Life and Death in America’s Hottest City

from The New Yorker The record-setting heat wave in Phoenix this summer, thirty-one consecutive days of temperatures exceeding a hundred and ten degrees, finally broke on Monday, July 31st. But, by the following Friday, August 4th, the thermometer was creeping up toward a hundred and fifteen degrees. Residents liked to joke that anything below the “teens” was comfortable. Jessica Lindstrom, who was thirty-four, was no longer a resident. She and her husband, Daniel, had bought a house in Central Point, Oregon, in 2015. But she had grown up in greater Phoenix and, that week, had brought her expanding family to […]

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How The Climate Crisis Is Transforming The Meaning Of ‘Sustainability’ In Business

from Fast Company In his 2021 letter to CEOs, Larry Fink, the CEO and chairman of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, wrote: “No issue ranks higher than climate change on our clients’ lists of priorities.” His comment reflected a growing unease with how the climate crisis is already disrupting businesses. Companies’ concerns about climate change have typically been focused on their operational, financial and reputational risks, the latter associated with the growing importance of the issue among young people. Now, climate change is calling into question the traditional paradigm of corporate sustainability and how companies address their impacts on […]

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The Grid Isn’t Ready for the Renewable Revolution

from Wired YOU CAN ALMOST hear the electrical grid creaking and groaning under the weight of the future, as two forces converge to push it—often literally—to its breaking point.  One force is climate change, which can exacerbate disasters that take down parts of the grid, as Hurricane Ida did this summer, knocking New Orleans offline just as a heat wave settled in. Or extreme weather can suddenly spike the demand for energy just when the grid is least able to provide it, like during last winter’s Texas freeze and subsequent power system failure. The other force, ironically enough, is the massive […]

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