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Category: Climate Change

How a more conservative Supreme Court could impact environmental laws

How a more conservative Supreme Court could impact environmental laws

E&E News reports: Barrett, who currently serves on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has a relatively slim record on climate and environmental matters. But if she is confirmed to the high court, Barrett, 48, likely would lock up a conservative coalition there, legal experts said. That bloc could smooth the path for future environmental rollbacks or make it more difficult to expand emissions regulations through a broad reading of statutory authority. “I view Barrett being added to the…

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Three Rockefellers say banks must stop financing fossil fuels

Three Rockefellers say banks must stop financing fossil fuels

Daniel Growald, Peter Gill Case and Valerie Rockefeller write: One hundred years ago, as a deadly influenza gripped the world and the stock market dropped precipitously, our great-grandfather John D. Rockefeller Jr. began investing in New York banks to diversify the family’s business away from fossil fuels in the midst of the economic uncertainty. The result was the beginning of our family’s century-long association with what is today JPMorgan Chase, known in its earlier incarnation as the “Rockefeller Bank.” The…

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Florida sees signals of a climate-driven housing crisis

Florida sees signals of a climate-driven housing crisis

The New York Times reports: If rising seas cause America’s coastal housing market to dive — or, as many economists warn, when — the beginning might look a little like what’s happening in the tiny town of Bal Harbour, a glittering community on the northernmost tip of Miami Beach. With single-family homes selling for an average of $3.6 million, Bal Harbour epitomizes high-end Florida waterfront property. But around 2013, something started to change: The annual number of homes sales began…

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NextEra Energy, a wind and solar power producer, tops Exxon as most valuable U.S. energy company

NextEra Energy, a wind and solar power producer, tops Exxon as most valuable U.S. energy company

CBS News reports: It’s a milestone for renewable energy in the U.S.: A solar and wind power provider topped ExxonMobil as America’s most valuable energy company. NextEra Energy, based in Juno Beach, Florida, eclipsed Exxon this week when its value hit $143.8 billion, edging out the fossil-fuel giant. After the close of trading on Wednesday, NextEra was worth $900 million more that Exxon and about $2 billion more than Chevron, America’s No. 2 oil and gas producer. NextEra’s enormous growth…

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Exxon’s plan for surging carbon emissions revealed in leaked documents

Exxon’s plan for surging carbon emissions revealed in leaked documents

Bloomberg reports: Exxon Mobil Corp. has been planning to increase annual carbon-dioxide emissions by as much as the output of the entire nation of Greece, an analysis of internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg shows, setting one of the largest corporate emitters against international efforts to slow the pace of warming. The drive to expand both fossil-fuel production and planet-warming pollution comes at a time when some of Exxon’s rivals, such as BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, are moving…

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A second Trump term would be ‘game over’ for the climate, says Michael Mann

A second Trump term would be ‘game over’ for the climate, says Michael Mann

The Guardian reports: Michael Mann, one of the most eminent climate scientists in the world, believes averting climate catastrophe on a global scale would be “essentially impossible” if Donald Trump is re-elected. A professor at Penn State University, Mann, 54, has published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers, testified numerous times before Congress and appeared frequently in the news media. He is also active on Twitter, where earlier this year he declared: “A second Trump term is game over for the…

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Unprecedented ice loss is predicted for Greenland Ice Sheet

Unprecedented ice loss is predicted for Greenland Ice Sheet

Kate Ravilious writes: Over the next eighty years global warming is set to melt enough ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet to reverse 4000 years of cumulative ice growth – with rates of ice-loss more than quadruple even the fastest melt rates during the past 12,000 years. These stark conclusions come from new simulations which, for the first time, put current and projected future rates of ice-loss into context; comparing them directly with historical rates of ice-loss. These latest results…

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Vote like the future of humanity depends on it — because it does

Vote like the future of humanity depends on it — because it does

Bill McKibben writes: To understand the planetary importance of this autumn’s presidential election, check the calendar. Voting ends on November 3rd — and by a fluke of timing, on the morning of November 4th the United States is scheduled to pull out of the Paris Agreement. President Trump announced that we would abrogate our Paris commitments during a Rose Garden speech in 2017. But under the terms of the accords, it takes three years to formalize the withdrawal. So on…

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Investors that manage $47tn demand world’s biggest polluters back plan for net-zero emissions

Investors that manage $47tn demand world’s biggest polluters back plan for net-zero emissions

The Guardian reports: A group representing investors that collectively manage more than US$47tn in assets has demanded the world’s biggest corporate polluters back strategies to reach net-zero emissions and promised to hold them to public account. Climate Action 100+, an initiative supported by 518 institutional investor organisations across the globe, has written to 161 fossil fuel, mining, transport and other big-emitting companies to set 30 climate measures and targets against which they will be analysed in a report to be…

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A post-Ginsburg Supreme Court could be one more climate obstacle

A post-Ginsburg Supreme Court could be one more climate obstacle

Bill McKibben writes: Among its many other tragic consequences, the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg may dramatically complicate the process of finding a legislative solution for the climate crisis. It now seems possible that a Democratic White House and Congress could convene in January, with a commitment to finally—after three decades of ducking—taking federal action on global warming. Indeed, after this record season of flame and gale, new polling shows that three out of four Americans blame climate change…

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In an historic wildfire season, it’s time to follow the lead of young campaigners

In an historic wildfire season, it’s time to follow the lead of young campaigners

Bill McKibben writes: The numbers shock, of course: these past weeks, West Coast fires have burned an area the size of New Jersey. The smoke has thickened the air to the point where the pollution is literally off the E.P.A.’s existing charts. Five of the ten largest fires in California history are currently burning. But it’s the color that I think will linger in our minds—the orange not of flames but of the shroud of particulates and fog, which tints…

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With fires raging up and down the West Coast, the instinct to bolt has nowhere to go

With fires raging up and down the West Coast, the instinct to bolt has nowhere to go

Emma Marris writes: The West is on fire and there’s nowhere to run. Up and down Interstate 5, the artery connecting most of the major cities on the West Coast, a pall of thick smoke has turned the sun red. Millions of acres have burned. I’m calling and texting friends in communities across Oregon, Washington, California. A friend who lives in the Medford area of Oregon, where hundreds of homes have been destroyed, has evacuated; another lost her childhood home….

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Would you feel more urgency about climate change if all you could see was smoke?

Would you feel more urgency about climate change if all you could see was smoke?

Charlie Warzel writes: The American West does not have a monopoly on climate-related disasters. Hurricane seasons grow worse each year and devastating earthquakes loom. The flooding in the Midwest and storms like the recent derecho in Iowa are calamities that deserve equal attention. They’re also urgent alarm bells. Everyone on earth right now is experiencing unpredictable and dire weather. No region is alone in experiencing the tragedy of our dying planet. I’m not so naïve as to think that all…

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Huge cavities threaten Antarctica glacier larger than Great Britain

Huge cavities threaten Antarctica glacier larger than Great Britain

The Guardian reports: British scientists have mapped cavities half the size of the Grand Canyon that are allowing warm ocean water to erode the vast Thwaites glacier in the Antarctic, accelerating the rise of sea levels across the world. Like decay in a tooth, the channels of warm water are melting the ice from below, threatening the stability of a glacier that is larger than Great Britain. Using an aircraft, ship and robot submarine, the British Antarctic Survey and a…

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Redirect military budgets to tackle climate change and pandemics

Redirect military budgets to tackle climate change and pandemics

Denise Garcia writes: Despite threats to human existence from climate change, biodiversity loss and a pandemic that’s devastating economies and paralysing societies, countries still spend recklessly on destructive weapons for wars they will never fight. As an academic who advises the United Nations on arms control and the military uses of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, I have long argued that nations should prioritize ‘human security for the common good’ over military spending. That means ensuring people can live to…

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Groups pressure Biden to exclude fossil fuel execs from team

Groups pressure Biden to exclude fossil fuel execs from team

The Hill reports: More than 100 climate and advocacy groups are asking Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to commit to blocking fossil fuel representatives from its transition team or administration should the former vice president win the election. “We urge you to ban all fossil fuel executives, lobbyists, and representatives from any advisory or official position on your campaign, transition team, cabinet, and administration,” the groups wrote in a letter to the campaign, which was signed by a mix of 145…

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