Even as Congress passed $15 billion in initial funding for Hurricane Harvey relief, Americans were glued to their TVs watching Hurricane Irma, the strongest-ever Atlantic storm, bear down on Florida, where millions are still without power and other services.

Sadly, Congress, and the rest of us, had better get used to it. Harvey and Irma are just glimpses of the massive extra costs climate change is already extracting from U.S. taxpayers, a price tag that will only grow exponentially in coming years.

Continue reading at The Hill. 

Clean-energy policies championed by Democrats over the last decade have helped create millions of high-paying energy jobs for American workers. And innovative Democratic policies going forward can help spur millions more good jobs — in energy efficiency, natural gas, nuclear energy, carbon capture, wind, solar, electric vehicles and infrastructure — in coming years.

This record of high-wage job creation stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s false coal-dust promises to somehow bring back jobs using 19th century energy strategies.

But, as Democrats look toward the mid-term elections, their candidates must talk about energy in the right way. They must put high-wage energy jobs first, national security gains second and environmental benefits third, to tap into voters’ concerns to garner the electoral benefits their policies deserve.

Continue reading at The Hill.

Infamously, Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax, but the rest of the world knows better. In fact, the main reason European and Asian nations are interested in importing U.S. natural gas is to displace coal and cut greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

If the Trump administration truly cares about expanding U.S. gas exports, as they claim, they should maximize the competitive advantage that lower-emitting U.S. natural gas has over not only coal, but also over higher-emitting Russian gas.

This means the administration should stop the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) attempt to rollback domestic regulations of methane emissions from gas development, and perhaps use the threat of sanctions against Russian gas pipelines (as allowed under the new Russia sanctions law) to expand U.S. markets.

Continue reading at The Hill.

Donald Trump made political hay in Appalachian and industrial states by running as an ardent booster of coal. Yet what’s really powered America’s remarkable energy boom over the last decade is shale oil and natural gas, renewable solar and wind, clean-tech and energy efficiency.

Energy innovation, in short, is the key to creating more good jobs and lowering U.S. carbon emissions. But given the Trump administration’s animus toward energy technology funding and low-carbon approaches generally, much of the political leadership for America’s next energy revolution will have to come from states where Democrats are in charge.

Take Colorado, which is aggressively pursuing energy innovation across the full spectrum of fuels and technologies. Governor John Hickenlooper has crafted a pro-growth, low-emissions agenda that should be a model to other states and to national policymakers. It emphasizes shale gas, wind, solar, hydropower, efficiency and advanced technology in everything from zero emissions electric cars to home net electricity metering.

Continue read at Real Clear Energy. 

Last week, President Donald Trump declared that he would bring back coal jobs, directing the EPA to roll back the Clean Power Plan and other regulations on coal producers. It’s an audacious promise given the recent trajectory of the industry, and most energy experts dismissed it as impossible.

But there is one way for Trump to slow the loss of coal-related jobs and it has nothing to do with undermining climate regulations: Rather, it runs through China.

As Trump meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping today, he has a rare chance to build relations with a global rival and help keep one of his domestic promises. The reason is clean coal technology.

Read more at Politico. 

Trump’s executive order eviscerating Obama’s climate plan could leave the U.S. isolated as other countries push forward to curb emissions, observers of international climate negotiations said.

Major climate allies are increasingly concerned that Trump’s efforts to overturn the [Clean Power Plan] and other climate rollbacks will blow a huge hole in the U.S. ability to meet its 2025 climate commitment, let alone reach much deeper emissions cuts needed to stabilize the climate long-term,” said Paul Bledsoe, a senior fellow on energy at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Those concerns about U.S. climate commitments under a Trump presidency could come up in May when diplomats gather for a working group meeting on the Paris climate agreement.

Read more at The Washington Post. 

Global temperatures were the highest on record in 2016 for the third straight year, scientists at NASA and elsewhere reported last week. This is just the latest proof of rapid climate change that has experts and governments around the world deeply alarmed. And yet President Trump and many other Republicans have so far paid no political price for questioning or downplaying the scientific evidence on climate change and undermining environmental policies that reduce risk.

One reason for their apparent immunity is that climate denialists exaggerate the economic costs of laws that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, advocates of effective climate policies have lacked hard numbers on the current and future economic toll of global warming.

But this is starting to change. Over the past several years, a number of peer-reviewed studies have established that climate change is already costing American taxpayers and consumers tens of billions of dollars. As these costs to businesses, states and the federal budget mount, Trump and Congress may finally face pressure to act.

Continue reading at Los Angeles Times.