In The News

Climate Future Could Be Decided in the Courts

Emily Schwartz Greco July 31, 2015
Over the past thirty years, most governments have been slow in responding to the threat of climate change. So environmentalists have increasingly turned to courts for results. Much like the anti-tobacco groups of the 1990s, advocacy groups are suing governments for failing to protect constituents – and have reported successes in Washington State and the Netherlands. South Pacific groups are...

How to Create a New Climate for Peace

Lauren Herzer July 20, 2015
The G7 commissioned an independent report to address the threats to international security from climate change including competition over resources, volatile food prices and natural disasters. Weak states and poor governance exacerbate the problems: The Ethiopian government’s policy of selling privately owned land in the face of a food shortages has left indigenous minorities without farmlands or...

Climate Change Brings Ill Winds for Airline Industry

Tim Radford July 15, 2015
Researchers studied round trips for airlines between Hawaii and airports in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angles over the past two decades: Eastbound trips are now an average 10 minutes shorter and westbound trips were 11 minutes longer. The researchers suggest that climate change and volatile wind patterns are the reason. “[T]iny differences began to add up to substantial costs in time and fuel...

Climate Change Brings Moral Change

Mary Evelyn Tucker July 14, 2015
The world’s major religions urge both respect for nature’s power and gratitude for Earth’s bounty. No one should have been surprised by the encyclical of Pope Francis, rallying believers and non-believers in a global call: “The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that...

The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change Forever

Tom Randall July 6, 2015
Renewable forms of energy gain favor with investors. “Trillions of dollars will be invested over the next 25 years, driving some of the most profound changes yet in how humans get their electricity,” reports Tom Randall, based on a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance that forecasts global power market trends through 2040: Solar prices are falling and could be competitive for most world markets...

Climate Changes May Eradicate Health Progress

Sandy Dechert June 24, 2015
A warming climate is not good for health. More than 700 died during a heat wave in Pakistan and hundreds more died in India during a previous heat wave. Rising temperatures also heighten risks of bacterial, viral and insect-borne disease; asthma; and respiratory and cardio failure. A commission convened by the medical journal Lancet identified climate change as the biggest global health threat of...

Pope Calls for “Action Now” to Save Planet

Philip Pullella June 18, 2015
Pope Frances, leader of the Catholic Church, is calling for immediate action on climate change and poverty. “In the ‘Laudato Si (Praise Be), On the Care of Our Common Home,’ Francis calls for a change of lifestyle in rich countries steeped in a ‘throwaway’ consumer culture and an end to an ‘obstructionist attitudes’ that sometimes put profit before the common good,” reports Philip Pullella for...