general counsel at the White House Counsel of Environmental Quality, I recognize that continuing to improve federal permitting and environmental review processes is important work. But without extensive surgery, this bill should not ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Best Reason for Optimism About Climate Action
As the saying goes, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
In 2010, a major climate change law passed by the House died in the Senate, but 12 years later, a major climate law passed both Houses. In the meantime, there had been a revolution in energy economics. If cellphone prices had dropped as fast since 2010 as the cost of power from solar panels, you could buy a new iPhone for about thirty bucks today. I'll unpack the numbers, but this graph from Penn State tells the story. Even if you don't much care for graphs, I gua...
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