An Earth Day 2020 talk, delivered to Lehigh University by Joseph Robertson, on the 50th annual Earth Day—April 22, 2020. Integrative Geopolitics: Climate Resilience in a Post-COVID World This online event is the keynote for Lehigh’s Earth Week 2020 Celebration, with support from the Office of Sustainability, in collaboration with the Environmental Initiative, Environmental Studies…
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We are living through historic—and perilous—separation of high finance from everyday experience. Accelerating climate disruption is a symptom of the unaccountability that comes with such disconnections. And yet, central banks’ efforts to mitigate climate risk and build resilience will affect you personally. When food is scarce, prices rise; this is one of the most significant…
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The biggest growth opportunity in finance is climate-aligned investment and innovation. In 2018, all major asset classes struggled to earn. Cash was the asset class that expanded the most, signaling a pull-back from new investment and a wait-and-see attitude. In 2019, trade tensions spurred worries of a global economic slowdown that could lead to recession.…
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The global economy is slowing down. The US economy is also slowing down. A major contributing factor to both is the widening gap in new income generation, between the super-rich and everyone else. It is now widely argued we are living through a “new Gilded Age”, where high-powered, high-visibility interests prosper and everyone else struggles.…
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REPORT FROM DAVOS The World Economic Forum has identified all 5 of the leading global risks as related to climate and environment: Extreme weather Climate action failure Natural disasters Biodiversity loss Human-made environmental disasters Climate breakdown is accelerating, and global carbon emissions are not declining. The loss of climate stability is not a small or…
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Tracking of interacting compounding risks shows higher value of financing external returns. Resilience is the ability to weather and emerge from shock events. Resilience intelligence is the complex work of understanding whether we are positioned to do so. Structured, evolving guidance, rooted in Earth systems science, is critical for achieving reliable ongoing operational resilience. The…
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Studies of significant changes to the Jet Stream—a fast-moving river of air that plays a major role in regulating climate patterns—show increasing risk of prolonged catastrophic drought and threats to the human food supply. Scientific American is reporting: extreme jet stream patterns like those of 2018 may be getting more common and more extreme, representing…
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A week before Christmas, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, wrote in the Financial Times that the UK is now stress-testing banks for climate risk and resilience. Specifically, he writes: Modelling for the full extent of climate-related financial risk is complex and challenging. Britain can lead the way next year, when we…
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Over the next year, all nations must upgrade their national climate action strategies (NDCs). The COP25 will lay the foundation for that work. CCE presents a view of Week 1, along with 5 high-value strategies for upgrading (and mobilizing) national plans for a climate-smart future. Civics, signals, finance, and nature to protect ice, watersheds, and…
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In July, The New York Times reported: The rating agency [Moody’s] bought a majority share in Four Twenty Seven, a California-based company that measures a range of hazards, including extreme rainfall, hurricanes, heat stress and sea level rise, and tracks their impact on 2,000 companies and 196 countries. In the United States, the data covers…
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When we talk about land use, most people immediately get a sense we are talking about something other people do. But land use is deeply involved in our everyday experience, our personal choices, the places we live and how we move through them. Increasingly, in countries large and small, rich and poor, people are migrating…
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