• Climate Change

The Paris Agreement at 5: Increasing Ambition

• #ParisAccord
• ambition
• Paris Agreement
• state department
• UN IPCCC

A key feature of the Paris Agreement is that it’s not a static promise. Current climate policies won’t get the world to the target below 2 degrees C of warming, but the agreement was designed for countries to report progress and over time increase their efforts. Every five years, each country is supposed to submit new climate pledges that are more ambitious than their previous ones.

Why this Matters: Holding countries accountable for increasing commitments to address the climate crisis is essential because we’re nowhere near the level of meaningful action needed.

• Climate Change

The Paris Agreement at 5: The Road To Paris — the Origins of the Agreement

• Climate COP
• COP 26
• Kyoto Protocol
• Paris Agreement
• Rio Earth Summit
• UNFCCC

This Saturday, December 12, the United Nations and the U.K. will host a Climate Ambitions Summit to commemorate the Paris Agreement’s fifth anniversary and encourage countries to commit to more ambitious actions. This week ODP will take a deep dive into the Paris Agreement — today we recap its origins.  By Monica Medina and Ashira […]

• Climate Change

Our Global War on Nature is Suicidal, Our Ocean Should Be Better Managed

• #30x30
• #CampaignforNature
• climate change
• management
• nature
• ocean
• sustainable
• World Meteorological Organization

World leaders spoke out yesterday on the state of the planet and the message was clear — we must stop taking the natural world for granted.  UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “the state of the planet is broken,” our attitude about it is “suicidal,” and then he spent more than 10 minutes cataloging our global “crimes against nature.” 

Why This Matters:  Guterres implored the world to make 2021 a “leap” year — a year in which individuals, businesses, and governments make a “quantum leap” towards carbon neutrality, and when more women leaders are at the table and they take decisive action to begin to cut carbon emissions by 45% by 2030.

• Climate Change

Shifting Baselines Make Climate Change Harder to Perceive

• baseline
• climate change

by Ashira Morris, ODP Contributing Writer What is “normal”? This rather philosophical question — especially in 2020 — has concrete answers in weather science that can skew how we think about climate change. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) records climate normals as an average of the past 30 years, with updates made every […]

• Climate Change

EU GHG Emissions Dropped 24% in 30 Years

• climate neutral
• European Union
• greenhouse gas emission
• Greta Thunberg

Since 1990, the European Union has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 24 percent. It’s all part of the bloc’s goal of making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The next big step toward that goal will be hitting a 55 percent reduction by 2030 — more than doubling the change over the last 30 years in the coming decade. The details of those goals will be hammered out in meetings next month. 

Why This Matters: Europe’s pledge to reach neutrality by 2050 is a legal commitment that guides banks, policies, and decision-making. Each of the EU’s 27 countries must now write its own plan for how to reach these targets.

• Climate Change

Fannie and Freddie Mortgages Vastly Underestimate Flooding Risks

• climate risk
• climate risk disclosure
• Flooding
• green finance
• mortgages

Climate-induced flooding has inundated coastal cities, yet new reporting from Politico shows that government mortgage lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to pump money into severely flood-prone property markets.  As such in the Florida town of Hialeah, federal taxpayers hold greater than 60% of home mortgages. And as Politico explained, “if the homes […]