Ideas matter. Or at least Council on Foreign Relations fellows like to believe that: otherwise, we’d be wasting a lot of our time. With that in mind, I canvassed some of the smartest observers of the energy and climate worlds – scholars, advocates, journalists, businesspeople, and policymakers – for their picks for the most influential studies, reports, in-depth articles, or books of the year in the field. Then I threw my own judgement into the mix. Read more »

This blog has been a bit quiet for the past few weeks: I’ve been out on the road reporting for a book on the future of American energy and locked up in my office cranking through the manuscript. I’ll be on vacation for the next week. Before I left, I thought I’d offer a few suggestions for energy-related summer reading: Read more »

It’s that time of the week again. Some recommendations:

• “Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of Marcellus shale gas”, Environmental Research Letters. Six researchers at Carnegie Mellon take a careful look at the emissions from shale gas development. They conclude that they’re far lower than those from coal.
• “Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy”, American Economic Review. (Working paper version here.) Three researchers look at what would happen if you included air pollution damages in U.S. economic accounts. More bad news for coal: the damage created by coal-fired power appears to be considerably larger than the value that the sector creates.
• Jared Bernstein and Brad Plumer both wonder why driving has taken such a dive during the recent economic downturn. (It barely budged during the last couple.) Each speculates about fundamental shifts that might underlie the change. I’m not so sure that exotic explanations are necessary: the most recent recession featured a much larger dip in output than the previous two and way followed by much higher gasoline prices than on either of the other occasions. I’m hoping someone with a bit of time on their hands will take a look at this.

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I promised I’d post weeklyish reading lists on this blog. That was a month ago – hence the capital letters in this post’s title. In any case, here are some suggestions:

• If you didn’t read “Yemen on the Brink of Hell” in the Times magazine a couple weeks ago, I highly recommend that you do. If you want an energy connection, take a look at a map of the Middle East, but it’s worth your time regardless.
• I included Mike Spence’s recent Foreign Affairs article in my last list. I liked it enough that I read his new book, The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World. Highly recommended.
• Jeff Colgan, Bob Keohane, and Thijs Van de Graff have a nice paper in The Review of International Organizations that looks at how and why the landscape of energy security institutions has evolved over time. The paper, “Punctuated equilibrium in the energy regime complex”, is behind a paywall, but you can find a working paper version here.

Following my friend and colleague Shannon O’Neil’s lead, I’m going to start posting a quasi-weekly collection of links to interesting things that I’ve been reading. I encourage readers to add their own in the comments. Read more »