Climate Change

Where has California's renewable energy policy been, and where it is going? What role have California's utilities played in promoting the development of clean electricity? What must utilities and state policy makers do to ensure California continues to lead on clean energy policies? Switzer Fellow Laura Wisland works on these issues every day in her role as Senior Energy Analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

We urge all candidates for public office at national, state, and local levels, and all New Hampshire citizens, to acknowledge the overwhelming balance of evidence for the underlying causes of climate change, to support appropriate responses to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, and to develop local and statewide strategies to adapt to near-term changes in climate(5). Ignoring the issue of climate change places our health, our quality of life, our economic vitality, and our children’s future at risk. Read the letter

“Soil carbon offsets will promote a spate of African land grabs and put farmers under the control of fickle carbon markets,” said Teresa Anderson of the UK-based Gaia Foundation, an NGO that promotes indigenous farming, speaking in Durban. “The [World] Bank’s agenda is more money for the bank and for carbon project developers, not development,” said Doreen Stabinsky of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

There is little doubt that agriculture is both affected by and directly affects climate change. Exactly how to address agriculture within the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UFCCC), however, is not easy to answer. Before Durban, negotiating text had been circulating since before the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, virtually unchanged for two years.

More dramatic floods, hurricanes, cyclones and wildfires, increases in global temperatures and higher levels of precipitation are consequences of climate change. In order to survive these environmental shifts, communities need to adapt their behaviors, says Frank Lowenstein of The Nature Conservancy. He talks with host Bruce Gellerman about how to plan for the future and adjust to a changing planet. Hear the story

Read the story in a South African publication

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One of the major issues being considered here at COP17 is adaptation.