Green Lights May 16: Top stories this week
Don't miss a single story from the best of Callaway Climate Insights.
. . . . Welcome back to Green Lights. Here’s our roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. This week, David Callaway writes about California’s forthcoming battles over EVs, cap-and-trade and even its proposed high-speed rail project. Mark Hulbert writes about the implications for the real-estate market as property insurance starts to unravel. And don’t miss the news about Dave’s book! We hope you have a great weekend. Please subscribe to support our climate finance journalism.
. . . . California extended its controversial cap-and-trade program through 2045, but with none of the major revisions many climate advocates had hoped for. It has been rebranded “cap-and-invest” and currently generates about $4 billion a year. Now comes the hard part of pushing the reauthorization through the California legislature.
. . . . Jean Rogers (above), one of world’s leading sustainability executives, has left Blackstone after four years as global head of ESG and has joined climate investing pioneer Pegasus Capital Advisors as senior operating advisor. Her departure from Blackstone illustrates the beginning of a migration of sustainability executive talent to the more hardcore climate investing firms with focus mostly on energy and water infrastructure projects.
. . . . Don’t miss this fascinating special project in the Financial Times that looks for cities most at risk from climate change. Calling them “sitting ducks,” it identifies 25 cities most vulnerable to flash flooding or wildfires, including eight cities and one state in the U.S.
. . . . From a reauthorization of the cap-and-trade program to the battle for the California’s mandate to have all new automobiles be electric by 2035, David Callaway looks at how Gov. Gavin Newsom will need to balance climate progress vs. cost overruns that will reverberate well beyond California’s golden borders.
. . . . The property insurance market, in the U.S. and in many parts of the world, is starting to unravel in the face of ravaging global warming, with huge implications for the real estate market behind it, writes Mark Hulbert. Citing a spate of recent statements by a former California insurance commissioner and even the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Hulbert argues that without adequate government backup and incentives for insurers, there is real potential they will just pull out of many markets exposed to wildfires, flooding and violent storms. While that has started to happen in parts of California and Florida, it has yet to spread to the mortgage market because of state backup plans. Those plans are generally underfunded, however.
. . . . David Callaway would like to take this short break from global climate finance for a special announcement. His first book, a nonfiction political thriller titled “Unregulated Militia,” will be coming out at the end of the month. It’s about America’s fascination with guns and the emergence of drones in warfare and terrorism, taking place about a decade in the future during the middle of a presidential transition. “The hero is, of course, a journalist, but one far younger and far prettier than me,” he says.
More greenery . . . .
Grasshoppers getting bigger?: New study on growth shows uncommon trend in response to warming (The Daily/University of Washington)
Another sign: Home Insurance Crisis Getting Even More Expensive (New York Times)
Significant risk: Amazon forest dieback if global warming overshoots 1.5°C (Carbon Brief)
The eyes have it: Climate change threatens eye health in disturbing ways (Smithsonian Magazine)
From the good news file: In a re-freezing trend, Antarctica gained 200 billion tons of ice (Springer)