The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement was signed in December 2015 to widespread acclaim. Although largely symbolic and non-enforceable, it begat optimism that governments would act to substantially decrease carbon pollution. The agreement focuses on voluntary pledges to reduce carbon pollution in order to limit global warming to a 2.0°…

2017 may be the year that cognizance of the global warming threat reached a tipping point. Powerful hurricanes inundated Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico, and other lands, causing painful losses in lives and treasure. In what some might have thought was an Orson Welles “The War of the Worlds” sci-fi redux, Hurricane Ophelia, the easternmost Atlantic…