Climate

The US Inflation Reduction Act is a landmark legislative package that should be welcomed around the world, despite its putatively protectionist features. Owing to the positive learning-by-doing spillovers that follow from green subsidies, Europe and the rest of the world ultimately will benefit, too.

Building infrastructure is hard; building a trillion dollars’ worth of infrastructure within a decade, while jump-starting U.S. manufacturing and protecting fragile ecosystems, is harder still. But if President Biden’s climate finance windfall is to position the United States to lead on clean-energy jobs, trade and innovation, that building needs to start now.

Attempting to shield Earth from the sun’s rays in what’s often described as a last-ditch effort to cool average global temperatures is controversial for good reason. It might work and do a lot of good, but there are ample risks. Most importantly, it is no replacement for cutting greenhouse gases. Researchers who study the approach most closely are the first to say just that. Using solar geoengineering as the latest excuse not to slash carbon and other pollution would be a mistake. But research we must.

Rules are being drafted to guide compliance with a 2019 New York City law that requires most of about 50,000 buildings, many over 25,000 square feet, to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by the end of this decade and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Speeding up the adoption of already proven and scalable technologies, and exposing the many hidden costs associated with fossil fuels, is a necessary goal. Achieving it will require new policies to guide investments in the right direction, and techno-optimists ought to be the loudest advocates.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a proposal to require some companies to disclose information relating to the risks they face from climate change. But the agency is coming under pressure to scrap or water down the proposal because of a recent Supreme Court decision.

In the face of a massive financing gap for climate-change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, everyone accepts the need for more "creative" measures to unlock and redirect private capital. But proposals like carbon credits must be understood merely as stepping stones, rather than as lasting solutions.

A lot of today’s widespread confusion about climate change—some of it unwitting, some of it deliberately cultivated—stems from the critical miscommunication of two little words: risk and uncertainty. To most of the public, risk means a danger that must be addressed, whereas uncertainty means a lack of clarity about whether there is any meaningful danger at all. To scientists and economists like myself, uncertainty has a starkly different meaning. It is worse than risk; it indicates the possible range of just how bad a (very real) danger will be.

California is finally poised to lift parking requirements across the state. Here’s why that would be a huge win for the climate.