Climate Climate & Energy

Doomsday seed vault’s stores are growing

CHICAGO — The stores of seeds in a “doomsday” vault in the Norwegian Arctic are growing as researchers rush to preserve 100,000 crop varieties from potential extinction. The imperiled seeds are going to be critical for protecting the global food supply against devastating crop losses as a result of climate change, said Cary Fowler, executive […]

Canada touts continental climate change policy

OTTAWA — Canada’s environment minister on Thursday heralded a possible continental climate change pact with the United States, saying US President Barack Obama has opened the door. “At this point in history there is an enormous opportunity to work together as North Americans to achieve real focused and concerted progress on the environment,” Environment Minister […]

Climate change to cause dark night of the shoal

PARIS — Climate change will cause key species of fish to migrate towards the poles, badly depleting many commercial fisheries, scientists said in a study published on Thursday. “The impact of climate change on marine biodiversity and fisheries is going to be huge,” said its lead author, William Cheung, of the School of Environmental Sciences […]

Paris digs deep to harness Earth’s green energy

PARIS — A major new project is under way in Paris to provide ecologically clean heating for an entire district by extracting piping hot water from nearly two kilometers under the earth. In a revival of the French capital’s geothermal potential, drilling has just begun in the north of the city on a desolate building […]

Northern Ireland environment minister bans climate change ads

BELFAST — Northern Ireland’s environment minister came under fire Monday after he banned a climate change ad campaign, saying it was “nonsense” to suggest people could save the world by turning off their lights. Sammy Wilson, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party which shares power with Sinn Fein in the British-ruled province, believes mankind […]

Japan PM to draft ‘Green New Deal:’ report

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will order his ministries to draft a “Green New Deal” this week to counter the twin threats of climate change and the economic downturn, a report said Sunday. Aso will order a stimulus package focusing on slashing greenhouse gases at a meeting of his global warming advisory panel […]

Beef has 13 times more climate impact than chicken, 57 times more than potatoes

SciAm reports:

• Pound for pound, beef production generates greenhouse gases that contribute more than 13 times as much to global warming as do the gases emitted from producing chicken. For potatoes, the multiplier is 57.
• Beef consumption is rising rapidly, both as population increases and as people eat more meat.
• Producing the annual beef diet of the average American emits as much greenhouse gas as a car driven more than 1,800 miles.

I primarily focus on technology-based solutions since they can be the basis of government policy and since many websites are devoted to personal behavior choices, like No Impact Man.

Behavior-based strategies really only work on a large scale when societal values change (and/or prices jump) sharply, which is certainly inevitable in the coming years as more and more people come to grips with the increasingly painful reality of human-caused global warming (see "What are the near-term climate Pearl Harbors?") and realize just how immoral it is to maintain current levels of GHG emissions per capita at the expense of the next 50 generations to walk the earth (NOAA stunner: Climate change "largely irreversible for 1000 years," with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

For a good article on how one meat-loving environmentalist has changed his behavior, see Mike Tidwell's "The Low-Carbon Diet."

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Book coming out in 2010!

My book with this title will be coming out in fall 2010 by Palgrave. Look for it!!

Fog's decline boosted Europe's warming trend

PARIS — Fog, mist and haze in Europe have declined over the last three decades, a trend that may have stoked regional warming and ironically could be linked to better air quality, a study published on Sunday says. From 1978-2006, temperatures in parts of Europe rose above the global land average, with prominent increases in […]

Transport ministers plot climate action in Japan

TOKYO — Officials from 20 nations met Thursday in Japan to find ways to tackle global warming related to transport, which causes nearly one-quarter of carbon emissions but has partly evaded strict regulation. Transport ministers or envoys from nations including all members of the Group of Eight industrial powers opened two days of talks in […]