When the Texas power grid failed during a historic winter storm, millions of people were left in the cold and dark. The operator of that grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said they were only moments away from an absolute nightmare scenario: a statewide blackout that could have lasted weeks — or months.

The storm was unprecedented — but it wasn’t unpredictable. How did this disaster happen, and what can be done to prevent a similar failure?

A group of Brown University researchers, funded by the Shared Beringian Heritage Program, is tracking evidence that supports a new but disputed theory about when and how human beings first arrived on the American continent. Brown professor Yongsong Huang and his team of researchers believe they have found traces of human fecal matter and fire activity in northern Alaska dating back more than 30,000 years—thousands of years before the archaeological record indicates humans were in Alaska.

A new study demonstrates that achieving an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 is feasible for Rhode Island.

A select group of IBES fellows offers their reflections about what the new Presidential Administration here in the U.S. could mean for the climate and other environmental concerns.

The Watson-based Climate Solutions Lab has created a syllabus bank to encourage more social-science instructors to teach university-level courses on climate change.

There is so much to worry about in our world today: political turmoil, civil unrest, a pandemic, climate change. The list goes on . . . and on and on. All of us want to be hopeful, of course, as we stare down all of these challenges. Let’s listen to Curt Spalding’s sanguine words, as he reflects on the future of our precious planet.

IBES graduate affiliates Sloane Garelick and Emily Joyce have earned prestigious Outstanding Student Paper Awards for the work they presented at AGU last December.

IBES fellow Myles Lennon says growing industry exploits labor of Black, Brown, and poor communities worldwide.

“Faster and Steeper is Feasible: Modeling Deeper Decarbonization in a Northeastern U.S. State,” published in Energy Research & Social Science, 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.

Oil companies have been trying to rebrand themselves as cleaner and greener for years.

Republican attacks, amplified by Fox News, have been met with a planned response from climate envoy John Kerry

An 'ice jam' bottlenecking an Arctic ice exit route shows troubling signs it may no longer serve as a year-round barrier to sea ice flow to warmer waters to the south.

Despite supermajorities enjoyed by the party in both houses of the state legislature, a new Brown University study suggests the answer may be no.

Thomas Marlow and John Cook, scholars with the IBES-supported Climate Social Science Network, are featured in E&E News, where they discuss new research showing that a substantial amount of climate change disinformation online comes from Twitter bots.

Oil companies like to point to the demise of the whaling industry as an example of market-based energy solutions. The reality is much more complicated.

A new report from an IBES research team analyzing climate and energy lobbying records details the actors working against climate action in Massachusetts.

Severe storms. Heat waves. Rising seas. New England is already seeing the impacts of climate change, and scientists project they will become more severe and deadly, shaping how we live and work in the northeastern U.S. This week on NEXT, in a special ahead of Inauguration Day, the New England News Collaborative and America Amplified look at climate change in our region and how President-elect Joe Biden’s administration could affect climate action in the future. Biden has proposed the most ambitious climate platform of any incoming U.S. president in history.

Last year the Black Lives Matter movement that intensified with the high-profile deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others led to heightened conversations nationwide around institutional discrimination against marginalized groups in workplaces, academia and government.

Women and minorities in the earth and atmospheric sciences were already on it.

An agreed system for measuring funding of green projects in poorer nations will be vital to achieving action on climate change in 2021.

Climate researchers describe a new method of tracking the ancient history of the westerly winds—a proxy for what we may experience in a future warming world.

Combining traditional "pick and trowel" field work with a sweeping birds-eye view.

“Deep Adaptation” made people confront the end of the world from climate change. Does it matter if it’s not correct?

Climate activists and some ad industry figures are calling on agencies to declare or dump their Big Oil clients.

IBES fellow Scott Frickel and colleagues examine what that means beyond the 2020 elections.

Ex-secretary of state’s appointment as climate envoy signals issue as priority for new president

Today's advertising, lobbying, and public-relations firms help provide the rationalizations and the justifications that slow the pace of climate change action. IBES fellow Robert Brulle studies such marketing extensively, as described in The New Yorker.

In the mid-19th century, a parade of whaling ships set sail from New England. One by one, they swept down the United States’ Atlantic coast, circled South America’s Cape Horn, and finally cruised northward, toward the Arctic edge of the Pacific Ocean.

A handful of dedicated IBES scholars are working to trace the arc of global sea level rise: from the melting ice sheets, into the swelling oceans and onto the shores of vulnerable communities like Providence. Together, the researchers aim to chart a new course forward — staving off sea level rise where it is possible and fortifying the environments and societies where it is not.

Our very existence is threatened by a warming world. Why aren’t we doing more?

Elise Dadourian's film, The Global Food Waste Crisis and The Danish Solution, has gained widespread recognition in the last few months.

In Fall 2019, sustainable investing advocate and Brown instructor Cary Krosinsky approached 12 Brown University students to contribute to his recent book, "Modern China: Financial Cooperation for Solving Sustainability Challenges."

IBES offers a competitive summer internship for undergraduates in partnership with the Leadership Alliance.

Senior Elise Dadourian knows that our planet has a looming problem: With 10 billion mouths to feed forecasted by 2050 and a food system already made unstable by socioeconomic factors and a changing climate, food waste is a topic that everyone should be concerned about.

A new study of lizards in countries struck by hurricanes suggests cataclysmic weather can reshape entire species.