[TheClimate.Vote] May 20, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/May 20, 2018/

[Insurance Journal]
*California Commissioner Ran a Climate Change 'Stress Test' on Insurers 
<https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2018/05/08/488649.htm>*
By Don Jergler | May 8, 2018
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has...said during a press 
conference on Tuesday that he is the first U.S. financial regulator to 
conduct a climate-related financial risk stress test and analysis of 
insurance companies' investments in fossil-fuels...
Jones and the California Department of Insurance have engaged 2 degree 
Investing Initiative, a partner of European financial regulators, to 
conduct an analysis of insurers in California's insurance market with 
more than $100 million in annual premiums...
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has run a "stress test" on 
the state's largest insurers...
The goal of the scenario analysis conducted by Jones' office was to 
assess the exposure California insurers have to transition risk based on 
the evolution of production and assets in the real economy. The analysis 
compares the currently planned production from physical assets allocated 
to a portfolio with future production levels defined in a 2 degrees C 
global warming scenario....
He the CDI will send the results of the survey to companies and 
encourage them to use it to assess the risks to their portfolios, and 
he'll use the information in his capacity as the state's insurance 
regulator...
Jones' efforts to do battle with climate change haven't gone unnoticed, 
or unopposed.
Jones last year came under fire from 12 state attorneys general and one 
governor, who called his efforts an "affront to sound insurance 
regulation," and threatened to sue him for calling on insurance 
companies to evaluate and address potential climate-related risks to 
their investment portfolio.
Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak has also urged Jones to back 
off his Climate Risk Carbon Initiative, which calls for insurance 
company disclosure of investments in fossil fuel producing companies and 
aims to discourage them from such investments...
Jones during Tuesday's press conference said that based on that results 
over the past five years of the survey that he believes insurers are not 
doing enough to prepare for climate change.
"I reached the conclusion that insurance companies were not addressing 
the serious financial risks associated with climate change," Jones said..
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2018/05/08/488649.htm
- - - -
[Calif Dept of Insurance Analysis]
*SCENARIO ANALYSIS: Assessing Climate Change Transition Risk in Insurer 
Portfolios 
<https://interactive.web.insurance.ca.gov/apex_extprd/f?p=250:70:13583878154708::NO:::>*
https://interactive.web.insurance.ca.gov/apex_extprd/f?p=250:70:13583878154708::NO:::


[Congress does good deed]
*Carbon Monitoring Restored in Congress, for Now 
<https://climatecrocks.com/2018/05/19/carbon-monitoring-restored-in-congress-for-now/>*
May 19, 2018
Readers will know that the Trump administration was determined to cancel 
an important NASA program which monitors global carbon fluxes.
Looks like another example of good science being tougher to kill than 
climate deniers (and Vladimir Putin) would like.
Earther:
  Update 5/18: In a surprising turnaround, the House Appropriations 
Committee voted yesterday to reinstate the $10 million NASA needs to 
continue the Carbon Monitoring Program in an amendment to a 2019 
spending bill. According to Science Magazine, representative John 
Culberson (R-TX), who heads up the spending panel that oversees NASA, 
reportedly gave his colleague Matt Cartwright (D-PA) a shoutout for 
urging that CMS funding be restored. Democracy in action!
https://climatecrocks.com/2018/05/19/carbon-monitoring-restored-in-congress-for-now/


[Threat multiplier in Australia]
*Climate change an 'existential security risk' to Australia, Senate 
inquiry says 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/18/climate-change-an-existential-security-risk-to-australia-senate-inquiry-says>*
Threat is not a possible future one but one endangering Australia now, 
parliament told
Climate change is a "current and existential national security risk" to 
Australia, a Senate inquiry has told parliament, one that could inflame 
regional conflicts over food, water and land, and even imperil life on 
Earth.
The Senate committee inquiry into the implications of climate change for 
Australia's national security recommended an increase in foreign aid to 
be dedicated to climate change mitigation and adaptation in the region, 
as well as a government white paper on climate security, Department of 
Defence emissions targets and a dedicated climate security post within 
the Department of Home Affairs.
The inquiry, which released its report on Thursday afternoon, heard that 
the security risk of climate change was not a possible future threat but 
one that endangers Australia and its region now. The Asia-Pacific was 
the region "most vulnerable" to the security and humanitarian impacts of 
climate change, the committee heard, and faced an "existential threat".
An existential threat was defined as "one that threatens the premature 
extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and 
drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development"...
- - - -
"What this inquiry has brought home to me is that when people choose to 
engage with the climate science, without any partisan or ideological 
blinkers, they quickly understand the seriousness of the challenge and 
decide to act. We have seen that the Australian Defence Force is 
changing how it does things because it is taking climate change 
seriously, but we have a government that is doing nothing to reduce 
emissions to actually reduce the threat of climate change itself."
More at: 
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/18/climate-change-an-existential-security-risk-to-australia-senate-inquiry-says


[PDF file 
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-dcoats-021318.PDF 
]
*STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD WORLDWIDE THREAT ASSESSMENT
of the US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY 
<https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-dcoats-021318.PDF>*
Information available as of 8 February 2018 was used in the preparation 
of this assessment.
*Environment and Climate Change*
The impacts of the long-term trends toward a warming climate, more air 
pollution, biodiversity loss, and
water scarcity are likely to fuel economic and social discontent - and 
possibly upheaval - through 2018.
- The past 115 years have been the warmest period in the history of 
modern civilization, and the
past few years have been the warmest years on record. Extreme weather 
events in a warmer
world have the potential for greater impacts and can compound with other 
drivers to raise the
risk of humanitarian disasters, conflict, water and food shortages, 
population migration, labor
shortfalls, price shocks, and power outages. Research has not identified 
indicators of tipping
points in climate-linked earth systems, suggesting a possibility of 
abrupt climate change.
- Worsening air pollution from forest burning, agricultural waste 
incineration, urbanization, and
rapid industrialization - with increasing public awareness - might drive 
protests against
authorities, such as those recently in China, India, and Iran.
- Accelerating biodiversity and species loss - driven by pollution, 
warming, unsustainable fishing,
and acidifying oceans - will jeopardize vital ecosystems that support 
critical human systems.
Recent estimates suggest that the current extinction rate is 100 to 
1,000 times the natural
extinction rate.
- Water scarcity, compounded by gaps in cooperative management 
agreements for nearly half of
the world's international river basins, and new unilateral dam 
development are likely to heighten
tension between countries.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-dcoats-021318.PDF


[study on projected impacts]
*The projected effect on insects, vertebrates, and plants of limiting 
global warming to 1.5 degrees C rather than 2 degrees C 
<http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6390/791>*
R. Warren1,*, J. Price1, E. Graham2, N. Forstenhaeusler1, J. VanDerWal2
One and a half degrees on biodiversity
Insects are the most diverse group of animals on Earth and are 
ubiquitous in terrestrial food webs. We have little information about 
their fate in a changing climate; data are scant for insects compared 
with other groups of organisms. Warren et al. performed a global-scale 
analysis of the effects of climate change on insect distribution (see 
the Perspective by Midgley). For vertebrates and plants, the number of 
species losing more than half their geographic range by 2100 is halved 
when warming is limited to 1.5 degrees C, compared with projected losses 
at 2 degrees C. But for insects, the number is reduced by two-thirds.  
(Science, this issue p. 791; see also p. 714)
*Abstract*
In the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the United Nations is pursuing 
efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C, whereas earlier 
aspirations focused on a 2 degrees C limit. With current pledges, 
corresponding to ~3.2 degrees C warming, climatically determined 
geographic range losses of >50% are projected in ~49% of insects, 44% of 
plants, and 26% of vertebrates. At 2 degrees C, this falls to 18% of 
insects, 16% of plants, and 8% of vertebrates and at 1.5 degrees C, to 
6% of insects, 8% of plants, and 4% of vertebrates. When warming is 
limited to 1.5 degrees C as compared with 2 degrees C, numbers of 
species projected to lose >50% of their range are reduced by ~66% in 
insects and by ~50% in plants and vertebrates.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6390/791


[Article]
*The way scientists define climate goals has given the world a false 
sense of hope 
<https://qz.com/1282148/the-santa-fe-high-school-shooting-is-number-17-since-parkland/>*
- - - -
In two separate analyses 
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0142-4> published this week 
in Nature Geoscience 
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0143-3>, Glen Peters and 
Oliver Geden, researchers at the Center for International Climate 
Research and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, respectively, 
argue the solution is to completely rethink the way we set the policies 
designed to push us towards climate goals.
- - - - -
Convincing politicians to commit to a zero-emissions goal won't be easy, 
Geden says. That's because, directly or indirectly, scientists have been 
giving politicians a false sense of hope with regards to climate change.
"For 30 years now, we've been hearing that it's five minutes to 
midnight," says Geden. It's the doomsday analogy that warns us that 
climate catastrophe is coming soon. "But in that period we've continued 
to emit more and more greenhouse gases, [and] scientists still say it's 
only five minutes to midnight. How can that be?"
Geden worries that scientists always say it's feasible to hit climate 
goals under certain circumstances. His concern is not that this is 
false, but that politicians hearing the message will only take home it's 
first part - that the goals are attainable - and ignore the section 
where the experts lay out the specific details necessary to reach those 
ends.
Scientists have good reason for employing positive rhetoric: they worry 
that if they say the goals are infeasible then politicians would give up 
on climate action. They are "constantly shifting and shaping their 
assumptions to keep their story alive, because they fear defeatism," 
says Geden. It's one reason there are so many different carbon budgets 
for hitting the same climate goals: they're essentially offering up a 
sampler platter for policymakers to choose from, allowing them to pick 
whichever budget makes their political life easier.

For example, until 2007, the concept of negative emissions - which 
relies on developing technologies cheap enough to pull carbon dioxide 
from the air - did not feature in popular climate models. But because 
the world was continuing to emit more CO2 each year, it became clear 
that, to keep the 2 degrees C goal feasible, scientists had to start 
including negative emissions in their climate models. Now it is widely 
assumed that, if we are to hit our Paris goals, we will need negative 
emissions at a large scale, capturing billions of metric tons of carbon 
dioxide each year by some time in the second half of this century.

Geden has a solution to the communication breakdown that currently 
exists between scientists and policymakers. Instead of saying "yes, we 
can hit climate goals if we do this, this, and this," Geden argues, 
scientists need to change their communication and say "no, we cannot hit 
climate goals unless we do this, this, and this." That, he argues, will 
encourage among lawmakers the urgency scientists feel, but have failed 
to articulate to date.
https://qz.com/1282148/the-santa-fe-high-school-shooting-is-number-17-since-parkland/
- - - -
[Nature Geoscience]
Beyond carbon budgets <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0142-4>
Glen P. Peters
The remaining carbon budget consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 
degrees C allows 20 more years of current emissions according to one 
study, but is already exhausted according to another. Both are 
defensible. We need to move on from a unique carbon budget, and face the 
nuances...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0142-4
- - - -
*Politically informed advice for climate action 
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0143-3>*
Oliver Geden
Upward estimates for carbon budgets are unlikely to lead to 
action-focused climate policy. Climate researchers need to understand 
processes and incentives in policymaking and politics to communicate 
effectively.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0143-3


[from MIT]
*At this rate, it's going to take nearly 400 years to transform the 
energy system 
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610457/at-this-rate-its-going-to-take-nearly-400-years-to-transform-the-energy-system/>*
Here are the real reasons we're not building clean energy anywhere near 
fast enough.
by James Temple
March 14, 2018
Fifteen years ago, Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie 
Institution, calculated that the world would need to add about a nuclear 
power plant's worth of clean-energy capacity every day between 2000 and 
2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Recently, he did a quick 
calculation to see how we're doing.
Not well. Instead of the roughly 1,100 megawatts of carbon-free energy 
per day likely needed to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 
degrees C, as the 2003 /Science/ paper 
<http://science.sciencemag.org/content/299/5615/2052> by Caldeira and 
his colleagues found, we are adding around 151 megawatts. That's only 
enough to power roughly 125,000 homes.
At that rate, substantially transforming the energy system would take, 
not the next three decades, but nearly the next four centuries. In the 
meantime, temperatures would soar, melting ice caps, sinking cities, and 
unleashing devastating heat waves around the globe (see "The year 
climate change began to spin out of control 
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609642/the-year-climate-change-began-to-spin-out-of-control/>").
Caldeira stresses that other factors are likely to significantly shorten 
that time frame (in particular, electrifying heat production, which 
accounts for a more than half of global energy consumption, will 
significantly alter demand). But he says it's clear we're overhauling 
the energy system about an order of magnitude too slowly, underscoring a 
point that few truly appreciate: It's not that we aren't building clean 
energy fast enough to address the challenge of climate change. It's that 
- even after decades of warnings 
<http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html?pagewanted=all>, 
policy debates, and clean-energy campaigns - the world has barely even 
begun to confront the problem.
The UN's climate change body asserts that the world needs to cut as much 
as 70 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions by midcentury to have any 
chance of avoiding 2 ˚C of warming. But carbon pollution has continued 
to rise, ticking up 2 percent last year.
*So what's the holdup?*
Beyond the vexing combination of economic, political, and technical 
challenges is the basic problem of overwhelming scale. There is a 
massive amount that needs to be built, which will suck up an immense 
quantity of manpower, money, and materials.
For starters, global energy consumption is likely to soar by around 30 
percent in the next few decades as developing economies expand. (China 
alone needs to add 
<http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/WEO_2017_Executive_Summary_English_version.pdf> 
the equivalent of the entire US power sector by 2040, according to the 
International Energy Agency.) To cut emissions fast enough and keep up 
with growth, the world will need to develop 10 to 30 terawatts of 
clean-energy capacity by 2050. On the high end that would mean 
constructing the equivalent of around 30,000 nuclear power plants - or 
producing and installing 120 billion 250-watt solar panels.
*Energy overhaul*
	What we should be doing* 	What we're actually doing^†
Megawatts per day 	1,100 	151
Megawatts per year 	401,500 	55,115
Megawatts in fifty years 	20,075,000 	2,755,750
Years to add 20 Terrawatts 	50 	363
Sources: Carnegie Institution, Science, BP 	*If we had started at this 
rate in 2000 	^† Actual average rate of carbon-free added per day from 
2006-2015

There's simply little financial incentive for the energy industry to 
build at that scale and speed while it has tens of trillions of dollars 
of sunk costs in the existing system.
"If you pay a billion dollars for a gigawatt of coal, you're not going 
to be happy if you have to retire it in 10 years," says Steven Davis, an 
associate professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the 
University of California, Irvine.
It's somewhere between difficult and impossible to see how any of that 
will change until there are strong enough government policies or big 
enough technology breakthroughs to override the economics.
*A quantum leap*
In late February, I sat in Daniel Schrag's office at the Harvard 
University Center for the Environment. His big yellow Chinook, Mickey, 
lay down next to my feet.
Schrag was one of President Barack Obama's top climate advisors. As a 
geologist who has closely studied climate variability and warming 
periods in the ancient past, he has a special appreciation for how 
dramatically things can change.
Sitting next to me with his laptop, he opened a report he had recently 
coauthored assessing the risks of climate change. It highlights the many 
technical strides that will be required to overhaul the energy system, 
including better carbon capture, biofuels, and storage.
*Evidence points to the need for a broader range of clean power beyond 
just wind and solar.*
The study also notes that the United States adds roughly 10 gigawatts of 
new energy generation capacity per year. That includes all types, 
natural gas as well as solar and wind. But even at that rate, it would 
take more than 100 years to rebuild the existing electricity grid, to 
say nothing of the far larger one required in the decades to come.
"Is it possible to accelerate by a factor of 20?" he asks. "Yeah, but I 
don't think people understand what that is, in terms of steel and glass 
and cement."
Climate observers and commentators have used various historical 
parallels to illustrate the scale of the task, including the Manhattan 
Project and the moon mission. But for Schrag, the analogy that really 
speaks to the dimensions and urgency of the problem is World War II, 
when the United States nationalized parts of the steel, coal, and 
railroad industries. The government forced automakers to halt car 
production in order to churn out airplanes, tanks, and jeeps.
The good news here is that if you direct an entire economy at a task, 
big things can happen fast. But how do you inspire a war mentality in 
peacetime, when the enemy is invisible and moving in slow motion?
"It's a quantum leap from where we are today," Schrag says.
*The time delay*
The fact that the really devastating consequences of climate change 
won't come for decades complicates the issue in important ways. Even for 
people who care about the problem in the abstract, it doesn't rate high 
among their immediate concerns. As a consequence, they aren't inclined 
to pay much, or change their lifestyle, to actually address it. In 
recent years, Americans were willing to increase their electricity bill 
by a median amount of only $5 a month even if that "solved," not eased, 
global warming, down from $10 15 years earlier, according to a series of 
surveys 
<https://books.google.com/books?id=SC9BBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq=Ansolabehere+and+climate+change+survey+and+if+the+cost&source=bl&ots=a4N_8J6Gq_&sig=iyUqo4CrIFNmdcDp3LysSOhVxVE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiX1LaRrtvZAhUTS2MKHVqrDy4Q6AEIXTAI#v=onepage> 
by MIT and Harvard.
It's conceivable that climate change will someday alter that mind-set as 
the mounting toll of wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, extinctions, and 
sea-level rise finally forces the world to grapple with the problem.
But that will be too late. Carbon dioxide works on a time delay. It 
takes about 10 years to achieve its full warming effect, and it stays in 
the atmosphere for thousands of years. After we've tipped into the 
danger zone, eliminating carbon dioxide emissions doesn't decrease the 
effects; it can only prevent them from getting worse. Whatever level of 
climate change we allow to unfold is locked in for millennia, unless we 
develop technologies to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere on a 
massive scale (or try our luck with geoengineering 
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604081/the-growing-case-for-geoengineering/>).
This also means there's likely to be a huge trade-off between what we 
would have to pay to fix the energy system and what it would cost to 
deal with the resulting disasters if we don't. Various 
<https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers.pdf> 
estimates 
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/feb/15/stern-review> find 
that cutting emissions will shrink the global economy by a few 
percentage points a year, but unmitigated warming could slash worldwide 
GDP more than 20 percent 
<http://web.stanford.edu/%7Emburke/climate/BurkeHsiangMiguel2015.pdf> by 
the end of the century, if not far more 
<http://web.stanford.edu/%7Emburke/climate/map.php>.
*In the money*
Arguably the most crucial step to accelerate energy development is 
enacting strong government policies. Many economists believe the most 
powerful tool would be a price on carbon, imposed through either a 
direct tax or a cap-and-trade program. As the price of producing energy 
from fossil fuels grows, this would create bigger incentives to replace 
those plants with clean energy (see "Surge of carbon pricing proposals 
coming in the new year 
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609560/surge-of-carbon-pricing-proposals-coming-in-the-new-year/>").
"If we're going to make any progress on greenhouse gases, we'll have to 
either pay the implicit or explicit costs of carbon," says Severin 
Borenstein, an energy economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Researchers have begun to understand the economic and social damage 
caused by climate change.
But it has to be a big price, far higher than the $15 per ton it cost to 
acquire allowances in California's cap-and-trade program late last year. 
Borenstein says a carbon fee approaching $40 a ton "just blows coal out 
of the market entirely and starts to put wind and solar very much into 
the money," at least when you average costs across the lifetime of the 
plants.
Others think the price should be higher still. But it's very hard to see 
how any tax even approaching that figure could pass in the United 
States, or many other nations, anytime soon.
The other major policy option would be caps that force utilities and 
companies to keep greenhouse emissions below a certain level, ideally 
one that decreases over time. This regulations-based approach is not 
considered as economically efficient as a carbon price, but it has the 
benefit of being much more politically palatable. American voters hate 
taxes but are perfectly comfortable with air pollution rules, says 
Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard University.
Fundamental technical limitations will also increase the cost and 
complexity of shifting to clean energy. Our fastest-growing carbon-free 
sources, solar and wind farms, don't supply power when the sun isn't 
shining or the wind isn't blowing. So as they provide a larger portion 
of the grid's electricity, we'll also need long-range transmission lines 
that can balance out peaks and valleys across states, or massive amounts 
of very expensive energy storage, or both (see "Relying on renewables 
alone significantly inflates the cost of overhauling energy 
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610366/relying-on-renewables-alone-would-significantly-raise-the-cost-of-overhauling-the-energy/>").
- - - - -
The upshot is that we're eventually going to need to either 
supplement wind and solar with many more nuclear reactors, fossil-fuel 
plants with carbon capture and other low-emissions sources, or pay far 
more <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.324/abstract> to 
build out a much larger system of transmission, storage and renewable 
generation, says Jesse Jenkins, a researcher with the MIT Energy 
Initiative. In all cases, we're still likely to need significant 
technical advances that drive down costs.
All of this, by the way, only addresses the challenge of overhauling the 
electricity sector, which currently represents less than 20 percent of 
total energy consumption. It will provide a far greater portion as we 
electrify things like vehicles and heating, which means we'll eventually 
need to develop an electrical system several times larger than today's.
But that still leaves the "really difficult parts of the global energy 
system" to deal with, says Davis of UC Irvine. That includes aviation, 
long-distance hauling, and the cement and steel industries, which 
produce carbon dioxide in the manufacturing process itself. To clean up 
these huge sectors of the economy, we're going to need better carbon 
capture and storage tools, as well as cheaper biofuels or energy 
storage, he says.
These kinds of big technical achievements tend to require significant 
and sustained government support. But much like carbon taxes or 
emissions caps, a huge increase in federal research and development 
funding is highly unlikely in the current political climate.
*Give up? So should we just give up?*
There is no magic bullet or obvious path here. All we can do is pull 
hard on the levers that seem to work best.
Environmental and clean-energy interest groups need to make climate 
change a higher priority, tying it to practical issues that citizens and 
politicians do care about, like clean air, security, and jobs. Investors 
or philanthropists need to be willing to make longer-term bets on 
early-stage energy technologies. Scientists and technologists need to 
focus their efforts on the most badly needed tools. And lawmakers need 
to push through policy changes to provide incentives, or mandates, for 
energy companies to change.
The hard reality, however, is that the world very likely won't be able 
to accomplish what's called for by midcentury. Schrag says that keeping 
temperature increases below 2 degrees C is already "a pipe dream," 
adding that we'll be lucky to prevent 4 degrees C of warming this century.
That means we're likely to pay a very steep toll in lost lives, 
suffering, and environmental devastation (see "Hot and violent").
But the imperative doesn't end if warming tips past 2 degrees C. It only 
makes it more urgent to do everything we can to contain the looming 
threats, limit the damage, and shift to a sustainable system as fast as 
possible.
"If you miss 2050," Schrag says, "you still have 2060, 2070, and 2080."
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610457/at-this-rate-its-going-to-take-nearly-400-years-to-transform-the-energy-system/


[Ars longa, vita brevis]
*Solar Panels As Artistic Canvas 
<https://artistsandclimatechange.com/2018/05/17/solar-panels-as-artistic-canvas/>*
Berlin-based magazine The Beam <http://www.the-beam.com/>, in 
collaboration with the Little Sun Foundation 
<http://littlesunfoundation.org/> and Street Art Berlin 
<https://www.streetartbln.com/upcycled-solar-panels-transformed-into-street-art-lets-celebrate-it/>, 
launched the Solar Panel Art Series 
<https://www.instagram.com/thesolarpanelartseries/> in 2017, the first 
international art exhibit of painted solar PV panels. The Beam invited 
over 40 artists and designers from around the world to create works of 
art using recycled solar panels as their canvas. The exhibited panels 
were sold via online auction to benefit the Solar Kids School Program 
<http://littlesunfoundation.org/solar-kids-school-programm-rwanda/>, one 
of the many programs of the Little Sun Foundation co-founded by the 
Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson 
<http://www.olafureliasson.net/>. The goal of the Solar Kids School 
Program is to provide safe and sustainable light and phone charging to 
students and teachers in off-grid schools in rural Rwanda...
More at: 
https://artistsandclimatechange.com/2018/05/17/solar-panels-as-artistic-canvas/
- - - -
*Artists and Climate Change <https://artistsandclimatechange.com/about/>*
https://artistsandclimatechange.com/about/


*This Day in Climate History - May 20, 2013 
<http://environblog.jenner.com/corporate_environmental_l/2013/05/high-court-refuses-to-take-up-kivalina-climate-suit.html> 
- from D.R. Tucker*
May 20, 2013: The US Supreme Court refuses to hear an appeal of the 9th 
US Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in the Kivalina v. ExxonMobil 
case, effectively ending one effort to hold fossil fuel companies 
legally accountable for carbon pollution.
http://environblog.jenner.com/corporate_environmental_l/2013/05/high-court-refuses-to-take-up-kivalina-climate-suit.html 


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