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Controlling for factors such as criminal violence and poverty, we tested if drier than usual growing season weather was a predictor of emigration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to the US between 2012 and 2018. We focus on growing season weather because agriculture is a primary transmission pathway from the effects of climate change upon migration. We secured the migration apprehensions data for our analysis through a FOIA request to US Customs and Border Protection. Border Patrol intake interviews recorded the original home location of families that arrived at the southern US border. We used this geographic information to measure recent weather patterns and social circumstances in the area that each family departed. We found 70.7% more emigration to the US when local growing seasons in Central America were recently drier than the historical average since 1901. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the lack of efforts by some countries to address climate change and reduce their carbon emissions. Topics discussed include key goal of the Paris Agreement, attitude of U.S. President Donald Trump on climate action, and political challenges of trying to curb emissions. It also mentions the problem facing the 24th Conference of Parties (COP) in Katowice, Poland, and rise in global temperatures by 2034, according to the Global Carbon Project.

The article discusses climatic changes and international cooperation for climatic changes. Topics discussed include global economy, carbon emissions and Paris convention on climatic changes held in Paris, France in December 2015. Other topics such as UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are also discussed.

Many experts argue that climate change will exacerbate the severity and number of extreme weather events. Such climate-related hazards will be important security concerns and sources of vulnerability in the future regardless of whether they contribute to conflict. This will be particularly true where these hazards put large numbers of people at risk of death, requiring the diversion of either domestic or foreign military assets to provide humanitarian relief. Vulnerability to extreme weather, however, is only partially a function of physical exposure. Poor, marginalized communities that lack access to infrastructure and services, that have minimal education and poor health care, and that exist in countries with poor governance are likely to be among the most vulnerable. Given its dependence on rainfed agriculture and its low adaptive capacity, Africa is thought to be among the most vulnerable continents to climate change. That vulnerability, however, is not uniformly distributed. Indicators of vulnerability within Africa include the historic incidence of climate-related hazards, population density, household and community resilience, and governance and political violence. Among the places in Africa most vulnerable to the security consequences of climate change are parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and South Sudan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do states and decision-makers ever act for moral reasons? And if they do, is it only when it is convenient or relatively costless for them to do so? A number of advocacy movements—on developing country debt relief, climate change, landmines, and other issues—emerged in the 1990s to ask decision-makers to make foreign policy decisions on that basis. The primary advocates were motivated not by their own material interests but broader notions of right and wrong. What contributes to the domestic acceptance of these moral commitments? Why do some advocacy efforts succeed where others fail? Through a case study of the Jubilee 2000 campaign for developing country debt relief, this article offers an account of persuasion based on strategic framing by advocates to get the attention of decision-makers. Such strategic but not narrowly self-interested activity allows weak actors to leverage existing value and/or ideational traditions to build broader political coalitions. This article, through case studies of debt relief in the United States and Japan, also links the emerging literature on strategic framing to the domestic institutional context and the ways veto players or “policy gatekeepers” evaluate trade-offs between costs and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the issues attributing to the division between the U.S. and Europe. Dispute about climate change; Conflict of government policy on global warming; War of the U.S. against terrorism.

Coal-fired energy generation is the backbone of India's power sector and considered a driver of its economic development. However, it is associated with detrimental environmental and health impacts in India and its fleet is currently struggling with overcapacity and inefficiency problems. One solution to address these challenges is the early retirement of some of India's coal-fired power plants. In this paper, we introduce multidimensional indices that identify plants for retirement based on comprehensive criteria that include technical and economic characteristics of plants as well as their environmental impacts. We implement an ensemble approach, where we formulate 8008 indices based on all possible combination of seven relevant parameters and rank plants accordingly. This approach facilitates a comprehensive analysis of the plants' performance on different parameters and provides a new outlook on plant retirements that differs from the common approach of retiring plants based solely on technical characteristics such as age, capacity, and heat rate. Our results show that top plants recommended for early retirement are typically 7 years older, 13% more expensive and have around 40% higher population exposure to emissions compared to an average plant in India. We estimate the potential costs saved from the retirement of the worst-performing 50 GW of generating capacity to be $21 billion resulting from shifting ownership towards a cheaper cost of capital and replacing coal by more competitive sources such as solar power. • Identify plants for early retirement based on technical, economic and environmental indicators. • Worst performing 50 GW capacity are older, more expensive to operate and have higher population exposure. • Costs saved from retiring 50 GW capacity and replacing them with solar are $21 billion. • A multidimensional approach is essential for a politically feasible phaseout of coal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]