US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 09/23/13 By Michael Shank and US Congressman Paul Tonko On Friday, the Obama Administration announced greenhouse gas emission limits on new power plants. We applaud this development and appreciate the meaningful step forward it provides. Much of the conversation about this progress concerns coal-fired power […]
USA TODAY 9/23/13 By Michael Shank Focus on African security missing development needs. Last month, at the beginning of a trip to Somalia, my twitter feed started buzzing with breaking news about explosions in Mogadishu. A local rebel group, al-Shabab, claimed credit. Their tactic was fairly unsophisticated: break the Ramadan […]
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 09/19/13 By Michael Shank This week, as U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy testified before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power regarding the administration’s climate change policy, there was the palpable absence of constituent opinion. […]
CNN 09/17/13 By Michael Shank and Emily Wirzba Editor’s note: Michael Shank is director of foreign policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Emily Wirzba is program assistant for Sustainable Energy and the Environment at FCNL. The views expressed are their own. The agreement forged by Russia and the […]
THE NEW REPUBLIC 08/20/13 By Marin Cogan On most days, a vegetarian hill worker’s lunch options are depressing: soggy salad-bar greens, a greasy grilled cheese, or maybe—just maybe—a wrap from the sandwich station made of cheese and leftover garnishes. A few months ago, Michael Shank, then an aide to California […]
NATIONAL JOURNAL 08/19/13 By Michael Shank A report released this week on how the American public is thinking and talking about climate change — published by the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication and the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication — may startle policymakers and the private […]
NATIONAL JOURNAL 08/12/13 By Michael Shank Having just returned from Somalia last week, and after meeting with the Minister of Natural Resources, the imperative to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy is increasingly becoming a moral one, not merely an environmental or financial one. In Somalia — where the […]
NATIONAL JOURNAL 07/29/13 By Michael Shank While I am all for a renewable fuel standard that boosts our production and consumption of renewable energy – as opposed to non-renewable fossil fuel energy – I think it is worth identifying several myths about biofuels first. In a bipartisan column I wrote […]
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 07/29/13 By Michael Shank There are few ideas that convey the idea of “shared security” better than global warming. When the world warms up, when the sea levels rise, and when the extreme weather patterns wreak havoc, we are all in it together – either […]
NATIONAL JOURNAL 07/22/13 By Michael Shank If Washington wants to avoid another Canadian case study and minimize the disasters associated with transporting fossil fuels it should, simply, stop transporting them. Here’s why and here’s how: The fossil fuel spill legacy is long. Most memorable is the Deepwater Horizon spill in […]