Climate Change

On Friday, the UNEP Emissions Gap Report joined a series of studies released over the past few weeks assessing how much countries’ recent climate change announcements, or intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), contribute to combating warming. Collectively, the studies make it clear that the INDCs make a substantial contribution to bending the global emissions trajectory below our current path. However, the studies also show that without additional action, the INDCs are insufficient to limit warming to below 2°C and avoid some of the worst climate impacts.

Another easy tip for significant savings is using electrical power strips, says Kristen Pratt, sustainability manager at the Chicago Academy of Sciences and Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (NatureMuseum.org). “Many electronic devices, especially the ones with that ever-glowing little light, are constantly drawing electricity, even when powered down,” she says.

Of all the issues that will need to be resolved in Paris, experts warn that loss-and-damage may have the greatest potential to derail negotiations before an agreement can be reached. “This is about whether or not they have a place to live and sustain their families into the future,” said Heather Coleman, Oxfam America’s climate policy director. “So this is not a small issue, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.” Read more

Heather Coleman spoke at the the NASA Climate Policy Speaker Series on Oxfam's global work and COP21. Visit the NASA website

"The Chinese government likes to hold authority over data for fear that different numbers than those from official sources could lead to social unrest," says Angel Hsu, a professor with the Yale School of Forestry And Environmental Studies, who has researched the poor quality of Chinese data. "China claims they don't have the human capacity to maintain and run the monitors," she says. "But they were monitoring air quality for over a decade; they just didn't release it because they were worried that it would lead to social unrest."

The United States, like many other countries, has been participating in negotiations in the lead-up to the United Nations' conference on climate change in Paris. The goal is to craft a policy framework that is going to engage all countries in combating global warming and establish institutions that can continue to spur more ambitious efforts over time. ...

“It’s fascinating to me to look at the partisan evolution of this issue over the past decade,” Joseph Aldy, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, who previously worked on carbon pricing for the Obama Administration, told me. “In 2003, the leader in the Senate on climate change was John McCain.

Without policies to protect the world’s most vulnerable from crop failure, natural disasters, waterborne diseases and other impacts of climate change, 100 million more people could sink into poverty by 2030, the World Bank said. The report unveiled yesterday is one of a growing number of high-level studies linking poverty to climate change. This one, World Bank officials said, goes further by combining findings from household surveys in 90 nations with modeling results on the impact of rising global temperatures on food prices, heat waves, floods, droughts and diseases.

Chris Bacon and his colleagues have received a $300,000 mult-year National Science Foundation research grant to study food and water security under climate change for smallholders in Nicaragua.