The future of energy is being shaped by many converging forces, among them: Fast-moving multifaceted innovation; The geophysical and human health need for clean energy; Sustained and expanding growth-potential for low-carbon investments; Urban planning, energy-efficient building, and utility reform; Financial innovation, including integration of Earth science insights; The COVID-19 pandemic disruption. The COVID-19 pandemic emergency…
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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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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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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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How much do we value human freedom? For thousands of years people of all variety of experience and influence have debated whether free will exists and which universe would be more full of virtue and good fortune—one that is fated or one that is free. Today, technology is flooding our experience with hard-to-trace information and…
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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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COP25 Closing Statement from the Citizens’ Climate delegation The future of humankind will be shaped and defined by how well we manage our relationship to the climate system. Nations that move too slowly are ensuring they will face higher costs, expanded vulnerability, and reduced benefit from international cooperation. The Citizens’ Climate delegation came into the…
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CCE COP25 Press Conference The Paris Agreement was achieved four years ago today. How far have we come? What can we do to rapidly upgrade the design of national climate action? On Saturday, December 12, 2015, the 196 nations of the UNFCCC process agreed to work together to end the industrial disruption of the climate…
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COP25 Strategy Brief from Citizens’ Climate Education, the Engage4Climate Network and Resilience Intel The time between the COP25 (opening today in Madrid) and the COP26 (next November in Glasgow) constitutes an unprecedented moment for creative collaboration in the improvement of human experience and outcomes. During that time, 195 nations must upgrade their Nationally Determined Contributions…
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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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The following brief is an outcome document from the High-level Climate and Energy Dialogue held on April 20, 2017, at the UN Foundation in Washington, DC, as part of the series Accelerating Progress, Advancing Innovation. The dialogue was moderated by Rachel Kyte, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and CEO Sustainable Energy for All. The…
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