One of the raps against President Obama is that he’s in over his head due, in part, to lack of executive management experience.
Here’s one thing Obama could do to shore up his management credentials: find a way to get rid of Greg Jaczko as chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Now would be a good   more

Another biennial international climate negotiation jamboree wraps up today.
What does the world have to show for it? Durban shouldn’t turn out to be the belly flop that Copenhagen was in 2009. Other than that, not much. See you in two years and all that.
Even a few greens are wondering if trekking to these multi-national climate   more

We’re not back to the energy glory days, when oceans of east Texas crude fueled the ships, aircraft, and tanks on which the Allies rode to victory in World War II.
U.S. imports of crude oil and petroleum products, however, have dropped a hair below 50 percent. And on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that   more

Eli Lehrer ably defends the Department of Energy, the flawed and unloved agency whose name fell away from Rick Perry’s lips when his neural network took an inopportune coffee break.
As Lehrer pointed out, about half of DOE’s budget is allotted for watchdogging our nuclear arsenal and cleaning up “legacy wastes” left behind by production of   more

A guy closing in on retirement can speak uncomfortable truths that he might not have felt as free to share before.
John Rowe, the soon-to-retire CEO of the giant utility Exelon, rolled out a few grenades about energy politics in a recent interview published in the October 22nd Wall Street Journal.
Rowe argues that market-friendly Republicans are as   more

Many Republican officeholders and would-be officeholders are telegraphing to voters an either-or message: They can have more jobs or they can have cleaner air. But they can’t have both.
Rhetoric about closing down EPA and removing bureaucrats’ boots off industry’s throat, however, is more about drawing distinctions between Republicans and Democrats rather than taking reasoned positions   more

Solyndra is a lesson in how the substitution of wishful thinking for green eyeshades can stimulate the growth of costly energy carbuncles that emit malodorous political fumes.
Today it is Solyndra. Yesterday it was Colony Shale.  more

The Obama White House is many things—flailing as it fishtails from an adult-in-the-room pose to screaming populism; cack-handed, as it both infuriates its base and loses independents; and passive to the point of paralysis, as Chris Christie pointed out in his Reagan Library speech.
The Obama White House, however, is not insane.
The Daily Caller’s breathtaking insistence,   more

What would a President Perry mean for the U.S. energy-wise?
First, Perry’s election would mean environmentalists might as well scrub “climate change” and “global warming” out of their vocabularies for four years. There would be no climate initiatives offered or accepted as such by a president who dismisses rising temperatures as the concoction of unnamed conspirators,   more

When it comes to climate change, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie annoys people on both extremes of the political spectrum. One more reason to see a bright future for this guy.
On the far left, the Daily Kos types fulminate that Christie is a stooge of fossil fuel interests. Over on the far right, the vein   more

On August 18, a few days after Rick Perry went off on climate scientists as money-grubbing carbon cultists, Jon Huntsman had some craziness of his own to share.
“To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy,” the presidential candidate and former Utah governor Tweeted on Thursday afternoon.  more

The prevailing narrative about regulation is that businesses want the Environmental Protection Agency to lighten up. So, why did five appliance manufacturers recently ask EPA to tighten rules involving air conditioners and ozone-depleting refrigerants?
Or, to put it another way, is the Obama administration undercutting Ronald Reagan’s signature environmental accomplishment through sloppy rule writing?  more

The Internet has been touted as a paradise for individual liberty and democracy – a platform from which every point of view can be heard, a global town hall where the ideas of free individuals are the raw materials for the wisdom of the crowd.
Not so fast, says musician, virtual reality developer, and technology theorist   more

Back in the 1980s, the biggest fighting words around environmental policy were not “climate change.” They were “wilderness preservation.”
Environmentalists wanted more, much more wilderness set aside. Extractive industries wanted little or, preferably, zero new wilderness. The bitterest wilderness battles were in the forests, mountains, and arid lands of Oregon.  more

Partisanship in Washington has been extreme lately. So has the weather. Might there be a connection? It certainly looks that way.
Let’s talk about heat. As anyone living in Washington—or in about three-fourths of the nation for that matter—has surely noticed, this summer has been unusually hot. In fact, July’s heat was unrivaled in 140 years of   more

The fact that congress is promoting lightbulbs that consume less electricity is a cause for cheer.  more

Stanford University released a poll suggesting that GOP candidates should reconsider pandering to the most ideologically locked-in Republican voters on climate change.  more

Before we can have a rational debate on America’s future energy needs, both parties need to acknowledge the role tax preferences and other subsidies play in the marketplace.   more

Congressional Republicans are having difficulty keeping their stories straight when inventing politicized explanations for high oil prices.  more

In a setback to conservationists, the White House this week abandoned a proposal that would have led to the creation of new wilderness areas out West.  more