Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Institutional investors have called for action on climate change, prompted by growing evidence of negative economic impacts. Meeting at the 2005 Investor Summit on Climate Risk, held in New York, a grouping of pension funds, foundations, investors and United States state treasurers demanded that market regulators insist on rigorous corporate disclosure of climate risks. The group is also seeking one billion US dollars in clean technology investment over the next year.

The conference issued a "Call for Action," signed by 40 major investors. "Investors backing these practical and pragmatic steps send a strong signal to the markets that climate risk is real and needs to be managed aggressively," responded Klaus Toepfer, head of the United Nations Environment Programme, a co-host of the meeting. There will be three post-summit initiatives: a new climate disclosure risk initiative; the development of principles for responsible investment; and a new forum to promote collaboration among investors.

More information

• ENS
• ENN
• Press release, UNEP

• Call for Action
• Investor Network on Climate Risk

One hundred leading scientists and environmentalists met at the World Environmental Forum, held at Stony Brook University in the United States over the first weekend in May, to consider the ecological impact of climate change. "We have to get a grip on ourselves, on this planet, and let's start managing it in a sensible way," said Thomas Lovejoy of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington DC. "We're going to have glacier national parks but no glaciers."

Richard Leakey, conference organizer and visting professor at Stony Brook University, called for a new global fund to protect wildlife. "Protected areas are now islands," he said. "The wildlife and fauna and flora are pretty well tied in by boundaries which aren't oceans, in the sense of islands, but development. And if there's significant climate change, as is predicted, what's going to happen to these areas? Palaeontologically, island faunas become extinct."

More information

• Newsday
• BBC

• ENS
• Stony Brook Statesman

Cutting smog pollution is accelerating global warming, according to Martin Wild of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Zurich, Switzerland. "There's no longer a dimming to counteract the greenhouse effect," he reported to New Scientist. Since 1990, skies have become clearer, ending the period of 'global dimming' associated with increasing pollution.

Surface measurements of radiation received from the sun, supported by satellite data, show a four per cent brightening over the past decade. "The atmosphere is heated from the bottom up, and more solar energy at the surface means we might finally see the increases in temperature that we expected to see with global greenhouse warming," said Chuck Long, contributor to the project from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy.

More information

• Terra Daily
• New Scientist

• Christian Science Monitor