Stock hedges, home insurance, and our misunderstanding of risk

There is no insurance policy that will protect us against catastrophic climate change. We cannot get our habitable climate back on any time scale that matters to humans once it’s gone. The insurance policy is us, that is, changes in our behavior and our technology done quickly enough to matter. There is no other hedge that will help us.

Cognitive Dissonance on Climate

Suffice it to say that, at a time when our president openly denies that climate change is real, let alone the most consequential challenge we face, the NYT screwed up by hiring yet another columnist to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that immediate action is necessary to avoid the collapse of human civilization.

Huge Victory in Seneca Lake: After Years of Protest, Gas Storage Project Abandoned

After a years-long popular resistance against a proposed fracked gas storage project in Seneca Lake, N.Y., the people have emerged victorious. The Arlington Storage Company announced Wednesday that it was finally abandoning a contentious plan to store fracked gas in unlined salt caverns along the pristine lake in New York’s Finger Lakes region.

The Paris Climate Agreement: Should We Stay or Should We Go? Update

Predictably there’s been a lot written over the last few weeks about the Paris Climate Agreement and whether the Trump administration will continue to sit with other nations. Driving the coverage is the on-again off-again meeting between Trump and a pack of senior advisors. The ultimate decision will remain for The Donald to make–purportedly after the G-7 summit at the end of May.

Warming Limit of 1.5C Would ‘Save’ Huge Expanses of Permafrost, Study Says

The cost of allowing global temperature to rise to 2C, rather than capping warming at 1.5C, is an area of permafrost the size of Mexico, according to new research. The study, carried out by a team of scientists from Sweden, Norway and the UK, is the first to work out what the ambitious targets contained in the Paris Agreement mean for permafrost loss.