Climate Politics

How to Lie with Percentages

It’s easy to make something seem big or small, depending on how you present the numbers.

We’re told that a given policy will only reduce U.S. emissions by something like 1%, which sounds trivial. But total U.S. carbon emissions are 4.8 billion tons.  One percent of that is 48 million tons, which is a lot of carbon.  At the current estimate of the social cost of carbon, reducing U.S. emissions by 1% would prevent $9 billion of harm.

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Why I Still ♥ IRA

Biden’s climate law has already had a dramatic impact.

With over a half-trillion dollars in clean tech investment to date, the Inflation Reduction Act has left an indelible mark on U.S. climate policy. It’s unlikely that Congress will vote to repeal the whole law, given massive investments in GOP congressional districts. But even if they did, there’s no undoing the investments already made.

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A Trumped-Up Energy Emergency

We have weathered past threats to energy security through democratic processes, not by executive fiat.

The Executive Order has fabricated an energy emergency and is doubly wrongheaded. First, as the statistics bear out, there is neither a domestic energy emergency nor an energy crisis. The U.S. has effectively secured energy independence. More significantly, Trump’s politically driven, fossil fuel-dependent energy portfolio is neither diversified nor economically sound.

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Talking Climate Policy with an Energy Economist

An interview with leading energy expert Catherine Wolfram

Catherine Wolfram, a leading energy economist who has researched the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act, shares her views of the impact of the IRA, its likely fate, and the energy policies of the incoming Trump Administration. Wolfram served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the US Treasury in 2021-2022

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A Crisis in Climate Communications

Deadly windstorms, wildfires, and hurricanes constitute something more horrific than just “climate change.”

What’s best for communicating urgency: phrases like “global warming” and “climate change” or “climate crisis” and “climate emergency”? What do audiences take away from these semantic choices? Does it matter what words we use? What about when the entire nation is watching a series of wildfires engulf Los Angeles, fueled by unusually dry vegetation during …

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Looking Ahead to the Second Trump Administration

Does the IRA have staying power?

This is the seventh in a series of posts.  The first post is here.  The second post is here.  The third post is here.  The fourth post is here.  The fifth post is here.  The sixth post is here. The incoming Trump Administration has, of course, called for ending efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, …

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Broadening the Scope of Climate Policy

How to expand climate policy to new places and new sectors

This is the sixth in a series of posts.  The first post is here.  The second post is here.  The third post is here.  The fourth post is here.  The fifth post is here. The political dynamics of decarbonization that I’ve sketched out are very specific to time, space, and economic sector.  The policy approaches …

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How to Commit to Decarbonization

Feedback effects can lock in decarbonization policies, for better and for worse

This is the fifth in a series of posts.  The first post is here.  The second post is here.  The third post is here.  The fourth post is here.  Decarbonization is a long-term challenge, and it requires commitments to drive the investments required for innovation and deployment of non-fossil-fuel energy sources.  But long-term commitments, which …

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On Carbon Pricing and Mass Climate Movements

Neither carbon pricing nor a mass climate movement can drive effective climate policy on their own

This is the fourth in a series of posts.  The first post is here.  The second post is here.  The third post is here. What lessons can we draw from this analysis for key climate policy debates?  Here, I will focus on two key lessons, first for carbon pricing, and second for the use of …

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How to Make Climate as Compelling as Egg Prices

While politicians are right to focus on cost of living, it’s dangerously wrong to assume voters rejected climate policies in the 2024 election.

How do we make the climate crisis as compelling to voters as the price of eggs? That’s a question—an existential question—I’ve been asking myself for weeks now. My UCLA Emmett Institute colleagues and I have some ideas that I’ll be sharing over the next weeks and months. We’re hardly alone: Two months after a disheartening …

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