News & Resources

Latest
The hidden costs of energy and mobility: A global meta-analysis and research synthesis of electricity and transport externalities
CSSN Scholar Benjamin Sovacool and coauthors have published a new scholarly article examining the global hidden costs of energy. They find that while electricity systems and transport could cost trillions of dollars per year in externalities ($11.6 trillion/year and $13 trillion/year, respectively), energy efficiency has annual positive value of $312 billion per year.
Latest
Rebooting a failed promise of climate finance
A new commentary article in Nature Climate Change by CSSN Executive Director J. Timmons Roberts and CSSN Scholar Stacy-ann Robinson et al. argues that the 2009 pledge to mobilize US$100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance to developing nations was not specific on what types of funding could count. Indeterminacy and questionable claims make it impossible to know if developed nations have delivered; as 2020 passes, opportunity exists to address these failures in a new pledge.
Latest
Faster and Steeper is Feasible: Modeling Deeper Decarbonization in a Northeastern U.S. State
A new study published in Energy Research & Social Science by CSSN Executive Director Timmons Roberts et al. uses and updates a energy model originally developed for Rhode Island’s 2016 climate plan to assess the viability of more rapid decarbonization pathways for the state.
Latest
Approaches to energy transitions: Carbon pricing, managed decline, and/or green new deal?
CSSN scholar Emily Eaton has published new research showing the need for a democratization, decolonization, and decarbonization approach to energy transitions to address climate change.
Latest
New CSSN Report: Who’s Delaying Climate Action in Massachusetts? Twelve Findings
A new report from a CSSN research team analyzing climate and energy lobbying records details the actors working against climate action in Massachusetts.
Latest
Bots and online climate discourses: Twitter discourse on President Trump’s announcement of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
Climate Policy published "Bots and online climate discourses: Twitter discourse on President Trump’s announcement of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement" by CSSN scholars Thomas Marlow and Timmons Roberts and Sean Miller. The authors discuss the presence of bots in Twitter discourse around the time of U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on June 1, 2017.
Latest
Potential obstruction of climate change mitigation through ISO standard on radiative forcing management
In the very first CSSN position paper, CSSN Scholar Ina Möller explores the repercussions of a possible international standard for climate cooling particles.
Resources & Research
“America Misled”
CSSN Scholars John Cook, Geoffrey Supran, and Stephan Lewandowsky, with Naomi Oreskes and Ed Maibach authored "America Misled," a look into the fossil fuel industry's extensive history of misinformation on climate change and the strategies used to propagate said misinformation.
Latest
“Early oil industry disinformation on global warming”
CSSN Director of Accountability Research Benjamin Franta authored a briefing conveying climate obstruction actors, such as the American Petroleum Institute, engaging in disinformation about global warming earlier than previously thought.
Latest
More Heat than Life: The Tangled Roots of Ecology, Energy, and Economics
CSSN Scholar Jeremy Walker makes an increasingly relevant contribution to knowledge on the mutual histories of ecology, economics, and energy in "More Heat than Life: The Tangled Roots of Ecology, Energy, and Economics." He illuminates contemporary aporias in the conduct of energy, climate and environmental policy and scrutinizes the metaphorical affinities that both disciplines have derived from the ‘hard sciences’ in terms of the social values encoded therein.
Latest
“Animal Agriculture and Climate Change in the US and UK Elite Media: Volume, Responsibilities, Cases and Solutions”
Environmental Communication published "Animal Agriculture and Climate Change in the US and UK Elite Media: Volume, Responsibilities, Cases and Solutions" by Silje Kristiansen, CSSN Scholar James Painter, and Meghan Shea. The authors discuss approaches to addressing the disparity in media coverage and accuracy of the agriculture industry's contributions to climate change.
Latest
Fossilized: Environmental Policy in Canada’s Petro-Provinces
CSSN Scholar Angela V. Carter's "Fossilized: Environmental Policy in Canada's Petro-Provinces" traces the development of oil extraction in Canada's largest oil-producing provinces. Carter provides insight into how the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador offered extensive support for oil development and often downplayed environmental effects of said extraction.
Latest
“The Debunking Handbook 2020”: A consensus-based handbook of recommendations for correcting or preventing misinformation
With the current flood of misinformation and “fake news” undermining democracies around the world, a consensus document that summarizes the science of debunking has been published by a team of 22 prominent researchers of misinformation and its debunking.
Latest
Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist Feminist Literature on Climate and Energy
Many of the leadership deficiencies that have shaped the United States’ inadequate response to the Covid-19 pandemic have also thwarted the country’s response to the climate crisis.
Latest
Climate Change Solutions: Beyond the Capital-Climate Contradiction
This work shows how ideology continues to conceal “the capital-climate contradiction,” or, the fundamental incompatibility between growth-dependent capitalism and climate stability. The authors propose “transitional” mitigation strategies that have the potential to spark the necessary transition toward an ecological society that rapidly, effectively, and justly reduces material and energy throughput.