climate

GUEST ROOM | A Green Endowment

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Economics and climate awareness have always been heralded as enemies in the media, with “right-wing, power-hungry” economists battling with “left-wing, hippie” environmentalists. But what if there was a way for them to join forces to achieve a common goal? On Oct. 4, the Senior Leaders Climate Action Group released a report outlining different pathways to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035, furthering its commitment to the Climate Action Plan released in 2009. Members of SLCAG presented the report before the Student Assembly yesterday, and will take questions from the entire community at a forum on Oct.

Columns

HARDIN | When it Snows in the Desert

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I’ve showered once in the last 10 days. A camp stove explosion burned off the bottom half inch of hair on the left side of my head. My leg got stuck in quicksand while hiking through neck-deep water in a river. After walking over 10 miles a day through three national parks in the southwest, the toes on my left foot have definitely seen better days. My dream hike across Zion National Park in Utah was cut short when my three friends and I were forced to evacuate after it snowed a foot during our second night of backcountry camping.

climate

BARELY LEGAL | How a Vote Could Change the Climate

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Less than two weeks ago, hope for the long term stability of the recent Paris Climate Agreement was wearing thin. In an unprecedented step, the five conservative justices of the Supreme Court issued a stay on Feb. 9, 2016, preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit had ruled on the merits of the case challenging the regulation. This unexpected decision from the Court, overriding the decision of the D.C. Circuit to deny a stay, dealt a serious blow to the confidence of the major stakeholders of the Paris Agreement. The Clean Power Plan is a foundational aspect of the United States’ commitment to greenhouse gas emissions reductions under the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and it was only the United States’ willingness as a major emitter to make significant reductions that brought other countries to the negotiating table in Paris in the first place.