Blog Posts: climate

A new UN report finds that countries’ emissions-reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement are falling far short of what’s needed to prevent the most dangerous impacts of climate change.

National governments and international organizations must use this year to make three critical shifts to address climate impacts, as well as health and economic risks facing vulnerable communities.

A new WRI report finds that China can peak its emissions as early as 2026 and realize enormous economic benefits over the long term by strengthening its climate and energy policies. Doing so could save nearly 1.9 million lives and generate nearly $1 trillion in net economic and social benefits in 2050.

Many grassroots organizations, including those focused on climate change, stepped in to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their actions in addressing COVID-19 illustrate the need for local leadership in longer term crises like climate change.

The developing world is facing a major debt crisis, limiting their ability to spend on economic recovery for COVID-19 or climate action. Creditor countries — specifically China, the largest bilateral creditor to developing countries — can exchange this for clear, verifiable climate action and investments in healthcare.

As the need for climate action becomes more urgent, the ocean is gaining attention as a potential part of the solution. A range of ocean-based carbon removal approaches could help capture and store billion of tons of carbon.

The task of decarbonizing the U.S. economy is too big for any one level of government to tackle alone. The “new climate federalism” model proposes a framework for the federal, state and local governments to work together to address climate change.

At Paris in 2015, countries agreed to come back to the table with more ambitious climate commitments (known as nationally determined contributions – NDCs) every five years, in order to keep the global temperature increase to 1.5 and build a more resilient and adaptive economy, together with investments compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement. We are now in the midst of the first of these five-year cycles. Yet, as of the closing of the 75^th session of the U.N. General Assembly this September, only 13 countries have...