Climate Change

The Climate Changes for the Insurance Industry

ThinkProgress reports: Following the most damaging year of climate disasters in the United States in history, the insurance regulators in three states – California, Washington, and New York – announced that all major insurance companies operating in their states will be required to assess and publicly disclose the climate-change related risks they face, both in …

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Guest blogger David Pettit: In the Weeds with GHGs

This post, by David Pettit of the Natural Resources Defense Council, is part of an occasional series by guest bloggers. As Ann Carlson and Rick Frank have previously blogged, on December 29th 2011, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill ruled that California’s low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. …

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Guest blogger Vera Pardee: Clearing the Runway for Carbon Pollution Reduction — a Better Way to Fly

This post, by Vera Pardee of the Center for Biological Diversity, is part of an occasional series by guest bloggers. In the absence of international agreements on climate change, important state, regional and national efforts are forging ahead on their own to tackle greenhouse gas pollution.  Despite the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, the business-as-usual …

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What’s in the final 2012 spending bill?

I’ve just finished plowing through H.R. 2055, the2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which was signed by President Obama last week. I was curious to see how many anti-environmental riders made it into the final bill. I haven’t seen much news coverage of the details of the final bill, and the White House offered no comment when …

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Federal Court Invalidates California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard

U.S. District Judge Lawrence O’Neill has ruled that the California Air Resources Board’s pioneering Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a key component of California’s multifaceted strategy to reduce the state’s aggregate greenhouse gas emissions under AB 32, is unconstitutional.  In his December 29th ruling in Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Goldstene, the Fresno-based federal judge issued …

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Ten of the Top Environmental Stories of 2011

Nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan. EPA issues new rules limiting mercury emissions by power plants. Durban climate summit produces modest progress, as developing countries begin to acknowledge the need for binding limits on their carbon emissions. White House kills scheduled new regulations of ozone. California adopts cap-and-trade system under AB 32. White House announces stringent …

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“White Christmas” — A Song of Climate Change?

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Irving Berlin was prescient when he wrote those words over seventy years ago.  Little did he know that White Christmases were on their way to becoming a thing of the past. This year is a striking illustration, as ThinkProgress reports: In …

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Churchill’s Wisdom and Climate Change

According to Yale poll results from last month, 63% of Americans now believe climate change is real, 17% think it isn’t, and 20% say they don’t know. Where does Churchill come into this?  To see that, you have to turn back the clock seventy years to December 1941. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, only …

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Signs of the (NY) Times

The Times has two interesting environmental stories today.  Both are worth reading.  They relate in different ways to climate change, but they’re both interesting even if climate change isn’t an issue that excites you. The first and most important story is about melting of permafrost in the Arctic.  Huge amounts of carbon are locked up …

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The Durban Outcome: End of CBDR?

I wasn’t in Durban for the last days of wrangling, so I missed some late nights, dramatic speeches, and unexpected alliances. ClimateWire has the best account I’ve seen of the last-minute drama (sub. req’d.: “How a Belligerent, Sleep-Deprived Crowd in Durban Arrived at Consensus”).  Highlights include a ministerial-level “huddle to save the planet”; invocations of …

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