Energy Resources & Access

Fellow Kelly Sims Gallagher spoke recently with The GroundTruth Project about Donald Trump’s impact on the international relations of the Paris climate agreement, and what effect the U.S. election might have on climate politics in Europe and China.

Jisung Park's work was featured in a recent op-ed by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Until now, the focus [of climate change discussion] has been on rising seas, more intense hurricanes, acidification of oceans, drought and crop failures. But new studies are finding that some of the most important effects will be directly on our bodies and minds.

In several interviews with prominent media outlets, Climate Interactive’s Andrew Jones and MIT’s Prof. John Sterman elaborated the potential effect of president-elect Trump pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.

A new world of global climate action is coming into view here in Morocco – a world without US leadership on the issue. The test now is whether global cooperation can proceed and grow at a time when America – in recent years a leader in the push to reduce carbon emissions – has a president-elect who opposes the very concept of climate response.

As the United States and China put new policies in place to achieve their national targets and fulfill their domestic and international commitments, both countries confront a common challenge: mobilizing sufficient investment at home to meet domestic energy, climate, and environmental protection goals, while at the same time steering outbound investments toward sustainable projects in other nations that support, rather than undermine, those nations’ climate targets.

Dr. Tracey Osborne, partnering with Amazon Watch on the Climate Alliance Mapping Project, built a platform that factually and compellingly demonstrates the geographic footprint of Amazonian oil reserves and the human and natural resources its extraction threatens. Specific outcomes of this Switzer Leadership Grant project include:

A University of Maine PhD Candidate is developing policy to build climate resilience. Kimberley Miner is studying earth and climate sciences in Orono. She’s analyzing the threat of pesticides and organic pollutants in glaciers. After completing her dissertation, Miner hopes to develop a model that analyzes the risk of downstream communities which could be impacted by polluted glacial melt waters.