The End of Fast Fashion’s “Silent” Waste: EU Locks in Ban on Unsold Apparel
Every second, the equivalent of a rubbish truck full of clothes is dumped into a landfill or incinerated. In Europe, between 4% and 9% of all unsold textiles, specifically items that have never been worn, are destroyed annually. This produces carbon emissions roughly equivalent to the total net output of Sweden. This week, the European […]
Bangladesh Election: BNP Landslide Sets Stage for Landmark Reform Charter
Dhaka woke up this week to a political landscape that had been scrubbed clean. After fifteen years of an autocratic grip that ended in the blood of a student-led uprising, Bangladesh has delivered its verdict. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has claimed a landslide victory in the country’s first competitive election in nearly two decades, […]
From Wind to Storage: Norway’s $2.2 Trillion Fund Pivots to the Grid
The world’s largest pool of capital is looking for a place to park its energy. After years of anchoring its renewable portfolio in the spinning blades of offshore wind and the sprawling glass of solar farms, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global has signaled a transition into the infrastructure that makes those assets viable: battery storage. […]
New Chair Julio Cordano Elected as Global Plastics Treaty Talks Attempt a Fragile Restart
When delegates from nearly every nation gathered in Geneva earlier this month, the meeting on the agenda was procedural but carried heavy symbolic weight: electing a new chair to lead negotiations on what could become the world’s first legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. In a one-day resumed session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, known […]
Why This Time Is Different: The Trump Administration Targets the Core of Climate Law
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to rescind the federal government’s landmark determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, a move that would strike at the legal foundation of nearly every major climate regulation enacted over the past two decades. Known as the “endangerment finding,” the determination adopted in 2009 established […]
Thailand Election 2026: A Conservative Victory Reshapes Politics and Rewrites the Country’s Climate Path
Bangkok woke up to a different political map. Thailand general election 2026 delivered a clear and unexpected result: a conservative surge led by Anutin Charnvirakul and the Bhumjaithai Party, vaulting the party to the largest bloc in parliament and halting what many believed was an inexorable drift toward progressive reform. The outcome was decisive. Bhumjaithai […]
A $4 Billion IOU and the Future of the United Nations Under Trump
The United Nations has long operated with a degree of financial uncertainty. What feels different now is how deliberately that uncertainty is being used. This week, officials in New York received word that the Trump administration intends to make an initial payment toward the nearly $4 billion the United States owes the United Nations. The […]
$35 Billion Vanished: How America’s Clean Energy Boom Quietly Unraveled
More than $35 billion in clean energy investment and tens of thousands of jobs did not disappear overnight. They faded quietly, project by project, factory by factory, as federal priorities shifted and certainty gave way to hesitation. On a gray winter morning in the heartland, the factory floor is silent. Just a year ago, this […]
EU Lawmakers and Member States Agree to Historic 90 % Emissions Cut by 2040
Brussels — The European Parliament voted today to enshrine a 90 percent cut in net greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 into EU law. The decision sets the most ambitious intermediate climate target ever adopted by a major economy and hardens the EU’s path toward climate neutrality. The vote updates the EU Climate Law and places […]
SDG Spotlight – Julio Cordano: The Diplomat Tasked With Restarting the World’s Most Fragile Environmental Negotiation
When governments moved to restart stalled negotiations on a global plastics treaty in Geneva earlier this month, they turned to a diplomat shaped not by a single issue, but by the slow accumulation of trust, credibility, and experience across climate, oceans, and multilateral governance. Julio Cordano, newly elected Chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating […]
