Have Hurricanes Gustav and Hanna gotten you thinking about the possible link between hurricanes and climate change?
Check out our hurricane and clilmate change overview for the straight facts from EDF climate scientists. And Peter Black shares eye-opening maps over on ClimateAtlas.
This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.
I live in New York City, and when I started riding my bike to work last year, I became acquainted firsthand with the obstacles to using this most efficient and green mode of transport. Here’s the short list:
Thankfully, help is on the way. New York City has turned decidedly pro-bike under Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Jeannette Sadik-Khan. And the non-profit group America Bikes is helping to bring bike-friendly changes to communities across the country.
At first I was excited to escape the inferno of August in Washington D.C. for a vacation in Maine, but after three straight days of rain I started to feel a certain amount of self-pity. On the fourth rainy morning, however, a visit to a farmer I used to work for quickly put my woes in perspective. The rain put a minor dent in my vacation, but it put a major dent in the growing season for Maine’s farmers.
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all have received exceptional amounts of rain this summer, seriously damaging certain crops. Maine’s raspberry and green bean crops were devastated, and livestock feed crops (grain and hay) could not be harvested due to the wet weather. Many farmers will be paying high prices to truck in feed to replace what was lost.
No particular weather event can be reliably ascribed to climate change. But as I talked to my farmer friend, I began to wonder if this summer’s wet weather was a glimpse into the future for farmers in the region.
Another UN climate negotiating session has come and gone, the banners and tents swiftly dismantled, the delegates again scattered to the world’s four corners. Most leave with a sense of progress – incremental, to be sure, but the meetings are slowly transforming into real negotiations. When the United States’ new team hits the ground in January, the pace of negotiations will grow furious as we count down to the Copenhagen talks in December.
Here are the highlights from a week packed with negotiations, side events and planning sessions.
Even if every industrialized country were to reduce its emissions to zero by 2050, atmospheric carbon levels would still be above what scientists tell us is dangerous.
That’s a pretty powerful statement, and it leads to the question: How do we convince developing countries to set limits on their emissions? A possible answer to that challenge brought me to Ghana this week.
This post is by Gustavo Silva-Chávez, an international policy analyst in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.
Early this week, the team from Environmental Defense Fund started boarding planes for Accra, Ghana to attend the international Climate Change Talks. The official first day was Thursday, but Wednesday was busy with pre-meeting workshops.
