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Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change

Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change
3. Is there anything I can do? Fly less, drive less, waste less. You can reduce your own carbon footprint in lots of simple ways, and most of them will save you money. You can plug leaks in your home insulation to save power, install a smart thermostat, switch to more efficient light bulbs, turn off the lights in any room where you are not using them, drive fewer miles by consolidating trips or taking public transit, waste less food, and eat less meat. Perhaps the biggest single thing individuals can do on their own is to take fewer airplane trips; just one or two fewer plane rides per year can save as much in emissions as all the other actions combined. If you want to offset your emissions, you can buy certificates, with the money going to projects that protect forests, capture greenhouse gases and so forth. In the end, though, experts do not believe the needed transformation in the energy system can happen without strong state and national policies.

Paris climate agreement ‘may signal end of fossil fuel era’ | Environment Governments may have signalled an end to the fossil fuel era, with massive consequences for industry, global security, financial markets and public health, Al Gore and other business leaders have said. “This universal and ambitious agreement sends a clear signal to governments, businesses, and investors everywhere: the transformation of our global economy from one fuelled by dirty energy to one fuelled by sustainable economic growth is now firmly and inevitably under way,” the former senator said in a statement. “No agreement is perfect, and this one must be strengthened over time, but groups across every sector of society will now begin to reduce dangerous carbon pollution through the framework of this agreement,” said Gore. Gore was joined by Paul Polman, Unilever’s chief executive, who said investors would now have more confidence to address the risks of having fossil fuel assets on their books. “The consequences of this agreement go far beyond the actions of governments.

Leaders Move to Convert Paris Climate Pledges Into Action Photo PARIS — Before the applause had even settled in the suburban convention center where the Paris Agreement was adopted by consensus on Saturday night, world leaders warned that momentum from the historic accord must not be allowed to dissipate. “Today, we celebrate,” said Miguel Arias Cañete, the European Union’s energy commissioner and top climate negotiator. “Tomorrow, we have to act.” With nearly every nation on Earth having now pledged to gradually reduce emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are warming the planet — a universal commitment that had eluded negotiators and activists since the Earth Summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 — much of the burden for maintaining the momentum shifts back to the countries to figure out, and carry out, the concrete steps needed to deliver on their vows. Continue reading the main story OPEN Graphic During negotiations, India insisted that it would not be able to make the transition without assistance. Continue reading the main story Gov.

An Insider’s Journal from the Paris Climate Talks — Natural Resources Defense Council An Insider’s Journal from the Paris Climate Talks What’s it like to help protect the world from climate chaos? Here’s my daily peek behind the scenes at #COP21. Friday, December 4:Real Places, Real People, Real Leadership for Change Few buildings anywhere speak to the promise of human achievement with greater eloquence than the grand Hotel de Ville, the city hall of Paris. In many ways, these are the heroes of the global fight against climate change. For these visionary leaders, climate action is no mere catchphrase; it’s a daily part of their political life. “Cities shelter more than half the inhabitants of the planet,” said the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. Hidalgo, along with former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, cohosted Friday’s Climate Summit for Local Leaders, convened in concert with the global climate talks in Paris. It’s vital work. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti is working to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. Additional notes:

Scientists Warn Climate Change Will Trigger Rise In Terrifying Illness Breakthrough Energy Coalition FACT SHEET: Mission Innovation On Monday in Paris, President Obama, President Hollande, and other world leaders will launch Mission Innovation, a landmark commitment to dramatically accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation. Through the initiative, 20 countries representing 80 percent of global clean energy research and development (R&D) budgets are committing to double their respective R&D investments over five years. These additional resources will dramatically expand the new technologies that will define a future global power mix that is clean, affordable, and reliable. The Breakthrough Energy Coalition, an independent initiative launched simultaneously with Mission Innovation and spearheaded by Bill Gates, is a global group of private investors that will take the risks that allow the early stage energy companies that emerge from the research programs of Mission Innovation countries to come out of the lab and into the marketplace. As part of its contribution to Mission Innovation, the U.S.

11 terrifying facts about climate change in 2015 Global leaders are in Paris for the long-awaited United Nations conference on climate change. The event is one of the largest diplomatic conferences ever organised, and it brings together 150 leaders from around the world for what some are calling the 'last chance' for the environment. The main focus of the discussions is to figure out how warming can be restricted to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This is the somewhat arbitrary threshold for averting the worst impacts of climate change, agreed upon by many researchers and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Unfortunately, climate change is already here -- and it's only going to get worse. As a guide to some of the issues at stake, WIRED has compiled a selection of climate change facts that underpin the discussions. Temperatures are breaking records around the world The 21st century has seen the most temperature records broken in recorded history. There is no scientific debate about the reality of climate change

Rising waters prompt China’s sea change on climate At Pleasant Banyan Bay in China’s southern Guangdong province, couples flock by the dozens for elaborately staged wedding photos on the white sand. Large signs on a nearby hotel shout, “Forever.” But the love on display here might outlast the sand. A rising sea has narrowed the main beach by 10 metres and scoured around trees, exposing their roots. Smaller beaches on the fringes of the bay have already vanished. “I know the glaciers and the poles are melting and that’s why the water is rising,” said Chen Hong, 48, a lifeguard who has worked on this beach since 2000. “With the sea level rising so much, water is going to occupy a lot of land,” he said. Climate change Visiting a picture-perfect Chinese beach that is slowly being swallowed by the sea A 900-page Chinese climate science report released recently points to sea levels as one of the chief risks to the country, saying some coastal “cities may even face risks of massive disasters that are hard to forecast.”

The attack on climate change scientists continues in Washington While 150 world leaders continue their efforts outside Paris to hammer out an agreement to address climate change, the concerted attack on scientists by conservatives in Congress has continued apace. We've reported on this campaign in the past, but recent developments warrant an update. Ground zero for the attack on climate change scientists is the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. It's headed by Rep. The article prompted Smith to demand emails and other correspondence from the scientists involved in the study, purportedly to ferret out evidence that they manipulated their data to help the Obama Administration make the case for climate change policy. "Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that some may see as politically controversial," they wrote. The autors of the Science paper, headed by Thomas R. To Lamar Smith, there could be only one explanation for this finding: scientific fraud.

Bill Gates launches multi-billion dollar clean energy fund - Nov. 29, 2015 The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist announced his latest endeavor, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, at the climate change summit in Paris. "We need to bring the cost premium for being clean down," Gates said Monday in an interview with CNN's New Day. "You need the innovation so that the cost of clean is lower than the coal based energy generation." Lowering the cost of clean energy to make it competitive with fossil fuels is the best way to get poor countries to make the switch without sacrificing economic growth, Gates said. Clean energy can make air conditioning, refrigerators, stoves and fertilizer more affordable for poor people. "All these things that enable to modern lifestyle are very energy intensive," he said, noting that five years from now, "I see the price of energy actually being lower than today, and that's for clean energy." President Obama called the Gates effort a "groundbreaking new public-private initiative." The Obama Administration said

Will Bill Gates and his billionaire friends save the planet? | Martin Lukacs, Rajiv Sicora | Environment Not to worry, the world’s richest philanthropists are on the case. As the United Nations climate talks kicked off in Paris amid worries that governments aren’t committing to serious emissions reductions, Bill Gates stole the spotlight with a bold promise to usher in a clean-tech future. Gates is the new public face of Mission Innovation, an initiative of twenty governments, including the US and India, pledging to double their spending on future clean tech. And because government research is “not enough,” Gates also launched the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a parallel plan with billionaires like Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg to spark big technological solutions, while making a buck on the side. And what of the wave of decentralized green energy, based on existing technologies, already spreading through several countries? Except that’s just not true. Then, of course, there’s fighting poverty—Gates’ favourite recreational activity.

What’s really at stake at the Paris climate conference now marches are banned | Naomi Klein Whose security gets protected by any means necessary? Whose security is casually sacrificed, despite the means to do so much better? Those are the questions at the heart of the climate crisis, and the answers are the reason climate summits so often end in acrimony and tears. The French government’s decision to ban protests, marches and other “outdoor activities” during the Paris climate summit is disturbing on many levels. The one that preoccupies me most has to do with the way it reflects the fundamental inequity of the climate crisis itself – and that core question of whose security is ultimately valued in our lopsided world. Here is the first thing to understand. The next thing to understand is that even in these rare moments, frontline voices do not have enough of a platform in the official climate meetings, in which the microphone is dominated by governments and large, well-funded green groups. Some say this is all fair game against the backdrop of terror. One further thought.

Exxon's Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too The American Petroleum Institute together with the nation's largest oil companies ran a task force to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and 1983, indicating that the oil industry, not just Exxon alone, was aware of its possible impact on the world's climate far earlier than previously known. The group's members included senior scientists and engineers from nearly every major U.S. and multinational oil and gas company, including Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, Phillips, Texaco, Shell, Sunoco, Sohio as well as Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil, the predecessors to Chevron, according to internal documents obtained by InsideClimate News and interviews with the task force's former director. An InsideClimate News investigative series has shown that Exxon launched its own cutting-edge CO2 sampling program in 1978 in order to understand a phenomenon it suspected could harm its business. "It was a fact-finding task force," Nelson said in an interview. Bruce S.

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