The Guardian (April 6)
“An unprecedented leap of 38.5C in the coldest place on Earth is a harbinger of a disaster for humans and the local ecosystem.” The record-setting leap at documented Concordia research station, along with other “events have raised fears that the Antarctic, once thought to be too cold to experience the early impacts of global warming, is now succumbing dramatically and rapidly to the swelling levels of greenhouse gases that humans continue to pump into the atmosphere.”
Tags: 38.5C, Antarctic, Atmosphere, Coldest, Concordia, Disaster, Earth, Ecosystem, GHG, Global warming, Harbinger, Humans, Impacts, Succumbing, Unprecedented
Institutional Investor (August 23)
“Proponents and critics of ESG claim it can change society. Both will be disappointed.” During the past five years, ESG investing has taken off. “By the end of 2022, global ESG funds had attracted more than $2.5 trillion in assets.” Regardless of this clout and “whether or not asset managers are ‘woke,’ ESG doesn’t hurt oil companies or provide capital for solutions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”
Tags: $2.5 trillion, Asset managers, Assets, Capital, Change, Climate change, Critics, Disappointed, ESG investing, Impacts, Oil companies, Proponents, Society, Woke
Washington Post (August 3)
“The world just got its first real taste of what life is like at 1.5 degrees Celsius.” July was far and away the hottest month ever recorded. Previously, “the world had briefly passed over 1.5 degrees for a few times” but always during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, which muted “impacts on the largest population centers. This was the first month where temperatures were that far above preindustrial levels and most of the world’s population was under hot, summer conditions.”
Tags: 1.5 degrees, Hot, Hottest, Impacts, July, Northern Hemisphere, Population centers, Preindustrial levels, Records, Summer conditions, Temperatures, Winter
Institutional Investor (May 31)
Last December, “the SEC proposed a set of trading reforms detailing significant changes on vital features such as tick size, the access fee cap, and competition for retail orders.” NASDAQ broadly supports the moves, but worries that “they may not accomplish what the SEC is trying to accomplish” or lead to “unintended consequences that harm liquidity.” Instead, NASDAQ and others believe the SEC “should sequence the proposals rather than do them simultaneously and pause periodically to assess the impacts and determine whether additional reforms are warranted.”
Tags: Access fee cap, Assess, Competition, December, Impacts, Liquidity, Nasdaq, Proposals, Retail orders, SEC, Sequence, Tick size, Trading reforms, Unintended consequences
Chicago Tribune (June 29)
“As Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed Chicago on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Windy City earned the unwelcome distinction of having the ‘worst air quality of any major city in the world.’” North American wildfires are proliferating and “today consume twice as much land… than they did in the 1990s.” This is clearly “a climate issue. But if we fail to take action on forest management, the impacts of climate change—drier, hotter, longer fire seasons—will only further contribute to the flammability of our overly dense forests.”
Tags: Air quality, Canada, Chicago, Climate change, Drier, Fire seasons, Flammability, Forest management, Hotter, Impacts, Smoke, Wildfires
Institutional Investor (June 27)
“Further escalation between the U.S. and China could make U.S. Treasuries less dependable.” But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. “Every trade is financed…. Trade and capital flows are part and parcel of a complex system. Mess with trade flows and there will be ‘unintended’ impacts on capital flows. Equally, disturb capital flow and there will be an impact on trade flows.” As trade issues also flare up with NAFTA and Brexit, it’s “no wonder equity markets are volatile.”
Tags: Brexit, Capital flows, China, Equity markets, Escalation, Impacts, Nafta, Trade, Treasuries, U.S., Unintended, Volatile
NBC News (June 25)
“The Trump Administration’s trade war is starting to have real impacts on farmers who grow everything from corn to cotton.” Soybeans look set to bear much of the economic pain. “Soybeans were the nation’s largest agricultural export in 2017 and China was the biggest buyer, purchasing 57 percent of the total. But since China announced the tariff, the price of soybeans has fallen by roughly 15 percent to a more than two-year low.”
National Geographic (April 1)
“The world is not ready for the impacts of climate change, including more extreme weather and the likelihood that populated parts of the planet could be rendered uninhabitable,” according to 772 scientists who worked on a report released in Yokohama by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report “warns that the world is close to missing a chance to limit the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”
Tags: Climate change, Extreme weather, Global warming, Impacts, Industrial Revolution, IPCC, Planet, UN, Uninhabitable, Yokohama
