Nov 21 2008

Climate Changes

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Here's a roundup of some of the week's major news on climate change:

• In his first post-election speech on global warming, President-elect Barack Obama promised on Tuesday to "confront this challenge once and for all" with a combination of investments in clean energy technology and a cap-and-trade market to raise the cost of carbon emissions. 
• Obama's call to action won widespread praise. The head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said his pledge was a "huge signal" of encouragement to countries that negotiating a new accord to replace the Kyoto protocol on climate change. 
• Members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which includes several leading environmental organizations and utilities, including Pacific Gas and Electric Co., also endorsed Obama's statement. PG&E's chairman and CEO, Peter Darbee, welcomed the president-elect's commitment as "an opportunity to spur a wave of new investment in the technology and infrastructure needed to create a low carbon economy while at the same time providing a badly needed shot of economic adrenaline."
• A new United Nations report indicates that emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialized countries leveled off in 2006 for the first time in six years. That's the good news. The bad news is the study didn't measure emissions from India and China, two of the world's largest and fastest growing sources of carbon dioxide.
• In the meantime, global warming continues to wreak devastation on some ecosystems.  According to the New York Times, prolonged droughts and mild winters have promoted widespread infestations of mountain pine beetles that are killing millions of acres of forests from New Mexico to British Columbia.
• Physical scientists who wonder why their findings have not spurred the world to more decisive action may find answers in the social sciences--including the fields of behavioral decision making, risk analysis, and evolutionary psychology. According to an interesting new analysis of human risk perception, "The way we're psychologically wired and socially conditioned to respond to crises makes us ill-suited to react to the abstract and seemingly remote threat posed by global warming." 
  

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