Region: International

On the present improbability and future necessity of carbon pricing

Mapping a politically feasible roadmap towards a future, rigorous carbon pricing system

Carbon pricing is in the news right now—and not in a good way.  Whether it is French protests over gas taxes, political challenges to Canada’s new federal carbon price system, voter rejection of a carbon price in Washington state, or (yet another) Australian government falling because of disputes over carbon pricing, the political challenges of …

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On magical, mythical, market unicorn fairies

Or how we can get effective climate policy without government intervention

I don’t usually respond to op-ed columns, but the column by Bret Stephens in the New York Times on climate policy yesterday is so …. foolish that I think it needs a response.  And more to the point, the foolishness in the column can help illuminate some of the major problems that have developed as …

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Climate Negotiations Start in Poland: Setting the Stage

Much at Stake in COP-24, Including Negotiation of Paris Rulebook to Implement 2015 Commitments

This week and next, negotiators are meeting in Poland for the big annual international climate-change meeting. This meeting, formally, is the 24th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1992 treaty that provides the foundation for all official international action on climate change, and informally is called “COP-24.” It …

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Good News From India

While we’ve been obsessing about Trump, India has made great strides in renewable energy.

We get so focused on the problems in our own country that it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening globally. It turns out that while we’ve been mired in our own travails, India has been making remarkableprogress on renewable energy. What happens in India has tremendous significance. It is now the most populous country …

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Don’t Believe Everything That You Read

CNN solar geoengineering tweet

Solar geoengineering is often inaccurately portrayed in the media

If you had followed the climate change news over the weekend, you might have been shocked to see headlines such as “Scientists Prescribe a Healthy Dose of Sulphate Particles to Promote Global Cooling on the Cheap.” CNN tweeted that “Harvard and Yale scientists are proposing that we tackle climate change by dimming the sun.” And …

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Does the New National Climate Assessment Hurt the Trump Administration in Court?

The Report Could Affect a Number of Cases

The newly released Fourth National Climate Assessment is a bombshell.  It catalogues, in excruciating detail, the dire health, economic, and environmental consequences of unchecked climate change on every region of the United States. And although the Trump Administration appears to have tried to minimize the report’s political and public  impact by dropping it on Black …

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Netherlands Government Appeals Historic Climate Change Ruling

Supreme Court building of the Netherlands

The Dutch Supreme Court will decide whether the government is obligated to cut emissions more

Last month, an appeals court in the the Netherlands upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Dutch government is legally obligated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more aggressively. This drew much international attention, as well as praise from environmental advocacy organizations. As expected, the government has announced that it will appeal this decision in the Urgenda …

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A Catalogue of Game Changers

We’re making progress on addressing climate change, and I’m hopeful that we’ll continue doing so. Yet it’s not clear whether the path we’re currently on will make progress fast enough to avoid very serious risks.  So what would it take for us to make a quantum leap in this effort?  I wouldn’t hazard a prediction …

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Do Androids Dream of Endangered Sheep?

Imagine there were self-aware AIs. Would they care about the environment?

With the election behind us, I thought it might be a good time to take a step back and do some musing about less impending issues. Unlike most of my posts, this one is more on the speculative side. The title of this post is a riff on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a novel by …

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Solar Geoengineering and International Law

Climate Engineering and the Law

May states intentionally alter the entire planet’s climate?

A couple weeks ago, I introduced solar geoengineering (see also 1, 2, 4 in the series). This is a set of proposed technologies that would reduce climate change by blocking or reflecting a small portion of incoming sunlight. It appears that it would be effective in reducing climate change, inexpensive, rapid, and technically feasible. It would …

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