Climate 411

This post is by Mary Kelly, Attorney and Co-Director, Land, Water, and Wildlife Program at Environmental Defense.

If you’ve been watching the news, you know we have a climate problem, and you may also know we have a drinking water problem in some parts of the country. What you may not realize is that these two problems are related. Yes, global warming can impact rainfall, but that’s not all. The water supply sector uses large amounts of energy to transport, treat, and deliver water. On the flip side, vast quantities of water are required to generate power.

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This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense.

Last month, Michael explained why we need to cut emissions as soon as possible. A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences adds even more urgency. It says that:

• Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuel use have accelerated since 2000, and
• Earth’s oceans may be taking up an increasingly smaller fraction of the extra CO₂.

This paper received coverage even before it was published. Now that it’s out, let’s take a closer look.

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Americans have a love affair with coastal living. Waterfront property is highly coveted and highly priced. And now may be nearly impossible to insure due to skyrocketing damage costs from hurricanes.

These are some of the findings in a new report from Environmental Defense titled Blown Away: How Global Warming is Eroding the Availability of Insurance Coverage in America’s Coastal States [PDF]. "Across the board, the nation’s largest carriers have declared their intentions to reduce exposure in high-risk areas by raising rates, hiking deductibles, limiting coverage and in many cases, pulling out of risky markets altogether."

Here are some more highlights from the report.

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This post is by Elizabeth Thompson, Legislative Director at Environmental Defense.

Climate Vote 2007

Part of a series on the work of the Environmental Defense Action Fund to enact an effective climate law. You can help by writing to Congress.

November 1, 2007, may go down as America’s D-Day in the fight to avert the global warming crisis. A key Senate subcommittee just passed the Lieberman-Warner America’s Climate Security Act (S.2191) – a bipartisan bill to cap and reduce America’s global warming pollution.

The full Environment & Public Works Committee is expected to take up the legislation the week of November 12, so it could come to a vote by the end of the month. With this bill we have a real chance of passing a mandatory cap on emissions in this Congress!

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This post is by Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University. He also serves as science advisor to Environmental Defense.

The award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an important milestone in the journey toward a global warming solution, and it got me thinking about how the IPCC came to be. To some extent, it was thanks to a miscalculation by the Reagan Administration!

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