In an event co-sponsored by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, panelists discussed how to bridge the perceived gap between religion and climate change. Titled "Climate Change is not a Leap of Faith: On Being a Climate Scientist and an Evangelical Christian," it focused on the possible tensions between religion and climate change.

In The Huffington Post, William Becker writes that is not hard to imagine a nationwide campaign to replant forests, restore wetlands, bring more nature back to cities, and promote carbon-capturing tillage and grazing practices partnering a wide variety of organizations. The next administration and Congress, for their part, could help with several relatively minor modifications to federal policies and programs. Forest Trends and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University have just issued a report that identifies several of these policy adjustments.

Calling their quest to conquer climate change a “pillar” of the relationship, the White House says that this country and China will ink a deal on April 22—Earth Day—that formally advances their mutual cause. The goal, it says, to get a grip on global warming before it is too late. Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, comment in Environmental Leader.

Last summer, MEM/MBA student Andrew Seelaus interned with Off Grid Electric, a solar start-up company based in Arusha, Tanzania, which focuses on providing off-grid energy to rural areas in both Tanzania and Rwanda. Before his internship, Seelaus participated in a class, “Renewables and the World’s Poor,” which was co-taught by Jim Rogers, Rubenstein Fellow at Duke University who is leading the university’s Energy Access Project, and Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute of Environmental Policy Solutions.

The thousands of negotiators, reporters and observers at this winter's U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in France included a team of Duke University students there to observe the historic event and provide supporting information on climate issues. The students spent the fall semester taking the United Nations Climate Change Negotiations Practicum course taught by Nicholas Institute faculty fellow Billy Pizer and Jonathan Wiener, a professor in the Duke Law School. Eight of the practicum students attended the UNFCCC's 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) negotiations in Paris in November and December, traveling with financial and logistical support from the Energy Initiative, the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, and the Sanford Innovation & Impact Fund. 

The Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, in coordination with faculty at the Duke Department of Economics and the Nicholas School of the Environment, invite research paper submissions for presentation at a workshop on new directions in the analysis of environmental justice at Duke University August 23 and 24.

British Columbia’s climate policy is at a crossroads. The government must decide how to move forward with its signature policy: the revenue-neutral carbon tax, writes Joel Wood in the Vancouver Sun. He cites work by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions' Brian Murray and Nicholas Rivers of the University of Ottawa concluding that the carbon tax reduced emissions by five to 15 per cent while having a “negligible impact” on economic activity.

The New York Times reports on how, in 2008, the British Columbia Liberal Party, which confoundingly leans right, introduced a tax on the carbon emissions of businesses and families, cars and trucks, factories and homes across the province. The tax, which rose from 10 Canadian dollars per ton of carbon dioxide in 2008 to 30 dollars by 2012, the equivalent of about $22.20 in current United States dollars, reduced emissions by 5 to 15 percent with “negligible effects on aggregate economic performance,” according to a study last year by economists at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the University of Ottawa.

Billy Pizer, faculty fellow at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy, discusses new energy with China Central Television News Channel.