Climate Change

Less than one-seventh of the US$5 billion needed to fund the Least Developed Countries’ (LDCs’) most urgent climate change adaptation projects has been delivered by wealthy countries — a sliver of their annual spending on their own disasters and globally on fossil fuel subsidies. LDCs played almost no role in causing climate change, yet from 2010 to July 2013, their deaths from climate-related disasters were more than five times the global average. International pledges of climate finance to address this inequality are overall both inadequate and unmet.

A 2011 law has provided new information about what natural gas companies are doing with the huge amounts of waste generated by West Virginia's drilling boom, but major data gaps remain, a legislative committee heard Tuesday. Evan Hansen, president of the consulting firm Downstream Strategies, said the state requires drilling operators to report what they do with only about 38 percent of the waste they produce.

I am excited to announce that this week, International Rivers published a new report titled An Introduction to Integrated Resources Planning. The report, written by 1999 Fellow Chris Greacen, Chom Greacen, David von Hippel, and David Bill, demonstrates the benefits of a comprehensive approach to energy planning.

Ask a Wall Street analyst and all but the most extreme contrarians will tell you that over the long run, the market is going to go up. Sure, over the last century there have been some downturns, and some flat periods of little growth, but if you invest over the long haul you are virtually guaranteed to make money. Now consider the question: Is the planet warming?

Julia Ledewitz was on a panel at the U.S. Solar Decathlon and XPO to discuss strategies to save energy and ultimately money in office building adminitration. Read more

For the tourist city of Acapulco, the statistics about Tropical Storm Manuel are staggering, especially given its seemingly unassuming status as a storm and not a cyclone. 60,000 stranded tourists. 23,000 homes without electricity and water. At least 11 deaths. 15 to 25 inches of rain. The only two roads connecting Acapulco to México City ruined by landslides. The international airport flooded. The rains began on Saturday, 14 September 2013, and continued nonstop through Monday, México’s Independence Day.

California farmers feel more threatened by climate policy than they do by climate change, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis. The study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, found that the greatest climate risk Yolo County farmers believe they face in the future is not drought, water shortages, or temperature changes, but government regulations. However, this view did not make them less likely to participate in government incentive programs that would help their climate adaptation and mitigation efforts.

Hello all: I just received an important notice from the Global Footprint Network (based in Geneva). Today, 20 August 2013, is “Earth Overshoot Day.” It’s the approximate date that humanity’s annual demand on nature exceeds what Earth can renew in a year.