By Chris Mooney, Naema Ahmed and John Muyskens, The Washington Post, Dec 1, 2022 | Graphic credit: ICMGLT

IT’S THE WORLD’S MOST IMPORTANT CLIMATE GOAL: limiting the Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). It’s the aspiration of global agreements, and to inhabitants of some small island nations, the marker of whether their homes will continue to exist.

Keeping warming this low will help save the world’s coral reefs, preserve the Arctic’s protective sea ice layer and could avoid further destabilizing Antarctica and Greenland, staving off dramatic sea level rise. Read more.

By Mara Hoplamazian, NHPR, Dec 5, 2022 | Image: ISO New England

New England’s power grid will be reliable this winter under mild or moderate weather conditions, but a long cold snap could cause some issues, according to the winter outlook from the region’s electric grid operator, ISO-New England. The grid operator says they do not anticipate calling for any controlled power outages – or “rolling blackouts” – this winter.

By Damian Carrington, The Guardian, Nov 17, 2022 | Photograph: Photoboyko/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Wet cat and dog food is far more environmentally damaging than dry pet food, according to a new study. It found that wet food results in eight times more climate-heating emissions than dry food.

The analysis found that a wet food diet for a typical dog resulted in an “ecological pawprint” for the animal that was the same as for its human owner. There are estimated to be 840 million cats and dogs in the world and, with numbers rising, the impact on the environment of feeding them is under increasing scrutiny. Read more.

By Ann-Christine Duhaime, The Harvard Gazette, Dec 6, 2022

Our extraordinary brains don’t solve all problems equally well. Our evolutionary history equipped us to perceive, prioritize, and find solutions for some kinds of problems more easily than for others, and there are some for which we are ill-suited novices. In all our pursuits, we are guided by an extraordinary internal mechanism that evaluates, second to second, our actions in relation to a shifting panoply of human rewards. This complex mechanism, honed by millions of years of history but flexible by nature, assigns value to our choices and guides us with electrochemical currencies that are exquisitely designed under the influence of evolutionary pressure to be fleeting. It is the understanding of that mechanism and how it intersects with our human decisions relevant to climate change that we will pursue in this exploration. Read more.

By Madeleina Aitkin, Boston.com, Dec 5, 2022 | Image: Jill Tiongco Photography

The world’s first bio-based 3D-printed house has been built in Orono, Maine, by the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC), in what could be a major step forward in combatting the affordable housing and climate crises.

BioHome3D, when mass-produced, will help provide affordable housing solutions. It’s also made of natural materials and is completely recyclable, which will help reverse climate change — normal buildings account for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions. Read more.

By Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, Dec 8, 2022

You can forgive people who work on U.S. energy policy for being tired this month. They have just sprinted, and sometimes slogged, through an extraordinary year of action and progress at the federal, state and local levels.

“It’s been a big one, for sure,” said Autumn Proudlove, associate director for policy and markets at the N.C. Clean Technology Center at North Carolina State University. Not just a big one, but maybe the biggest one ever in terms of the number and scope of new laws and rules, she said. Read more.

By Anmar Frangoul, CNBC, Dec 6, 2022

Renewables are on course to overtake coal and become the planet’s biggest source of electricity generation by the middle of this decade, according to the International Energy Agency. The IEA’s Renewables 2022 report, published Tuesday, predicts a major shift within the world’s electricity mix at a time of significant volatility and geopolitical tension.

“The first truly global energy crisis, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has sparked unprecedented momentum for renewables,” it said. Read more.

"An understanding of the natural world and what’s in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.”

Image: Kera Think

By David Zipper, Bloomberg News, December 13, 2022 | Photographer: Alisha Jucevic/Bloomberg

Unless your interest in transportation borders on obsession, you probably don’t. But now might be a good time to learn, because there’s a new generation of electric vehicles emerging in cities around the world: small, weather-protected urban runabouts that fall along the wide spectrum between two-wheeled EVs and traditional cars. These conveyances are already widespread in East Asia, and they’re gaining popularity in Europe as well. North America could be next. Read more.

By Neelu Tummala, Scientific American, Nov 14, 2022

During the most recent conference of my professional organization, my colleague Amanda Dilger and I encouraged our fellow clinicians in attendance to offset the carbon cost of their travel. This was in addition to a panel in which we explained to a small crowd of surgeons that climate change is a health issue. Amanda and I are otolaryngologists, but we are also climate activists.

Before starting the panel, I was unsure about how it would be received by my fellow surgeons, as climate change had rarely been discussed at these meetings. But my colleagues who walked up to the mic after our talk asked the kinds of questions that told me they understood this environmental health issue and the need for hospitals to be more sustainable. Read more.

By Shaheed Jameel, Observer Research Foundation, Dec 5, 2022

Climate change affects both physical and mental health, and in many different ways. Heat and extreme weather events not only lead to increased human mortality and morbidity but also longer-term food and water shortages, air pollution, and disease. Increased exposures to wildfire smoke, atmospheric dust, and airborne allergens are associated with cardiovascular and respiratory distress. Untimely rain and flooding increase the occurrence of food- and water-borne diseases and disrupt health services. All these, thus, have economic and societal impacts. Read more.

Interfaith Power and Light recently presented a briefing on a new opportunity for non-profits, providing insight on applying for federal funds for schools, homes, etc. from recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the federal Inflation Reduction Act. Watch here!

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The Climate Collaborative's Climate Action Alerts newsletter is curated and edited by Fran Schofield with production assistance by Lauren Gottlieb. We welcome climate news from your home, school, business, town, faith community, or organization. Please submit your news, events, or article ideas to info@capecodclimate.org.