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April 14, 2022
Instead of taking steps to boost U.S. oil and gas production amid skyrocketing prices and the war in Ukraine, President Biden is standing by his green-energy goals and blaming fossil-fuel companies for the consequences. This will make today’s energy problems even worse. Though he campaigned on a promise to ban drilling on federal lands and…
March 28, 2022
Nineteen-fifty-six—when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary—was, according to the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, the year “British communists lived on the edge of the political equivalent of a collective nervous breakdown.” If 2016 did not constitute such a year for conservatives in the West, then perhaps 2022—when Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine—will, at least for those…
March 9, 2022
As energy prices skyrocket and Europe considers whether to follow the new U.S. ban on importing Russian oil and gas, policymakers should consider how to build a stronger energy system, better prepared for future disruptions. In recent weeks, opposing voices have argued that record prices driven by the Ukraine crisis mean that the world must accelerate its transition to…
March 2, 2022
President Biden promised to reinvigorate American science. After a tumultuous four years in which a populist upsurge, a bombastic president, and the worst public health crisis in a century had pushed the social contract between science and the public to the breaking point, he pledged to restore science to a place of preeminence in the federal…
February 3, 2022
The United States no longer leads the world in basic science. There is growing recognition of a gap in translational activities — the fruits of American research do not convert to economic benefits. As policymakers consider a slew of proposals that aim to restore American competitiveness with once-in-a-generation investments into the National Science Foundation (NSF), less discussion has been…
January 26, 2022
One year in, the Biden administration finds itself in an energy and climate bind. Its climate policies are a continuation of policies that President Obama adopted during a period of low energy prices. But now high oil, gas and electricity prices are threatening to derail President Biden’s commitment to climate action. The traditional U.S. approach to climate action…
January 25, 2022
With a new variant running rampant, an enormous wave of cases, hospitals under strain, mask mandates returning, states of emergency being redeclared, and schools reverting to virtual learning, it is easy to get the sense that we have slid back to where we started. A raft of news articles in late December described the perilous and demoralizing feeling that the country…
December 23, 2021
Editor’s Note: The coronavirus pandemic has brought onto the center stage of public debate our deep, although often unarticulated, disagreements about the nature of scientific knowledge and the authority of scientific experts. Seeking insights on these questions, we asked former New Atlantis associate editor M. Anthony Mills, who has written widely on philosophy, science, and expertise, to…
November 24, 2021
Thursday’s first meeting between President Joe Biden, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador was a missed opportunity for North American energy. The three face many shared challenges, but energy, which currently divides them, could instead be a common thread that binds them together. Silence at the highest level sends the wrong signal;…
November 18, 2021
In an age of many irreconcilable partisan divisions, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have quietly come to agree on at least one thing: the federal government must do more to shore up American science and technology. To that end, various pieces of bipartisan legislation aim to revitalize US research and development (R&D) by increasing funding for federal science agencies, particularly the…