gear Push settings
After two weeks of marathon negotiations, hundreds of presentations and dozens of press conferences, 195 countries unanimously approved an acord that will ultimately eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels, limiting global warming to 2ºC, with an incremental goal of 1.5ºC. For better or for worse, it’s the first global climate accord after two decades of […]
With only hours remaining on the COP21 negotiations, there’s a good chance the draft we got to see yesterday will be final – with some small tweaks perhaps. Opinions have been mixed, but mostly negative about this particular draft; sure, it’s important that we get a final draft on which all parties agree, but it’s […]
If we want to tackle climate change, we have to fight it from all sides; one of the things I liked about the COP21 climate summit was that people from all around the world came to present their ideas for fighting climate change locally, with tailored solutions. The UN recently highlighted the projects in the Change […]
If we want to limit our emissions to an acceptable limit, then all aspects of human society have to come together – environmental, social, economic, and not least, technology. With this in mind, six projects were presented at COP21, highlighted as this year’s UN Momentum for Change ICT solutions winners. These are the winning projects: Fairphone […]
After hundreds of hours of negotiations and discourse, it seems that the parties involved are finally settled and can agree to a new draft for a binding climate agreement. But with one day left to go, is that enough – can we call it a success? The pact is a top-bottom approach; it’s an international agreement […]
You know something is down when the most important climate change event in history is sponsored by fossil fuel companies.
A very ambitious initiative could make Africa the cleanest continent – Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) an African-led plan to add 10,000 MW of additional renewable energy on the continent by 2020, has received over $10 billion in funding from international sources at COP21. The mega-scale initiative wants to develop all sectors of African renewable energy by […]
Emissions flatlined in 2014 -- the first time in 15 years. There is still hope!
Researchers from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment claim that plants aren't keeping up with CO2 levels.
With only three days left from the Paris Climate Summit, the time for populist talks has passed, and we're expecting concrete solutions.
An undercover investigation exposed how fossil fuel companies pay off academics to publish research sowing doubt about climate change and promote corporate interests.
While the climate talks in Paris are carrying on in full force, it’s important to keep in mind that most of climate change isn’t actually affecting the ones causing it. The polar regions, the south Pacific and small islands are the ones suffering the most. The governments of Nunavut (Canada) and Greenland (Denmark) and the Inuit […]
“I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change” – this is how a post on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Facebook page opened up yesterday, one day before his talk at the COP21 climate summit. Fighting for climate We don’t have the time to debate and convince everyone, as every day, as 19,000 people die from […]
Elon Musk - involved with cutting-edge tech companies like Tesla, SpaceX and Solar city - told youngsters gathered at an event at the University of Sorbonne, Paris that carbon pricing would accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to a renewable energy economy.
The climate talks in Paris have so far been surprisingly consistent and on track – right now, we’ve learned that the first draft for a global climate agreement is out! This unprecedented meeting has just yielded its first concrete results, and while there are still many brackets which mean that many things are still debatable, […]
Should dirty energy companies have a voice in climate talks? Can government figures, known to receive money from the oil and gas industry, be trusted to represent the best interests of the planet over those of the people that fund their campaigns? That was one of the key points that today's conference on great polluters debated on.
Today, at a press conference at COP21, a panel of scientists and chairmen from the IPCC said that they never suggested one or the other figures as a baseline for averting climate change. "The 2 degree goal is a political figure, not generated by scientific reports," the panel warned.
82 artists joined hands to create 600 artworks - modified ads placed around Pars to protest greenwashing done by the corporations involved in the climate summit.
As China’s cities struggle with smog more and more, one man has started an interesting project to raise awareness: he wandered the streets of Beijing with a vacuum cleaner gathering smog and turned it into a brick. Meet “Nut Brother,” a 34-year-old artist and activist from Shenzhen. Of course, he understands vacuuming smog will do nothing to change […]
Some 2,440 new coal fired plants are expected to come online by 2030 in eight countries like India, China, Indonesia and the European Union. Combined with already existing plants, their emissions make averting 2 degrees of warming past industrial levels impossible, and the respective countries' national pledges aimed at curbing emissions - the so-called INDCs - now sound completely ridiculous.
More than 500 institutions representing over $3.4 trillion chose to divest away from fossil fuels, $800 million of which only in the past 10 weeks.
While most of the world is trying to reach a climate agreement that would help preserve our planet’s climate for future generations, some of the US presidential candidates just don’t get it – or don’t want to get it. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus (97% of climate scientists), despite obvious effects and forecasts, and despite […]
Warning alert: this will be extremely annoying for Republicans, Democrats, women, men, children… and pretty much anyone with common sense. While the whole world is trying to settle its differences and finally reach a climate agreement for the future of the planet, Donald Trump is being… Donald Trump. What is Obama thinking? A video posted […]
Climate change and agriculture are so interrelated that you basically can't talk about addressing climate change without bringing agriculture into the mix. At COP21, the climate summit in Paris, governments, NGOs and private entities joined hands to announce several initiatives focusing on some of the most pressing issues in agriculture: soils in agriculture, the livestock sector, food losses and waste, and sustainable production methods and resilience of farmers.
President Obama voiced his concerns that any agreement made in Paris, COP21 will be ineffective if it lacks the force of treaties.
A report released by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found we are beyond the peak of coal consumption and demand. Effectively, the demand for coal has virtually dropped all over the world with few exceptions, most notably India. The news suggests we're well on our way to leave coal behind for good, and never turn back. Replacing coal are more efficient and energy friendly measures,including renewable energy, nuclear and gas.
According to a NY Times/CBS poll two out of three Americans support the signing of a global climate pact, but only one in five agrees to increasing taxes on electricity
A possible game changer – 120 country alliance spearheaded by India and supported by France has been announced, with the purpose of promoting solar energy in developing countries. Many developing countries enjoy sun-rich areas, but they lack the technology and financial capabilities to make full use of that potential. With that in mind, India’s prime […]
Four European countries, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, have announced a new $500 million initiative to fight climate change, especially in developing countries. The entire initiative is supported by the World Bank. “We want to help developing countries find a credible pathway toward low carbon development,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. “This initiative is […]
Bill Gates and 27 other billionaires with a collective net worth of $350 billion have joined forces to launch the biggest private climate fund in history. The multi-billion dollar fund, called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, will focus on cutting edge research and development to accelerate the growth of renewable energy and other sustainable technologies.
The eyes of the world are set on Paris, as the COP21 climate summit started today with the ambitious goal of achieving a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world. But while this dance sometimes paces close to the impossible, there are also reasons to be optimistic: world leaders […]
The wealthiest man in the world, Bill Gates, will announce on Monday a massive private-government partnership for a new clean energy research fund. This is reportedly the biggest research and development fund for clean energy ever, which will funnel billions to support innovation in this section. The precise details of the multi-billion partnership will be revealed once with the opening of the United Nations conference on climate change in Paris.
If you've heard the words "COP21", "Climate Summit" or "Paris Climate... thingy" but don't know what to make of them - this is what you need to read.
You know things are messed up when the head of the House committee that covers science doesn't really understand it. Or, worse even, chooses to bury it and persecute scientists. Such is the case of Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, who suspects of fraud a group of scientists that explained in a new paper that the global warming hiatus isn't actually thing. Seems like the world is warming at the same rate as in the 20th century - fast. That didn't bode well with an obviously biased conservative Republican, so Smith subpoenaed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to gain access to the private documents and emails of scientists involved in the study.
The Climate Summit in Paris may or may not create a binding agreement for countries to limit their greenhouse gas emissions, but either way, the real work will begin after the talks. “When the meetings in Paris are done, the real business of decarbonization must begin,” write climate-policy experts David Victor and James Leape in […]
While in South Carolina last weekend, Democrat Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders reiterated a burn he's been feeling for decades: the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry. He told the crowd climate change “is already causing devastating problems all over this world,” and the fossil fuel industry, Koch brothers specifically, are doing everything they can do keep this out of the public's attention. At one point he directly called out Republican candidates to basically man up, grow a backbone and stop lying.
Philipp Pattberg, a professor of transnational environmental governance and policy at VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands, focuses on the study of global environmental politics, with a focus on climate change governance and biodiversity. Here, he gives a talk about more than 20 years of international climate change diplomacy, from the successful negotiation of the 1992 United Nations […]
Amber Rudd, the UK's Secretary of Energy and Climate Change, announced the government's new plan to generate clean and cheap energy. Rudd says the Britain will add more nuclear power, explore for shale and, most strikingly, replace all coal fired plants with gas.
Starting November 30, the world's leaders will meet in Paris at the UN summit for climate change to discuss a common framework to reduce carbon emissions at a global level. Most countries already have plans set in motion to reduce emissions, either by using energy efficiency and new technology to lower the carbon footprint of their own operations, or use legislation to compel residents and companies to do the same. A lot of big and sizable corporations in the United States have taken matters into their own hands, however, by buying more clean energy and less fossil fuel derived energy, regardless of what the government suggests or coerces.
Improvements in aircraft design, air traffic management and changes to airline operations could effectively slash US airline emissions by as much as 50%.
The Amazon basin is home to the world's great biodiversity. You'll find more plant and animal species per square foot than anywhere else in the world. It's truly one of the wildest and life teeming places in the universe, which given humans' habit of meddling makes it one of the most vulnerable as well. The huge 6-million-square-kilometer rainforest area remains mostly unstudied, due to the roughness and inaccessibility of the land. But making their way through the outskirts are the chainsaws and sawmills; and they're moving fast. Since 2000 an area equal to 50 football pitches has been destroyed every minute in the Amazon rainforest, satellite imagery revealed.
After five years long of pondering, the FDA finally gave the green light for a genetically modified Atlantic salmon variety. This is the first food animal that was genetically modified that the FDA approved for human consumption and farming. The salmon has genes from another salmon species, as well as an eel-like fish, which allows it to grow to market size in half the time it would usually take. This means it saves twice as much time and resources as conventional salmon, with no nutritional or health drawbacks, the FDA says.
Some 360 million years ago, the oceans were teeming with big fish, some as big as a school bus. Then something terrible happened, the causes of which still escape scientists today: the Hangenberg Event. This was the last peak in a streak of mass extinctions known as the Late Devonian extinction which exterminated 97% of all marine vertebrate species. In the aftermath, it paid to be small a new study suggests. The researchers at University of Pennsylvania found that small fish dominated the ecological niches for nearly 40 million years. This tremendous rebound time is relevant today when overfishing is threatening countless large fish species. Once these disappear, it might be a very long time before we get tuna-sized fish back on our plates.
At the U.N. summit on climate change held in Paris soon, world leaders will join in an attempt to curb their emissions in order to avoid warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius past the industrial age. We're already 0.9 degrees warmer and by the looks of the pledges filed by member states ahead of the talks, a more realistic target seems like 3 degrees. In other words, the framework - which will not be legally binding - will only have moderate effects, when more ambitious action is required. One big part of the problem is fossil fuel subsidies, which last year amounted to $452 bn. in total for all G20 member states. Oppositely, renewable energy - a field which actually deserves to be subsidizes since its new tech and isn't mature yet - was subsidized by only $121 bn. or four times less.
MIT’s Climate CoLab has an innovative approach to the huge problem of climate change: breaking it up into smaller, manageable problems and crowdsourcing a way out.
While Americans are in favor of renewable energy and electric cars, when it comes to paying more for gasoline support dwindles. Are the voters hypocritical? Not necessarily. A new study suggests that voters would be in favor of a gas tax, if they'd know the cash would flow directly into measures that address energy efficiency, fix roads and bridges or gets refunded to taxpayers equally. In other words, if people know what they're paying for, they'll be more willing to pitch in. Who would've thought, right?
According to NOAA's Coral Reef Ecosystem Division about 30 percent of the world's coral population has perished due to average ocean temperatures, El Nino's effects and acidification. Even if we halt all man-made CO2 emissions now (virtually impossible), the cascading effects of ocean acidification can not be halted once they've been set in motion. As a result, coral all over the world will bleach more frequently and intensely. Desperate times indeed, but a group of scientists are trying their best. They identified strong coral specimens and are currently stressing them further so they become more resiliant to changing conditions driven by global warming. In time, these super coral might be transferred all over the globe in an attempt to halt the rapidly deteriorating coral reef.
The world enters uncharted territory in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, as concentrations reach record levels, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced.
Significant progress has been made in curbing poverty at the global level, but the rapid escalation of climate change could force developing regions to take two steps backwards. A World Bank report says as many as 100 million people could be pushed back into poverty by 2030 if no measures are taken, i.e. we go about business as usual
ZME Science reported earlier that Exxon Mobil might be liable for a RICO case similar to tobacco companies for withholding information about the risks of climate change and actively seeking to manipulate public opinion to favor its business. Now, a NY Times article reports New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman is investigating the oil & gas company on suspicion that the company failed to mention critical information to its investors about the risks of climate change. A subpoena was issued on Wednesday evening to Exxon Mobil, demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents.
