Overview How much Iranian nuclear capability is too much? The simplest answer is that any amount is unacceptable. But it is far from clear that zero enrichment is a realistic goal. To help illumin…

Overview Corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, which require automakers to achieve government-mandated targets for the efficiency of the vehicles they sell each year, can reduce U.S. re…

Overview Economists have long argued that taxing oil consumption would be the most efficient way to address U.S. vulnerability to overpriced and unreliable oil supplies. Yet energy taxes are a thi…

Overview What is energy security? On April 12–13, the Council on Foreign Relations convened academics, policymakers, and industry experts to assess the security implications of the way the world p…

Overview U.S. policymakers who worry about the impact of energy developments on geopolitics typically think of high oil prices as bad news and low prices as an unalloyed good. But a sustained drop…

Introduction An oil-exporting country’s “fiscal breakeven” oil price is the minimum price per barrel that the country needs in order to meet its expected spending needs while balancing its budget …

Overview Most discussions about using international institutions to address climate change focus narrowly on the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, many ot…

China is once again conducting cyber-enabled theft of U.S. intellectual property to advance its technological capabilities. To combat the problem, the United States should build a multinational coali…

The U.S. system for taxing corporate profits is outdated, ineffective at raising revenue, and creates perverse incentives for companies to shelter profits overseas. It is also, for most U.S. companies most of the time, a pretty good deal, which is one of the big reasons why any serious overhaul will be so difficult to achieve.