2015 Was the Warmest Year on Record. By Deborah Netburn, LATimes, 1/20/16. “2015 was Earth's hottest year on record, and it appears the planet is still getting hotter… Climatologist Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said… ‘Even without El Niño this would have been the warmest year on record. We are looking at a long-term trend, and the factors that cause this long-term trend are continuing to accelerate, namely the increased burning of carbon dioxide fuels and other emissions.’”

Proof That a Price on Carbon Works. Editorial, NYTimes, 1/19/16. “Lawmakers who oppose taking action to lower greenhouse gas emissions by putting a price on carbon often argue that doing so would hurt businesses and consumers. But the energy policies adopted by some American states and Canadian provinces demonstrate that those arguments are simply unfounded. Around the world, nearly 40 nations, including the 28-member European Union, and many smaller jurisdictions are engaged in some form of carbon pricing. In this hemisphere, British Columbia, Quebec, California and nine Northeastern states have raised the cost of burning fossil fuels without damaging the economy. … Yet Congress has refused to act even as it becomes clear that putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions is the most direct and cost-effective way to address climate change.”

Cancer and Climate Change. OpEd by Peter Sellers, NYTimes, 1/16/16. “I’m a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer… I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?... I concluded that all I really wanted to do was spend more time with the people I know and love, and get back to my office as quickly as possible. I work for NASA, managing a large group of expert scientists doing research on the whole Earth system (I should mention that the views in this article are my own, not NASA’s). This involves studies of climate and weather using space-based observations and powerful computer models. These models describe how the planet works, and what can happen as we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The work is complex, exacting, highly relevant and fascinating… History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots. The winners tended to be realistic, pragmatic and flexible; the losers were often in denial of the threat… And so, I’m going to work tomorrow.”

Making a Fair Deal on Carbon. OpEd by Steven Chu, 1/15/16. “Last month, 196 countries reached a landmark consensus agreement in Paris to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow global warming, agreeing to work toward capping a global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius…We need meaningful actions that will dramatically decrease carbon emissions at the lowest possible cost. Numerous industries, including six major oil companies, have asked for a carbon pricing system to be initiated at the national, regional, and, ultimately, international level… [During the Paris talks,] my colleagues and I came out in favor of a revenue-neutral carbon tax. A simple carbon tax maximizes transparency, minimizes market manipulation and regulatory complexity, and provides investment certainty... A meaningful, and timely, global price on carbon is essential to get us to where we have to be in the coming decades. Otherwise, to quote Martin Luther King, ‘There is such a thing as being too late.’” Steven Chu is a Nobel laureate in physics and former US secretary of energy.

A Carbon Price Will Reduce Emissions More than Computer Models Predict. By Noah Kaufman, World Resources Institute, 1/13/16. “How much would a carbon tax reduce U.S. emissions? The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that if the country had set a carbon tax of $25 per ton in 2015 and increased it by 5 percent each year, CO2 emissions would have fallen to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. But new research shows that this may underestimate a carbon price’s true potential. In our new issue brief, Putting a Price on Carbon Emissions (PDF, 36 pp), we outline the specific ways a carbon price (meaning either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program) would encourage emissions reductions by changing the behavior of producers, consumers and investors throughout the economy. We compare these incentives to the corresponding forecasts in EIA’s model, and we find that the model is likely underestimating emissions reductions in important ways.

Chasing a Climate Deal in Paris “By Coral Davenport, NYTimes, 11/28/15. “The French have clearly invested an enormous amount of political and personal capital in pursuit of a climate change deal, and the shadow of last month’s terrorist attacks in and around Paris continues to hang over the talks… Observers are concerned that pushing to deliver a quick, clean document could lead to the postponement of many complicated but important legal processes, with a text saying the matter would be clarified later… Those legal processes are what will give the deal teeth, and leaving them unresolved could weaken the deal. In the eagerness to get a deal that everyone can agree on, said Alden Meyer, the head of the Union of Concerned Scientists, ‘there is also a fear that we are heading towards the lowest common denominator.’”