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Climate Policy blog
How an Environmental Law Became a Weapon Against Student Housing The People's Park fight in Berkeley shows how lawsuits under California's environmental review law stalled student housing, and how the state rewrote the rules in 2023 and 2025. Permitting Reform Splits the Left Between Builders and Protectors Why the 2024 Manchin-Barrasso permitting bill divided climate advocates, what faster reviews would gain and risk, and how a deal could serve both clean power and frontline towns. The Grain Belt Express and the Fifteen-Year Fight to Build One Power Line The story of a Kansas-to-Indiana power line proposed around 2010, the landowners and states that fought over it, and what its canceled federal loan guarantee says about building anything. Eunice Foote and the 1856 Experiment That Found the Greenhouse Effect In 1856 an amateur scientist from upstate New York showed that carbon dioxide traps heat. Her paper was read aloud by a man, credited to others and forgotten for 150 years. EV Subsidies and the Evidence From Norway to California Norway sells almost nothing but electric cars now. Did tax breaks, chargers or fuel prices do the work, and what does the evidence mean for American buyers after 2025? How Iowa Became a Wind Power State Under Republican Governors Iowa now makes more than half its electricity from wind. The story runs through a 1983 law, a Republican senator's tax credit, farm lease checks and governors of both parties. How Texas Under Rick Perry Built the Lines That Made It a Wind Giant A 2005 Texas law ordered thousands of miles of high-voltage lines to carry West Texas wind to the cities. Here is how the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones worked and what they teach about building. How the Inflation Reduction Act Became the Biggest US Climate Law How a bill declared dead in late 2021 passed the Senate on a tie-breaking vote in August 2022, and what its tax credits, grants and loans were built to do. How the Paris Agreement Actually Works, From the Gavel at Le Bourget Why the Paris climate deal runs on national pledges, a five-year ratchet and public scrutiny instead of penalties, and what that design can and cannot do. James Hansen's Hot June Day Before the Senate in 1988 On June 23, 1988, a NASA scientist told senators global warming had begun. Here is what that hearing changed, what Washington did and failed to do next, and why it took decades. Leaving Paris Twice and What the US Withdrawals Changed The United States has quit the Paris climate deal twice. Here is the case that states, cities and markets limit how much a presidential walkout can actually do. The 1973 Oil Embargo and the Fuel Economy Rules It Produced How the gas lines of 1973 led Congress to write the first federal fuel economy standards in 1975, why they stalled for decades, and what that history says about today's car rules. The 95-0 Byrd-Hagel Vote That Doomed Kyoto in the Senate In July 1997 the Senate voted 95-0 against any climate treaty that bound only rich nations. How that vote sank Kyoto and shaped every US climate agreement since, including Paris. The Keeling Curve, Measured on Top of Mauna Loa Since 1958 How a young chemist's obsession with measuring carbon dioxide precisely, on a Hawaiian volcano starting in 1958, became the single most important record of a warming world. The Montreal Protocol, the Treaty That Began to Mend the Ozone Hole How a 1987 treaty backed by the Reagan administration and ratified without dissent by the Senate set the ozone layer on the path to recovery, and what climate diplomacy can borrow from it. The Rural Electrification Act and the Co-ops That Still Light the Countryside How the 1936 Rural Electrification Act used cheap public loans and farmer-owned co-ops to light rural America, and why those same co-ops now matter for the clean energy shift. Waxman-Markey, the 2009 Cap-and-Trade Bill That Passed the House and Died How a carbon cap squeaked through the House in June 2009, why the Senate never voted on it, and how its failure shaped the very different climate law of 2022. What the 2025 Budget Law Cut From the Clean Energy Tax Credits A plain guide to what the July 2025 budget law ended, from EV credits after September 30, 2025, to new deadlines for wind and solar, and which clean energy credits survived. Why So Many Clean Energy Factories Landed in Republican Districts A 2022 law passed without a single Republican vote sent much of its factory money to Republican districts. Here is why, what happened in 2025, and the case that those jobs built a new constituency. Why Thousands of Clean Energy Projects Wait Years to Connect to the Grid Why finished wind, solar and battery projects sit for years in interconnection queues, how studies and upgrade costs pile up, and what FERC's July 2023 order tried to fix.