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Category: Climate Change

It’s not entirely up to school students to save the world

It’s not entirely up to school students to save the world

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Bill McKibben writes: In the past several months, people around the world have watched in awe as school students, led by the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, have taken their concerns about the climate crisis to a new level, with a series of one-day strikes. The latest took place on Friday, and drew what is estimated as more than a million participants in a hundred and twenty-five countries. The strikes have been the biggest boost yet for the global climate movement,…

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Why carbon credits for forest preservation may be worse than nothing

Why carbon credits for forest preservation may be worse than nothing

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Lisa Song reports: The state of Acre, on the western edge of Brazil, is so remote, there’s a national joke that it doesn’t exist. But for geochemist Foster Brown, it’s the center of the universe, a place that could help save the world. “This is an example of hope,” he said, as we stood behind his office at the Federal University of Acre, a tropical campus carved into the Amazon rainforest. Brown placed his hand on a spindly trunk, ordering…

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Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too

Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too

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Greta Thunberg and 46 youth activists write: Tomorrow, schoolchildren and students will be out on the streets again, in huge numbers, in 150 countries, at over 4,000 events, demanding that governments immediately provide a safe pathway to stay within 1.5C of global heating. We spent weeks and months preparing for this day. We spent uncountable hours organising and mobilising when we could have just hung out with our friends or studied for school. We don’t feel like we have a…

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‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica

‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica

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The Guardian reports: Ice losses are rapidly spreading deep into the interior of the Antarctic, new analysis of satellite data shows. The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The West Antarctic ice sheet was stable in 1992 but up to a quarter of its expanse is now thinning. More than 100 metres of ice thickness has been lost in…

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Nudges to get a bit greener undermine support for effective economic policies tackling climate crisis

Nudges to get a bit greener undermine support for effective economic policies tackling climate crisis

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Policies that aim to nudge us into better choices actually decrease support for policies with far greater impact, research finds. For example, many households across the United States receive energy bills comparing their use to that of similar neighbors to remind them to use less energy. And most companies automatically enroll employees in 401(k) plans unless they choose to opt-out, helping employees easily save for retirement. Such policies aim to “nudge” people toward making better choices, both for their future…

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Why the Green New Deal doesn’t go far enough

Why the Green New Deal doesn’t go far enough

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Peter Fiekowsky writes: In early February, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced the Green New Deal (GND), a sweeping resolution that addresses the dual challenges of income inequality and climate change, and the first government policy document aimed at curbing climate change as one of its goals. This is significant. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released in October 2018 stated that there will have to be some removal of carbon dioxide…

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What happened in what was supposed to be Australia’s climate change election?

What happened in what was supposed to be Australia’s climate change election?

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The New York Times reports: The polls said this would be Australia’s climate change election, when voters confronted harsh reality and elected leaders who would tackle the problem. And in some districts, it was true: Tony Abbott, the former prime minister who stymied climate policy for years, lost to an independent who campaigned on the issue. A few other new candidates prioritizing climate change also won. But over all, Australians shrugged off the warming seas killing the Great Barrier Reef…

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Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point?

Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point?

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John Vidal writes: Last week a small campaign group in the staunchly conservative town of Shrewsbury called a public meeting about climate change. The organisers were delighted when 150 people turned up. Even they were surprised, though, when people unanimously said they were prepared to give up flying, change their boilers and cars, eat less meat and even overthrow capitalism to get a grip on climate change. But this was just a straw in the political wind whipping through middle…

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‘Something is changing,’ says Midwest mayor who doesn’t want to say ‘climate change’

‘Something is changing,’ says Midwest mayor who doesn’t want to say ‘climate change’

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The New York Times reports: The Mississippi River, which gushed into downtown Davenport at record levels two weeks ago, has finally retreated toward its banks. Left behind: A truck-size hole in the temporary flood barrier, dead fish on mud-caked Pershing Avenue, and an urgent conversation about how to shield the city from the next flood. As Mayor Frank Klipsch of Davenport starts that conversation — a wide-ranging discussion of upstream levee heights, riverfront development and whether the city should install…

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Trump’s interior secretary: ‘I haven’t lost any sleep over’ record CO2 levels

Trump’s interior secretary: ‘I haven’t lost any sleep over’ record CO2 levels

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The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s interior secretary hasn’t “lost sleep over”, the record-breaking levels of pollution heating the planet, he told US lawmakers in an oversight hearing. The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii observed carbon dioxide levels of 415 parts per million in the atmosphere on Friday – the highest ever documented. Asked to rank his concern on a scale of 1 to 10, by the Pennsylvania Democratic congressman Matt Cartwright, David Bernhardt pointed to US climate progress. “I believe…

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Jeff Bezos offers absurd and hypocritical reason for his massive space plan

Jeff Bezos offers absurd and hypocritical reason for his massive space plan

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Joe Romm writes: Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos recently announced a wildly ambitious plan to ultimately put up to 1 trillion humans in vast cylindrical space colonies near the Earth. But while the goal is over-the-top, the justification is both absurd and hypocritical. Bezos argued at length on Thursday in a major presentation at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center that we need such a future to save the Earth “if the world economy and population is to keep expanding.”…

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It was 84 degrees near the Arctic Ocean this weekend as CO2 hit its highest level in human history

It was 84 degrees near the Arctic Ocean this weekend as CO2 hit its highest level in human history

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Jason Samenow writes: Over the weekend, the climate system sounded simultaneous alarms. Near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia, the temperature surged to 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius). Meanwhile, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eclipsed 415 parts per million for the first time in human history. By themselves, these are just data points. But taken together with so many indicators of an altered atmosphere and rising temperatures, they blend into the unmistakable portrait of…

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NASA study: Human influence on global droughts goes back 100 years

NASA study: Human influence on global droughts goes back 100 years

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NASA’s Global Climate Change reports: Human-generated greenhouse gases and atmospheric particles were affecting global drought risk as far back as the early 20th century, according to a study from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City. The study, published in the journal Nature, compared predicted and real-world soil moisture data to look for human influences on global drought patterns in the 20th century. Climate models predict that a human “fingerprint” – a global pattern of regional…

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California’s latest weapon against climate change is low-tech farm soil

California’s latest weapon against climate change is low-tech farm soil

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NPR reports: Before leaving office, Gov. Jerry Brown set a goal for California to be carbon neutral by 2045. That will likely mean not just reducing carbon emissions — from electricity production, cars and buildings — but also absorbing carbon that’s already in the air. California’s Healthy Soils initiative is now in its third year, and it’s designed to be part of the state’s climate strategy. A state report finds that farms and forests could absorb as much as 20…

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Climate change suddenly matters in the 2020 race. Are the candidates ready?

Climate change suddenly matters in the 2020 race. Are the candidates ready?

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Bill McKibben writes: For three decades in American politics, climate change has been the issue that wasn’t. Even as the temperature steadily rose, and evidence mounted that it was human behavior—and human policies—that were driving this change, candidates mostly deflected. And it wasn’t hard: During the 2016 general election, no journalist even asked the presidential candidates a debate question on the topic. But that’s not the case this time. Climate change matters for Democratic voters: A Monmouth University poll last…

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U.S. fossil fuel subsidies exceed Pentagon spending, says IMF

U.S. fossil fuel subsidies exceed Pentagon spending, says IMF

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Rolling Stone reports: The United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the U.S. reached $649 billion in 2015. Pentagon spending that same year was $599 billion. The study defines “subsidy” very broadly, as many economists do. It accounts for the “differences between actual consumer fuel prices…

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