In The News

The Ride to a Pollution-Free India

Nayan Chanda October 26, 2016
India has committed to reducing its carbon footprint from 2005 by at least 33 percent before 2030 through the Paris agreement to stem climate change. Innovations of emerging economies will contribute to combating climate change, and Nayan Chanda, founding editor of YaleGlobal Online, points to the battery-powered e-rickshaw in India: “the humble three-wheel vehicle that could help cities like...

Green Sovereign Bonds: Tactical Moves on an Emerging Market

October 20, 2016
France issued the first green sovereign bond in September and China may soon follow, joining the ranks of institutions like the World Bank and large companies. Green bonds fund programs aimed at stemming climate change and promoting alternative energies, energy efficiency, water treatment and other forms of sustainable development. So far, yearly issuances represent about 1 percent of the global...

Climate Accord Could Push A/C Out of Sweltering India’s Reach

Ellen Barry and Coral Davenport October 17, 2016
In India, a family’s first air conditioner marks upward mobility and the potential to reach the middle class. But the low-cost air conditioners usually contain hydrofluorocarbons, a “supergreenhouse gas,” report Ellen Barry and Coral Davenport of the New York Times. Negotiators from more than 150 nations have reached a global agreement to phase out use of HFCs. For countries like the United...

No Country Is Taking the 2 Degree Climate Target Seriously

David Roberts October 5, 2016
Cognitive dissonance is when thoughts and attitudes do not match behaviors. Humans are nervous about climate change, but they are not changing old habits around fossil fuels. “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 routines of day-to-day...

Aviation Emissions Are Next Target in Fight Against Climate Change

Justin Worland September 28, 2016
Negotiators from more than 50 nations, including China and the United States, gathered in Montreal with the goal of encouraging greater efficiency and advanced technologies to control emissions from the airlines industry. “An agreement to address aviation emissions may play a key role in determining whether global leaders will be able to meet the goal of keeping global temperatures from rising...

Study: Climate Change in East Asia Caused by China’s Air Pollution

Viola Zhou September 13, 2016
Manufacturers reduced costs by relocating factories to China where wages were low and regulations few. Researchers from China, Britain and the United States published a study in Nature Geoscience that suggests China’s role in producing goods for the West is contributing to a changing climate for East Asia. New climate patterns are linked to factory and export activities, as well as a reliance on...

Will ExxonMobil Have to Pay for Misleading the Public on Climate Change?

Paul Barrett and Matthew Philips September 7, 2016
A handful of climate-change skeptics have convinced legislators in the United States and other nations to dismiss ample findings by climate researchers that the planet is warming. The Union of Concerned Scientists in 2007 compared fossil-fuel industry tactics “to manufacture uncertainty” on scientific findings with those of the cigarette industry. Investigative journalists in 2015 suggested that...