Green Lights March 1: Top stories this week
Don't miss a single story of the best from Callaway Climate Insights.
. . . . Welcome back to Green Lights. Here’s our weekly roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. This week, David Callaway explains why the Scope 3 emissions train has left the station (without the SEC), and looks at the potential threat AI poses to the nation’s energy grids. It’s probably not what you think. Here are the highlights in a simple and convenient format that makes it easy for our readers. It’s also easy to subscribe.
. . . . As the Securities and Exchange Commission gears up for a vote next week on its long-awaited climate disclosure rules, expectations are high that SEC Commissioner Gary Gensler will ditch the controversial requirement for big companies to report on emissions from their supply chains, known as Scope 3 reporting. But David Callaway writes that while the SEC has dithered over political threats to the new rules for months, more than half of large U.S. companies are already starting to report their emissions. Why? Because investors want the data. . . .
. . . . It is perhaps inevitable that the demand for more AI is going to create more energy usage. But without strategies to manage soaring power needs, it could soon overwhelm our existing power grids and create an energy security threat that makes the Russian emergency seem like a blinking tail light.
. . . . It’s cute, but costly. Matthew Diebel’s weekend cottage in Connecticut is an energy disaster, he says. It may be too late for this 1930s beauty, but the big debate now is whether making homes more energy efficient is worth the cost.
. . . . Ministers of environment and other leaders from more than 180 nations convened this week in Nairobi for the start of the sixth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly. Organizers say this year’s assembly will focus on strengthening environmental multilateralism to address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution.
. . . . First it was Chinese weather balloons, now it’s their electric vehicles. The Biden Administration’s declaration Thursday that Chinese EVs are a national security risk lays out a stark threat to American drivers and highways. It’s a quick way to lock up the auto vote, and to prevent Donald Trump from making it his own in the election campaign, writes David Callaway. Next up? Chinese solar panels and their data collection threat to our homes.
More greenery . . . .
It’s not us, it’s you: Exxon CEO blames public for failure to fix climate change (The Hill)
Melting away: Climate change costing U.S. ski industry billions (The Associated Press)
Race against extinction: Harvard works to analyze and digitize its medicinal plant collections (The Harvard Gazette)
Weather and economic perils: U.S. and Philippines the hardest hit (Swiss Re Institute)