The overarching message of The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review was that failing to invest in mitigating climate change would exact an alarmingly high price, estimated between 5% and 20% of global GDP per year.
When lives are assigned a higher dollar value, stricter pollution standards tend to clear the 'economic efficiency' sniff test, resulting in cleaner air. But that improved air quality comes at the expense of America's industrial industries, which have to invest in pricey systems to reduce the amount of these pollutants they spew down to acceptable levels.
Officials from the Department of Energy are meeting daily as the Iran war drives up the price of fuel. A public awareness campaign is urging citizens to 'save energy, save your pocket.'
In 2019, scientists found that balloons eaten by seabirds are more likely to kill them than other kinds of plastic yet they do not seem to have been earmarked in the same way as, for example, plastic straws.
At a young age, I learned quickly how oil wealth and power could burn the land while people struggled. I saw heat rise off the streets, the Nile strained, and the air thickened with injustice. In my teenage years, through Aotearoa, being on the edge of the Pacific, I felt the ocean breathing heavy, swallowing the shores of islands that have done the least to cause this harm.
But to environmental advocates, the announcement sounded less like relief and more like a bill for working people, one that would result in higher fuel costs, increased pollution, and a slower path to clean energy. Critics warn that the decision represents a blow to the energy transition and a significant setback in the fight against climate change overall.
Covering Climate Now was formed in 2019 in response to the climate silence that then prevailed in much of the press, especially in the United States. Over the years that followed, hundreds of newsrooms joined our effort, and press coverage of the story began to reflect the scale of the crisis. Newsrooms beefed up their climate reporting teams; they confronted misinformation that sought to play down the problem; they thought creatively about how to find the climate connection on every beat.
The UN-run market allows companies and countries to offset their excess emissions by financing projects that cut greenhouse gases in other nations. The new initiative involves a clean cooking project in Myanmar, which distributes efficient cookstoves that reduce pressure on local forests. Implemented in partnership with a South Korean company, the project will generate credits that will count towards the climate targets of South Korea and Myanmar.
"Let's be realistic." That's the advice coming from a growing number of voices in climate circles in the United States. In October, billionaire Bill Gates argued that a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius is unavoidable and not a " super bad outcome"-a view unlikely to be shared by the millions of people whose homes would be destroyed by the resulting killer storms and rising seas.