COP28 brought together world leaders, climate experts, and other key stakeholders to discuss progress on global climate goals. As a member of the Turkish delegation, Rice faculty scholar Gökçe Günel offers her take on the summit’s outcomes.
The authors write that enormous volumes of “energy transition waste” — waste from wind turbines, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, etc. — are anticipated in the coming decades. To cope with this waste and ensure a sustainable energy transition, they call for more data, planning and coordination across the entire global supply chain, in addition to waste management and recycling policies that align with environmental and sustainability goals.
Rachel A. Meidl, Michelle Michot Foss, Ju LiMarch 2, 2022
The authors take a realistic look at what's needed for the global energy transition to succeed and warn that moving away from fossil fuels too quickly could backfire — stranding climate progress in the so-called “valley of death.”
Gabriel Collins, Michelle Michot FossJanuary 27, 2022
The core strategies of the U.S. War on Drugs are eradication, interdiction and incarceration. After a 40-year and trillion-dollar effort, illicit drugs remain available to meet a remarkably stable demand.
Drawing on decades of government-gathered and publicly available data, William Martin, director of the Drug Policy Program, and contributing expert Jerry Epstein contend that U.S. drug policy is premised on incorrect assumptions, aims at the wrong targets and can never succeed. But because these data run counter to a century of anti-drug propaganda, they play only a small role in public policy, mass-media presentation and popular perception. In this policy report, Martin and Epstein call for a reexamination of the data and sweeping revision of existing strategies. They urge formation of a politically independent national scientific commission, its members chosen by the National Academy of Sciences, in consultation with the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services, to facilitate open examination and honest consideration of alternatives to current failed or flawed policies.
Fossil fuel subsidies have allowed energy exporting countries to distribute resource revenue, bolstering legitimacy for governments, many of which are not democratically elected. But subsidy benefits are dwarfed by the harmful consequences of encouraging uneconomic use of energy. Now, with consumption posing a threat to long-term exports, governments face a heightened need to raise prices that have come to be viewed as entitlements. While reforms of state benefits are notoriously politically dangerous, previous experience shows that subsidies can be rolled back without undermining government legitimacy — even in autocratic settings — given proper preparation.