Washington Post (June 1)
“Even as the Trump administration’s commitment to the [Paris] climate accord wavered, the Exxon vote showed that climate concerns were gaining ground in the business world.” BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street apparently cast their “shares in opposition to Exxon management.” Their success “marked an important step for groups that have been trying to force corporations to adopt greater disclosure and transparency about the financial fallout of climate change.” Ultimately, 62.3% of shares cast were against ExxonMobil management, effectively forcing “the oil giant to report on the impact of global measures designed to keep climate change to 2 degrees centigrade.”
Tags: BlackRock, Climate, Disclosure, Exxon, Fallout, Impact, Management, Opposition, Paris accord, State Street, Transparency, Trump, Vanguard
The Economist (April 29)
“Those who doubt the power of human beings to change Earth’s climate should look to the Arctic, and shiver…. In the past 30 years, the minimum coverage of summer ice has fallen by half; its volume has fallen by three-quarters. On current trends, the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free in summer by 2040.”
Bloomberg (December 24)
“Some climate activists worry that Donald Trump’s presidential election will be the death knell for the global environment. That’s almost certainly untrue. Whatever Trump’s attitude toward climate science and energy policy, two big outside factors will be much more important — technological progress and policy in developing nations.
Tags: Activists, Climate, Developing nations, Election, Energy, Environment, Policy, Science, Technological progress, Trump
Time (March 17)
“Global temperatures in February were the most above average since weather record keeping began nearly 150 years ago, bringing the world the closest it has ever been to what scientists consider dangerous levels of warming.” As if that’s not enough bad news, “climate scientists have already predicted that 2016 will trump last year as the warmest on record.”
Tags: Climate, Dangerous levels, February, Global warming, Records, Scientists, Temperatures, Weather
The Economist (October 10)
“Every so often a country comes along whose economic transformation has a vast impact on the world’s climate system. For the past generation that country has been China. Next it will be India.”
Tags: China, Climate, Economic transformation, Generation, Impact, India
USA Today (December 16)
“For 22 years, the nations of the world have been discussing ways to prevent catastrophic damage to the Earth’s climate caused by emissions of greenhouse gases…. About the best that can be said for the accord announced in Peru on Sunday, after two weeks of talks among nearly 200 nations, is that even a weak deal is better than no deal.”
Tags: Accord, Catastrophic, Climate, Damage, Deal, Earth, Emissions, Greenhouse gases, Peru, Prevent, World
New York Times (September 23)
The U.S. “has made commendable progress in reducing its emissions, and is halfway toward meeting Mr. Obama’s pledge at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in 2009 to reduce its emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.” Globally, however, progress is not being made. “Steadily increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, rising sea levels, more violent weather events, persistent droughts…. The burden on the United States to set a positive example is as heavy as ever.”
