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“Oil Change International released our Big Oil Reality Check report today in collaboration with over 200 organizations worldwide. The report assesses the climate pledges and plans of eight international oil and gas companies – Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Eni, Equinor, and ConocoPhillips – against 10 criteria representing the bare minimum for aligning with the …
My Modern Met: “This dreamy winter scene has earned Dieter Damschen the title of GDT Nature Photographer of the Year. The competition is run by the Germany Society for Nature Photographers to highlight the talent of its members. This year, 481 members from 13 countries entered just under 8,000 images. Damschen rose to the top …
New AI report: OECD (2024), OECD Artificial Intelligence Papers, No. 16, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/d1a8d965-en.”Defining AI incidents and related terms,” it’s a must-read for everyone in AI. Important information: An AI incident is defined as: “an event, circumstance or series of events where the development, use or malfunction of one or more AI systems directly …
Fossil Fuel Finance Report 2024 – “The world’s 60 biggest banks committed $6,900,000,000,000 over 8 years to the fossil fuel industry, driving climate chaos & causing deadly local community impacts.”
Join the Witkin State Law Library and Professor Dave Owen for a free live webinar on “Environmental Law and the Things We Need to Build” on Tuesday, June 11, 2024 at 6PM. Is environmental law keeping us from building important things—and from building things that would be good for the environment? Recently, that question has …
Data is Plural: “Carbon Majors, run by the UK-based InfluenceMap, “is a database of historical production data from 122 of the world’s largest oil, gas, coal, and cement producers.” It attributes to these producers 1,421 metric gigatons of CO2-equivalent emissions from 1854 through 2022. Launched last month, the database provides downloads at several levels of …
Vox: “Several US states are again experiencing an influx of wildfire smoke as Canada’s summer fire season gets underway. Due to the scale of the wildfires and natural weather patterns, enormous amounts of smoke are drifting southward — much like last year. North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Minnesota are among the earliest states to …
The New York Times [unpaywalled]: “The insurance turmoil caused by climate change — which had been concentrated in Florida, California and Louisiana — is fast becoming a contagion, spreading to states like Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio, Utah and Washington. Even in the Northeast, where homeowners insurance was still generally profitable last year, the trends are worsening. …
“New InfluenceMap analysis finds that negative lobbying by the world’s largest automakers is putting global climate targets at risk and threatening the transition to electric vehicles. This report analyses the climate policy engagement strategies of fifteen of the largest global automakers in seven key regions (Australia, EU, Japan, India, South Korea, UK, US). It shows …
International Energy Agency – Electricity 2024 Analysis and forecast to 2026 – “Electricity is central to the functioning of modern societies and economies – and its importance is only growing as technologies that run on electricity, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps, become increasingly popular. Power generation is currently the largest source of carbon …
Washington Post [link is free to read]: “Your vibrant green lawn may look lush, but it’s actually an ecological wasteland. “The idea for that ideal lawn is that nothing else can live in it,” said David Mizejewski, a naturalist with the National Wildlife Federation, a nonprofit conservation organization. “It’s like a dense, eternally green carpet.” …
Wired: “The humble tree has long protected humans from sickness and even death—and in the modern city, it’s still doing so. As global temperatures rise, so too does the “urban heat island effect”—the tendency for cities to absorb and hold on to the sun’s energy, which is a growing public-health crisis worldwide. On a small …
