Articles

"Hillary Clinton's campaign has stressed her continuity with Obama's energy policy on key aspects such as decarbonization of the US economy, technological innovation and global cooperation. However, policy reforms to deliver long-term climate goals might be out of reach in a highly divided Congress."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Washington last week, making his fourth trip to the United States since taking office just two years ago. India and South Asia Program Fellow, Ronak Desai examines the strategic approach to India's relations with the United States.

"The role of market mechanisms for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and the relationship between climate change policy and international trade were the topics of a side-event panel discussion on Friday at the Conference of the Parties (COP21), the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris. The panel discussion, which was co-sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, addressed a variety of issues related to the emissions-reduction targets that countries are putting forward as part of a new agreement to be concluded in Paris."

"In addition to U.S. moves toward curbing carbon emissions, international attention on the issue is far more substantial than it was at the time of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, according to panelists. That agreement covered just 14 percent of global carbon emissions, Stavins said. Countries responsible for 90 percent of today's emissions have already committed to voluntary reductions in advance of the Paris talks."

During the Climate Change Conference in 2009, the Obama-BASIC meeting was a watershed, saving Copenhagen from a complete collapse and also marking the emergence of the BASIC quartet as a major force in international climate policy diplomacy.

Through structured interviews and a literature review, we assess which approaches to protection against insider thefts in the casino and pharmaceutical industries could be usefully applied to strengthen protections against insider theft in the nuclear industry, where insider thefts could have very high consequences.

Various journalists and advocates have, of late, described America's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) as being near "the brink of failure" thanks to the trend of very low prices of permits to emit carbon dioxide. Likewise, commentators have claimed that Europe's carbon market, the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), may be "sinking into oblivion" because its emissions allowances too have become very cheap. 

The effort to address climate change stumbled with the failure to pass cap-and-trade. What should happen now? Five experts, including the Harvard Project's Joe Aldy, discuss the future of U.S. climate and energy policy.

Over the last decade, carbon trading has emerged as the policy instrument of choice in the industrialized world to address global climate change. This paper argues that a transnational business coalition, representing mostly energy firms and energy-intensive manufacturers, actively promoted the global rise of carbon trading. In this process, business could draw on the support of government allies and business-oriented environmental groups, particularly in the UK and the US.

Mammoth, "comprehensive" change is so murky and fraught with uncertainty that the public is predisposed to turn against it. It's difficult for a member of Congress to walk into a town-hall meeting and persuade people that there really aren't death panels in the health-care bill while brandishing a 1,000-page monstrosity in front of skeptical voters. Complexity breeds suspicion in a country where 40 percent of the population is ideologically opposed to government, and 70 to 80 percent at any given time in recent history don't trust it.