Climate Change

The European Union led the world in wheat production and exports in 2014-15. Yet Europe is also the region where productivity has slowed the most. Yields of major crops have not increased as much as would be expected over the past 20 years, based on past productivity increases and innovations in agriculture. Finding the causes of that stagnation is key to understanding the trajectory of the global food supply.

Following national trends, greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change continue dropping locally [in Tucson, Arizona], a government report shows. The region’s weak economy clearly is playing a role in the decline, a University of Arizona expert said. But it’s not just dollars and cents. Recent signs of a shift to solar energy and to natural gas from coal burning for electricity also have made a difference, said the UA expert, Derek Lemoine, an assistant professor who specializes in energy and environmental economics.

There's a growing understanding of the factors that contribute to ocean acidification in coastal areas and how shellfish respond. A new study looks at the risks to shellfish and identifies areas where livelihoods are most at risk. ...

On Wednesday, the European Union will unveil its post-2020 climate-change strategy, kicking off a 40-day period during which most industrialized nations are expected to upload their strategies to the United Nations web site. By the end of June, every country in the world should have offered its own Intended Nationally-Determined Contribution to the climate challenge, and by October we’ll know how they all fit together. ...

Trying to predict where India will swerve on climate policy seems as hard as predicting which way an auto-rickshaw driver will swerve in a Kolkata traffic jam. “Overall, we’re still holding our breath, waiting to see what Modi and India are going to do on greenhouse gas emissions and climate,” Heather Coleman, Oxfam America’s climate policy leader, said. “I don’t think this announcement sheds more light on that.” Read more

Although environmentalists had hoped for more progress when Obama came into office, most give him credit for having done what he has in the face of Republican opposition. “Obama has done an amazing amount on climate in his six years, and it certainly looks like he is trying to make this a legacy issue,” says Kevin Kennedy, director of the US Climate Initiative at the World Resources Institute, a non-govern­mental environmental-research organization in Washington DC.

Rigorous integration will ensure the goals inspire rather than deter commitment, say Angel Hsu and Alisa Zomer. Sustainable development is an elusive concept, one that is open to interpretation and difficult to define, let alone measure. UN negotiators therefore have a challenging task: how to specify a clear set of indicators to track the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) before they are finalised in September.

Worldwide, half a million people die from air pollution each year-more than perish in all wars combined. One in every five mammal species on the planet is threatened with extinction. Our climate is warming, our forests are in decline, and every day we hear news of the latest ecological crisis. What will it really take to move society onto a more sustainable path? Many of us are already doing the "little things" to help the earth, like recycling or buying organic produce. These are important steps-but they're not enough.

With many companies in the goal-planning stage as they retire 2015 targets and set new ones, it is an appropriate time to evaluate our troubled relationship with carbon goals. Despite strong agreement within the scientific community that we need to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, Tim Greiner is not seeing goals that are bold enough to get us where we need to go.