Brooking's Energy Security and Climate Initiative
Having attended Brown University for political science, Stephen Robert has been a fellow or trustee for Brown since 1984 and also served as Brown University’s Chancellor. The majority of his career has been dedicated to finance and philanthropy and co-founded the Source of Hope Foundation with his wife. Stephen Robert is also currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Foreign Policy Leadership Committee with the Brookings Institution. Brookings is a not-for-profit research institution with a focus on foreign policy headquartered in Washington, DC. The institution’s foreign policy branch oversees the Energy Security and Climate Initiative which provides research and analysis into US environmental policy choices in the public and private sector. Brookings recently published an article exploring the current status of the energy sector. It’s clear that climate change must be addressed through reducing emissions, and certain states, like California and New York, are producing energy technology and innovation to address these issues. The US can also look to certain areas of Europe and Mexico, where cleaner energy production has not impeded economic growth. This has made it cheaper and easier to produce sustainable energy, so innovation moves much faster. If more countries, including the US, can follow this example, global emissions may actually slow down enough to address the major global challenge of climate change.