Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. From Palm Springs, I’m Janet Wilson. This week’s hoopla-laden Super Bowl and Mardi Gras events are gauges of good and not so great progress on climate change and environmental risks in the U.S.
This year’s Super Bowl, held in Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, was powered fully by renewables via a partnership between the stadium owners and NV Energy, which owns a solar farm in the nearby desert that officials say produced enough energy to light up every mega-scoreboard, giant TV camera and microphone-wearing referee. It’s a real-world sign of how “clean” energy with no dangerous greenhouse gases is on the uptick, reports USA Today’s Julia Gomez.
Stadium workers also recycle tons of food waste, sod, grass clippings and even cigarette butts, earning the facility a coveted Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) award in July. As critics note, the carbon footprints created by all the private jet owners and others who flew in are still not great.