December 2015

Jeff McMahon’s Coverage Of Paris Climate Conference

Feb. 3, 2016: Inside The Paris Agreement: Why The World Agreed To 'Balance' Greenhouse Gas Emissions Jan. 3, 2016: How Iceland Drilled For Renewables And Struck Tourists Jan. 3, 2016: By 2050, Utilities Will No Longer Charge For…

Paris Agreement Final Draft Released: Six Vital Details

Updated.
PARIS—Delegates from 196 countries reached consensus early this morning on the final draft of "a universal legal agreement" to keep man-made global warming below 2º C, with a newly enshrined aspiration to hold it to 1.5º.
If approved this…

Danish Furniture Giant Calls On Peer Retailers To Electrify Fleets
PARIS—Businesses that want to survive the transition to a low-carbon economy should strive for 100 percent transformation in whatever goals they set, Ikea's chief sustainability…

Is Green Greed Good?

PARIS—185 governments have pledged to do all they can to mitigate climate change, and now, say some negotiators here, they need business to grease the way for them to do more.
"We need to accelerate nationally-determined contributions to lowering CO2…

How A Global Carbon Price Is Slipping In The Back Door

PARIS—Most everyone here wants a global price on carbon, even those who are knee-deep in carbon. Here's an example uttered this afternoon by Arne Eik of the petroleum company Statoil:
"We are not asking for more costs for our emissions or for…

Zipcar Founder: The Era Of Industrial Capitalism Is Over

PARIS—Workers of the world unite, Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase suggested here Saturday. You have nothing to lose but your excess capacity.
"The shared future of our world is no longer industrial capitalism," she declared before hundreds of delegates…

Seoul Teaches A New Way To Prevent Nukes

Updated
PARIS—South Korea has a desperate relationship with nuclear power. It imports 97 percent of its fossil fuels from abroad, so Koreans have viewed nuclear power as an essential source of domestic energy.
But South Korea has nowhere to put…

UN Climate Strategists Have A Powerful New Ally: Money

PARIS—There’s a hopeful new sense of inevitability in these climate talks—offsetting the frightening inevitability of climate change itself—the inevitability of a worldwide human response to it.
In Paris this week it seems inevitable that positive…

PARIS — A 2ºC rise in global temperature is already baked into the atmosphere, some scientists warn, but diplomats have clung to it as a useful target to focus political aims—clung to it even knowing that 2º is too hot for some.
"The below 2º is not…

PARIS — The first day of the Paris Climate Conference began with 40 nations declaring war on fossil-fuel subsidies and ended with six nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund calling for a global carbon tax.
France was in both…