On July 10, 2020, over three decades after it was first conceived of and designed, the city of Venice launched a test run of its new flood barrier system, the MOSE project. The system of barriers was created to keep high seas from inundating the city—a common event in Venice, but more frequent and severe […]
As years go, 2020 was a record breaker on many levels: chaotic, surprising, bizarre—and sweltering. Even as much of the globe submitted to lockdowns and business activity ground to a halt for weeks or months at a time, the global thermometer still ticked upwards: last year was the hottest year on record, tied with the […]
Enlarge (credit: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sea-surface-temperature.html ) Someday, humans will get it together and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But—not to fact check your daydreams too strictly here—how exactly will global temperatures respond to that day? This is a question climate science has long worked to answer, although devils in the details have led to some confusion. A […]
The world’s richest person made the single-largest charitable contribution in 2020, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of top donations, a $10 billion gift that is intended to help fight climate change. Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, whose “real-time” worth Forbes magazine estimates at roughly $188 billion, used the contribution to launch his Bezos Earth […]
In recent weeks, we have witnessed the power of innovation to solve catastrophic problems. Most notably, we have seen the extraordinary human accomplishment of delivering vaccines within a year to counter the novel coronavirus, COVID-19—an achievement that was accelerated by the U.S. government’s Project Warp Speed. What many people may be less aware of is that […]
COVID continues to cause severe economic distress, but natural disasters fueled by a warming planet also took their toll this year, causing record damage and displacing millions according to two new assessments of insurance claims in 2020. Christian Aid, the relief arm of 41 churches in the U.K. and Ireland, ranked the 15 most destructive climate disasters of […]
The coronavirus pandemic overshadowed nearly everything in 2020, but alongside the pyrotechnics of an extraordinary U.S. election and the resurgence of social justice activism, at least one more big-picture issue came to the fore: this was the year the “net zero by 2050” climate commitment went mainstream. The promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions as […]
President-elect Joe Biden introduced Saturday primary members of this group he’s building to meet his pledge to fight climate change, phoning them qualified and brilliant. Climate change has been”the existential danger of the own time,” Biden said, along with the folks he had been nominating to direct the Environmental Protection Agency, the White House Council […]
BP Plc gained a vast majority stake in woods carbon-management firm Finite Carbon, enlarging on a first investment made annually. The trade gives BP–among the planet’s largest carbon-credit dealers — management of the biggest developer of woods carbon-offset credits from the U.S.. It comes in the conclusion of a year that has seen that the […]
Here is the internet edition of Eye on A.I.,” Fortune’s weekly newsletter covering artificial intelligence along with enterprise. To receive it delivered {} your in-box, then sign here. Hello and welcome to this Previous “Eye on A.I.” of 2020! It is almost always a fantastic place for taking the heartbeat of this area. Held entirely virtually […]