Energy Resources & Access

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.

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.

Seven research projects aimed at confronting the challenge of climate change using the levers of law, policy, and economics, as well as public health and science, have been awarded grants in the inaugural year of [Harvard] President Drew Faust’s Climate Change Solutions Fund. ...

Under the new bill, the number of tanks regulated by the act would shrink considerably, said Evan Hansen, president of West Virginia think tank Downstream Strategies. The bill exempts storage tanks that store oil or any other liquid associated with the oil or natural gas industry, and it also exempts tanks that hold less than 10,000 gallons.

From the White House: The Obama Administration is committed to taking responsible steps to address climate change and help ensure a cleaner, more stable environment for future generations. As part of that effort, today, the Administration is announcing a new goal to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 – 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025, and a set of actions to put the U.S. on a path to achieve this ambitious goal.

The Center for Biological Diversity has sued the U.S. government, alleging it has failed to release public documents revealing the extent and risks of offshore hydraulic fracturing by oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico. “The public has a right to know where, when and how much fracking the federal government is allowing in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney with the center.

Grist recently published an excellent overview of Frances Moore's research on how much climate change is going to cost us: How much is climate change going to cost us? How much is it worth to avoid it? How do we figure that out? Well, first we develop models in the physical sciences that show how biophysical systems will react to changing levels of atmospheric gases. Then we feed that data into economic models, usually Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), to project the economic cost of a given change in temperature.

John Berger recently published a two-part review of Naomi Klein's book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (Simon & Schuster, 2014) on The Huffington Post: In the aftermath of the fractious recently concluded global climate talks in Lima, Peru, Naomi Klein's remarkable book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (Simon & Schuster, 2014) takes on new relevance for everyone yearning for solutions to the climate crisis.

When a gigantic threat is staring you in the face, and you can't act upon it, it's safe to assume there's some sort of mental blockage happening. So what's the hangup? That's what a new report from ecoAmerica and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University's Earth Institute -- entitled Connecting on Climate: A Guide to Effective Climate Change Communication -- seeks to help us better understand.