CalSTRS divest from fossil fuels Jan. 2020 Peg Hunter CC by NC 2.0 State treasurers can be the forgotten children of public office. They don’t tend to have the name recognition of a governor or congressperson, and many of their own constituents don’t even have a clear sense of their job description. So how have state treasurers entered the spotlight in climate advocacy? And why are they banding together to change the ways corporations like ExxonMobil respond to the climate crisis? Last week, 16 state treasurers from Oregon to Iowa to Massachusetts released a letter calling for corporate discl ..read more

350.org ExxonMobil shareholders meeting action 2019 350.org This week, ExxonMobil holds its virtual annual shareholders’ meeting—in the spotlight, because the company is in a proxy fight! As I have every year since 2016, I’ll be attending ExxonMobil’s annual meeting as a representative of a climate-conscious shareholder. And the Union of Concerned Scientists is urging BlackRock, Vanguard, state treasurers, and other major investors to vote for climate-critical shareholder proposals and against laggard corporate leadership at ExxonMobil. Here are four reasons why. What is a proxy fight? First ..read more

Fishers on Lake George in Uganda/Adam Markham Africa Day celebrates independence, freedom from colonialism, and looking forwards to a peacful and thriving future in the 55 African Union nations. This year’s theme is “Arts, Culture and Heritage” and UCS is helping to raise up climate change in that context.  Climate change is probably the fastest-growing threat to African cultural heritage, much of which was left in a parlous position because of the legacies and structural inequal ..read more

National Cancer Institute/Unsplash Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has invited Professor Steven Koonin to give a seminar on May 27, 2021. Professor Koonin’s seminar will cover material contained in a book he published on May 4. His book is entitled “Unsettled”. Its basic thesis is that climate science is not trustworthy. Professor Koonin is not a climate scientist. I am. I have worked at LLNL since 1992. My primary job is to evaluate computer models of the climate system. I also seek to improve understanding of human and natural influences on climate. In collaboration with scien ..read more

President Biden recently announced that the US would cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to 50–52 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. While there are many reasons why even this level of ambition isn’t sufficient, it’s still an enormous shift from where we are today, and an important milestone toward where we need to be. The world needs to remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than we emit by midcentury to meet Paris goals—this is called “net-negative emissions.” This is critical—not only to slow the pace of climate change, but to reduce the staggering number of deaths from fossil fuel air pollution ..read more

Wikimedia Commons; AP/Ross Franklin; NASA Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the first updates to its Climate Change Indicators website since 2016, when the previous administration halted the regular updates that had been a feature of the site for years. By tracking the progression of climate change across different human and natural systems, the website provides an accessible place for planners and the public to explore data generated primarily by federal agencies on climate change and its impacts on our lives. Here are four things to know—and one word of caution—a ..read more

Tim Youngquist of Iowa State University (left) with Larry and Margaret Stone at their prairie strips near Traer, Iowa. This is a first year of growth after frost seeding in the winter of 2015. Prairie plants are coming but have been mowed to keep weeds down. Credit: NRCS/SWCS photo by Lynn Betts Long a joke in federal policy circles, Infrastructure Week is actually upon us. Since President Biden revealed his infrastructure plan (aka the American Jobs Plan) earlier this spring, we’ve heard a lot of opinions about what is, and isn’t, infrastructure. Now I’ll add my hot take: Soil is infrastruct ..read more

Michael Fousert/Unsplash This blog post was written with substantial input from Alyssa Tsuchiya. On Friday, a Minnesota administrative law judge ruled the state can proceed with finalizing new clean car standards that will give Minnesotans more control over air quality improvements and progress toward the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, as well as increase vehicle model choices for Minnesota car buyers and save drivers money at the pump. I usually write about electric vehicle (EV) charging programs. Increased access to charging means more people have the opportunity to adopt an EV. Pl ..read more

Ben van Beurden, CEO, Royal Dutch Shell in 2018 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal Annual general meetings (AGMs, also known as annual shareholders’ meetings) of major oil and gas companies targeted by UCS’s campaign begin with ConocoPhillips and BP this week and Royal Dutch Shell next week. ExxonMobil and Chevron follow at the end of the month. After the last year of Big Oil companies grabbing pandemic bailouts, publicizing dubious “net-zero” pledges, and getting hit with even more climate lawsuits, we’ve got some questions about how they’re conducting their business. Lots of attention ..read more

FURIA, Inc. La Dra. Adi Martínez-Román del Centro Legal de Desarrollo de Resiliencia de la Universidad de Puerto Rico es co-autora de este escrito. Las islas y su gente son más vulnerables a los impactos climáticos que las jurisdicciones continentales y se encuentran más desprotegidas de los estragos climáticos que cada vez son más feroces.  El porqué de su vulnerabilidad está relacionado al cambio climático, pero más directamente al efecto de decisiones humanas.  Es por esto urgente que se atiendan sus problemas de forma decisiva y efectiva, y que no escatimemos en recursos y estra ..read more