Our latest Issue Backgrounder looks at the potentially historic impact of the ambitious climate action agenda known as the Green New Deal — not just on this Congress or the next, or even on the race for the White House in 2020, but for the soul of the Democratic Party. An analysis of a public policy program in the making, the political maneuvering it’s engendering and its prospects to sow division or prompt a united front.

A former head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has written a powder keg of a book, “Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator.” Author Gregory Jaczko left the post in 2012, far more critical of nuclear power’s safety claims than he came in, his concerns amplified by the Fukushima meltdown in Japan in 2011. Now, he worries that its lessons have not sunk in deeply enough with an industry that he believes is headed toward catastrophe. Read our latest BookShelf review.

The economics of fracking may be as big a worry as its environmental impacts, finds a new book on the energy extraction industry. Our latest BookShelf reviews the volume from a seasoned business reporter, who questions conventional views about a renewed U.S. energy “dominance,” probes the financial instability of the industry’s boom and raises the politically destabilizing spectre of a future decline for the fossil fuel market.

The topic of climate change will certainly heat up in 2019. That’s not just because a Democratic House will push back against the Trump administration, but also because of pressure from a “Green New Deal” clean-energy jobs movement, not to mention ongoing legal action, and corporate and state-level moves to limit carbon emissions. This special edition TipSheet explores the fault lines on climate in the year ahead.