Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The decision by President Trump to withdraw the USA – the world’s biggest per capita polluter – from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change is undoubtedly a set-back to a unified global response to climate change. However, the response by US cities, along with states, businesses and citizens has been truly inspiring. More than 300 American “Climate Mayors” have committed to “adopt, honor and uphold Paris Climate Agreement goals.”
Vulnerable riverbeds, shorelines and even fresh water lakes are being damaged by sand dredgers across the world. Sand – a necessary part of making concrete used extensively in the construction industry – helps build the cities of tomorrow. But as these cities go up, the natural environment around them suffers.
Climate science can seem distant and inhuman, particularly when it’s foretelling the parched doom of humans. Wallace-Wells’ reliance on that doom and flourish has elicited the objection of some scientists. Telling the human race exactly what kind of threats await our home is sensitive business, a fact of which scientists are sharply aware.
The most potent weapon in the Trump administration’s arsenal for defeating efforts to combat climate change and slowing the adoption of solar, wind and other low-carbon energy sources is one rarely spoken of: federal preemption of state-based incentives and policies like Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS).
The Resilience Dialogues program provides resources and expertise to help communities build individualized plans for resilience in the face of climate change
New York Magazine has stirred up a firestorm of debate by publishing a worst-case scenario for climate change this week, “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently added to the string of struck federal executive actions when it overruled an attempt by the Environmental Protection Agency to delay Obama-era methane regulations, rejecting claims by the EPA that the oil and gas industry wasn’t allowed to comment on the rules.
Whatever deal Brexit secretary David Davis manages to strike with the EU, it could have a negative significant impact on climate policy both on the continent and in the UK, a new report has warned. Dublin-based think tank the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) looked at four different Brexit scenarios, and found that the UK’s withdrawal from the EU would likely harm the region’s overall ambition to climate change.
Observational records show us that half a degree of warming in the recent past has brought significant increases in extreme weather events, which provides another line of evidence for what an additional 0.5C of warming could entail. Differentiating climate impacts between 1.5C and 2C warming above pre-industrial levels has been a hot topic in climate science since the adoption of the 1.5C long-term temperature limit in the Paris Agreement and much research is underway for inclusion in the IPCC special report on impacts at 1.5C warming.
This month we’re going to talk about the current pace of anthropogenic climate change. That’s perhaps the most massive story of our time; it’s happening a good deal faster than I expected — though in all fairness, a great many climate scientists have been caught flatfooted by the pace of change as well.
A new resistance camp, called L’eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life), opened over the weekend, on June 24. Based in southern Louisiana, the camp is against the 163-mile long Bayou Bridge Pipeline. The camp, according to a press release emailed to Colorlines, is made up of indigenous and environmental justice communities. Described as a “floating camp,” it sits among Louisiana’s wetlands and contains numerous indigenous art structures that are on rafts.
The idea of conferring of a “legal personality” on a river and explicitly guaranteeing its “health and well-being” is a major departure for Western law, needless to say. We westerners have no legal categories for recognizing the intrinsic nature of nonhuman living systems and how we relate to them ontologically.
