Energy Archive

The extraordinary demographic change currently sweeping Africa is one of the most important challenges facing humankind over the remainder of this century. United Nations projections predict that from its present population of nearly 1.4 billion people, the continent’s population will approach 4.5 billion people by 2100, which is the staggering equivalent in population terms of two Chinas and one India. Other carefully considered efforts to project global population trends, such as a recent study published in the Lancet, predict an even larger African population two generations hence. Demographic growth on such a scale will affect nearly every human question one […]

The most recent assessment report on the state of climate science, released last week by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, or IPCC, eliminates any remaining shred of doubt about the anthropogenic origins of global warming, calling the evidence of human activity’s responsibility “unequivocal.” The report also identifies how quickly humanity needs to slash emissions to avoid catastrophe, given the accumulated stock of greenhouse gases already present in the atmosphere. Under any conceivable scenario, average temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come. The magnitude of that rise is up to us. Unfortunately, the window to prevent massive dislocation […]

Editor’s note: Guest columnist Nikolas Gvosdev is filling in for Charli Carpenter. History does not repeat itself, as Mark Twain remarked, but it does rhyme. And when it comes to its policies on Russia, climate and energy, the Biden team is dealing with Obama-era echoes. Seven years ago, in my then-weekly column for WPR, I called attention to the internal tensions in the Obama administration’s climate, energy and geopolitical priorities. Back then, the United States was trying to square several irreconcilable circles. One had to do with reducing Russia’s global influence by constraining its sales of energy. Another was putting […]