Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

"We must not let rhetoric or vested interests divert us from what we know is the right course of action." From across the Atlantic, the European scientific community is watching warily as our American colleagues endure increasingly politicised attacks on their work and on the very foundation of evidence-based science. President Donald Trump 's decision earlier this month to withdraw the United States from the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change - a decision condemned by heads of state, businesses, mayors and ordinary people in the US and the world over - epitomised this contempt for the facts from some within the political sphere. We can, to some degree, relate, as many European scientists - and particularly those who research climate change and its impacts, as I do - have been forced to confront the politicisation of their disciplines, the distortion of their research and the promotion of "alternative facts" and vested-interest propaganda. In...

**Article re-posted from EURACTIV  ** Forest mitigation should be measured using a scientifically-objective approach, not allowing countries to hide the impacts of policies that increase net emissions, writes a group of environmental scientists led by Dr Joanna I House . Dr Joanna I House is a reader in environmental science and policy at the Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, UK. She co-signed this op-ed with other environmental scientists listed at the bottom of the article. From an atmospheric perspective, a reduction in the forest sink leads to more CO2 remaining in the atmosphere and is thus effectively equivalent to a net increase in emissions. [Yannik S/Flickr] When President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the EU’s Climate Commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete spoke for all EU Member States when he said that, “This has galvanised us rather than weakened us, and this vacuum will be filled by new broad committed leadership.” The French President, Emmanuel...

Each year, students on the MSc Environmental Policy and Management program receive funding to plan an educational trip in Europe. Previous cohorts have chosen to visit Berlin, Copenhagen, Riga, and Amsterdam. This year, we democratically decided to visit Warsaw. We chose to do so not because the city and Poland are exemplary in environmental management, but rather because they have real challenges facing them in the transition to a low-carbon future. The energy sector represents the biggest environmental challenge in Poland and government leaders are reported to actively oppose European Union climate change targets (Kowalski, 2016). After its most recent election (2015), the country announced that energy policy would prioritise the exploitation of domestic coal deposits. Indeed, there is a historical and cultural attachment to coal in Poland, as the coal industry was influential in the country’s socio-economic development in the period between World War I and World War II, and dur...

The decision by President Trump to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change puts the United States at odds with both science and global geopolitical norms.  The fundamentals of climate change remain unambiguous: greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing, they are increasing because of human action, the increase will cause warming, and that warming creates risks of extreme weather, food crises and sea level rise. That does not mean that scientists can predict all of the consequences of global warming, much work needs to be done, but the risks are both profound and clear. Nor do we know what the best solutions will be - there is need for a robust debate about the nature, fairness and efficacy of different decarbonisation policies and technologies as well as the balance of responsibility; the Paris Agreement, despite its faults with respect to obligation and enforcement, allowed great flexibility in that regard, which is why nearly every nation on Earth is a signatory....