Climate change

Two miles across the water from Miami’s glamorous beaches and luxury apartments lies what is perhaps the city’s most important but underappreciated waterfront property – the Central District Wastewater Treatment Plant. Donning hardhats and reflective vests, a team of Harvard Kennedy School environmental policy fellows toured this lesser-known side of Miami. The facility is operated […]

BY NIKHIL KUMAR Upon her election as chair of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group in 2016, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo declared, “C40 member cities are determining the course of our planet’s future.”[1] (C40 is a group of more than 90 cities organized to combat climate change at the municipal level.[2]) Indeed, as societies become […]

BY HENRI BREBANT January 19th was the 10th consecutive Saturday that the “Yellow Vests” protested in France. The movement started in October 2018 with a viral video, a change.org petition and some Facebook events that pushed 290,000 people[i] into the streets and onto the roundabouts. Unstructured and distancing itself from political parties and unions, the […]

This is the third episode of our audio interview series. In this episode, Kai speaks to former UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon.  Mr. Ban speaks on his take on climate adaptation, Paris Agreement, the plight of Myanmar, and the human right abuses in North Korea as well as his personal experience working as a civil servant during […]

BY JACK PEAD Last year wasn’t great for the climate. We saw the potential for rising ocean temperatures to turn the Atlantic into an increasingly violent hurricane-producing system. The average global concentration of CO2 permanently surpassed 400 parts per million, making something of a mockery of 350.org, an advocacy organization set up to try to […]

BY LIZ HANSON With each passing year, the fight against climate change becomes more critical to our success in maintaining livable communities around the world. In December 2015, 195 nations recognized the urgency to take action and joined together to adopt the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).[1] The […]

By TOMÁS INSUA “I commend His Holiness [Pope Francis] and all faith leaders here, for raising awareness of the urgent need to promote sustainable development and address climate . . . Your influence is enormous. You speak to the heart of humanity’s deepest hopes and needs.” Ban Ki-moon, former UN secretary general, addressing an interfaith […]

BY JEAN-BAPTISTE LE MAROIS Most climate change awareness campaigns feature stranded polar bears on drifting ice sheets, or sea levels creeping over the island of Manhattan. But are these strategies convincing? The “protect the planet” approach has proven to be too weak of a public narrative to mobilize voters. Instead, imagine opening the newspaper to […]

BY DAVID HARARY It has become clear Democrats need a new strategy on passing climate change legislation. The new Administration’s budget proposal for 2018 is certainly not friendly towards climate change research or mitigation. Deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Energy are just the beginning […]

The Middle East is an arid region to begin with, but climate change is set to exacerbate the region’s water scarcity.

On October 15, in Kigali, Rwanda, more than 170 countries signed a legally binding accord to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a powerful greenhouse gas commonly used in air conditioners and refrigerators. The deal could stop the equivalent of 70 billion tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere, approximately twice […]

BY JOELLE THOMAS “I see no objections. The Paris Agreement for the climate is adopted.” A decidedly stoic Laurent Fabius—President of the COP21 talks—brings down his leaf-shaped gavel. The room erupts in cheering, as exhausted and emotional negotiators from 196 countries take to their feet. Al Gore is beaming. The cries echo along Le Bourget’s […]