In The News

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...

Waste Not, Want Not: Industries Innovate With Trash

Susan Froetschel October 11, 2016
With urbanization and a swelling global middle class come enormous amounts of waste. Many governments and companies respond to this challenge with sustainable solutions including recycling. Organic material – food, in particular – is the largest part of household waste in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Countries are changing laws, allowing redistribution of food or flexibility on expiration...

Pollution Controls as Infrastructure Investment

Euston Quah and Joergen Oerstroem Moeller October 6, 2016
Indonesia and the surrounding region produces 80 percent of the world’s palm oil. In the short term, slashing and burning brush is a low-cost way for farmers to clear land for palm-oil production. But a murky haze chokes the region, contributing to illnesses and deaths, not to mention lost production with business and school cancellations. The solution is to make slash-and-burn clearing less...

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...

US Cities Reconsider LED Streetlights After AMA Warning

Alyssa Navarro September 26, 2016
LED lights have captured a greater share of the global market each year as Europe, the United States, India and China enact policies encouraging energy conservation. The light-emitting diode, invented in the early 1960s, sends an electric current through a semiconductor device. LEDs are about seven times more energy efficient than conventional lights and last 25 times longer, while cutting energy...

ICC: Environmental Destruction Is a Crime Against Humanity

Rowena Lindsay September 23, 2016
The International Criminal Court is turning attention to cases of environmental destruction and land grabs as crimes against humanity, reports the Christian Science Monitor. “This represents a significant shift in strategy at the ICC, which since its 1989 inception has been charged with investigating war crimes and human rights offenses when national governments were incapable of doing so,” notes...