Protecting intact peatlands and restoring degraded ones are crucial steps if the world is to counter climate change, European researchers said Friday. In a study, they said peat bogs, wetlands that contain large amounts of carbon in the form of decaying vegetation that has built up over centuries, could help the world achieve climate goals like the limit of 2 degrees Celsius of postindustrial warming that is part of the 2015 Paris agreement.
San Diego Gas & Electric released a sustainability strategy Thursday with climate change-conscious goals in the areas of environmental stewardship, clean transportation, grid modernization, community engagement and company operations.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday to protect nearly a third of California’s land and coastal waters in his latest effort to fight climate change that he has blamed for recent record-breaking wildfires.
Determining how climate change is affecting water supplies is difficult in a state like California that swings between floods and droughts, but a new study has found that climate models agree on key metrics that could help water managers in the Golden State.
Droughts usually evoke visions of cracked earth, withered crops, dried-up rivers and dust storms. But droughts can also form over oceans, and when they then move ashore they are often more intense and longer-lasting than purely land-born dry spells.
A report by California energy officials on Tuesday placed blame for rolling blackouts that left millions without power in August on the impact of climate change and outdated policies and practices that failed to adequately take into account hotter weather.
California energy officials on Tuesday said the state’s power planning processes were insufficient to address a crushing heat wave in August that led to rolling blackouts for two days. In a preliminary analysis that was requested by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the heads of three state energy bodies said there was no single cause of the outages.
The situation playing out along the Muddy River is not unique across the Southwest and in the Colorado River Basin. As climate change and overuse reduce water supplies, the gap between “paper water” (the legal right to use water) and “actual water” (what’s available) is widening.
The devastating wildfires raging across the western United States are a wake-up call for anyone who continues to doubt the financial and economic implications of climate change.
Last month, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission published a comprehensive report on the risks climate change poses to U.S. financial markets, stating in clear terms that “a world wracked by frequent and devastating shocks from climate change cannot sustain the fundamental conditions supporting our financial system.”
We need it. We need it really, really badly. With wildfire after wildfire battering California since late summer, burning record acreage and killing at least 30 people in less than two months, weather experts have repeatedly said conditions conducive to critical fire risk probably won’t begin to subside until the first significant rainfall of autumn.
