By: Chandu Visweswariah [Author’s note: this blog is adapted from CURE100’s August newsletter’s “opening banter.”] Sitting here in New York, it’s easy to think of climate change as a “faraway” phenomenon. Hurricane Sandy filled our subway stations with water in 2012, and there was much talk of building sea walls and reducing emissions. We did neither and Sandy slowly faded…
By: Chandu Visweswariah Every Town and Village has a potpourri of governmental environmental organizations like a Sustainability Committee, a Conservation Advisory Council and a Climate Smart Community. There’s even a NY State Association of Conservation Commissions. There’s also typically a grab bag of local and national environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs). With all this fervor and well-meaning effort, you would think…
By: Chandu Visweswariah The fossil fuel industry has defiantly projected that we will need their products till the end of this century or beyond. They are wrong. And if there’s any chance we will burn fossil fuels for another eight decades, God help our children, grandchildren and generations to come who will inhabit the planet at the turn of the…
By: Chandu Visweswariah There’s a dark and a troubled side of lifeThere’s a bright and a sunny side tooThough we meet with the darkness and strifeThe sunny side we also may view. — From a song by the Carter Family Over the years, many of you have read my blogs pointing out the dire consequences of climate change. I recently…
By: Chandu Visweswariah This short blog should be mandatory reading for all G7 Summit delegates in Japan. With the flurry of recent policy and scientific information, where do we stand on climate change and global warming? What are the most likely outcomes? The chart below outlines the outcomes of global warming with impacts in this century and beyond. The left…
By: Chandu Visweswariah On this Earth Day, with all the wonderful Earth Day festivals and activities and speeches that have united and invigorated us, the only thing that actually counts is reduction of greenhouse gases to stabilize our climate system. If you want to get straight to the action part and bypass the scientific rationale, skip forward to this symbol…
By: Chandu Visweswariah The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 (Assessment Report 6) Synthesis Report states that we have a remaining carbon budget of 500 gigatons or 500 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent. What does this mean in practical terms? A carbon budget at an instant of time means that the cumulative emissions from that instant until…
By: Chandu Visweswariah Climate change is the existential challenge of our lifetimes. Like me, you are probably frustrated at the lack of real progress. Despite all the headlines and all the environmental events and all the climate pledges, carbon in the atmosphere continues to climb instead of declining. Let me restate that: Carbon in the atmosphere continues to climb instead…
By: Chandu Visweswariah Money makes the world go around. Put your money where your mouth is. While we’ve all heard these sayings, I recently had the satisfaction of using them to advance environmental goals. Many of us have some money in the form of bank accounts, or investments (like stocks, bonds or mutual funds) or retirement assets (like 401(k) accounts)….
By: Chandu Visweswariah Look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Am I an arsonist?” The honest answer may shock you. Over the years, the United Nations has ratcheted up the urgency and stridency of its statements accompanying Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Back in 2018, the verbiage was “We will need rapid, unprecedented and far-reaching changes in all…
