Climate Change Transparency Project

Featured Posting

Illustration from a 1985 report by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Michael MacCracken, showing smoke and soot lofted from nuclear detonations on day 1 and the passage of the smoke 5, 10, and 20 days later (See Document 13, “Global Atmospheric Effects of Nuclear War”)

Investigating the Climate Impacts of Nuclear War

Washington, D.C., October 30, 2024 - A 1983 study from scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory said that a full-scale nuclear war between the superpowers would “…

Oct 30, 2024

Previous Postings

Ronald Reagan: Climate Hero

Aug 1, 2024

On the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, President Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon plant a California Giant Sequoia tree

The “Carbon Dioxide Problem”: Nixon’s Inner Circle Debates the Climate Crisis

Apr 26, 2024

The Folkets Hus Building (center) in Stockholm, Sweden

50 Years of U.S. Resistance to Environmental Reparations

Jul 6, 2023

Nuclear Winter: U.S. Government Thinking During the 1980s

Jun 2, 2022

Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Environmental Security Sherri Goodman

Climate Change and the Military: Examining the Pentagon’s Integration of National Security Interests and Environmental Goals under Clinton

May 26, 2022

Convening of a COP session at the Kyoto climate change conference in late 1997. (Photo credit: UN image, Frank Leather)

National Security and Climate Change:
Behind the U.S. Pursuit of Military Exemptions to the Kyoto Protocol

Jan 20, 2022

The Clinton White House and Climate Change, Part II: Engaging the Oval Office

Apr 5, 2021

The Clinton White House and Climate Change: Model for Biden?

Feb 25, 2021

The U.S. and Climate Change: Washington’s See-Saw on Global Leadership

Sep 24, 2018

See More Postings

Featured Documents

State Department cable, “Climate Change: Outcomes from the Kyoto Conference,” December 19, 1997

White House memorandum for John Podesta from Climate Change Task Force Chairman Roger Ballentine, “Climate Change Priorities,” April 26, 2000

State Department cable, “Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer,” October 14, 1987

State Department cable, “National Security Exemption on Climate Change,” October 26, 1997

DNSA collection

(Digital National Security Archive Collection published by ProQuest)

The Diplomacy of Climate Change: U.S. Policy from the Montreal Protocol to the Paris Agreement, 1981-2015

Edited by Dr. Robert A. Wampler

More than 2,400 documents (totalling nearly 23,000 pages) fully cataloged and indexed

Convening of a COP session at the Kyoto climate change conference in late 1997. (Photo credit: UN image, Frank Leather)

The most comprehensive compilation of its kind on this critical topic. Covers 35 years of key developments and controversy in U.S. climate change policy, from Montreal to Kyoto to Paris. Features top-level White House, State Department, Treasury, and EPA documents, CIA analyses, and U.N. reports on the key negotiations.

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Project Directors

Current
Rachel Santarsiero first joined the Archive in March 2022 as a Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow. As the Archive’s Climate Change Transparency Project Director, she manages the upcoming Climate and Security DNSA collection. She also contributed to the Archive’s Iraq Documentation Project. She has an MS in International Development from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and previously worked as a civil engineer on climate resiliency and adaptation projects.

Former
Dr. Robert A. Wampler (Emeritus) joined the Archive in 1993. In addition to the Climate Change Project (formerly the Environmental Diplomacy Project), he directed the project on U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korean relations and developed on the United States and the Tibet issue since the 1970s, and the history of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. He has also contributed to Archive projects on NATO and Henry Kissinger. Dr. Wampler received his doctorate in History at Harvard University, where he worked with the late Ernest R. May, who was a member of the Archive’s Advisory Board.