Opinion Editorial: California should stop investing its retirement funds in fossil fuels. Instead of propping up and legitimizing fossil fuel companies, we ought to be stigmatizing them as morally repugnant for continuing to add fuel to a house that’s on fire. This year’s United Nations climate summit in Dubai is being hosted by an oil executive, which is like the climate equivalent of letting arms dealers hold peace talks. It’s alarming to see the extent to which fossil fuel industries have captured institutions responsible for slowing climate change. If only it were that easy, right? But politicians, who are often financially beholden to these planet-wrecking industries, have wasted decades with denial, delay tactics or outright hostility to anything more than incremental steps. It would be delusional to expect the trajectory to change without a fundamental shift in our economic system, including moving on from the companies that profit from the continued extraction and burning of hydrocarbons. How can city officials help save lives during heat waves? Make cooling a requirement for habitation, like it is already is for heating during cold weather. The city can save lives by requiring A/C in rentals Opinion Editorial: Climate change is roasting L.A. The more we experience the horrors of climate-fueled extremes, from destructive storms and wildfires to deadly and debilitating smoke and heat waves, the clearer it ought to be that we cannot trust in the same actors whose dangerous, unhealthful and unsustainable products are responsible for more than a century of unabated dumping of greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere. The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues its unrelenting rise, and is now 50% higher than in preindustrial times. Global greenhouse gas emissions have rebounded, climbing to new all-time highs after a brief downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic. But that would set back an important program to fight climate change.Īs much as renewable energy like wind and solar has grown globally, we still get more than 80% of our energy from burning fossil fuels. The state’s independent good government commission says California won’t make its 2025 organics recycling goal and the Legislature should suspend the law. California can’t afford to abandon its methane-busting law now Opinion Editorial: Don’t stop composting. Polling last year by the Pew Research Center found that while most Americans are reluctant to ditch fossil fuels, younger adults are much more supportive of phasing out oil, gas and coal entirely. But it’s welcome nonetheless, and there’s clear generational shift in that direction that offers some hope. It’s a little late for powerful voices from older generations to come to the realization that fossil fuel companies aren’t operating in good faith and will fight climate action until the bitter end. She wrote in Al Jazeera earlier this month that after years of holding out hope that oil and gas companies would wake up and participate in the decarbonization of the economy, their actions over the last 12 months have changed her mind.įormer Vice President Al Gore, a longtime champion for climate action, has also been speaking with refreshing frankness about fossil fuel industry obstruction, decrying “ anti-climate plotting” by companies that refuse to disclose their emissions or commit to phasing them out while they successfully push government policies to slow down the transition to clean energy. Some high-profile environmental leaders have come to a similar conclusion recently, among them influential climate negotiator Christiana Figueres, under whose tenure as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the landmark 2015 Paris agreement was developed.
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