… Environmentalism in the U.S. used to be a fairly bipartisan issue. The Environmental Protection Agency, founded in 1970, was a product of the Nixon administration. But somewhere around 1990, everything changed. And it changed quickly, in ways that had big impacts on our ability to negotiate international environmental accords […] Read more »
The Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming Matters
Skuce et al., responding to Powell, title their article, “Does It Matter if the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming Is 97% or 99.99%?” I argue that the extent of the consensus does matter, most of all because scholars have shown that the stronger the public believe the consensus to be, the […] Read more »
Is Trump’s Climate-Change Agenda Politically Sustainable?
… The unifying thread through Trump’s environmental agenda is an attempt to resurrect an earlier energy order centered on maximizing fossil-fuel production and marginalizing considerations about the carbon emissions linked to climate change. … It’s difficult to overstate how directly this revanchist agenda collides with both the marketplace and policy […] Read more »
Paris Agreement enjoys more support than Donald Trump
President Trump reportedly intends to withdraw from the Paris Climate agreement. His advisors may have told him that it will be a popular move. This is what they told him about firing FBI Director James Comey, and he seems to have believed it. This could become yet another self-inflicted wound, […] Read more »
Few Americans support cuts to most government programs, including Medicaid
President Donald Trump’s first budget request to Congress would make deep cuts to government programs, including Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income adults and children. Recent polls have found little public support for cuts to Medicaid, but that may not be a surprise: Americans tend not to favor budget […] Read more »
Fox News Poll: Trump approval down, voters support special counsel on Russia
American voters disagree with President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, think the dismissal was for self-serving reasons, and approve of a special counsel being appointed to investigate Russian government efforts to influence the election and the Trump campaign. In addition, a majority opposes the Republican plan to replace […] Read more »