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Luisa Vieira

Graphic Truth: Carbon in context

The US and Canada are both racing against the clock to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. As the effects of climate change become more apparent and deadly, countries are grappling with how to curb their emissions without curbing economic growth.

Canada, a resource-rich nation, is at a crossroads. Along with transportation and industry, the oil and gas sector dominates the country's emissions profile. Still, Canada has embarked on an ambitious journey to redefine its environmental legacy with one of the boldest climate commitments: pledging to reduce emissions by 40-45% below 2005 levels by 2030. Policies such as carbon pricing, identified as the top driver of emissions reductions, will prevent 226 megatonnes of carbon pollution from being released by 2030.

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Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind Technologies and developer of AlphaGO, attends the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes, Britain, November 2, 2023.

REUTERS/Toby Melville/Pool

Hard Numbers: Google’s spending spree, Going corporate, Let’s see a movie, Court-ordered AI ban, Energy demands

100 billion: AI is a priority for many of Silicon Valley’s top companies — and it’s a costly one. Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis said that the tech giant plans to spend more than $100 billion developing artificial intelligence. That’s the same amount that rival Microsoft is expected to spend in building an AI-powered supercomputer, nicknamed Stargate.

72.5: The free market is dominating the AI game: Of the foundation models released between 2019 and 2023, 72.5% of them originated from private industry, according to a new Staford report. 108 models were released by companies, as opposed to 28 from academia, nine from an industry-academia collaboration, and four from government. None at all were released through a collaboration between government and industry.

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Podcast: Challenging the climate change narrative with Bjorn Lomborg

Transcript

Listen: On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with Danish author Bjorn Lomborg, a controversial figure in the world of climate change. Lomborg is unequivocal that climate change is a real problem and that humans are responsible for causing it. But where he differs from the global climate narrative is that the current focus on reducing carbon emissions is misguided and ineffective. Lomborg argues the world is too fixated on stopping climate change at the expense of… everything else.

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Climate emergency: limited Biden executive power
White House Climate Emergency Gives Biden New Powers To Reach Goals | US Politics :60 | GZERO Media

Climate emergency: limited Biden executive power

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his analysis on US politics:

What is President Biden doing now that his legislative agenda is all but over?

Congress is getting ready to throw in the towel on 2022, racing to pass several pieces of legislation dealing with healthcare, drug prices and subsidies for the semiconductor industry before they go on their annual recess beginning in August. Some Democrats are holding out hope they can still pass a broader bill to finance green energy investments. But others are already writing the eulogy for the 117th Congress, recognizing how hard it is to legislate in a 50-50 Senate and a narrowly divided House and looking forward to Republicans taking control of at least one branch of government next year.

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West Virginia v. EPA ruling hampers climate change action
West Virginia v. EPA Ruling To Affect Climate Change Regulations | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

West Virginia v. EPA ruling hampers climate change action

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his analysis on US politics:

This week's question, what are the implications of the Supreme Court's decision in the case of West Virginia v. EPA?

It's been a busy term for the Supreme Court, topped off this week with a ruling on the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA did not have the properly congressionally delegated authority to regulate carbon emissions. This will hamper the ability of the Biden administration to act on climate change in the absence of congressional action, which we do not expect. And more broadly could have implications for other agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.

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Nations don’t need carbon to grow their economies, says John Kerry
Nations Don’t Need Carbon to Grow Their Economies, Says John Kerry | GZERO World

Nations don’t need carbon to grow their economies, says John Kerry

If John Kerry were only able to accomplish one thing as US climate change czar, he'd focus on changing the minds of the one-third of countries in the world that say they're "entitled" to pollute because they didn't before.

For Kerry, it's a fallacy that heavy carbon use is the only way to develop an economy because these nations can leapfrog from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

If we are able to cut by half the amount of carbon we're now releasing into the atmosphere by the end of the decade, he says, we may be able to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

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"What's it worth to save everything we have?" asks climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe
"What's It Worth to Save Everything We Have?" Asks Climate Scientist Katharine Hayhoe | Global Stage

"What's it worth to save everything we have?" asks climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe

Why do governments and corporations set Net Zero goals when the science just says to just cut emissions ASAP? For atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy and Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University., it's too easy for humans to procrastinate on doing stuff 30 or 40 years from now. That's why she says we need more near-term goals with "everything on the table," given what's really at risk is not the planet — but rather us. "So the question is not, 'Could we possibly spend too much trying to fix climate change?' No. The question is, 'What's it worth to save everything we have?'"

Companies moving from climate pledges to judging performance, says Microsoft’s Lucas Joppa
Companies Moving From Climate Pledges to Judging Performance, Says MSFT’s Lucas Joppa | Global Stage

Companies moving from climate pledges to judging performance, says Microsoft’s Lucas Joppa

As governments haggle climate deals to curb emissions way into the future at COP26, Microsoft chief environmental officer Lucas Joppa says the private sector is moving beyond lofty pledges to talk about performance. Instead of what your commitments are, he explains, corporations are asking each other how they're scoring on what they promised to do. "How are you measuring carbon? How are you accounting for carbon? What are the systems that need to be put in place to actually make this whole Net Zero thing work?"

Joppa spoke during a live Global Stage event, Climate Crisis: Is net zero really possible? Watch the full event here.

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