Communities and Experts Collaborate for Climate Resilience: the Resilience Dialogues
The Resilience Dialogues program provides resources and expertise to help communities build individualized plans for resilience in the face of climate change
Environment featured
We aren’t Doomed by Climate Change. Right Now we are Choosing to be Doomed.
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.
Pruitt Says “Stay”, the Court Says “Go”: Methane Regulation in the Age of Trump
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.
Brexit Could Harm UK and EU’s Climate Ambition — Report
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.
Half a Degree could Make a World of Difference
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.
July 2017 Stormwatch: Climate Change
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.
Prayer and Resistance Camp Launches in Louisiana to Challenge Pipeline Connected to DAPL
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.
“I Am the River, and the River is Me”
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.
Why Climate Change Belongs in the Health Care Debate
I’m digging through reports and punditry to make sense of health care reform when I realize that while we’ve been debating single-payer systems and high-risk pools, no one’s talking about the most serious health threat: climate change. I know what global warming is doing to our ecosystems. My Twitter feed is a stream of climate disaster revelations. Given the serious implications droughts, floods, and fires pose to our health, shouldn’t climate change be part of the health care discussions?
CAFE Standards in the Age of Trump: It’s a Stall Y’all!*
Candidate Trump had promised the auto industry and his supporters that he would get Detroit working again by deregulating the industry. On the Ides of March 2017, The Donald started to make good on that promise. In an executive order, The Donald directed EPA and the Department of Transportation/National Highway Transportation and Safety Agency to re-open the Midterm Evaluation (MTE) completed just prior to President Obama’s leaving office.
‘We feel stronger’: Meet those Fighting the Sand Dredging Business in Cambodia
Sand-dredging is big business, especially in Asia, where demand has sky-rocketed thanks to the booming construction industry. Rod Harbinson reports from Cambodia on an extractive industry that is mired in corruption and scandal, and meets some of those on the frontline of the fight against it.
US States and Cities could Meet Paris Climate Goals without Trump
With the decision by the Trump administration to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change and reverse many of the prior administration’s climate change policies, it seems that federal action on climate change will be unlikely in the next few years. However, the US system of government gives individual states broad powers to regulate CO2 emissions within their borders, with many states actively moving forward with their own mitigation strategies in absence of federal action.
