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 Policy Brandon Wu. It’s worth…
The world is currently facing its largest and most critical refugee crisis. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) states that the United States has long been a safe haven for refugees from around the world. Since its creation in 1980, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) has accepted more than 3 million refugees into the…
It comes as a shock that after three years of debate and fight for reformation, Chile has rejected the adoption of a leftist constitution. On Sunday, September 4, 2022, 62% of the Chileans voted against a constitution that would have legalized abortions, adopt universal health care, and granted more rights than any national charter. It…
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), today, there are more than 100 million individuals who have been forcibly displaced because of war, violence, human rights violations, and persecution in their countries. 26.6 million of these individuals are refugees. This is the highest number ever recorded. When displaced people are in, or…
A decade and a half ago, “climate justice” was presented as a radical alternative to the prevailing narrative about climate change which conceived of the problem as purely an environmental crisis, with relatively simple technical solutions (i.e. faster adoption of renewable energy sources). Activists, especially from the Global South, highlighted the fact that the climate…
While much of the corporate sector is out there making claims about social responsibility through greenwashing and pinkwashing and bluewashing, Yvon Choinard has put his money where his heart is. In giving away his entire company, Choinard has truly broken new ground. Most philanthropic millionaires and billionaires put their money into a foundation, legally required…
A couple of weeks ago, the news circulated that a massive part of the Greenland ice sheet is going to melt regardless of what climate action the world takes. This could trigger up to a foot of sea level rise in the coming decades, which would have catastrophic consequences. As a recent study says: “About…
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 article: Corn ethanol production emits…
In a statement on Monday, Martin Griffiths, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that “famine was at the door” and was likely to occur in south-central Somalia between October and December this year. But the alarm is not just for Somalia. Many countries are suffering from extremely harsh climate conditions driven…
Yesterday Nature published a new analysis estimating the social cost of carbon in the United States at $185/ton, more than triple the current estimate used by the federal government in calculating the monetary impact of greenhouse gas emissions (and therefore of policies that would reduce or increase those emissions). The U.S. fair share of international…
