A new report in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A published earlier this week presents a suite of new scientific and policy research meant to improve and drive forward progress under the Paris Climate Agreement. The report – from the oldest science journal in the western world – is the culmination of presentations first delivered by attendees at the 25th anniversary conference of the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute. CPR Board President and Member Scholar Rob Verchick is among the contributing authors.
In his article, Verchick argues that the rise of global temperatures by an additional half a degree above the agreement's target could hamper our ability to address the unavoidable harms of climate change to the world's most vulnerable populations. In "Can Loss and Damage Carry the Load?" Verchick explains that developed nations have a moral and political obligation to address "the negative effects of climate change that we have not been able to avoid through emissions reductions or adaptation measures" that eventually accrue to developing nations. To counter any uncertainty in the scope of that harm, he calls for a process that is predicated upon flexibility adequate to account for far more expensive damages, as well as fairness and transparency toward meaningfully involving vulnerable states in the decision-making process.
The report is expected to generate international interest and to influence the work of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is currently producing a report on many of the same issues explored in the Royal Society's report. Other articles in the report explore additional policy issues related to the Paris Agreement. For example, two authors present an improved methodology for assessing the social equity of mitigation policies, while another author challenges the intergenerational fairness of short-term benefits accrued to present-day generations by reductions in mitigation measures.
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David Flores | April 5, 2018
A new report in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A published earlier this week presents a suite of new scientific and policy research meant to improve and drive forward progress under the Paris Climate Agreement. The report – from the oldest science journal in the western world – is the culmination of presentations […]
Daniel Farber | April 2, 2018
There are three important climate lawsuits pending in federal court. Here’s the state of play and what to expect next. In the first case, Oakland and San Francisco sued leading oil companies. They claim that the companies’ production and sale of fossil fuels is a public nuisance under California state law. They seek an abatement […]
Joel Eisen | March 30, 2018
It's no secret that the Trump administration and coal companies have drawn a bullseye on reversing coal's declining fortunes in wholesale electricity markets, where competition and inexpensive natural gas have driven coal's market share down from 50 percent in 1990 to about 30 percent today. Feeling bullish about their prospects in a sympathetic administration, owners […]
Evan Isaacson | March 29, 2018
This post is part of an ongoing series on the midpoint assessment and long-term goals of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort. In my last post, I described how a database housed by the Maryland Department of the Environment allows tracking of land development activities in real time. This database not only gives us the ability to track […]
| March 28, 2018
This post is part of an ongoing series on the midpoint assessment and long-term goals of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort. In a recent post, I described the broad failure of Chesapeake Bay states to follow EPA’s basic expectations to account for pollution growth under the restoration framework known as the Bay TMDL. This failure is one […]
Rena Steinzor | March 27, 2018
Originally published on The Regulatory Review. Reprinted with permission. The spirited conservative attack on regulatory guidance is both puzzling and hypocritical. Admittedly, agencies sometimes issue guidance to avoid the quicksand of informal rulemaking. But the law makes clear that without full-dress procedure, guidance can never replace rules and statutes in enforcement actions. Remedying agency overreach in […]
Katie Tracy | March 26, 2018
Maryland’s Occupational Safety and Health division (MOSH) is struggling to carry out its mission of ensuring the health and safety of Maryland workers, according to CPR’s analysis of a mandatory performance report the agency provided to the state legislature late last year. The Maryland legislature mandated the report as a condition of releasing $250,000 of […]
Evan Isaacson | March 21, 2018
This post is part of an ongoing series on the midpoint assessment and long-term goals of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup effort. A few weeks ago, I discussed why the periodic written "expectations" from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are critically important to the Chesapeake Bay's restoration. These expectations communicate to the state and federal partners […]
David Flores | March 19, 2018
This post is the first in a forthcoming series about climate change and the increasing risk of floods releasing toxic chemicals from industrial facilities in Virginia. At the tail end of winter, a succession of “bomb cyclones” and nor’easters has brought fierce winds and surging coastal flooding to the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. These storms remind […]