CLIMATE POLITICS-As the New Year asserts itself -- a year that begins in global lockdown and political shock-and-awe -- an extraordinary question emerges: Are we on the brink of real change?

DEEGAN ON LA-Blueish may be how we’re feeling, now that we’re shut in and uncertain of what to expect in a future that could be tinted with grey.

BEGREEN--Change in climate is a common phenomenon in recent times and apart from scientific backing, there is now evident physical evidence. Scientists believe that the major reason for the warming of our planet is human activity.  

BEGREEN--This past June 17, four members of the California Assembly sent a letter to the California Air Resources Board, granting cautious blessing to the air board’s proposal for saving the world’s tropical forests. That proposal, the California Tropical Forest Standard, was crafted over the last decade by air board staff and would set guidelines to improve the integrity of tropical forest-based carbon credits.

BEGREEN--June 2019 was the hottest June in recorded history. July was even hotter — in fact, it was the hottest month ever recorded worldwide, as a wide swath of the continental United States sweltered with heat indexes of over 100 degrees.

BEGREEN--In June, I delivered a keynote presentation on Australia’s vulnerability to climate change and our policy challenges at the annual meeting of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the main conference for those working in the climate science community. I saw it as an opportunity to summarize the post-election political and scientific reality we now face.

BEGREEN--As France, India, the U.S., and other nations face unprecedented and deadly heat waves, new research published Wednesday showed the planet has warmed more quickly in recent decades than at any point in the past 2,000 years.

BEGREEN--The Republican Party's stance on climate change has been shifting. Prominent conservatives who once might have been labeled climate deniers have begun acknowledging the reality that our climate is changing. Though not all have accepted the role of humans in causing that change, many now say that human action must be a part of the solution, releasing conservative climate policies to counter environmental policies from the left, including the Green New Deal.

CLIMATE CHANGE--The world is in the throes of an extinction crisis unlike any throughout paleoclimate history, a.k.a., the Sixth Mass Extinction -- keeping in mind that the normal “background rate” for extinction is 1-to-5 species gone per year. But, what if it’s five every 24 hours? 

OTHERWORDS--Every year around Earth Day, I’m reminded of papers I graded in an environmental sociology class.

BEGREEN--For decades, majorities of Americans have favored swift, meaningful action on climate change. They understand that we must transition away from dirty fuels and toward clean, renewable energy. Yet despite this overwhelming support, Congress has repeatedly failed to act.

BEGREEN--“I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to the atmosphere and thus finish the Earth, even though I knew that this was not possible.”