Paris Agreement

A month into summer 2024, the vast majority of the U.S. population had already experienced at least one extreme heat wave, and millions of people were under heat alerts, with forecasts warning of more ahead. Death Valley hit 125 degrees Fahrenheit (51.7 Celsius) or higher for nine consecutive days in early July. Las Vegas broke its all-time heat record at 120 F (48.9 C). Days of 100-degree heat dried out the California landscapes, fueling wildfires there and in the Northwest. Oregon reported several suspected heat deaths. Globally, the planet had its hottest day in at least eight decades of recordkeeping on July 21 – and then broke the record again on July 22, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The extreme heat is part of a longer trend: Each of the past 13 months has been the hottest on record for that month globally, including the hottest June, the EU service reported in early July. It also found that the average temperature for t...

Electric vehicle sales are growing faster than expected around the world, and sales of gas- and diesel-powered vehicles have been falling. Yet, the U.S. government still forecasts an increasing demand for oil, and the oil industry is doubling down on production plans. Why is that, and what happens if the U.S. projections for growing oil demand are wrong? I study sustainability and global energy system transformations. Let’s take a closer look at the changes underway. EVs’ giant leap forward On Sept. 12, 2023, Fatih Birol, director of the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization that advises the world’s major economies, drew global attention when he wrote in the Financial Times that the IEA is now projecting a global peak in demand for oil, gas and coal by 2030. The new date was a significant leap forward in time compared with previous estimates that the peak would not be until the 2030s for oil and even later for gas. It also stood out...

Leer in español Something significant is happening in the desert in Egypt as countries meet at COP27, the United Nations summit on climate change. Despite frustrating sclerosis in the negotiating halls, the pathway forward for ramping up climate finance to help low-income countries adapt to climate change and transition to clean energy is becoming clearer. I spent a large part of my career working on international finance at the World Bank and the United Nations and now advise public development and private funds and teach climate diplomacy focusing on finance. Climate finance has been one of the thorniest issues in global climate negotiations for decades, but I’m seeing four promising signs of progress at COP27. Getting to net zero – without greenwashing First, the goal – getting the world to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to stop global warming – is clearer. The last climate conference, COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, nearly fell apart o...

As the U.S. prepares for another Trump administration, one area unambiguously in the incoming president’s crosshairs is climate policy. Although he has not released an official climate agenda, Donald Trump’s playbook from his last stint in the Oval Office and his frequent complaints about clean energy offer some clues to what’s ahead. Exiting the Paris climate agreement Less than six months into his first presidency, Trump in 2017 formally announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord – the 2015 international agreement signed by nearly every country as a pledge to work toward keeping rising temperatures and other impacts of climate change in check. This time, a greater but underappreciated risk is that Trump will not stop at the Paris Agreement. Trump attends a session of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019. When he announced he would pull the U.S. out of the Pari...