Today at WPR, we’re covering how the Israel-Hamas war has boosted Qatar’s regional profile and Venezuela’s territorial dispute with Guyana.

But first, here’s our take on today’s top story:

Nuclear energy: The U.S. and 21 other countries pledged Saturday at the U.N. COP28 Climate Change Conference to triple their nuclear energy capacity by 2050. Britain, Canada, France, Ghana, South Korea, Sweden and the UAE were among the 22 countries that signed the agreement. (New York Times)

Our Take: Admittedly, there is a certain irony to the recent embrace of nuclear energy as part of the solution to what is essentially an environmental crisis. After all, the modern environmental movement—particularly Green parties across Europe—grew in part in response to questions about the safety of nuclear energy, especially following high-profile accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986. During the Cold War, too, a heightened fear of nuclear war also fueled concerns about nuclear technology more broadly.

But there’s no escaping the simple fact that nuclear energy doesn’t emit carbon and therefore doesn’t contribute to the greenhouse gas-fueled climate crisis.

This wouldn’t be the first push for greater investment in nuclear energy since the end of the Cold War, though the motivations have changed. In the 2000s, nuclear energy became an arena for geopolitical competition, as well as cooperation between allies, as the industry spread globally—particularly in China and India—amid multibillion contracts for new nuclear power plants. That trend likely would have continued had it not been for the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

Now, though, with an increasingly urgent climate crisis and the Global North desperately seeking to cut carbon emissions without sacrificing dependable energy sources, many countries are once again turning to nuclear energy, this time to reach ambitious climate goals, including the Paris Climate Accords agreement to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. For Europe, the push also serves to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas.