Fresh hopes on climate change
You may have to dig to find it, but there’s good news out there on climate change, and not just a little. Really. Eighty-one percent of the world’s top 500 companies are considering the operational risks from climate change, and are even talking about it publicly. For instance: More than 30 nations already have comprehensive climate-change legislation enacted, and 100 countries have renewable-energy regulations. Hundreds of cities around the world are taking climate-related action, and the World Bank has indicated it won’t finance coal plant construction unless it is considered critical. World governments are ever so slowly moving toward a new climate agreement, even as advances in technology have driven down the cost of renewable energy and boosted energy efficiency. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, brought a hopeful message during remarks Friday at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) to highlight the idea that fighting rising global temperatures is possible....