Hakes

Author: Jay Hakes

Senior Fellow

Jay Hakes has had a long career in government dealing with energy and environmental issues.  His posts included: assistant to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, director of the Florida Governor’s Energy Office, administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and director of policy and research for the presidential commission on the BP Oil Spill.  He has testified before congressional committees on more than two dozen occasions.  Between 2000 and 2013, he served as Director of The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

Hakes has also been active in research, writing, and speaking on critical national issues.  After earning his PhD in political science at Duke University, he taught at the University of New Orleans.  More recently, he has published three books and numerous articles on the intersections between energy, the environment, the economy, and national security. His most recent one, The President and the Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush, recently received the Association of American Publishers’ 2025 Prose Award for the best book on environmental science.

Latest Research & Commentary

Ambushing American Oil

View Original Article “Drill, baby, drill” became a frequent refrain during the 2024 presidential campaign. Despite the largely successful appeal to oil producers, several recent trends have begun to undermine the people doing the drilling. The promise of a grand

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Electric Cars and Election Consequences

View Original Article   America’s response to climate change has many moving parts. But how people travel from point A to point B in an environmentally sustainable manner stands atop the challenges of slowing the human alteration of our earth’s

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