By Guy Edwards and Jakob Skovgaard

Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN body on climate change, visited Lima last week as Peru prepares to host the annual UN climate talks in December. Figueres was vocal in her comments that the Lima conference needs to secure a draft agreement before the deadline summit in Paris next year to create a new climate agreement. The chief of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change commented that government efforts to confront climate change are woefully inadequate.

She also cited recent research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which affirms that the window of opportunity to keep global temperature within 2C and avoid dangerous climate impacts is rapidly closing. This reminds us of the relentless pressure facing presidents of the annual UN climate Conference of the Parties (COP).

By J. Timmons Roberts

Almost every year since 2008, a quixotic state representative in Rhode Island has introduced the “Climate Solutions Act,” which lays out a series of targets for emissions reductions in the tiny state.  Each year, the bill has died in committee.

It wasn’t that Representative Art Handy, a Democrat in a state with about 90 percent of its legislature on the blue side of the aisle, was in the minority party.  (Full disclosure: Representative Handy has worked with climate stakeholders across the state, including with Brown University, where I teach.) In fact, Democrats have all but one small row of six seats in the 70-some seat legislature.  It wasn’t a hostile committee he had to make it through either—Handy himself chaired the House Environment Committee. And it wasn’t that Rhode Island would be way out in front of other states: Rhode Island’s neighbor Massachusetts passed identical wording to the Rhode Island bill in 2008, establishing a program that with other legislation is credited with lowering the state’s emissions, bringing over a billion dollars in economic benefits, and generating more than 12,000 new jobs.  Another neighbor, Connecticut, has also passed climate targets and begun statewide efforts to reduce its emissions.

By Marcela Jaramillo and Camila Bustos

The elections took place amid high growth, historically-low unemployment and unconvinced voters. Colombia is a “hot economy” that continues to conquest international markets and attract foreign investors as the government upgrades our investment policies. Yet Colombians feel the country’s progress is slow and economic opportunities are not easily available for them. They do not yet see Colombia as a safe place. The results from 15 June should therefore not hide the political reality of Colombian voters being unsatisfied with the government’s policies. Rather, Santos’ elections should be seen as a victory over an alternative they considered worse.