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Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are over 410 parts per million (PPM) and rising, and according to a new study published in Science Advances last week, that is the highest levels in the last 3 million years.
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There has been some confusion and even disinformation about what is IN and what is not in the Green New Deal bill, H.R. 109. We will summarize it for you here.
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A study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications provides a glimmer of hope on meeting the Paris Agreement’s greenhouse gas emissions targets globally. According to the study, if we begin right now, and “carbon-intensive infrastructure is phased out at the end of its design lifetime from the end of 2018, there is a 64% chance that peak global mean temperature rise remains below 1.5 °C.”
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Toxic carbon dioxide emissions (that are an important contributor to global warming) increased by 3.4% in 2018 after three years of declines, according to a new report based on government statistics released today, demonstrating that the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction on cleaning up air pollution and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Why This Matters: The Washington Post reported that the study’s authors concluded that we are now experiencing the impacts of the Trump Administration’s regulatory rollbacks of the clean power plan, the clean car rule, and dozens of other rules designed to protect health and reduce air emissions that cause global warming. And recall that these impacts are not harmless — according to a study by Harvard scientists published last summer in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Trump administration‘s changes to air pollution policies will result in an extra 80,000 deaths per decade. And we no longer are leading the world on battling climate change, despite the best efforts of states, cities, corporations and individuals. This should give greater impetus to the Green New Deal proposals likely to emerge from the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives.
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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected (with no written explanation) an effort by oil giant Exxon Mobile to block an investigation by the State of Massachusetts’ Attorney General, Maura Healey, into whether the company misled the public and investors about how much it knew regarding whether its products increased the threat of climate change. As a result, Attorney General Healey can force the company to provide her decades of records about how it has dealt with the threat of climate change to the world and to its businesses.
Why This Matters: The Supreme Court has twice refused to step in and cut off novel climate change lawsuits in recent months. That they passed up the chance to stop these untested cases is telling. Even if the cases are ultimately unsuccessful, the public will learn a great deal about the complicity of oil companies in our current climate predicament, which could hasten their desire to shift away from fossil fuels. Moreover, the negative publicity these cases generate is bad for the oil companies, and for Congress and the Executive Branch as well, which are look anemic in the face of the growing challenges climate change presents the country.
To Go Deeper: Inside Climate News has a great summary of the many court challenges challenging the fossil fuel industry right now, both in the U.S. and abroad.
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