The Climate Minute - Fighting Off Depression Edition

Typhoon Haiyun, and yet another climate meeting with little prospect for meaningful action have Ted a bit down, but Rob tries to give reasons why soldiering on is possible on this week's Climate Minute. Now, the links Typhoon Haiyun devastated the Philippines last week, and out hearts go out to the thousands displaced or lost in the mega-storm.  But was climate change to blame?  Folks at the World Meteorological Society point out that even if climate change wasn't the cause of the Typhoon, changes over the last 100 years, including sea level rise, made the storm much more intense than it would have been otherwise.  Delaware Governor Jack Martell and Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse are also raising the connection. The 19th Conference of Parties is kicking off in Warsaw, Poland.  Expectations of game-changing agreements are low even with mounting evidence of climate damage.  Meanwhile the government of Poland is hosting a summit called by the World Coal Association seeking to seek lower-emissions solutions to keep coal a relevant energy source well into the next century.  Talk about mixed messages... In the face of all this though, new research out from Stanford University social psychologist Jon Krosnick shows that there's significant understanding of climate change and support for climate action across the country -- including red states like Oklahoma and Texas. And we're clearly making gains in renewable power.  In fact, solar power's success in Arizona has the utilities concerned and looking to levy new charges against customers who have solar on their roofs.  The utilities are actually bankrolling third party ads against solar power.  Solar power advocates must be doing something right. In other neat news, the Boston Redevelopment Authority will shortly adopt new regulations requiring developers to consider climate impacts -- including storm resilience -- in new large buildings.  That's good news, no? Meanwhile, in Washington, the White House has been busy on twitter, including tweeting about the continuing surge in domestic oil production.  While lowering reliance on foreign oil is a good thing, tagging the the tweet with the hashtag #climateaction was perhaps a bit much. On the lighter side, Star Trek fans will understand what we're talking about when we say that there are apparently billions of M-Class planets out there.  The Kepler Telescope has been scanning our galaxy and NASA scientists have determined there are about 8.8 billion planets in the Milky Way that are in the "habitable zone" where water can be found in its liquid state.  So we've got that going for us... Things to do "You Had Me at Pigovian..." is the alluring tagline of an event being held Tuesday, November 19th, at Babson University discussing the importance of a carbon tax. See more information here. The Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance is holding their Annual Conference (with speaker Governor Deval Patrick) on Wednesday, November 20th at the Boston Convention Center.  Read more about the conference and register here. Remember, for more climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar. You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always, it’s been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you. You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here. Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email. You can even follow us on twitter @MassClimate , so there are lots of ways for you to listen and participate in the dialog. When you are on the website, please contribute to MCAN. Your generous donations help us continue to bring climate news and views to you through our podcast and blogs, but also help support the Annual MCAN conference (this year on March 2nd, at Northeastern University), and our local climate action. So we will close the way we always close, by saying that because we recognize the necessity of personal accountability for our actions, because we accept responsibility for building a durable future and because we believe it is a patriotic duty as citizens, we insist that the US put a price on carbon. Good bye and see you next week…