By transforming patterns of travel and work around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the transition to renewable energy and the decline of fossil fuels. Lockdowns brought car commuting and plane travel to a near halt, and the mass experiment in which white-collar employees have been working from home may permanently reduce energy consumption for business travel. Renewable energy and electric vehicles were already gaining market share before the pandemic. Under pressure from investors, major energy companies have started writing off fossil fuel reserves as stranded assets that are no longer worth the cost of extracting. These shifts may indicate that “peak oil demand” has arrived earlier than expected.

By examining how power is constructed and maintained in Russia with the help of hydrocarbons—oil and gas—this article shows why this system is detrimental to Russia in the context of global environmental, technological, and geopolitical changes. While promoting a hydrocarbon culture as central to national identity, the Kremlin has failed to adapt to the global transition toward renewable energy. But external actors such as the European Union could encourage change from within to develop Russia’s untapped potential as a green power, given its vast endowments of renewable resources.

The degree to which states are tolerant of local-level initiatives and mobilization will become only more important as climate impacts intensify.

The Germans have been early adopters of green standards, and the state has set ambitious renewable-energy targets. But industrial lobbies can still thwart regulations, as the Volkswagen scandal revealed.

Mongolian leaders have decided the nation must find ways to take care of itself, rather than rely on its neighbors.

Most of Pen'a Nieto's legislative achievements remain incomplete, and they have been accompanied by serious missteps that must be rectified and oversights that can no longer be ignored.

If the second term of the left in Uruguay lives up to its promise, complementing the first term's performance, the country will have developed a signature social democratic experience in the global South.

[P]olicies based on the delusional but popular perception of the Arctic shelf as a ‘treasure chest’ of high-value resources that must be protected by military means have arrived at an inevitable dead end.

What makes these disputes so dangerous … is the apparent willingness of many claimants to employ military means in demarking their offshore territories and demonstrating their resolve to keep them.

The dual forces of population growth and climate change will exacerbate pressures on land use, water access, and food security.

Seeking global recognition, as well as access to resources and markets, one of the world's largest recipients of foreign assistance is boosting the aid that it distributes.

For the near to medium term, the international community likely will confront the consequences of weaker global security governance in an increasingly insecure world.

The energy dependency of the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia, combined with the growing dependence of rising powers such as China and India, is rapidly eroding American power and influence around the world.

With the global flow of energy assuming ever-growing economic and strategic prominence, oil and gas pipelines in the world today have become the major focus of international geopolitical competition.

Although the dispute about climate change is overshadowed by the strain in European–American relations concerning war with Iraq, it may have been a factor in the growing level of distrust between the United States and Europe. Indeed, the dispute over global warming may mask a larger concern.

Growing attention has been devoted in recent years to projected oil and gas pipelines that would link Russian gas fields in eastern Siberia and Sakhalin Island to China, Japan, and the two Koreas. By contrast, there is little awareness of the high economic and political stakes involved in the quiet struggle now unfolding in Northeast Asia over seabed petroleum resources, especially the conflict between China and Japan over the East China Sea.

Any realistic appraisal of global energy futures must begin with a comprehensive and balanced understanding of resources and their uses. What are the kinds and magnitudes of energy stores and flows available to supply the world's still-growing needs for fuels and electricity? And what is the intensity and pattern of their use?

The good performance of energy markets during the seven or eight years following the Gulf War masked many continuing and emerging energy policy challenges that derive from larger domestic and foreign policy issues. The changes in world oil, domestic natural gas, and electricity markets in 1999 and especially 2000 likely reflect the effects of ignoring some of these challenges.

The United States cannot increase its intake of foreign oil by 50 percent, as called for under the Bush energy plan, without involving itself in the political, economic, and military affairs of the states from which all this petroleum is expected to flow. This involvement may take financial and diplomatic forms in most cases, but it will also often entail military action.