A recent poll conducted by the new climate change news site Heatmap posed a provocative question: If you had to choose between rolling out renewable energy quickly and harming natural land or wild animals in the process, or slowing down renewable energy development to protect land and animals even at…

Why pursuit of “energy abundance” risks missing the point Abundant, cheap energy, wrote Ezra Klein in a recent New York Times column, could be “the foundation on which a more equal, just and humane world can be built.” It could also be the opposite. The availability of new forms of energy, particularly fossil fuels, has fueled human material progress…

Pumping the brakes on the next great technofix Last year, the makers of the cellphone game Candy Crush took over the nighttime sky across the Hudson River from Manhattan for a 500-drone synchronized light show marking the brand’s 10th anniversary. Such a display would not have been possible without stunning…

With the midterm elections now in the rearview mirror, some version of Sen. Joe Manchin’s “permitting reform” legislation could soon be coming back to life. Proposed as part of the deal that led to passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August, the legislation would have expanded the federal government’s…

The United States is a freakish outlier when it comes to the number of miles we drive in our cars and trucks. …

Local and state governments across America own more than 3.6 million vehicles, the vast majority of them powered by gasoline and diesel fuel. Buying, fueling and maintaining those vehicles is a big expense for governments, especially with gasoline and diesel prices on the rise. Transitioning to electric vehicles can reduce…

Abundant, cheap renewable energy is an essential part of a zero-carbon future. It is not enough to get us there on its own. The reason can be summed up in one word: Bitcoin. OK, Bitcoin isn’t literally the reason why ramping up renewable energy is insufficient (if necessary) to get…

Fixing the deficit in our political imagination. In 1921, in one of the most violent and notorious incidents in a notoriously violent era of U.S. race relations, a mob of white attackers descended on the prosperous Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, nicknamed “Black Wall Street.” …

The “abundance agenda” America needs In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Derek Thompson proposed “a simple plan to solve all of America’s problems”: an “abundance agenda” focused on “solving our national problem of scarcity.” Surveying the American landscape, Thompson asks a very important question: Why, given America’s vast resources, should we lack any basic…