Kelly Stone

Kelly Stone

Senior Policy Analyst

Kelly Stone is a Senior Policy Analyst at ActionAid, focusing on biofuels, climate change, food security, and land use. She joined ActionAid USA in 2014.

Prior to joining ActionAid, Kelly worked in the House of Representatives, where she specialized in food security and also worked on foreign affairs and appropriations. She has an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and a B.A. in Political Science from DePauw University.

POST BY Kelly Stone

Blog Post /

Breaking down Kerry’s climate hypocrisy

September 20, 2022 By

Yesterday Reuters had a story on Special Envoy on Climate John Kerry’s trip to Africa, with a headline that qualifies as clickbait in international climate policy circles: “U.S. climate envoy Kerry calls on African nations to help curb emissions.” This prompted some angry tweeting, including from our own Director of…

Blog Post /

Corn ethanol is NOT (and never has been) a climate solution

September 9, 2022 By

Yesterday, September 8th, Leah Douglas published an in-depth research article on ethanol in Reuters. It’s a careful, deeply researched piece that reminds us of what good journalism can be and an important and timely reminder that corn ethanol is NOT a climate solution. A couple of key findings from the…

Blog Post

About damn time a big funder did this… 

August 31, 2022 By

With devastating floods in Pakistan (where more than a thousand are dead) and Jackson, Mississippi (which will be without safe drinking water indefinitely) and the heatwaves that rocked Europe and the U.S. this summer, climate disasters have continued to be relentless this year. And don’t forget, hurricane season is only…

Insight /

How President Biden can claim real climate leadership

April 23, 2021 By

Throughout his presidential campaign, President Biden put a premium on reclaiming America’s climate leadership. However, the actual history of the United States in climate negotiations has generally been one of undercutting ambition. So for the U.S. to truly claim climate leadership, Biden will need to do more than break with…

Insight /

Five global justice priorities for the Biden administration

January 20, 2021 By

After four years of “America First” ultranationalism and xenophobia, ActionAid USA is excited to work with a new administration that cares about constructive engagement with the rest of the world. However, we also recognize that our country’s relationship with the rest of the world has always been fraught, well before…

Insight /

The climate action we need doesn’t leave workers behind

September 21, 2019 By

This is a guest blog by Mitchell Tropin, Executive Vice President of SEIU 500. ActionAid USA staff are proud members of SEIU 500. The climate crisis demands a response proportional to the threat. Climate action needs to start now, and emissions need to be cut dramatically and quickly. Addressing the…

Insight / /

Climate Justice in the Food System

September 6, 2019 By

Agriculture and food security were ActionAid’s entry points into climate change work. Over a dozen years ago, we began hearing from farmer partners across Africa and Asia about changing rainfall patterns, increasingly frequent floods and droughts, soil salinization due to sea level rise and ocean encroachment. For all of these…

Insight / /

Land and Climate in the Spotlight

August 21, 2019 By

Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new special report on climate change and land. While it didn’t generate the attention-grabbing headlines of last year’s report on the 1.5°C goal, its release came at a crucial moment in the climate fight, particularly for land use.…

Report & Publication /

BECCS: A Dangerous Distraction

July 2, 2019 By

A new and largely hypothetical technology called Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) has been getting a lot of attention in discussions on climate change. While its proponents argue that BECCS is a necessary climate mitigation tool, in reality it is unlikely to work, and it also poses a…