Climate

Green banks are starting to draw attention in the U.S., particularly since the federal government announced its first grant competitions under a national green bank program to bring clean technology and more affordable energy to low-income communities. But installing more solar and wind electricity generation isn’t the only way green banks can help. Massachusetts is launching an innovative new green bank that could become a model as states try to manage two crises at once: lack of affordable housing and climate change. While most green banks focus on clean energy, the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank is specifically designed to boost the state’s stock of sustainable, affordable housing. It comes at an opportune time: States can now tap into billions of dollars in new federal funding for green banks under the Inflation Reduction Act. So what exactly is a green bank, and how might it work for sustainable housing? What is a green bank? Despite the name, green b...

Women engaged in agri-food systems in Africa and Asia, including in India, face the highest climate risks such as droughts, floods or shortened crop-growing season, a new hotspot map developed by an international team of researchers has identified. It ranked 87 countries based on the level of climate change threat faced by women working in agricultural sectors. The study covered nations in Latin America, Asia and Africa. India stood 12th on the risk index developed by researchers from six institutes. These included the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Gender Platform, International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya, International Rice Research Institute, Alliance of Biodiversity International and International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Ireland, International Rice Research Institute, India, International Food Policy Research Institute, United States, Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa, Kenya and the Worl...

Gov. Jay Inslee proposed on Monday another $941 million for action on climate change, including environmental justice, clean energy and transportation projects, in his 2024 supplemental budget. The budget would tap into stronger-than-expected revenue from the state’s carbon-pricing program. The proposal comes toward the end of the first year of the program that makes the state’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases pay for their pollution. It would add to the $2.1 billion already allocated by lawmakers during the 2023 session for the next two years toward climate and clean energy projects. Also Monday, Inslee’s office announced pieces of legislation for the upcoming session intended to increase transparency over gas prices, pursue linkage with the California and Quebec carbon markets, and transition Puget Sound Energy out of the gas sector and limit future methane gas use. The additional funding also would include a on...

The global climate summit is well into overtime late Tuesday night in Dubai, with no deal on the meeting’s final agreement, and countries are bitterly divided over whether to call time on fossil fuels. Negotiators are scrambling last-ditch meetings to salvage more ambitious language to address the cause of the climate crisis. The latest draft of the COP28 summit’s centerpiece agreement published Monday dropped previous references to phasing out fossil fuels, stoking anger and frustration among some nations and advocates. More than 100 countries support a phase-out of fossil fuels in some form. Instead, the watered-down draft offers a list of actions that countries “could” take to reduce their planet-heating emissions, one of which is reducing the consumption and production of oil, coal and gas. An ambitious deadline set by COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber to strike a deal on a package of agreements expir...

Ocean temperatures have been off the charts since mid-March 2023, with the highest average levels in 40 years of satellite monitoring, and the impact is breaking through in disruptive ways around the world. The sea of Japan is more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) warmer than average. The Indian monsoon, closely tied to conditions in the warm Indian Ocean, has been well below its expected strength. Spain, France, England and the whole Scandinavian Peninsula are also seeing rainfall far below normal, likely connected to an extraordinary marine heat wave in the eastern North Atlantic. Sea surface temperatures there have been 1.8 to 5 F (1 to 3 C) above average from the coast of Africa all the way to Iceland. So, what’s going on? Sea surface temperatures are running well above the average since satellite monitoring began. The thick black line is 2023. The orange line is 2022. The 1982-2011 average is the middle dashed li...