Paul Bledsoe for The Hill: Can America prevent a global warming cold war?

At the 11th hour of climate negotiations in Scotland last week, the U.S. and China released a “Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s” outlining increased cooperation on a wide range of climate and clean energy topics. The communique’s careful language was redolent of Cold War détente documents, increasing a sense that climate change bargaining with China, Russia and other adversaries is becoming like Cold War nuclear nonproliferation negotiations: failure could be catastrophic, so enhanced cooperation is crucial, but often slow-going.

Yet, the climate crisis doesn’t permit the luxury of time. Leading science finds that to limit devastating near-term climate impacts, and reduce risks of runaway warming, China especially must cut its emissions as soon as possible this decade, not just in the long-term.  So far, however, despite the new declaration, and climate discussions this week between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing has made no such commitment. In fact, Chinese coal use just reached an all-time high.Sen. Joe Manchin and House moderates do their progressive colleagues a favor by demanding a bill that is fully funded without shell games and budget gimmicks. Pivoting to such a bill would shield Democrats from inflation risks and allow them to make permanent progressive policies that otherwise might vanish.

Can America prevent a global
warming cold war?
by PPI Strategic Adviser Paul Bledsoe
for The Hill

For Virginia Democrats like me, the odd-year elections earlier this month were like a gruesome coda to Halloween. Republicans swept the top three statewide offices, took over the House of Delegates and knocked the Old Dominion back into swing state status.

As painful as they were, however, the Democratic losses in Virginia and close shave in New Jersey have had one salutary effect: They seem to have popped the progressive bubble — the activist left’s claims, credulously accepted by many media commentators, to be the authentic voice and future of the Democratic Party.

Post-election analysis has highlighted the pitfalls for Democrats of heeding only that voice. The protracted battle in Washington over progressives’ big social spending demands has reinforced public doubts about President Biden. Republicans also made notable gains among parents angry over school closures, falling standards and academic “antiracism” theories promoted by progressive social justice warriors.
 

Popping the progressive bubble
by PPI President Will Marshall
for The Hill

The Progressive Policy Institute's Innovation Frontier Project released a comprehensive research deck on the threats facing American innovation. Jack Karsten, Managing Director of the Innovation Frontier Project, and Michael Mandel, Vice President and Chief Economic Strategist at PPI break down the deck's research and discuss how antitrust legislation in Congress would devastate American technological leadership and innovation.

What's new in the world of green technology? Noah Smith joins the show to discuss advances in solar, wind, battery and nuclear power, and why some of those technologies keep getting cheaper while others don't.  We also discuss other climate related moonshots like carbon capture technology and geothermal power, and why it's so important to invest in basic green tech research now.