This morning, Vice President Al Gore challenged the United States to achieve a carbon-free electricity supply within the next 10 years. Here is the statement of WRI President Jonathan Lash on Gore’s challenge:

“Climate change and energy security are not just threats—they are opportunities. Vice President Gore has issued an audacious and timely challenge: imagine our future and our children’s future if we seize the moment. We need to change the debate in this country from what we can’t do to what we can do. America has led every major technological shift in the last 100 years, and we can lead the next one as well. The problem is not technology, it is political will.”

WHAT: Nobody wants to admit that the United States has only made slow progress when it comes to improving on-road fuel efficiency.

While there are risks for the forest products industry, it largely stands to gain from efforts to address global warming due to new opportunities for sustainable forestry, according to a report released here today by the World Resources Institute.

Direct annual economic benefits of tourism and fisheries resulting from coral reefs amounts to US$94 million in St. Lucia and US$44 million in Tobago. Those numbers amount to 11 percent and 15 percent of those Caribbean islands’ yearly gross-domestic product.

WHAT: The World Resources Institute and the Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, hosted by the United Nations Development Programme (CLEP), will discuss a new global survey of

Statement from World Resources Institute President Jonathan Lash on June 6 Senate Vote on the Climate Security Act

While many national governments have made real progress in honoring their 1992 Rio Earth Summit commitments to better include the public in environmental decisions, a new book released here today in honor of World Environment Day finds that all the countries studied have fallen short in some aspect.

A World Resources Institute (WRI) analysis of the complex challenges that investors would face when deploying carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies shows that until government policies support large-scale demonstrations it is unlikely that CCS will be able to fulfill its potential in combating climate change.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics has been awarded a $1.5 million grant by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) as part of the foundation’s $100 million Climate Change Initiative.This joint project, conducted with the World Resources Institute (WRI), will undertake a comprehensive analysis of the connections between international trade and climate change policies and make recommendations for how these policies can be mutually supportive.