Green Lights March 8: Top stories this week
Green Lights March 8: 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 puts the SEC’s climate disclosure rules in perspective — and he’s waiting for the inevitable legal challenges. Mark Hulbert explains how investors are misreading the value of lower renewable prices compared to fossil fuels. Finally, there’s a most unexpected visitor to Nantucket. Here are the highlights in a simple and convenient format that makes it easy for our readers. It’s also easy to subscribe.
. . . . Eye from the sky? MethaneSAT, an 800-pound satellite developed by the Environmental Defense Fund along with Harvard and the New Zealand Space Agency, successfully launched this week. It has the ability to show where troubling methane releases are in real-time, and expose the fossil fuel companies with the most leaks. But it also will track improvements being made as companies work to reduce emissions.
. . . . Everywhere we turn this year, we’re hearing about soaring capacity of renewable electricity coming from wind and solar energy. And yet stock prices of the renewable companies remain in the tank. Why? Mark Hulbert, citing a new book about the challenges of climate finance, argues that investors are misreading the value of lower renewable prices compared to fossil fuels. Instead, it’s the return on investment that utility customers value most, and that in this case fossil fuels still clearly come out on top.
. . . . M&M’s are taking sustainability to a candy can-do level, Matthew Diebel writes this week in his insights column. The candy maker is using video from existing TV and online advertising and then re-editing them into a new campaign highlighting their sustainability efforts.
. . . . There once was a whale near Nantucket. And the survey team from the New England Aquarium was astonished, because the gray whale they spotted last week is a member of a species that has been extinct in the Atlantic for more than 200 years. They (gray whales) mostly live in the north Pacific Ocean. But it could be that climate change has helped this whale take a really, really long summer vacation trip east.
. . . . By far the most interesting take on the SEC’s climbdown on climate disclosures this week came from former acting Commissioner Allison Herren Lee, who said that the new rules could lead to more greenwashing by companies, not less, writes David Callaway. But for all the controversy, the SEC has at last enshrined into securities law that companies will be required to disclose climate risk. Bring on the reports.
. . . . American cities yield almost 60 million acre-feet of stormwater runoff each year — that’s enough water to meet 93% of municipal and industrial needs. So says a new report from the Pacific Institute that finds there’s a substantial opportunity for urban stormwater capture to improve resilience across the U.S.
Sorry, Barbie: The best climate change movies and TV series of 2023 (Yale Climate Connections)
Carbon emitters go to the polls: How five crucial elections in 2024 could shape climate action for decades (Nature)
Species at risk: Fossil study reveals which animals are most vulnerable to extinction (Phys.org)
Field notes: Documenting Climate Change Through Art (The Brown and White)
Wait, what?: San Diego man first in US charged with smuggling greenhouse gases (USA Today)