A Grave Climate Warning, Buried on Black Friday. In a massive new report, federal scientists contradict President Trump and assert that climate change is an intensifying danger to the United States. Too bad it came out on a holiday. The federal government published a massive and dire new report on climate change. The report warns, repeatedly and directly, that climate change could soon imperil the American way of life, transforming every region of the country, imposing frustrating costs on the economy, and harming the health of virtually every citizen. The report is a huge achievement for American science. It represents cumulative decades of work from more than 300 authors. Since 2015, scientists from across the U.S. government, state universities, and businesses have read thousands of studies, summarizing and collating them into this document. The report is blunt: Climate change is happening now, and humans are causing it. “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,” declares its first sentence – The Atlantic
- Why rising seas will force coastal residents to move – or spend – The Guardian
- Global emissions must drop 55% by 2030 to meet climate goals – Fast Company
- The climate apocalypse is now, and it’s happening to you – Wired
- A New Report Finds That Climate Change is the World’s Worst Public Health Crisis – Mother Jones
- We broke down what climate change will do, region by region – Grist
- China urged to lead way in efforts to save life on Earth – The Guardian
- Germany registers record low rainfall – Made For Minds
We have the tech to tackle climate change now–here are the next steps. We don’t need brilliant new inventions: A new book offers a simple guide to the policies we need to enact to fight climate change right now! The world has a tiny window of time to change course to avoid the worst-case scenario of climate change in the future–from global food shortages and catastrophic fires and floods to mass deaths from extreme temperatures. The good news: We have the technology we need to tackle the problem. A new book, explains how to do it. The price of a clean energy future is about the same as a carbon-intensive future, Harvey says, even without counting environmental benefits. The book also details the cost-effectiveness of the key policies it recommends. Cities that are designed for walking and biking and have good public transit save money by cutting traffic and pollution and health costs – Fast Company
Brazil Backs Out of Hosting 2019 Climate Change Meeting. Brazil this week pulled out of hosting next year’s United Nations global summit meeting on climate change, the latest signal that Latin America’s largest nation no longer aspires to be an influential player in efforts to mitigate the effects of a warming planet. The president-elect Jair Bolsonaro has vowed to empower commercial ventures in the Amazon and other Brazilian biomes while weakening enforcement of environmental laws. As a result, deforestation in the Amazon is now once again on the rise. Between August 2017 and July of this year, deforestation in the Amazon rose by nearly 14 percent. That represented the highest loss of forest cover in the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rain forest, in a decade. Mr. Bolsonaro’s incoming foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, a career diplomat, has call the movement to reduce global warming a plot by “Marxists” to stifle the economic growth of capitalist democracies – The New York Times
Gender equity is the most overlooked solution for climate change. The list of solutions to climate change usually focuses on technology, but one impactful solution is often overlooked. “Gender and climate are inextricably linked,” said Wilkinson, one of the authors of Project Drawdown. Empowering women and girls was one of the top solutions in fighting climate change. In lower-income countries, female farmers grow most of the food on small farms. But women don’t have the same access to resources as men who farm. “They farm as capably and efficiently as men, but this well-documented disparity in resources and rights means women produce less food on the same amount of land,” said Wilkinson. When farms are less productive, that leads to deforestation, as farmers clear more land to grow the same amount of food. Gender equity in education also matters for the climate. When girls go to school, it changes many things–their health, their financial security, and their agency. But it also means that they’re more likely to marry later and choose to have fewer children – Fast Company