Summer started with an oppressive heat wave. Get used to it. Summer only just started, but much of the world is already experiencing brutal heat. In the last two weeks, extreme heat waves have struck many parts of the US, Europe and China, threatening lives, increasing the risk of wildfires, and testing the limits of... Continue Reading →
Heat domes, heat islands, mega-droughts, and climate change: the anatomy of worsening heat waves. The Pacific Northwest is sweltering under a record-breaking heat wave. Portland reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit this week. Seattle reached 108 degrees. Vancouver reached 89 degrees. The searing heat has buckled roads, melted power cables, and led to a spike in deaths. It’s especially concerning in... Continue Reading →
The surprisingly subtle recipe making heat waves worse…
As a record-breaking heat wave settled over the Pacific Northwest in June, a climate researcher named Vivek Shandas took a drive with his 11-year-old son and began to collect data. Using a handy infrared attachment for his smartphone, he measured temperatures across Portland as they hit unprecedented triple digits. He was amazed to find that temperatures varied... Continue Reading →
How to cool a city without air conditioning…
The case for a national clean electricity standard. Last year, presidential candidate Joe Biden campaigned on a bold climate plan that included cleaning up America’s electricity system by 2035 with a federal Clean Electricity Standard (CES). A national CES, which would require utilities increase their share of renewable and carbon pollution-free electricity, is an old... Continue Reading →
This popular and proven climate policy should be at the top of Congress’s to-do list
How to spot the tricks Big Oil uses to subvert action on climate change Three ways fossil fuel companies try to trick the public... In his first week in office, President Joe Biden committed to an all-of-government approach to tackle climate change, signing executive orders recommitting the US to the Paris climate agreement, pausing new... Continue Reading →
Three ways fossil fuel companies try to trick the public…
The Green New Deal, explained (YouTube)
What's actually in the Green New Deal? Become a Video Lab member! http://bit.ly/video-lab The Green New Deal is an ambitious plan to fight the effects of climate change. It’s the only American plan that actually acknowledges the size of the impending crisis. And it contains some difficult truths that we might not want to hear.... Continue Reading →
Update, 3/30/2019: Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a Green New Deal resolution on February 7 that lays out the goals, aspirations, and specifics of the program in a more definitive way. Read about it here, and read about the criticism that followed here and here. The Senate voted the resolution down on March 26, but Ocasio-Cortez is now drafting a series of smaller,... Continue Reading →
The Green New Deal, explained
We have just 12 years to make massive and unprecedented changes to global energy infrastructure to limit global warming to moderate levels, the United Nation’s climate science body said in a monumental new report released Sunday. “There is no documented historic precedent” for the action needed at this moment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote in its... Continue Reading →
Report: we have just 12 years to limit devastating global warming
One of the morbidly fascinating aspects of climate change is how much cognitive dissonance it generates, in individuals and nations alike. The more you understand the brutal logic of climate change — what it could mean, the effort necessary to forestall it — the more the intensity of the situation seems out of whack with the workaday... Continue Reading →
empowerment & inner transformation... 