Environment and Energy

Amidst the climate predicament, from the undercurrents of politics, academia, and advocacy, the long-overlooked idea of “degrowth” is surfacing. It provides a vision for economic prosperity, human well-being, and environmental sustainability.

Disproportionately affecting women, lack of access to clean fuels for cooking leads to 3.7 million untimely deaths annually from household air pollution.

On November 13, 2023, HKS Student Policy Review Senior Editor Jane Petersen spoke with former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. The conversation covered a range of topics including what other countries can learn from Colombia’s peace agreement, poverty alleviation efforts, and the fight against climate change.

Carbon markets can be understood as a three-legged stool on which part of our climate goals rests; if one of the legs is missing, the stool falls. Unfortunately, today’s carbon market debates focus on two of those three legs whilst ignoring the other.  

Harmonized data lies at the heart of the climate agenda, but do we pay enough attention to the development of the figures that we see? Do we ever question how the figures are calculated?

Alternative protein sources, such as insects, have emerged as promising solutions that could help reduce the environmental impact of food production while providing a nutritious and accessible protein source.

Failure to recognize and manage the nexus of the relationship between climate and security could have significant ramifications in the future between and within countries and communities. Without considering these, efforts to promote sustainable development and peace may fall short.

In 2022, Naturgy — Mexico City’s natural gas monopoly — left me without service for three weeks. Working in the renewable energy sector, I knew what to do: end the gas contract and get both an electric stove and a water heater. That is the recipe I share in any energy transition report: “electrify” to […]

A version of this article was originally published in August 2021 on Climate XChange’s “Intersection” blog. PPR thanks Climate XChange for their permission to reprint it here. The summer of 2021 was marked by a series of climate-fueled disasters: heat waves with disastrous consequences, dramatic rainfall and intense thunderstorms, an earlier and potentially more destructive […]

Cover photo source: @JamesGranelli_ on Twitter Twenty-five years ago, a group of South African high schoolers from an under-resourced township school rallied and made their way around the globe to participate in a youth environmental summit hosted in the US. What was unusual was the rhetoric around it. “Why is a group of colored youth […]

I could feel the bass of the music thumping in my thoracic cavity. The soles of my shoes were sticky with the beer that had spilled on the floor when I saw Eva inhaling a line of white powder off the kitchen countertop.

Calls for a green industrial revolution and transition away from greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting forms of energy are anything but novel. The newest to make the call is the International Energy Agency (IEA), which calls in a 2021 report for immediately halting oil and gas development and achieving net-zero emissions from electricity generation by 2040.1 […]