Climate Change

China is the world's biggest polluter -- and now one of its largest producers of clean energy. Which way will China go in the future, and how will it affect the global environment? Data scientist Angel Hsu describes how the most populous country on earth is creating a future based on alternative energy -- and facing up to the environmental catastrophe it created as it rapidly industrialized. Watch the talk

... All these patterns of energy consumption and production reinforce the divergence between red and blue America in their exposure to demographic and cultural change, and the transition more broadly to a knowledge-based information economy. Across all these divides, Democrats now rely on a "coalition of transformation" centered on the states and voters that are most directly experiencing these changes, while Republicans depend on a "coalition of restoration" revolving around the places that are least affected by them -- and often most hostile to them as well.

To assess the presence of organochlorine pollutants (OCP) in Alaskan sub-Arctic latitudes, Fellow Kimberley Miner analyzed ice core and meltwater samples from Jarvis Glacier, a polythermal glacier in Interior Alaska. Jarvis Glacier is...

Editor's note: The following opinion piece by Fellow John J. Berger first appeared in The Seattle Times. Hot, dry conditions linked to climate change parched California this summer, setting the stage for 17 simultaneous blazes that consumed more than 800,000 acres. The state’s largest inferno ever, the Mendocino Complex fire, alone burned more than 460,000 acres and is still not fully contained.

The Clean Energy Solutions Center, in partnership with United Nations Foundation’s Energy Access Practitioner Network, hosted a webinar on mini-grids and interconnection to highlight the challenges and possible options for mini-grids after the main grid arrives. Participants learned about various country-specific case studies from Asia and Africa, and panelists discussed the potential requirements—policy, technical, and commercial—needed to achieve a relatively seamless interconnection of mini-grids with the main grid.

How do we ensure funds are available on a national or even international scale when climate disasters strike? Daniel Morris, who is currently Advisor to the U.S. Executive Director at the World Bank, has spent recent years thinking about how to make communities and countries more financially resilient in the face of catastrophic disasters in the future.

How can social capital and social media benefit communities experiencing climate shocks or extreme events? Meredith Niles, an assistant professor and faculty with the University of Vermont Food Systems Program and Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, examines food systems sustainability and policy with a focus on food security and climate change.

A few days after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, a single mother of two escaped the disaster that left Puerto Rico in chaos and without electricity. Through her informal social networks, and with only a three-hour notice, she and her family boarded a humanitarian plane with a western physician and patients from the local hospital.

From Fellow Bridie McGreavy, editor of the new volume Tracing Rhetoric and Material Life: Ecological Approaches: The book draws from interdisciplinary approaches within the field of rhetoric to explore the relationships between communication and the world. The book is organized around themes in rhetorical studies of the environment, including dynamic change, ecological engagements, ethics and attunement, and commitments to justice and care.