NATIONAL JOURNAL 09/16/13 By Michael Shank and Emily Wirzba What few people in Washington are talking about when it comes to the Syria crisis is the connection to climate change. While it may seem remote and implausible to Washington realists, the connection is clear. What is most disconcerting, however – […]
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 […]
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 […]
NATIONAL JOURNAL 07/15/13 By Michael Shank Rarely does one turn to Congress for innovation. That is certainly the case with energy efficiency. Congress may be a go-to on oversight and accountability but not innovation. The Pentagon, in contrast, while not a leader in oversight and accountability (with no audit planned […]
NATIONAL JOURNAL 07/08/13 By Michael Shank The so-called “war on coal” that Senate Joe Manchin (D-WV) claimed recently is real, in direct response to President Barack Obama’s climate change speech in Georgetown, gained new momentum last month in a World Bank memo that pledged fewer Bank-funded coal projects. Manchin, who […]
NATIONAL JOURNAL 07/01/13 By Michael Shank Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report citing that America could slow its obesity epidemic through a calorie tax. By putting a price on calories, much like we did with tobacco to slow tobacco use and ultimately the cancer […]
NATIONAL JOURNAL 06/24/13 By Michael Shank President Barack Obama must go big on climate change this Tuesday primarily because there will hardly be a better political moment available to him. If President Obama uses his speech to go soft — with meager caps on carbon emissions, weak investments in renewable […]
NATIONAL JOURNAL 06/17/13 By Michael Shank With carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration at 400 parts per million, Science Magazine reporting that the earth is warming much faster than previously thought, and a Government Accountability Office report citing the “high risks” that global warming poses to federal infrastructure and financing, it feels […]