Climate Change Is Hitting Georgia’s Peach Industry, Where An Unusually Warm Winter This Year Let To

Based on a survey of 144 climate change economists performed by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, response to: "Placing a “price on carbon” through a tax or cap‐and‐trade system will increase incentives for energy efficiency and the development of lower carbon energy production."

Other interesting results:

84% agreed or strongly agreed that “the environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions... create significant risks to important sectors of the United States and global economies.”

91.6% preferred or strongly preferred “market‐based mechanisms, such as a carbon tax or cap‐and‐trade system” over command‐and‐control regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Geographical distributions of penguin species

The species groups that are proportionally most in danger (the proportion of species within that grouping that are imperiled) are overwhelmingly freshwater species. Freshwater mussels, crayfishes, stoneflies (stonefly larvae live in freshwater), freshwater fishes and amphibians are the most at risk. This demonstrates the substantial need for a focus on conservation of freshwater habitats.

The American Lung Association released its 2012 "State of the Air" report. Among their findings, they report that the air quality in many places has improved, but that over 127 million people—41 percent of the U.S.—still suffer pollution levels that are too often dangerous to breathe. The report includes this graph from EPA, showing that emissions of the six common air pollutants have fallen 59% since 1990 as a result of Clean Air Act regulations. These reductions have occurred even as population, energy consumption, vehicle miles traveled and GDP have increased, debunking the myth that environmental regulations hurt economic growth.

*The "six common pollutants" are fine particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO), and lead.

Ongoing drought conditions have the prompted the U.S. Agriculture Department to declare a federal disaster area in more than 1,000 counties covering 26 states. That's almost one-third of all the counties in the United States, making it the largest disaster declaration ever made by the USDA. The result is skyrocketing corn, wheat and soybean prices.

Forest cover on Borneo over time, projected to 2020. Deforestation, driven mostly by clearing land to produce palm oil plantations, means less habitat for species such as orangutans, and more carbon emissions from disturbed peat lands.

Historic drought in California affects more than California. Local impacts of climate change have broader implications.

Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpcol analyzed the failure of the 2009 Cap & Trade bill to determine what caused climate legislation to fail while health care reform succeeded. In her report, she claims that a major failure was that the environmental coalition focused on gaining republican support (which was reasonable, as Republicans had previously supported cap and trade, including 2008 Republican Presidential nominee John McCain), without recognizing that the environment had become a politically polarized issue, with Republicans turning against environmental legislation.

In an interview with The Washington Post's Brad Plumer, she states:

One of the things that really surprised me in my research came from pulling together scores from the [League of Conservation Voters]. And you see a clear pull on politicians from grassroots conservative opinion around 2006 and 2007. Climate-change denial had been an elite industry for a long time, but it finally penetrated down to conservative Republican identified voters around this time. That created new pressures on Republican officeholders and candidates. And I don’t think most people noticed that at the time. Even John McCain. I have this figure that shows him moving up on LCV scores for most of the last decade [i.e., casting more pro-environmental votes] and then pulling back suddenly to the lowest level starting in 2007.

“Employment in the U.S. solar business grew 12 times faster than overall job creation... Fed by state initiatives to spur clean energy and innovative financing measures offered by companies such as SolarCity Corp., developers are adding workers at record rates to install rooftop panels. Oil and gas producers by contrast have slashed 351,410 jobs worldwide since prices began to slide in the middle of 2014, according to Houston-based Graves & Co.... This increase is being driven by declining renewable energy technology costs and enabling policy frameworks. We expect this to continue as the case for renewables strengthens and countries move to achieve climate targets... The group projects the workforce in clean energy will grow to 24 million by 2030 if United Nations targets are met on climate change and development.” - Bloomberg