CLIMATE

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE-Los Angeles County took a step toward a complete ban on oil and gas production within its borders after the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved on Wednesday a motion to phase it out on unincorporated land. It’s the largest urban area in the country to declare such a ban, which will impact over a thousand active wells.

PEACEVOICE - I vividly recall reading Bill McKibben’s prophetic work, The End Of Nature, serialized in The New Yorker beginning 11 September 1989.

CLIMATE CHANGE - As Democrats work to rapidly finalize the details of their $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, climate campaigners on Wednesday urged them to exclude fossil fuels and "false solutions" from a new clean energy program intended to cut down planet-heating emissions.

CLIMATE POLITICS-The Amazon rainforest is arguably the world’s premier asset. Indeed, it’s the world’s most crucial asset in a myriad of ways, nothing on Earth compares.

CLIMATE WATCH - Over the past four years, oil and gas producers have applied for more than 10,000 permits to drill for oil and gas on federal land in New Mexico.

CLIMATE POLITICS-U.S. House Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) recently introduced a bill in Congress to overhaul GDP, the nation’s most watched economic indicator.

THE GRID - The Energy Information Administration, the primary authority in the federal government on energy numbers, concludes that renewables, primarily hydro, wind and solar, rose to become 21% of electricity generation in the U.S. in 2020.

CLIMATE POLITICS-Like many, the pandemic gave me an opportunity to self-reflect on my life and my role in the world.

GREEN ENERGY-Reuters reports that President Biden intends to slash tax subsidies for fossil fuels like coal and petroleum and to use taxes instead to encourage renewable energy.

CLIMATE POLITICS--Is it possible that the country is truly rebuilding itself . . . from the soul up?

THE FUTURE OF GREEN-At the moment, signs point to a green economic recovery from COVID.

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.”

BE GREEN--Many pollinator insect species like bees, butterflies, and hoverflies are on the decline, due in large part to habitat destruction driven by conversion of land to agricultural fields and urbanization. But, while cities are generally considered to be poorer in biodiversity than rural areas, new research finds that urban areas could actually play a key role in conserving pollinator communities.

BEGREEN--NASA scientists were startled when a recent exploratory mission revealed a huge and rapidly-growing cavity on the underside of one of Antaractica's glaciers—signaling that the ice mass has been melting much faster than experts realized.

BEGREEN--We either keep fossil fuels in the ground, or we fry.

That’s the conclusion of another new blockbuster study on climate change, this one from the National Academy of Sciences. Our fossil-fuel industrial economy, the study details, has made for the fastest climate changes our Earth has ever seen.

BE GREEN--More Americans are taking climate change seriously. A new report by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reveals that 8 percent of participants in three separate surveys said they had changed their mind on the topic over the previous year—and of those, 84 percent said their level of concern had increased.

BE GREEN--As world leaders are meeting at the COP24 in Poland to discuss how to achieve goals outlined in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, scientists and activists are raising alarm about "brutal" new research published by the Global Carbon Project on Wednesday which offers the international community a "reality check" by showing that carbon emissions will hit a record high this year.

BE GREEN--Warnings about ecological breakdown have become ubiquitous.

CLIMATE POLITICS--Climate activists are cheering after the California Assembly passed legislation on Tuesday that requires the state to transition to 100 percent fossil-fuel free electricity generation by the year 2045.