Green Lights May 10: Top stories this week
Green Lights May 10: Top stories this week
Don't miss a single story of the best from Callaway Climate Insights.
. . . . Welcome again to Green Lights. Here’s our weekly roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. This week, David Callaway says New York taxi drivers and politicians may have something to learn about traffic congestion from their counterparts in London. Bill Sternberg gives us a play-by-play assessment of the SEC’s landmark emissions disclosure rules, and Matthew Diebel says fossil-fuel industries are not as clean as they’d like you to think they are. Have a great weekend. And please subscribe.
. . . Investors have been trading the weather for as long as there’ve been financial instruments, writes David Callaway. Orange juice futures. Dutch coffee. Farmers used to hedge their crops by buying contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade (above). These days, with climate change hitting hard, weather derivatives are a booming business, and some financial firms — and exchanges — are cashing in.
. . . . Too often in Washington, enactment of a regulation or a law is treated as the end of the ballgame when it’s really just the fourth or fifth inning. Such is the case with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new climate disclosure law, which passed on a 3-2 vote earlier this year, writes Bill Sternberg. As predicted, almost a dozen lawsuits were filed almost immediately, casting the new law’s fate into doubt and leading some to speculate it may never get implemented. For a look at what happens next, investors and corporate executives should check this out.
. . . . Dirty may not be as bad as filthy, but it’s still dirty. And no amount of greenwashing is going to make it clean, Matthew Diebel writes of the efforts of some propane industry proponents. In his insight columns this week, he’s inspired by the Congressional budget hearing titled “Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil’s Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change.”
. . . . Who knew there were so many self-driving trucks being tested and operating on America’s highways? While there are electric trucks on the road, these autonomous trucks are demonstrating how much safer and fuel-efficient even diesel rigs are when they do not have a human behind the wheel. Part of the secret to their success is that they go slower.
. . . . New York City is getting ready to launch a new era of congestion charges next month and there will surely be complaints from taxi and ride-hailing drivers. David Callaway says New York can look to London, where the congestion charge has been a success. If New York’s plan helps clean the air on a hot summer day and raise money for other climate mitigation, voters will respond.
More greenery . . . .
Too close for comfort: Climate change is pushing animals closer to humans, with potentially catastrophic consequences (Inside Climate News)
Tragic beauty: Shorelines Marred by Climate Change (Scientific American)
Accountability: Michigan plans to sue oil industry over climate change (E&E News)
Business is getting too hot: How extreme temps affect U.S. small businesses (Bloomberg)
Fed analysis: U.S. banks face climate risk data challenges (Reuters)