Environmental Policy & Law

[from December 2, 2015] Major world leaders today launched an unprecedented global carbon pricing initiative, calling for nations of the world to put a price on carbon pollution to protect the climate and accelerate a transition to ä clean, sustainable energy future. The initiative is sponsored by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund

“Finance is the bedrock of this agreement. It is through commitment of finance that the confidence and the trust that has always been debated in this process is strengthened.” These words of Pa Ousman, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change for the Gambia, reflect a strong sentiment of developing country representatives at the Paris climate negotiations this week: a just climate deal necessitates predictable public flows of money to support the most vulnerable countries in the face of escalating climate disasters, and to enable low-carbon development.

Changing the world is an expensive proposition. But for the representatives for the 195 countries gathered in Paris for the COP21 summit on climate change, the most daunting step might be figuring out how to split the bill. “The elephant in the room is still finance,” said Yvo de Boer, former head of the U.N. climate change body, at the start of the climate talks.

The medical anthropologist Paul Farmer once wrote that "the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world." For many in the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris this week, this idea is at the heart of disagreement on a pathway forward.

From The MIT Press: After nearly a quarter century of international negotiations on climate change, we stand at a crossroads. A new set of agreements is likely to fail to prevent the global climate’s destabilization. Islands and coastlines face inundation, and widespread drought, flooding, and famine are expected to worsen in the poorest and most vulnerable countries. How did we arrive at an entirely inequitable and scientifically inadequate international response to climate change?

Doreen Stabinsky, Visiting Professor of Climate Change Leadership, Uppsala University, Sweden and Professor of Global Environmental Politics, at College of the Atlantic, Maine, USA, said the price tag for climate damages this century will be in the trillions, with much of that damage in poor and vulnerable countries. “The US is responsible for much of that toll, but they don’t care and they won’t pay. With arm twisting of developing countries, they have language now protecting the richest and heaping devastating costs onto the poorest,” she said.

#34: Bipartisan Policy Center (Washington, DC)

“One of the major problems with this draft Environmental Impact Report is it is not including the Brockway Campground,” said Isaac Silverman, staff attorney for environmental group Sierra Watch. “What we have are two projects proposed by the same developer on continuous landholdings owned by the same person. Common sense, CEQA (and) good planning requires an approach that considers the full impacts of these two projects together.

On September 29, Rush Holt, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and former U.S. Representative, spoke during an interview about the state of science in the U.S., how to communicate science to the public and policymakers, and how scientists and others can engage effectively with policymakers to be better advocates for science. Holt’s main theme, to which he returned repeatedly, was the need to empower the public and policymakers with the idea that they are capable of understanding and evaluating scientific evidence on their own.