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It has now been 12 months since Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States, a man who as a candidate for the job called the scientific evidence for climate change “a hoax,” vowed to deregulate the American economy from what he considered to be onerous oversight, and bring back jobs that he claimed were lost as a result of the effort to combat the rise in global atmospheric temperatures. So, now is a good time to examine the president’s words and deeds regarding climate change – a sort of first-year job performance review or report card. What has he been able to accomplish? Has he laid a foundation for a successful agenda? And what are the most significant challenges to his energy and climate policy objectives? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As more and more diseases are discovered to be of animal origin and the effects of climate change on disease become clearer, now is the time to examine how best to mobilize health professionals, policy makers, and security experts around these connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early November 2018, Representative‐Elect Alexandria Ocasio‐Cortez, the New York Democrat, supported a protest by the Sunrise Movement, a youth‐driven grassroots effort to hold elected leaders accountable for a warming planet. The group wants to revive a select committee on global warming in the House of Representatives, which could produce draft New Green Deal legislation by 2020. Finally, it wants incoming Democratic lawmakers to sign a pledge that they won't accept fossil‐fuel money. So far, 19 members of Congress have taken the pledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-end climate change requires transformative solutions, as conventional strategies and solutions will not be enough if major disruptions in social-ecological systems are to be avoided. However, conventional climate assessment approaches and methods show many limitations if they are to provide robust knowledge and support to the implementation of such solutions in practice. To this end, we define transformative climate science as the open-ended process of producing, structuring, and applying solutions-oriented knowledge to fast-link integrated adaptation and mitigation strategies to sustainable development. In particular, based on our experiences within regional cases in Central Asia, Europe, Iberia, Scotland, and Hungary, we have selected 12 dimensions that scientists and practitioners can use as a checklist to design transformative-oriented climate assessments. While it is possible to talk both about transformative adaptation and transformative mitigation, in this paper, we make the case that societal transformation does not depend on mitigation or adaptation policies and actions, mostly because they are related to sustainability innovations, which are endogenous developments derived from deliberate social learning [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging literature discusses the effects of short-term temperature fluctuations on public opinion toward climate change. Yet, prior literature has not explored potential opinion-influencing effects of temporal patterns of temperature fluctuations or the interdependence between temperature anomalies and the direction and magnitude of short-term trends. This study uses an extreme warm spell that occurred during a survey of Michigan residents to evaluate the influence of complex temperature effects on public support for government involvement in the agricultural sector's adaptation to climate change. Comparison of several alternatives for capturing the influence of temperature fluctuations on survey responses (some drawn from the literature, some newly constructed) shows a temporary increase in support for government assistance for adaptation after the onset of a warm spell, but a longer exposure to extreme temperatures does not necessarily lead to more support for adaptation policies. Conditional on other attributes of temperature abnormalities (e.g., direction of trend), abnormal heat might even lead to reduced support for adaptation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the Restructuring of the Global Economy (ROGE) needed or is it part of a U. N. master plan? The evidence indicates that it is a U.N. master plan using global warming/climate change alarmism as the vehicle to accomplish a restructuring from a capitalist global economy to a more socialist global economy. This paper addresses the validity of the U.N.'s global warming narrative and the economic impact of following the U.N.'s agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess the role of fossil fuel prices, energy efficiency, and carbon taxation in achieving climate policy goals using a dynamic general-equilibrium model of the Portuguese economy. Given the forecasts for international fossil fuel prices, improving energy efficiency and implementing a new carbon tax have significantly different economic and budgetary effects. Greater energy efficiency reduces emissions and has a positive economic effect, but increases public and foreign debt. A carbon tax reduces emissions at a cost for the economy, but leads to positive effects on public and foreign debt. Thus, it is important to pursue both strategies. We estimate that under the reference-price scenario, a steady energy efficiency gain of 2%–2.5% per year and a carbon tax of at least 35 € per tCO2 are needed to achieve the stated goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 by an amount equivalent to 40% of the emissions in 1990. These views were fully integrated in a proposal presented by the Commission for Environmental Tax Reform to the Portuguese Government in September 2014, and then discussed in Parliament in November 2014, before enacting a new carbon tax on 1 January 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first study that aims to investigate policy shocks to Ecological Footprint of the USA. More precisely, we analyze the stochastic behaviors of the Ecological Footprint and its components (carbon Footprint, cropland, grazing land, forest products, built-up-land, and fishing grounds) by using Fourier unit root tests that are more powerful under an unknown number of breaks. The stationarity of a time series gives information about its future behavior based on past behavior. More specifically, stationarity properties give information on whether shocks have transitory or permanent effects on a variable; therefore, the stationarity of a time series has important implications to the formation of appropriate policies by decision makers. Stochastic properties of the Ecological Footprint are important considerations to the implementation of global and local policies targeting global warming, climate change and environmental degradation. Empirical results show that the Ecological Footprint is non-stationary which suggests that policies affecting the Ecological Footprint will have long-term and permanent effects. Findings and policy implications are further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Paris Agreement proposes a 1.5 °C target to limit the increase in global mean temperature (GMT). Studying the population exposure to droughts under this 1.5 °C target will be helpful in guiding new policies that mitigate and adapt to disaster risks under climate change. Based on simulations from the inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) was used to calculate drought frequencies in the reference period and 1.5 °C global warming scenario. Then population exposure was evaluated by combining drought frequency with simulated population data from shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). In addition, the relative importance of climate and demographic change and the cumulative probability of exposure change were analyzed. Results revealed that population exposure to droughts on the east side of the Hu line is much more than on the west side; exposure in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River region is the highest and lowest in the Qinghai-Tibet region. An additional 6.97 million people will be exposed to droughts under the 1.5 °C global warming scenario relative to the reference period. Demographic change is the primary contributor to exposure (79.95 %) in the 1.5 °C global warming scenario, more than climate change (29.93 %) or the interaction effect (-9.88 %). Of the three drought intensities, mild, moderate, and extreme, moderate droughts contribute the most to exposure (63.59 %). The frequency of extreme droughts is likely to decrease (71.83 % probability), while mild and moderate droughts may increase slightly (55.17 % and 51.71 % probability, respectively) in the 1.5 °C global warming scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has the United States not adopted global warming policies? Because the inner circle of the corporate elite has opposed these policies despite some corporate support for cap-and-trade and other policies. Pro- and anti-positions taken by think tanks that have led the policy debate in the post-Kyoto period are analyzed in order to demonstrate this. The corporate and upper class social ties of the directors of these pro- and anti-think tanks are examined, revealing a corporate elite split between the inner circle opposing these policies, and a ‘public interest sector’ of corporate law and media corporations along with top executives from higher education and other nonprofits that is supportive of policies addressing global warming. To enable adoption of major global warming policies, the corporate inner circle will need to become supportive and forge a class-wide corporate consensus on the need to address global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Central to this special issue is the notion that the methods and conceptual tools of comparative politics can improve our understanding of global climate change politics. Building on recent advancements in the field of comparative environmental politics, the special issues offers a more comprehensive treatment of climate change politics in developed countries, emerging economies and least developed countries. In this introduction, I distil the key features of comparative politics, advocate for the more rigorous application of comparative methods in climate politics scholarship and highlight three groups of political factors--institutions, interests and ideas--that hold considerable promise in explaining climate change politics at the domestic level. The introduction concludes with an appeal to (re)think how international and domestic politics interact. Examples drawn from the articles assembled for this special issue are used to substantiate the claims made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]