Weaponizing red tape

FOLLOW US SUBSCRIBE   The fight to slow climate change involves more than towering wind turbines and electric vehicles. It's also being fought in the fine print of financial regulations. The European Union is embedding environmental goals in standards for banks, money managers and insurers, in the hope of directing trillions of euros to fund a historic revision of the region's economy. —Josh Petri   "The human race probably isn't doomed, but climate change is still an enormous catastrophe in the making."  —Noah Smith, writing in Bloomberg Opinion. The UN's worst case for climate change—in which coal production increases and the planet warms by an average of 5 degrees Celsius by 2100—no longer looks likely, he contends.      Top stories More than a dozen U.S. states and New York City  sued the Trump administration for trying to scrap an Obama-era rule intended to expand federal protection of the nation's waterways. Young climate activists who sued the U.S. in 2015 to force changes in government policy said the Trump administration's actions increase the urgency for the case to go to trial. The defendants "continue to act in ways that further endanger plaintiffs' lives, liberties and property," the plaintiffs alleged in a new filing. The surge of renewable energy continues to upend traditional economics. Europe's nuclear plants are shuttering as more wind and solar projects come online. "Flight shame" (the guilt some feel for the destructive environmental impact of air travel) is spreading from the masses in coach to the 1% who fly privately. Small jet owners looking to sleep better now have a range of options to lower their carbon footprint. The unprecedented bushfires devastating Australia have already pumped out more than half of the country's annual carbon dioxide emissions, yet another setback to the fight against climate change. Destructive blazes have erupted over the past year from the Arctic to the Amazon and Indonesia, in what scientists are calling an exceptional year for wildfires. As places like Australia grapple with extreme weather conditions (often aggravated by climate change) they're likely to suffer from more persistent and ferocious fires.   What we've been reading Before three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant partially melted down in March 2011, fission had been on the verge of a renaissance. Instead, plants were phased out. As climate change worsens, however, many are reconsidering the power of the atom. The world's frozen regions, known collectively as the cryosphere, have had a rough decade. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, and the world's ice is melting at an alarming rate. Vox visualized the losses. When not using shore power, a single cruise ship can emit as much diesel exhaust as 34,400 idling tractor-trailers. When plugged in, that exhaust is almost entirely eliminated. So why has such a system hardly been used at a New York cruise terminal, despite being available since 2016?   You received this message because you are subscribed to the Bloomberg Climate Changed newsletter.     Unsubscribe | Bloomberg.com | Contact Us Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022