Climate change mitigation

Volunteers offload supplies on Pine Island in Florida on October 2, 2022 in the wake of Hurricane Ian.Photo: Gerald Herbert (AP)It can be tough to figure out a gift for someone who is super concerned about climate change and the environment. In a holiday that has unfortunately become defined by consumerism, what’s the best present that somehow circumvents buying even more stuff? But sending yet another $100 to powerful, well-known green groups may feel equally as pointless, and for good reason: Research released last year…

Damage from Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida, on October 1, 2022.Photo: Joe Raedle (Getty Images)This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.Religious Americans overwhelmingly believe they have a duty to protect the Earth, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, with 80 percent saying God entrusted them with that responsibility. The survey also found that 42 percent prayed for the environment in the past year. But that sense of duty doesn’t necessarily…

The entrance to COP27.Photo: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP (Getty Images)Tens of thousands of people are gathering in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt for the annual UN climate change conference this month—and that includes hundreds of representatives from the fossil fuel industry who are sitting in on the talks and outnumbering representatives from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, a new analysis has found.03:26Segment of Challenger Space Shuttle Found at Bottom of Atlantic Ocean2 hours agoAt last year’s UN climate meeting,…

Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, who appears on the Oxfam list.Photo: Nati Harnik (AP)The world’s wealthiest people are responsible for about a million times more emissions than the world’s lowest earners when you take into account their investments, a new report has found. The report, issued Sunday by Oxfam, finds that the world’s 125 wealthiest people—including American billionaires Bill Gates, Jim Walton, Warren Buffett,and Elon Musk—have a combined carbon footprint roughly equivalent to that of…

A general view of Drax Group Plc’s Coal fired power station on October 09, 2021 in Drax, England. Photo: Dan Kitwood (Getty Images)UK-based “clean” energy company Drax Group is looking to sell offset credits tied to U.S.-based power plants that the company hasn’t even built yet, Bloomberg reports. While the company is being vague about specifics, Drax says its first biomass plant with carbon capture technology is expected to be up and running 2030. The future U.S. power plants that Drax plans to build rely on a type of…

Trees catty corner to soybean fields in the Brazilian Amazon.Photo: Leo Correa (AP)Countries will need close to 3 billion acres (1.2 billion hectares) of land to fulfill their current climate pledges, thanks to their focus on techniques like planting new trees over tougher but less land-intensive methods of reducing greenhouse gasses, a report released Tuesday finds. That’s roughly half the amount currently used for all global agriculture and a bigger area than the entire United States.The Intergovernmental Panel on…

Nations are supposed to be doing everything they can to stave off catastrophic climate change, but a new report reveals that we’re not hitting the marks we need to. Not even close. We are speeding toward climate disaster, according to the report from the United Nations. Unless countries worldwide commit to much larger carbon emissions cuts, the planet is on track for between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius (3.8 to 5.2 degrees Fahrenheit) of average temperature increase by 2100. At that level of global warming, scientists…

Workers stand in front of stacked pipes for a natural gas pipeline.Photo: Sean Gallup (Getty Images)The most powerful countries in the world keepratcheting up public funding for fossil fuel projects and increasing emissions—despite the fact that continued investment in dirty fuels could push us beyond the warming targets laid out in the Paris Agreement.Last year, the G20, which is composed of 19 of the world’s wealthiest countries and the European Union, ramped up funding for dirty fuels by a stunning 29%, a new report…

Photo: Jan Woitas (AP)Renewables have been keeping pace with growing global energy demand, a new analysis finds, in an encouraging sign during a global energy crisis. But there’s trouble ahead for clean power, as climate change keeps wreaking havoc and supercharging droughts and heatwaves.A report out this week from UK-based clean energy think tank Ember takes a look at how electricity has been faring thus far in 2022. The report analyzes energy data from 75 countries; those 75 countries represent 90% of the world’s…

US Steel Clairton Works in Clairton, Pennsylvania.Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP (Getty Images)This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.What do you think of when you hear the word “pollution” — a city smothered in smog, a beach strewn with trash, factories pumping out dark clouds?Now try to picture “carbon emissions.” See anything? Probably not, since carbon dioxide is invisible.This simple exercise helps explain the growing popularity of once-rare phrases like “carbon…