Green Lights June 9: Top stories this week
Don't miss a single story: The best from Callaway Climate Insights
. . . . Welcome to Green Lights, our weekly roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. This week, New York — under a blanket of wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada’s tragic wildfires — was welcomed to the Air Quality Index club, and now, global warming’s a thing. Plus, don’t miss our pieces on how climate change will roll through capital markets (we’re talking about your insurance); the plastics treaty in Paris; and a carbon border tax. Here are the highlights in a simple and convenient format that makes it easy for our readers. It’s also easy to subscribe.
. . . . It’s not news until it’s in The New York Times is a favorite saying in the Big Apple. In that case, writes David Callaway, this is the week global warming became news there as the city choked under acrid, orange smoke from Canadian wildfires. When something similar happened three years ago in San Francisco, it was regarded as an oddity in NYC. Those crazy Californians and their forest policies.
. . . . Long an ignored and/or overlooked contributor to carbon pollution, the shipping sector is now getting more focus, though the efforts are still somewhat hampered by complex multi-national maritime laws that must go through many hurdles to be changed. However, one initiative has emerged which shows promise in making changes, writes Matthew Diebel.
. . . . Many headlines were made of the plastics treaty in Paris last week, where nations came together and … pledged to write a future agreement. Global diplomacy is a tricky and time-consuming practice, but countries need to do better.
. . . . In his Zeus column this week headlined, ‘How climate change will roll through capital markets - an early guide,’ David Callaway says insurance rates, municipal bonds, national debt, and commodities all will reflect coming disorder.
. . . . Canada’s exceptionally hot and dry weather in May has fueled hundreds of wildfires burning across the county from Quebec to the western provinces. See that smoke? If you’re in the northeastern U.S., you definitely see it. And smell it. And your flight’s delayed.
. . . . It’s one of the more interesting and, thankfully, bipartisan climate change moves percolating in Congress: A bill to tax imports from China and other countries with lower environmental standards. In other words, it’s a carbon border tax.
More greenery . . . .
From New Scientist: Turbulence on flights is getting worse because of climate change
From Politico: In a stunning manifestation, D.C. gets a lungful of climate change
From the United Arab Emirates’ incoming COP28 president: Phasedown of fossil fuels is inevitable
From behind the bar: Water scarcity threatens alcoholic drink production, Diageo warns
From NASA: The motion of the ocean is slowing; that’s not good
Truffles and toadstools: Fungi store a third of carbon from fossil fuel emissions and could be essential to reaching net zero