This week, Huffington Post posted a piece on a new study published in Nature about climate change predictions from 22 years ago. In 1990, climate scientists predicted a rise in global temperatures of 0.55 degrees C by 2010 and 1.1 degrees C by 2030, and current global temperatures indicate that these predictions were remarkably accurate. The accuracy is especially interesting given the technology used in 1990 was much simpler than what scientists rely on today. The 1990 predictions, which came from the first climate assessment report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), were based largely upon the amount of carbon dioxide that was already in the atmosphere. As climate change becomes an increasingly important issue for the planet, this report is a reminder that while we can’t know everything about how our actions impact the climate, we know that they do.
In other sustainability news, Environmental Leader wrote an article about a new partnership between the US Postal Service and UPS. The two logistics companies have teamed up in an initiative to cut costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In a video posted to YouTube, representatives from the USPS and UPS said that while they are competitors, they are also each other’s customers and can work together to reduce their carbon footprint. UPS is has dropped its normalized emissions by more than 6.5 percent from 2010 to 2011. USPS revealed in its 2011 sustainability report that its carbon emissions rose 0.7 percent from 2010 to 2011, prompting the company to realize how important it is for them to make changes to their operations to shift the needle. Proactive efforts like these by large companies will help raise the minimum bar and set new standards for supply chain logistics, helping offset the negative impacts of the industry’s activities on climate change.