Graph Showing Carbon Dioxide Concentrations In The Atmosphere Over The Past 650,000 Years. Concentrations

Oyster reefs are in rough shape over much of the world, threatened by over-harvesting in combination with pressures from exotic species (including disease) and pollution. This means those coastal areas are losing the valuable ecosystem services, such as water filtration and protection from storm surges, oyster reefs provide.

Source:

Beck, M. W., Brumbaugh, R. D., Airoldi, L., Carranza, A., Coen, L. D., Crawford,

C.,…Guo, X. (2011). Oyster reefs at risk and recommendations for conservation,

restoration, and management. BioScience, 61(2), 107-116. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/bio.2011.61.2.5

Per capita CO2 emissions in Europe

A study of "fossil beaches", those areas where geology and fossils show they were once pre-historic coasts, is aiming to give us a better picture of the threat of sea level rise. Researchers acknowledge that, even during natural climatic shifts, carbon dioxide is the primary driver of global warming and cooling. During the Pliocene, carbon dioxide was at 400ppm and sea level was much higher. We are currently at 393ppm and rising. We are likely to cross over 400ppm in the next several years. Thus, looking at sea level rise during the Pliocene can give us a picture of what sea levels may look like as a result of current global warming. This map shows where the coastline was in the U.S. during the Pliocene.

Preparedness for climate change (top) and coastal flooding (bottom), from States at Risk

While coal companies claim prohibition of or restrictions on mountaintop removal mining (MTR) will hurt rural Appalachian economies, this figure suggests MTR is failing to lift rural communities out of poverty. Considering MTR destroys the land, degrading property values and tourism, and imposes health costs on nearby residents, it is more likely MTR is hurting rural Appalachian economies far more than any attempts to stop it.

Accessibility remoteness index of Australia

The decline of arctic sea ice since 1980

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Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpcol analyzed the failure of the 2009 Cap & Trade bill to determine what caused climate legislation to fail while health care reform succeeded. In her report, she claims that a major failure was that the environmental coalition focused on gaining republican support (which was reasonable, as Republicans had previously supported cap and trade, including 2008 Republican Presidential nominee John McCain), without recognizing that the environment had become a politically polarized issue, with Republicans turning against environmental legislation.

In an interview with The Washington Post's Brad Plumer, she states:

One of the things that really surprised me in my research came from pulling together scores from the [League of Conservation Voters]. And you see a clear pull on politicians from grassroots conservative opinion around 2006 and 2007. Climate-change denial had been an elite industry for a long time, but it finally penetrated down to conservative Republican identified voters around this time. That created new pressures on Republican officeholders and candidates. And I don’t think most people noticed that at the time. Even John McCain. I have this figure that shows him moving up on LCV scores for most of the last decade [i.e., casting more pro-environmental votes] and then pulling back suddenly to the lowest level starting in 2007.

Ongoing drought conditions have the prompted the U.S. Agriculture Department to declare a federal disaster area in more than 1,000 counties covering 26 states. That's almost one-third of all the counties in the United States, making it the largest disaster declaration ever made by the USDA. The result is skyrocketing corn, wheat and soybean prices.

When thinking of ways to make renewable energy cost-competitive with fossil fuels, an important consideration are the market distortions caused by substantial government subsidies to fossil fuels versus subsidies to renewable energy. De-carbonizing the global energy sector will require removing subsidies for fossil fuels.

Numbers from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-13/sustainability-indicator-130-billion-pints-of-beer.html