Posts tagged with 'climate change'
Without getting cities right, we cannot solve the climate crisis. Contributing to 75% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, it is impossible to overstate their central role. Cities’ choices influence and can drive change in every system that needs to be decarbonized ...
The long-awaited COP26 climate summit in Glasgow has come to a close, making important progress in a number of areas — but not enough. The world still remains off track to beat back the climate crisis. Recognizing the urgency ...
Unprecedented extreme weather events have taken a heavy toll on people and communities across the United States, with loss of life and impacts on livelihoods that cannot be quantified. These events have also cost U.S. taxpayers $99 billion in damages last year ...
A central piece of the conversation about how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector has been around the need to electrify vehicles. This sentiment has been fueled by manufacturers and governments pledging to stop selling fossil-fueled powered ...
While negotiations rage on, many world leaders have already left COP26 in Glasgow having said their piece about a low-carbon future for their country. No one can accuse them of being short on vision. But one thing is increasingly clear ...
Several countries made climate commitments at COP26 with the goal of achieving net-zero emissions and reducing climate impacts. These goals will be impossible to achieve without making transportation sustainable, as the sector creates almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas ...
As COP26 is in full swing in Glasgow, countries worldwide have failed to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement targets to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But cities are a bright spot. Many have developed climate action plans ...
Infectious disease outbreaks can have enduring influence on urban design and several have irrevocably shaped how modern cities feel and function. For example, parks, wide street design and even the home bathroom are all important legacies of cholera outbreaks; today, ...
Owusu lives with his wife and four children in the Tantra Hills neighborhood of Accra, Ghana, where he shares his residence with five other tenants and their families. The house has a toilet and electricity, but the costs for both ...
The need to set aggressive goals, backed by meaningful numbers, is an obvious starting point in the fight against climate change. It’s common knowledge that if global warming exceeds 1.5C, we face the prospect of everything from increasingly extreme weather ...
World leaders are gathering in New York this week and next for the UN General Assembly meeting (UNGA76) and Climate Week. The two major events come at a critical moment for climate action. The world is facing an emergency. Nearly ...
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warns, “India will see increased heat waves and heavy rainfall events, while glaciers will melt further, along with more compound events from rising sea-levels like flooding.” The report further states that “unequivocal human ...
Reducing carbon emissions in buildings will be critical to achieving the Paris climate goals and achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Buildings represent 39% of global greenhouse gas emissions, including 28% in operational emissions and 11% in building materials and construction. Global building floorspace ...
Headlines related to recent extreme weather appear to come out of a science fiction book: Even the richest countries in the world can’t control widespread fires — they’re even burning in the Arctic. Deadly flooding in Germany and Belgium in July 2021 completely washed away buildings ...
Two years ago, I participated in the learning roundtable for the first cycle of the WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities. I confess that my expectations were rather moderate, but that, to my surprise, I found it truly refreshing and ...
