US Should Pledge to Cut Heat-trapping Emissions At Least 50 Percent Below 2005 Levels by 2030 Johnson Banks/COP26
US Should Pledge to Cut Heat-trapping Emissions At Least 50 Percent Below 2005 Levels by 2030
Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director and Lead Economist, Climate & Energy | March 10, 2021, 10:06 am EDT This post is a part of a series on
President Biden has brought the US back into the Paris Agreement and has announced a Leaders’ Climate Summit, now set for April 22 Earth Day. The administration has said it will develop and submit its nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement ahead of the summit. An appropriately ambitious US NDC should include a commitment to cut its heat-trapping emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Such a target is both feasible and commensurate with the country’s responsibility to contribute to global effort
Will Brown
The FHFA Begins to Reckon with Climate Risks to the Housing Market
Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director and Lead Economist, Climate & Energy | March 5, 2021, 1:48 pm EDT
Yesterday I had the opportunity to offer comments at the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s public listening session on its recently issued Request for Information (RFI) on climate and natural disaster risk to the housing finance system. This is a watershed moment, with a growing recognition from regulators and market actors that climate change is an economic threat and that climate risks must be acknowledged and addressed.
The FHFA’s role as housing finance regulator
FEMA’s Expert Committee Breathes a Sigh of Relief: They can now “Actually Say Climate Change.”
. These executive orders (EO) include a wealth of provisions that will upright the country’s direction on climate change.
A key question now on my mind is how quickly this clear signal on the urgency to act on climate change will trickle down to the federal agencies that need to implement the policy provisions.
Is climate change filtering down into FEMA under the new Administration?
This week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Technical Mapping Advisory Committee (TMAC) met for the first time under the Biden administration. (Actually, one could argue it was the second meeting as the last TMAC two-day meeting was held the day before and day of Biden’s inauguration). While TMAC may sound like an obscure committee and not relevant to the layperson, it is the science-based technical committee established by the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, th
Los Angeles looking from Hollywood at dawn/Getty Images
The Social Cost of Carbon Gets an Interim Update from the Biden Administration
Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director and Lead Economist, Climate & Energy | March 2, 2021, 9:28 am EDT This post is a part of a series on
Last Friday, the Biden administration announced an interim update to the social cost of heat-trapping emissions, key metrics for measuring the economic costs of climate impacts from a unit increase in these emissions.
This update to the social cost of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide comes as a result of an Executive Order from President Biden, and essentially restores the values to what they were prior to the Trump administration, adjusting for inflation. A more thorough process will follow to update these values by January 2022 to reflect the latest science and economics.
Snow covered Texas satellite Feb 15, 2021. NOAA
The Polar Vortex Has Killed 24 in Texas So Far. Who’s to Blame?
Astrid Caldas, climate scientist | February 19, 2021, 1:16 pm EDT
As we watch most of the country being taken over by this polar vortex, we ponder whether climate change has anything to do with it, and if these extreme events will be more likely to happen in the future. We are transfixed at images coming from Texas, where the deep freeze took a hold of most of a state not used to it, and certainly not prepared for it. We hear about the energy outages, what caused them (and what didn’t), and what should be done to prepare for the next deep freeze.