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Energy & Environmental Policy Technology Policy

Climate Change: A non-partisan issue in Texas?

Some interesting recent polling, including work done by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, suggests a narrowing gap between California and Texas over climate change concerns. This may be surprising to many since Texas’s political leaders take a hard line on restricting greenhouse gas emissions compared to public leaders in the Golden State. Governor […]

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Energy & Environmental Policy

Austinites Call for City Hall to Abandon King Coal

“Coal is dead.  Fund the future.”  This was the message from the Sierra’s Club’s Dave Cortez at Austin City Hall this Saturday.   On a blue bell Saturday afternoon, around 75 Austinites gathered on the steps of City Hall for a rally with nationally organized roots. A national campaign organized under the umbrella of the environmental […]

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Energy & Environmental Policy Technology Policy

Clean Tech’s Real Solyndra

The iconic image for the debate on climate change over the last decade has not been footage of glacial ice tumbling into the arctic sea or the cover of An Inconvenient Truth (2006). It is the climate forecast PowerPoint, crisscrossed with variable lines, demonstrating the empirical case for any number of global outcomes. The graph […]

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Energy & Environmental Policy

Cleaning Our Hands of Dirty Pipelines

  This article was co-written by Marcus Denton, a second year master's candidate at the LBJ School for Public Affairs, studying social and economic policy. President Obama generates controversy with nearly every one of his decisions. But if he gives in on the most important environmental decision in years, we’re all going to feel the […]

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Energy & Environmental Policy

Lighting Up a Dark Continent

  Take a look at a satellite photo of Africa at night.  Apart from a few specks of light over the largest cities, the continent is dark. Millions of rural Africans live without any electrical power at all, and the U.N. Development Program estimates that on a yearly basis the 19.5 million people of New […]

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Energy & Environmental Policy

Teeing Up for Climate Change

  I was asked the other day to name a country that I’d want to be a marketing agent for – spice up their image. I answered with some African state – predictable for an Africanist “do-gooder” who wants to “change!” the world. I was wrong. I should have said the Maldives. Before I continue, […]

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Energy & Environmental Policy

Hemp: The Solution to Climate Change

  What if we could reduce CO2 emissions without raising taxes? What if a carbon-neutral source of renewable energy could be grown on American soil and generate all the power the United States needed? What if one plant could bolster the economy, provide nutritious food, bio-degradable plastics, durable fiber, carbon-neutral energy, and save the world from […]

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Energy & Environmental Policy

The Intersection of Climate Change and Recovery

  On Friday, April 8, the U.S. Congress dodged a government shutdown by striking a budget compromise, undoubtedly crushing the dreams of the news outlets gleefully throwing countdown clocks and “what if?!” statements around. What the media have largely failed to cover, however, are the follow-up discussions that continue to adjust the budget. One of […]

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Energy & Environmental Policy

Targeting the Truly Vulnerable

  When we think of the places that are threatened by climate change, we think of tiny islands on the edge of pulling an Atlantis, coastlines where homes fall into the ocean when the shore erodes or the water levels rise, or the Sahara encroaching on land never meant to be part of a desert. […]

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Energy & Environmental Policy

Climate Change … or Not?

  In recent articles, I’ve been arguing that America has a teenager’s worst attitude about climate change: We need to stop slouching to our rooms and slamming doors shut, and start engaging developing countries on the issues that matter to them, like adapting to climate change within those countries’ borders and mitigating it within our […]

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