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Climate Change
Yesterday, eleven leading environmental and sustainable business organizations published an open letter urging the CEOs of Corporate America to step up their engagement on climate policy.
Why This Matters: Major corporations can’t be for fighting climate change if their political spending tells the exact opposite story.
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Seven out of ten Ohio adults believe climate change is real and impacting the U.S. today, and nearly 60 percent believe that it is impacting their own community according to a recent poll.
Why This Matters: If Ohio residents care this much about climate change, it is a fair bet that so do a majority of residents in other states. Climate change could be a very important issue in the 2020 election if Democrats would seize on it and talk about it more.
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Homeowners in flood-prone wealthy areas have a much better chance of receiving a government buyout than more vulnerable rural areas with lower-income residents, according to a study published last week.
Why This Matters: As climate change worsens, many areas in the U.S. have increasing exposure to its dangers. And the study revealed that because “local officials must request federal funds for buyouts — and then successfully navigate a series of bureaucratic requirements.
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The Florida Panhandle contains hundreds of archeological sites that reveal the lives and culture of the earliest Americans who used stone tools and hunted to subsist and represent a time period of over 2,000 years of occupation, but many of them are at grave risk due to sea-level rise due to climate change.
Why This Matters: Native American sacred sites in the West are better known, but these sites are also important and not contained on federal land where they can be preserved and protected. Once they are submerged, they will be gone for good.
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By Scott Nuzum Over the summer, I returned to my hometown of Venice, Florida for the first time in five years. As I prepared for my trip, I was excited by the prospect of revisiting old haunts, reconnecting with old friends, and reminiscing about my childhood spent exploring the area’s coastal waters. But I also […]
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It’s MLB playoff season (go Nats!) but increasingly hot weather is making outdoor baseball nearly impossible in parts of Texas. That was the case at the Texas Rangers’ Globe Life Park that saw its last game last week after owners noticed that high temps were depressing attendance.
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The Governor of Pennsylvania signed an Executive Order last week committing the state to implement a cap-and-trade program (known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or RGGI) for carbon dioxide emissions from power plants joining 10 other states in the northeast.
Why This Matters: Pennsylvania is the first major fossil-fuel producing state to join. This regional cap-and-trade program has been a true success — from 2005-2015 the initiative had reduced power-sector carbon dioxide pollution by 45% as well as provided $2.31 billion in lifetime energy cost savings to more than 161,000 households and 6,000 businesses.
Continue Reading 424 wordsYesterday Archbishop Desmond Tutu penned an op-ed for Financial Times where he called climate change the “apartheid of our times” and urged financial institutions to rapidly divest from fossil fuels and instead support investment in renewable energy. It’s very worthy of your time.
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E&E News reported on Monday that the Trump administration states it its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in favor of oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – the agency responsible for EIS – “does not agree that the proposed development is inconsistent with maintaining a livable planet (i.e., there is not a climate crisis).”
Why This Matters: This is yet another sign that the Trump Administration is ignoring the overwhelming opinion of expert scientists — the U.N. IPCC Oceans and Cryosphere report from last week is full of examples of how the Arctic region is being severely impacted by climate change caused by fossil fuel use.
Yale’s Climate Communications Center recently published its 2019 U.S. public opinion maps regarding climate change, broken down by state, congressional district, and county, with some surprising results — nationwide, now 67% of Americans nationwide believe climate change is real and in only a few dozen counties across the entire U.S. does the number who believes […]
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In the last 20 years, the U.S. has seen an average of almost seven natural events per year that each produce damages in excess of $1 billion. In the aftermath, not only are homeowners waiting an average of 5 years for FEMA-backed buyout of damaged homes but there’s growing concern that banks are giving […]
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By Stephen H. Hagerty, Mayor of Evanston, Illinois Our nation is facing a heightened risk from natural and man-made disasters. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, active shooters. We see it practically every time we turn on the television, pick up a newspaper, or glance at social media. Due to a changing climate, so-called 100-year flooding […]
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