Washington Post (August 27)
Governments need to rapidly “head off the ample risks of continuing to release huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the air and to set about it with speed and ambition.” A draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) concludes “the increasing amount of greenhouse gases that humans have emitted into the atmosphere has almost certainly been the chief driver of the warming of the planet over the past half-century…. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the IPCC notes, has shot up by 40 percent since 1750, with concentrations of the gas now increasing at a faster rate than at any time in the last 22,000 years.”Governments need to rapidly “head off the ample risks of continuing to release huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the air and to set about it with speed and ambition.” A draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) concludes “the increasing amount of greenhouse gases that humans have emitted into the atmosphere has almost certainly been the chief driver of the warming of the planet over the past half-century…. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the IPCC notes, has shot up by 40 percent since 1750, with concentrations of the gas now increasing at a faster rate than at any time in the last 22,000 years.”
Tags: Atmosphere, Climate change, CO2, Global warming, Governments, Greenhouse gases, IPCC, Planet
Institutional Investor (August Issue)
“Investors confront the risk of a carbon bubble fueled by stranded oil and gas assets” should major governments decide to impose strict carbon legislation to combat climate change. One recent report asserts that “to limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius between now and 2050, only 20 percent of the world’s fossil fuel reserves can be extracted and burned.”
Tags: Carbon, Climate change, Extraction, Fossil fuel, Gas, Global temperatures, Governments, Investors, Legislation, Oil, Reserves, Risk
Bloomberg (August 2)
“Earth’s atmosphere seems to have found a way to get back at the human race. For almost three centuries, we humans have been filling the air with carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. Now, it turns out, the climate change these emissions have wrought is turning people against one another.” Researchers have found “a surprisingly close link between climate change and civil wars, riots, invasions and even personal violence such as murder, assault and rape.”
Tags: Air, Atmosphere, Civil wars, Climate change, CO2, Earth, Emissions, Greenhouse gases, Human race, Methane, Researchers, Violence
CFO Magazine (May Issue)
“In the face of extreme weather and natural disasters, companies are reengineering their supply chains for added reliability.” ATMI, Kimberly-Clark, Royal Caribbean and Ford Motor are just a few of the companies “that have elevated climate change in their enterprise risk management methodologies. Indeed, according to a September 2012 survey by the independent Carbon Disclosure Project, 83% of S&P 500 companies are integrating climate change into ERM processes.”
Tags: Carbon Disclosure Project, Climate change, Enterprise risk management, Extreme weather, Natural disasters, Reliability, S&P 500, Supply chains
Washington Post (January 28)
“Climate change is an issue for the secretary of state as much as it is for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency…. The world is more likely to approach the climate issue with a bundle of national policies, rather than a comprehensive, top-down climate pact.”
Tags: Climate change, Climate pact, EPA, Policies, Secretary of state
Los Angeles Times (January 6)
“Societal change usually happens slowly, even once it’s clear there’s a problem.” This is not necessarily a bad thing. A leisurely pace allows a consensus to be established, eliminating backlash. “With climate change, however, there simply isn’t time to waste…. It’s a fight between human beings and physics. And physics is entirely uninterested in human timetables. Physics couldn’t care less if precipitous action raises gas prices or damages the coal industry in swing states. It couldn’t care less whether putting a price on carbon slowed the pace of development in China or made agribusiness less profitable.”
Tags: Agribusiness, Carbon, China, Climate change, Coal, Pace, Societal change
Bloomberg (November 2)Bloomberg (November 2)
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, endorsed Democratic President Obama. Obama’s position on climate change was a major factor in the endorsement. “Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be – given this week’s devastation – should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, endorsed Democratic President Obama. Obama’s position on climate change was a major factor in the endorsement. “Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be – given this week’s devastation – should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”
Tags: Bloomberg, Climate change, Extreme weather, New York, Obama
Time (October 23)
“We’re in the final few months of what’s shaping up to be the hottest year on record. In September, Arctic sea ice melted to its smallest extent in satellite records, while the Midwest was rocked by a once-in-a-generation level drought. Global carbon dioxide emissions hit a record high in 2011 of 34.83 billion tons, and they will almost certainly be higher this year….Given all that, it might seem reasonable to think that climate change —and how the U.S. should respond to it — would be among the top issues of the 2012 presidential election.” Instead, climate change has gone largely unmentioned.
Tags: Arctic, Climate change, CO2, Drought, Presidential election, U.S.
Washington Post (October 19)
“Not a word has been said in the presidential debates about what may be the most urgent and consequential issue in the world: climate change.”
Tags: Climate change, Obama, Presidential debates, Romney, U.S.
Los Angeles Times (October 4)
“The United States experienced the warmest July in its history, with more than 3,000 heat records broken across the country.” Globally, it was 36th year in a row that temperatures in July have exceeded the average of the 20th century. There’s one good thing about all the heat. “The increasingly powerful evidence of a long-term warming trend is making climate-change denial more difficult to defend.”
Tags: Climate change, Denial, Global warming, Summer, Temperatures, U.S.
