Climate Change and Climate Action

Intelligence community continues to see threat from climate change

By Ellen Scholl and David Livingston

The 2018 Worldwide Threat Assessment, released on February 13, includes climate change among the identified threats to global stability. While many have pointed to the gap between this assessment and the rhetoric of US President Donald J. Trump—and the noticeable absence of climate change from his administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy—the worldwide threat assessment underscores […]

Intelligence community continues to see threat from climate change

By Ellen Scholl and David Livingston

While continued identification of climate change as part of the threat landscape is certainly important, incorporating climate concerns into foreign, defense, development, and national security policy in a comprehensive way is still a work in progress.

Our take on Donald Trump’s first State of the Union

US President Donald J. Trump delivered his first State of the Union in Washington on January 30, 2018. Read the address here. Trump touched on a diverse set of topics. We asked our analysts their thoughts on what the president had to say. Here is their take: ON THE SPEECH Trump said: “As we rebuild […]

Trump gave global warming the cold shoulder

By David Livingston

What has changed? Nothing yet. Despite the fanfare surrounding the president’s Rose Garden announcement, there is a drawn-out legal process for withdrawing from the Paris Agreement that puts the earliest date for withdrawal at November 4, 2020—one day after the 2020 US presidential election.

Fiji’s COP23 presidency highlights climate struggles of small island nations

By Gray Johnson, Becca Hunziker

Despite all eyes on the United States in the wake of US President Donald J. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, Fiji, the host of the twenty-third Conference of the Parties (COP23), framed the conversation in Bonn around the challenges climate change poses to small island nations and how larger, wealthier nations can help.

Bonn and Berlin: COP23 and Coalition Negotiations Face Climate Challenges

By Ellen Scholl

Both the international climate talks this week in the former West German capital of Bonn, and the negotiations over the future composition of the German government continuing this week in Berlin, will focus on the country’s approach to climate policy. While all eyes may be on Bonn, the discussions in Berlin provide a preview, and […]

The Road to Bonn: Transatlantic Climate Solutions

By Becca Hunziker

On October 31, 2017, the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, along with the Council’s Future Europe Initiative and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, convened an expert panel for a conversation about the current state of climate action in the United States and in the transatlantic relationship more broadly. Ambassador Richard Morningstar (Ret.), […]

Climate change revisited

By Gray Johnson

Rising sea levels, extreme weather patterns, and other examples of our warming climate pose life-altering threats to communities around the world. Ninety-seven percent of scientists have concluded that the climate is indeed warming—and that humans are playing a role. The question is not whether the climate is changing, but how to address it.