EPA

Is Carbon Pricing Finally Taking Center Stage?

“We’ve now got carbon pricing on the radar screen in a way it hasn’t been before,” said the World Bank’s John Roome, “We’re moving from why to how.”

An April 24 New York Times story by Coral Davenport quoted Roome and others on the growing momentum of carbon pricing. “There is now an overwhelmingly obvious scientific consensus that the more carbon pollution we put into the air the more impact it has on warming the massive melting of the Arctic, the cycles of droughts and flooding, the die-offs of coral reefs,” the World Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, told Davenport. “And to our economists, who have been studying this for quite some time, there is an equally obvious consensus that putting a price on carbon pollution is by far the most powerful and efficient way to reduce emissions.”

Climate Uncertainty to Lead to Food Insecurity

Drought and extreme weather are making it even harder for farmers to produce the food needed to feed 7.3 billion people, and scientists believe that climate change contributes to this volatility in our weather. The risks posed to global food security and the challenges facing farmers and consumers in adapting are the focus of a major scientific assessment released in Paris December 4 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Higher Temperatures, Lower Incomes: The Economic Cost of Climate Change

In October came news that climate change could reduce average global incomes by 23 percent, compared to a world without climate change, and widen the gap between rich and poor countries. Those were the findings of a report, published in the journal Nature, by Marshall Burke of Stanford and Solomon M. Hsiang and Edward Miguel of Berkeley.