Elizabeth Sawin, Co-Director of Climate Interactive recently delivered a keynote speech at the Heroes & Leaders celebration of mentors, focusing on what she learned about mentoring from her mentor Donella (Dana) Meadows. Meadows was the founder of the Sustainability Institute (now the Donella Meadows Institute) and a co-founder of Cobb Hill Co-housing. Elizabeth worked with […]
Beth Sawin Illuminates the Emissions Gap For U.S. Media
Climate Interactive Co-Director Beth Sawin is one of the co-authors of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report, which is getting widespread coverage, as eyes focus on this year’s climate negotiations hosted by the tiny oil-rich middle eastern country of Qatar. Below is coverage of the negotiations featuring Climate Interactive from Live Science. Beth was also interviewed yesterday […]
Our Three Big Impacts
By Drew Jones, Beth Sawin, and Stephanie McCauley What has our impact been? Eight people, dozens of partners, five years, and two simulation models — what does it add up to? Here’s our informal assessment of how much of a contribution we’ve made to the global effort to curb climate change Together with our partners, […]
China-U.S. Collaboration Launches Powerful New Simulation
For over two years Climate Interactive has been working with Tsinghua University in China to create a learning tool to model the climate goals of Chinese provinces. Because of our work with Tsinghua, they have been able to provide the Chinese government with a new easy-to-use tool in order to meet their climate and energy […]
What we do and why are we doing it: a radio interview with Climate Interactive
What is it that keeps an organization like Climate Interactive ticking? Co-directors Drew Jones and Beth Sawin, along with team member and MIT professor, John Sterman, joined Radio Green Talk host Diana Dehm to discuss this and elaborate on why we provide the tools that we do. During the program John discusses how we use […]
Transparent, Real-Time Analysis Works
Climate Interactive is a small team with big goals. One of our founding goals was to offer rapid turnaround analysis of the most important climate and energy issues, and to make that analysis available ‘open source’. In doing so, we reasoned, we’d be boosting the effectiveness of the many, many parties –- from negotiators to […]
Durban Talks Open the Door to a Future Global Legal Agreement, But Produce No Immediate Strengthening of Pledges
With the close of COP-17, parties to the UNFCCC maintained the same inadequate emissions reduction pledges, thus committing the world to a more costly and risky path forward than is needed given the immediate availability of cost-effective measures to reduce emissions and begin the transition to a low-carbon economy. As our previous analysis showed, postponing […]
To Avoid Expensive and Disruptive Rates of Emissions Reduction In Coming Decades Parties Must Increase the Ambition of 2020 Pledges Today
To see a reposting on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog, click here. And a corroborating report by ClimateWorks Foundation here plus another by Climate Analytics here. Postponing commitment to ambitious targets until after 2020 would commit countries to rates of CO2 emissions reductions in decades beyond 2020 that exceed those typically seen in the current generation […]
Beth Sawin On Hurricane Irene from Vermont Bioneers: The Big Four Lessons
At the end of August, Vermont was hit by catastrophic flooding as result of Hurricane Irene, which dumped six inches of rain on already saturated hillsides around the state. On Saturday, I (Beth Sawin) was one of two panelists (along with Bill McKibben via Skype) asked to reflect upon lessons Irene and Vermont’s response to […]
Tropical Storm Irene Hits Close to Home
Climate Interactive Co-Director Beth Sawin (who is coping with life in newly flooded Vermont – she and family are okay BTW) posted a timely perspective on this week’s Irene disaster on Romm’s Climate Progress blog and Burlington Free Press. We’re sharing it here as well. My daughter, Jenna, will miss her first day of high […]