Region: International

Critical Insights on the Mineral Boom

In the race for critical minerals, the challenges, tradeoffs, and potential winners are becoming clear. Insights from the Emmett Institute’s “Powering the Future” symposium.

A couple hundred miles north of the Las Vegas strip at Rhyolite Ridge you’ll find a dusty yellow wildflower called Tiehm’s buckwheat that grows nowhere else in the world. But this flower sits atop a massive, untapped lithium reserve that would help the U.S. transition to cleaner energy. Now, what if you had to choose …

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How to Cooperate with China on Climate

A conversation with Joanna Lewis about what has worked, and what hasn’t, when it comes to bilateral climate cooperation with China.

China is the world’s largest producer of both CO2 emissions and green technology to cut those emissions. It installed more solar panels last year than the U.S. has in its history, and yet keeps building coal-fired plants too. And Chinese officials just announced that the country will accelerate the construction of solar, wind and hydropower. …

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Fifteen Years of Legal Planet

5700 blog posts later, we’re still speaking — if not “truth to power”— then our best approximation of truth, to anyone who’ll listen.

A decade and a half ago, the law school here announced the launch of a new environmental law blog by Berkeley and UCLA. The March 11, 2009 press release began: “The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Berkeley Law) and UCLA School of Law today announced the launch of a new blog, Legal Planet, …

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The global conversation about solar geoengineering just changed at the UN Environment Assembly. Here’s how.

National flags at UNEA6 in Nairobi

Duncan McLaren and Olaf Corry reflect on the implications of the UNEA-6 non-decision on solar radiation modification for research and governance

As we wrote in part 1, a Swiss-led proposal to the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) to establish an expert group on solar radiation management (SRM) proved divisive and was eventually withdrawn. Here we explore why, and what that means for any global conversation about SRM. SRM has long generated concerns that, as a powerful lever …

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Countries failed to agree first steps on solar geoengineering at the UN. What went wrong?

National flags at UNEA6 in Nairobi

Duncan McLaren and Olaf Corry observed as diplomats in Nairobi wrestled with a resolution on solar radiation management

In the last weeks, diplomats from all over the world were negotiating more than twenty draft resolutions at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA). The Assembly is a biennial intergovernmental meeting which sets the global environmental agenda. It also sets the strategy for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and outlines policy responses to address emerging environmental …

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Misusing Carbon Removal as a Climate Response

Carbon removal is an alluring idea. That also makes it a tempting façade for bad policies.

It seems clear that in some form, carbon removal is going to be an important component of climate policy, especially later in the century to deal with carbon levels that overshoot the targets in the Paris Climate Agreement. The problem is not with the concept but with its misuse.    One of the risks that …

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We Crossed 1.5 C. Did We Breach the Paris Agreement?

Here’s what the recent rise in global temperature means for international climate targets.

If you’re not a climate scientist—and maybe even if you are—reading news headlines this month has been confounding and a little scary. “In First, Earth’s Temperature Breached Key Threshold Over a 12 Month Period” is how the Wall Street Journal put it. “Earth Just Experienced 12 Months Of Global Temperatures Above Critical 1.5C Climate Threshold,” …

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Climate Justice, Climate Finance and Pragmatism for Tropical Jurisdictions at COP28

Exploring the urgency of subnational climate action: insights from COP28 on financing tropical forest conservation, indigenous empowerment, and sustainable livelihoods by the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force network.

The Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF Task Force) engaged in the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Dubai, marking a pivotal moment in the global climate dialogue. This significant international forum serves as a crucial platform where nations, subnational entities, and …

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The Environmental Gifts of the Magi

Clean air. Clean water. We receive these public goods every day without payment, as gifts from everyone to all of us.

One of the Christmas classics is the Jimmy Stewart movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. Stewart’s character is feeling suicidal, until he learns how much he has unknowingly helped others and how grateful they are. It’s heartwarming if also very corny. There’s a flip side to that story: the need to remember how much others have contributed …

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COP28: “The Methane COP”

Methane was at the center of COP28. Here are some of the most relevant announcements of this year’s Conference of the Parties.

By far, the most ubiquitous figure at COP28 was that of John Kerry. The U.S. climate envoy strolled through the labyrinthine and confusing alleys of Dubai’s Expo City wearing an impeccable suit despite the almost 100-degree Fahrenheit winter weather of the United Arab Emirates. When he wasn’t walking, he was talking about methane, earning him …

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