Plenty of reasons for optimism emerged from this year’s COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. The United States is back in the Paris Agreement, both China and the US have pledged to reduce carbon emissions (Friedman 2021), and many other countries have made addi... More »
Jean Vilbert is an academic in the La Follette School of Public Affairs and a Resident Fellow at the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program (University of Wisconsin).A recent report from the International Energy Agency shows that in 2020, renewa... More »
As stated by author and feminist-issues researcher Caroline Criado-Perez, the world is designed mostly by men with mostly other men in mind. The gender-based gap in data has been known to exist for a long time, and male-biased data has affected the living expe... More »
Dharrnesha Inbah Rajah is a MA in International Development and Public Policy candidate at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.Beyond witnessing one of the worst pandemics in modern times, 2020 was also the warmest year on record and saw h... More »
For a brief moment in 1988, America seemed ready to confront climate change. Scientist James Hansen’s senate testimony on rising temperatures received widespread media coverage, a Global Climate Protection Act passed with bipartisan support in Congress, and ev... More »
Amir Jina is an Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, UChicago. His research focuses on the role of the environment and environmental change in shaping of how societies develop. He has conducted fieldwork related to climate change adaptati... More »
The following is an edited transcript of an interview conducted by Kelly Aves, a second-year student at the Harris School of Public Policy. Kelly spoke with Kim Wasserman and Juliana Pino of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). Kim is... More »
The energy landscape is rapidly changing in response to concerns over resilience, climate change, and energy independence. Several cities around the world have pledged to become partially or completely carbon-free over the next couple of decades. But how does ... More »
When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a national emergency on March 13, the country was in the middle of primary election season. As states franticly adjusted plans for voting, Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court overruled Governor Tony Evers’ executive order to... More »
In March, as the world stared into a financial and epidemiological abyss, Congress acted more swiftly and dramatically to save the U.S. economy than during any crisis in American history. The CARES Act—signed into law by President Trump on March 27 after facin... More »
The U.S. tax collection agency, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), currently does not ask tax filers to disclose their race or ethnicity. This well-intentioned policy seeks to prevent racial discrimination and racially-motivated enforcement actions. Yet in a ... More »
When technology benefits us, it’s hard to not like it. It can track our sleeping patterns, check our news feed, alert us to meetings, and remind us to check the chicken in the oven. On a daily basis, it’s convenient, efficient, and not terribly invasive.Howeve... More »