2022-06-19. Republican Drive to Tilt Courts Against Climate Action Reaches a Crucial Moment. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/climate/supreme-court-climate-epa.html] By Coral Davenport, The New york Times. Excerpt: ...The [Supreme Court] case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming. Coming up through the federal courts are more climate cases, some featuring novel legal arguments, each carefully selected for its potential to block the government’s ability to regulate industries and businesses that produce greenhouse gases.…
2024 was the hottest year on record, breaching a critical climate goal and capping 10 years of unprecedented heat
By Laura Paddison , CNN. Excerpt: It’s official: 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaking the previous record set in 2023 and pushing the world over a critical climate threshold, according to new data from Europe’s climate monitoring agency Copernicus [ https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-first-year-exceed-15degc-above-pre-industrial-level ]. Last year was 1.6 degrees hotter than the period before humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels, Copernicus found. It makes 2024 the first calendar year to breach the 1.5-degree limit countries agreed to avoid under the Paris climate agreement in 2015. Scientists are much more concerned about breaches over decades, rather than single years — as above that threshold humans and ecosystems may struggle to adapt — but 2024’s record “does mean we’re getting dangerously close,” said Joeri Rogelj, a climate professor at Imperial College London.... Full article at https://www.cnn.c...