Climate Change

A few days after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, a single mother of two escaped the disaster that left Puerto Rico in chaos and without electricity. Through her informal social networks, and with only a three-hour notice, she and her family boarded a humanitarian plane with a western physician and patients from the local hospital.

How do we ensure funds are available on a national or even international scale when climate disasters strike? Daniel Morris, who is currently Advisor to the U.S. Executive Director at the World Bank, has spent recent years thinking about how to make communities and countries more financially resilient in the face of catastrophic disasters in the future.

From Fellow Bridie McGreavy, editor of the new volume Tracing Rhetoric and Material Life: Ecological Approaches: The book draws from interdisciplinary approaches within the field of rhetoric to explore the relationships between communication and the world. The book is organized around themes in rhetorical studies of the environment, including dynamic change, ecological engagements, ethics and attunement, and commitments to justice and care.

China is the world’s No. 1 polluter. It burns more coal than the rest of the world combined. It produces more than a quarter of the world’s human-caused global warming gases, nearly as much as North America and Europe put together. On Tuesday, the country set out to claim another title reflecting its ambitions to change all that: keeper of the world’s largest financial market devoted to cleaning up the air.

The impulse to help rebuild Puerto Rico — an often neglected corner of the nation that has struggled after the storm — has rippled through many corners of America. But in the world of electricity research, which has staked out a place of geeky global dominance here on the West Coast, an equally powerful idea about the island has resonated: It is a chance to work on a blank canvas. ...

“Ten years ago there were three solar companies in New Hampshire; today there are 90, and the next decade will be even more dramatic,” says Fellow Henry Herndon, casting his eyes in the direction of a new solar array on a local church in Durham. “I feel like I can have an impact in New Hampshire — and I already have had an impact in New Hampshire.”

Energy issues create challenges and opportunities every year for local decision makers, writes Henry Herndon about New Hampshire. Challenges are not only in cost, but also in the vagaries of the State House. Opportunities lie in the marketplace for cost-saving technologies that are competing with traditional monopolistic energy services. Favorable state policies can help to cultivate these market-based alternatives, provided those policies remain in place.

As the Trump administration slashes federal estimates of the future costs of climate change, new research suggests that even the much higher cost calculated by the Obama administration might be too low.

On a surface-mine-turned-farm in Mingo County, West Virginia, former coal miner Wilburn Jude plunks down three objects on the bed of his work truck: a piece of coal, a sponge, and a peach. He’s been tasked with bringing in items that represent his life’s past, present, and future. “This is my heritage right here,” he says, picking up the coal. Since the time of his Irish immigrant great-grandfathers, all the males in his family have been miners.