Guest Post By Lee Webb This year’s extraordinarily strong El Niño is a good opportunity for organizations to take stock of their climate preparedness. Appreciating just what El Niños are and how they affect local and global weather, will help show how they are connected to climate change preparedness. El Niños are periodic reversals of […]
Alex
The Paris Agreement is a Universal Call to Action and a Market Signal to Heed
Historic Global Climate Agreement is Reached COP 21 in Paris was historic. On December 12, 2015, after long days of negotiations and hours pouring over draft text, 195 nations who are Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement to decarbonize the economy, work collectively to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and […]
Private Sector: The United Nations is calling…
I’ve been attending UN Climate Summits off and on since I was a member of the Canadian Youth Delegation that went to the Bali negotiations in 2007. At that point in time, I was an articling student and recent grad from law school, fresh from taking deep intellectual dives into the academic literature on international environmental law. Being […]
United Nations Climate Summit, Paris COP 21: Welcoming Pragmatic Action and A Conversation
Delegates are boarding planes, trains and other modes of transportation on their way to Paris to participate in the most anticipated United Nations Climate Summit since Copenhagen in 2009. This year’s conference has a different mood than past conferences. It’s been sobered by terrorist attacks, extreme weather challenges, economic crisis and austerity measures. It’s taking […]
Climate Change is Transforming the Financial Landscape through Disclosure, Divestment and Duty
The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, recently delivered a stark warning detailing the various risks global markets and the financial community face as a result of a changing climate. He called climate change the “tragedy of the horizon”. Climate change increases physical, regulatory, reputation and litigation risks in a timeframe that may be longer than our […]
Momentum Builds on the Path to Paris: Papal Encyclical and Dutch Court Demand Greater Climate Action
As the international community prepares to negotiate a global agreement on climate change at COP21/CMP11 this December in Paris, two institutions have recently taken unprecedented actions to help build momentum, calling for swift and ambitious action. Last week, Pope Francis issued a wide-ranging teaching letter calling for unified global action on climate change and the environment. And […]
Shareholders Sue U.S. Corporation for Improper Disclosure of Environmental Liabilities
Shareholders and investors are increasingly asking for more information on environmental risks and liabilities. Investors in the United States filed a securities class action lawsuit claiming that a Florida-based corporation misled them by providing inadequate information about the company’s environmental clean-up costs. The lawsuit names Rayonier Advanced Materials Inc. (RYAM), a company specializing in the production of […]
U.S. Establishes New Federal Flood Risk Management Standard to Account for Climate Risks
On Friday (January 30, 2015), President Obama issued an executive order requiring all federally-funded construction projects to adopt more stringent siting and building standards to account for increased flooding risks linked to climate change.[1] The policy is aimed to “improve the resilience of communities and [protect] Federal assets against the impacts of flooding.”[2] Most agencies currently rely on historical […]
Paper: Canada Electricity Generation and Transmission Sectors’ Action and Awareness
This primer provides an overview of the concept of embodied carbon and describes how life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to calculate and minimize life cycle GHG impacts from construction projects. It draws on the lessons learned from a recent case study that calculated the embodied carbon of a new commercial building in Toronto […]
Understanding Canadian Electricity Generation and Transmission Sectors’ Action and Awareness on Climate Change and the Need to Adapt
The electricity generation and transmission sectors are among the most at risk of being disrupted by climate change. Our recent study, “Understanding Canada Electricity Generation and Transmission Sectors’ Action and Awareness”, reports on the current state of awareness and action on climate change adaptation in these sectors and is based on the results of interviews with companies […]