Guest | January 17, 2020
By Guest • Friday, January 17, 2020 - 09:48
By Tara Lohan, The Revelator. Originally posted on The Revalator.
Kanab, a small Utah town that’s home to the famous Best Friends Animal Society, took an unconventional path to face down a frac sand mine that threatened the region’s aquifer.
Guest | January 14, 2020
By Guest • Tuesday, January 14, 2020 - 11:25
By Joe Smyth, Energy and Policy Institute. This was originally posted on the Energy and Policy Institute.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley and Moody’s Investors Service expect that more electric utilities will accelerate their transition away from coal, with major financial benefits for both ratepayers and shareholders.
In a research report last month titled “The Second Wave of Clean Energy,” analysts at Morgan Stanley explained how “the surprisingly low cost of renewables” will drive utilities to close most of the remaining U.S. coal plants over the next decade. Replacing coal with cheaper renewable energy could save electricity customers as much as $8 billion each year, according to Morgan Stanley:
Guest | January 13, 2020
By Guest • Monday, January 13, 2020 - 14:30
This is a guest post by ClimateDenierRoundup.
Two new studies on denial came out last week. While they’re not exactly breaking new ground, confirmation is always nice.
The first is a literature review led by Stanford’s Gabrielle Wong-Parodi that examines psychological studies on climate denial in the U.S. and found four big lessons for appealing to conservatives. Although the press release is promisingly headlined as “pathways to changing the minds of climate deniers,” we remain skeptical that there’s any real way to change a denier’s mind. After all, if they were open to change, they wouldn’t be deniers!
Guest | January 7, 2020
By Guest • Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - 13:22
This article originally appeared in The Guardian and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalistic collaboration to strengthen coverage of the climate story.
By Michael Mann
After years studying the climate, my work has brought me to Sydney where I’m studying the linkages between climate change and extreme weather events.
Prior to beginning my sabbatical stay in Sydney, I took the opportunity this holiday season to vacation in Australia with my family. We went to see the Great Barrier Reef — one of the great wonders of this planet — while we still can. Subject to the twin assaults of warming-caused bleaching and ocean acidification, it will be gone in a matter of decades in the absence of a dramatic reduction in global carbon emissions.
We also travelled to the Blue Mountains, another of Australia’s natural wonders, known for its lush temperate rainforests, majestic cliffs and rock formations and panoramic vistas that challenge any the world has to offer. It too is now threatened by climate change.
I witnessed this firsthand.
Guest | January 2, 2020
By Guest • Thursday, January 2, 2020 - 17:26
By Martin Bush. Reposted with permission from ClimateZone.org.
The next decade will be noisy as hell. As more intense wildfires blaze across every continent except Antarctica, the sound of the planet burning will only get louder.
Climate scientists are looking back over the last decade, collating the data, and reviewing the numbers. Every single one of the most important metrics are signaling a worsening situation. It’s common knowledge that emissions of the carbon gases continue to increase and that this is driving up global temperatures, but the intensifying impact of heat waves and wildfires is starting to overwhelm governments’ capacity to keep these disasters under control.
Guest | December 29, 2019
By Guest • Sunday, December 29, 2019 - 08:55
By Birte Loschenkohl, University of Essex
Guest | December 28, 2019
By Guest • Saturday, December 28, 2019 - 08:55
By Joe Curnow, University of Manitoba and Anjali Helferty, University of Toronto
Greta Thunberg made history again this month when she was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The 16-year-old has become the face of youth climate action, going from a lone child sitting outside the Swedish parliament building in mid-2018 to a symbol for climate strikers — young and old — around the world.
Thunberg was far from the first young person to speak up in an effort to hold the powerful accountable for their inaction on climate change, yet the recognition of her efforts come at a time when world leaders will have to decide whether — or with how much effort — they will tackle climate change. Their actions or inactions will determine how much more vocal youth will become in 2020.
Guest | December 9, 2019
By Guest • Monday, December 9, 2019 - 13:55
By Isabella Kaminski, Climate Liability News. Originally published on Climate Liability News.
The world’s biggest polluters could be held legally liable for their contributions to climate change, a major national inquiry into the links between climate and human rights has concluded.
Guest | December 6, 2019
By Guest • Friday, December 6, 2019 - 17:51
By Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch. Reposted with permission from EcoWatch.
The Trump administration pushed through an exemption to clean air rules, effectively freeing heavy polluting, super-cargo trucks from following clean air rules. It rushed the rule without conducting a federally mandated study on how it would impact public health, especially children, said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Inspector General Charles J. Sheehan in a report released yesterday, as the AP reported.
Guest | November 29, 2019
By Guest • Friday, November 29, 2019 - 05:00
By Cara Daggett, Virginia Tech
As the Trump administration works to weaken regulations on fossil fuel production and use, a larger struggle is playing out across multiple industries. Until recently, oil companies and their defenders generally reacted to calls for regulating carbon emissions by spreading doubt and promoting climate denialism. However, I believe this approach is becoming less effective as climate change effects worsen and public demands for action intensify worldwide.
As a scholar who focuses on the politics of energy and the environment, I see growing anxiety among corporate elites. Some fossil fuel defenders are embracing a new strategy that I call climate defiance. With a transition to a low-carbon economy looming, they are accelerating investments in fossil fuel extraction while pressuring governments to delay climate action.
