I was just in central California right before the Los Angeles fires started. The effects of climate change are all around us. And the only solution is to dramatically cut down on the use of fossil fuels. But how do we do that when our federal government seems to be…
The Inflation Reduction Act was one of President Joe Biden’s great accomplishments and an opportunity for real progress on climate change, and President-elect Donald Trump wants to get rid of it. “I will rescind all the unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act,” Trump said in a speech before…
I grew up in the upper Midwest surrounded by forests. Every Christmas we would go into the nearby woods to cut down a tree. I can still remember how wonderful the fresh cut northern Balsams smelled. The Christmas, or Solstice, tree is an old tradition. It started with Nordic and…
This month marks the fifth year that I’ve been writing this climate change column. It was originally published in the Albuquerque Journal North in November of 2019. In the last five years there has been progress on climate change, but as most of us know, we are not moving fast…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines a tipping point as a critical threshold in a complex system that when exceeded can lead to change that is irreversible. We know that all our planetary tipping points are related to rising temperatures. The challenging factor is that we do not fully…
In the last few weeks as the hoopla of an election year has taken focus, we have seen the stark contrast of two distinct versions of the future presented by our two major parties. Not only does the viability of our democracy hang in the balance but the livability of…
It is hot and it will only get hotter. “July 21, 2024, was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth. The historic day comes on the heels of 13 straight months of unprecedented temperatures and the hottest year scientists have seen,” reported Sarah Kaplan recently in the Washington Post. Temperatures…
Climate anxiety or eco-anxiety is experienced as stress, fear, and worry about current and future effects of climate change. It is based on a real threat and is a rational response to the world we live in. Floods, fires, heat waves and massive storms have already caused hundreds of thousands…
Geoengineering may be in your future. Geoengineering involves such untested sunlight reflection technology as stratospheric injection of sulfur dioxide, marine cloud brightening and massive sunshields. It is a scary topic, but we need to pull our heads out of the sand and take a hard look at it. Annual temperatures…
If you ask who is responsible for climate change and who should pay, you get a lot of finger-pointing. Those responsible do not want to pony up their fair share – that includes most of us. Consider that 23 rich, developed countries make up only 12% of the world’s population…
