Statewide Coalition Demands Cuomo make Polluters Pay for a Clean Energy Transition

NY RENEWS delivers symbolic $7Billion check at the State Capitol - 2.27.2018

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Coalition Calls for Polluter Fee to Fund Transition to Renewable Energy

February 28, 2018

ALBANY, N.Y. — Climate activists delivered a symbolic $7-billion check to Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday, saying that's what New York stands to gain through a corporate polluter fee. The activists had just attended the Environmental Conservation Committee's budget hearing.

According to Dan Sherrell, the campaign coordinator for New York Renews, the governor's budget doesn't go far enough to address the growing effects of climate change but imposing a polluter fee on greenhouse-gas emissions could pave the way to 100-percent renewable energy by 2050.

"We could be raising $7 billion in revenue a year that could be invested in environmental-justice communities to protect them from the worst effects of climate change and in renewable energy," he says.

The governor has called for a program to bring solar power to 10,000 low-income New Yorkers, the development of offshore wind, and the closure of all coal-fired power plants.

Cuomo also has called for expansion of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate compact for reducing power-plant emissions. But Sherrell says a corporate polluter fee would be more effective.

"It will raise more revenue and it will be a more aggressive price," he notes. "And critically, it will be across the economy, so it will also tackle buildings and transportation which together make up almost 80 percent of the state's emissions."

He says the governor's office has indicated interest in creating a polluter fee but has made no commitment to pursue it.

New York has been a national leader in developing clean-energy strategies. But Sherrell notes other states are now considering corporate polluter fees as a way to advance their efforts, and they could soon leave New York behind.

"Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state is making this his priority issue for this year," he adds. "Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey has spoken about it and has also committed to 100 percent renewable energy, which Gov. Cuomo has not."

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and New York Sen. Kristen Gillibrand have expressed support for carbon pricing as a way to boost investment in renewable energy.

Andrea Sears, Public News Service - NY

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NY RENEWS at Gov. Cuomo’s Exec. Budget Hearing on Environmental Conservation - 2.27.2018

Price Carbon Pollution to Fund a Transition to Clean Energy and Green Jobs

Opinion | LETTER | NY TIMES

A Need for a Pollution Tax

FEB. 5, 2018

To the Editor:

Re: “New Jersey Rejoins Regional Emissions Program It Quit Under Christie” (news article, Jan. 31):

When it comes to cutting carbon emissions, participating in a cap-and-trade program like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is important, but it’s only a partial solution. After all, the initiative covers emissions solely from power plants, whereas transportation produces the bulk of New York’s emissions. And so far, the initiative has not cut carbon at the speed science tells us is required to avert dangerous warming.

To do that, we’ll need a more comprehensive and aggressive form of pollution pricing. Your article highlights the laudable effort by Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State to tax fossil fuel pollution directly and reinvest the revenue in renewable energy. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York will soon have the same opportunity.

NY Renews, a coalition of 140 environmental, labor and community groups across New York State, has been developing a proposal — likely to be introduced in Albany this year — to invest in job-creating clean energy and resiliency projects for coastal communities, using revenue from a polluter fee.

We need Governor Cuomo to be a real climate leader and embrace this common-sense idea, and lead the country in passing it into law.

LISA TYSON, MASSAPEQUA, N.Y.

The writer is director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, a member of NY Renews.

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State should follow New York City's lead taking on big oil

By Ashley Dawson, Commentary
January 28, 2018 | Times Union

“Put a price on carbon emissions so that Big Oil pays for the damage done to our health and environment, and so that we can bankroll a transition to clean energy and fair-labor green jobs.”

The Empire State Building was lit up bright green Jan. 10 to celebrate the precedent-setting announcement by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials: New York City is going to divest its $5 billion pension fund from fossil fuel-related investments. The city also has filed suit against the five biggest oil corporations to recover the billions of dollars in damage climate change has inflicted on the city.

It was a historic moment. The biggest city in the world's most powerful nation came out against the planet's richest, most powerful and most irresponsible industry. But it will take time for New York City's actions to have an impact. Divestment is not expected to happen until at least 2022. Big Oil has legions of lawyers who are experts in using the courts to obstruct justice and forestall reparations.

Although New York City's stand against Big Oil certainly sends a loud and emboldening message to the world, we need to be far more ambitious at the state level. We need state politicians to step up with concrete policy proposals that speed the transition away from fossil fuels. Otherwise, New York City's divestment could be nothing but hollow political posturing.

There certainly doesn't seem to be any meaningful coordination toward divestment on a state level. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced last month that he is directing the state to begin looking into divesting its own substantial pension funds from fossil fuels. However, the following day, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, sole trustee of the state's $200 billion pension fund, responded that "there are no immediate plans to divest our energy holdings."

Last summer, as President Donald Trump announced his intention to back out of the Paris Agreement, the state Legislature considered the Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA), which mandated the elimination of fossil fuels from New York's economy within 35 years. The CCPA set fair-labor standards for all green projects and ensured that at least 40 percent of the benefits of transitioning to a zero-carbon economy would be directed to the disadvantaged New York communities that have contributed the least to climate change but will bear the brunt of it. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called the CCPA "the most progressive climate equity policy we've seen."

But the CCPA died after state Sen. Tony Avella, D-Queens, declined to push Senate leaders to bring the bill to a vote. Avella is a member of the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), whose members all cosponsored the bill in the Senate in the first place. But the IDC caucuses with Republicans. Cuomo, who refused to make the CCPA a priority in his 2018 executive budget, has often sided with the IDC and has not pushed for them to rejoin the Democrats. Given the war declared on blue states by the Trump administration, the days of such antics by right-wing Democrats should be numbered in a place like New York.

It's time for the citizens of New York to show the rest of the country we can lead the way beyond fossil fuels. Put a price on carbon emissions so that Big Oil pays for the damage done to our health and environment, and so that we can bankroll a transition to clean energy and fair-labor green jobs. These corporations are not and never will be good citizens. They have known the facts about climate change for at least four decades and have done everything to obscure reality and sow public confusion. They have corroded our democracy and wrought havoc on our planet in the name of profits. As de Blasio put it, it's time that these corporations take responsibility for what they've done.

More Information:
Ashley Dawson is the Barron Visiting Professor at the Princeton Environmental Institute and professor at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island. He is the author of "Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change."

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Governor Cuomo's Proposal for New York's Clean Energy Jobs and Climate Agenda

On January 2, 2018, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo released the 20th proposal of the 2018 State of the State: a comprehensive agenda to combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and growing the clean energy economy. 

As stated in Cuomo's proposal, by further strengthening the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and welcoming new state members, New York will continue its progress in slashing emissions from existing fossil fuel power plants. In addition, unprecedented commitments announced today to advance clean energy technologies, including offshore wind, solar, energy storage and energy efficiency, will spur market development and create jobs across the state.

"New Yorkers know too well the devastation caused by climate change, and in order to slow the effects of extreme weather and build our communities to be stronger and more resilient, we must make significant investments in renewable energy," Governor Cuomo said. "With this proposal, New York is taking bold action to fight climate change and protect our environment, while supporting and growing 21st century jobs in these cutting-edge renewable industries."

Below are highlights listed in Gov. Cuomo's proposal:

• Expand Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and Reduce Emissions Equitably From the Highest-Polluting, High Demand "Peaker" Power Plants

• Issue Solicitations in 2018 and 2019 to Develop at Least 800 MW of Offshore Wind Projects and Foster Offshore Wind Industry and Workforce in New York State

• $200 Million Investment to Meet Unprecedented Energy Storage Target of 1,500 Megawatts by 2025 In Order to Increase Transmission of Clean and Renewable Energy

• Create the Zero Cost Solar for All Program for 10,000 Low-Income New Yorkers

• Reconvene Scientific Advisory Committee on Climate Change Disbanded by the Federal Government

• Governor Directs the Establishment of Energy Efficiency Target by Earth Day

• Regulations to Close all Coal Plants to be Adopted

The full text of the Governor's proposal is here.

For reactions to the Governor's proposal by NY Renews, a state-wide climate & energy coalition, and by local groups, click here. 

CLIMATE & ENERGY POLITICS - U.S., Canada, Mexico Pledge - Clinton Pushes Solar - Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Excerpts from News Reports

North America Will Draw Half Its Electricity from Carbon-Free Sources by 2025
37 percent already comes from non-carbon power plants, mostly nuclear and hydro

The United States, Mexico and Canada recently made a joint pledge to draw half the continent’s power from non-emitting sources by 2025. White House climate adviser Brian Deese described the pact as a sign of the growing bonds between the nations on climate and energy policies. He told reporters that the trio are cooperating more on those issues now than at any time in recent history.

The agreement calls for the continent’s power grid to draw 50 percent of its generation by 2025 from renewable energy, efficiency, nuclear power and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage technology. It would require a steep increase in clean power and efficiency over the next nine years.

Renewables are projected to increase to 23 percent by 2025, while nuclear power is expected to decrease to 18 percent as some units are decommissioned. Those figures don’t include state and regional action to de-carbonize the power grid.

The Clean Power Plan will be the “central component” to meeting the goals, but other policies—including federal tax incentives for renewables—will help. The Clean Power Plan faces litigation and is stalled under a Supreme Court stay.

Nuclear power is also a big part of the existing 'carbon-free' electricity in the United States—representing about 19 percent of the power mix. [Editors note: nuclear power doesn't emit carbon, and so it is referred to in the article as 'carbon-free'. However, the life-cycle of nuclear is definitely not carbon-free. It's also not environmentally 'clean' since it generates radioactive nuclear waste].

Deese added that the three countries will focus on the transmission lines needed to pave the way for rapid clean energy development.

Mexico will join the United States and Canada in committing to reduce methane emissions by between 40 and 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 from the oil and gas sector. This will immediate impact on climate change since methane has a strong, short-term impact on global warming.

Click here to read the full report at Scientific American.


Hillary Clinton has promised to have a half-billion solar panels installed by 2020

Hillary Clinton, courting young voters and the broader Democratic base, has promised to one-up President Obama on climate change, vowing to produce a third of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2027 while spending billions of dollars to transform the energy economy. 

Under the Paris Agreement, an accord committing nearly 200 countries to lowering carbon emissions, Mr. Obama pledged to reduce the United States’ emissions 25 percent to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, and 80 percent by 2050.

A half-billion solar panels will be installed by 2020, she has promised, seven times the number today, and $60 billion will go to states and cities to develop more climate-friendly infrastructure, such as public transportation and energy-efficient buildings.

She would put the United States on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050. And, she says, she could achieve all that without new legislation from Congress.
But Mrs. Clinton has avoided mention of the one policy that economists widely see as the most effective way to tackle climate change — and one that would need Congress’s assent: putting a price or tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

Conservative campaign operatives agree that they would immediately pounce on any mention by Mrs. Clinton of a carbon price.

Absent a carbon price, Mrs. Clinton plans to use a mix of new regulations, grant programs and spending on new infrastructure to achieve her targets. She would also spend $30 billion on a plan to help redevelop coal mining communities that are suffering economically in the wake of climate change policies.

And Mrs. Clinton would need at least some action by Congress to meet her goals — legislators would need to appropriate the $60 billion she intends to spend on clean infrastructure grants to states, and the $30 billion to help coal communities.

Among environmental groups and the renewable energy industry there is support for Mrs. Clinton’s proposals, however difficult they might be, compared with those of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who denies the established science of human-caused climate change.

Click here to read the full report at the New York Times.
 

Richest nations fail to agree on deadline to phase out fossil fuel subsidies

Energy ministers from the world’s major economies have failed to reach agreement on a deadline to phase out hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies for fossil fuels — subsidies that campaigners say are helping to propel the globe toward potentially devastating climate change.

Ministers from the Group of 20 major economies met in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday but failed to reach agreement on a deadline, despite Chinese and American efforts and a joint appeal from 200 nongovernmental organizations.

The Group of Seven richest economies last month urged all countries to eliminate “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies by 2025. At a separate annual meeting in June, the United States and China agreed to push for a firm target date to be set at a summit of G-20 leaders in Hangzhou in September.

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the G-20 had not agreed on a specific timeline to eliminate subsidies but said the United States believed that by 2025 or 2030, “we’d like to see very substantial progress.”

A 2015 report by the British think tank Overseas Development Institute, along with Oil Change International, calculated that the G-20 major economies subsidize fossil fuel production to the tune of $444 billion a year, marrying “bad economics with potentially disastrous effects on the environment.”

Russia spends some $23 billion in annual subsidies, and the United States $20 billion — despite President Obama’s calls to end tax breaks on the fossil fuel industry, the report said. China spends $3 billion, while Britain is one of the few G-20 countries increasing fossil fuel subsidies and cutting back on investment in renewable energy. Total G-20 subsidies for fossil fuels was four times the total global investment in renewable energy, it estimated.

“It is tantamount to G-20 governments allowing fossil fuel producers to undermine national climate commitments, while paying them for the privilege,” the report said.

 Click here to read the full report at The Washington Post 

Elon Musk: What Will It Take to Address the Climate Crisis?

Elon Musk, Tesla Motors CEO, breaks down climate change for students at The Sorbonne in Paris right before the historic Climate Change Conference in which over 190 nations agreed to reduce global warming emissions to keep the global average temperature increase below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) relative to pre-industrial temperatures.

What will it take to address the Climate Crisis? Watch the 12 minute video for Elon Musk's view:

Bill McKibben: Fracking Will Not Save Our Climate

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry

Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong. Very wrong.

By Bill McKibben | March 23, 2016 | The Nation

Global warming is, in the end, not about the noisy political battles here on the planet’s surface. It actually happens in constant, silent interactions in the atmosphere, where the molecular structure of certain gases traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. If you get the chemistry wrong, it doesn’t matter how many landmark climate agreements you sign or how many speeches you give. And it appears the United States may have gotten the chemistry wrong. Really wrong.

There’s one greenhouse gas everyone knows about: carbon dioxide, which is what you get when you burn fossil fuels. We talk about a “price on carbon” or argue about a carbon tax; our leaders boast about modest “carbon reductions.” But in the last few weeks, CO₂’s nasty little brother has gotten some serious press. Meet methane, otherwise known as CH₄.

In February, Harvard researchers published an explosive paper in Geophysical Research Letters. Using satellite data and ground observations, they concluded that the nation as a whole is leaking methane in massive quantities. Between 2002 and 2014, the data showed that US methane emissions increased by more than 30 percent, accounting for 30 to 60 percent of an enormous spike in methane in the entire planet’s atmosphere.

To the extent our leaders have cared about climate change, they’ve fixed on CO₂. Partly as a result, coal-fired power plants have begun to close across the country. They’ve been replaced mostly with ones that burn natural gas, which is primarily composed of methane. Because burning natural gas releases significantly less carbon dioxide than burning coal, CO₂ emissions have begun to trend slowly downward, allowing politicians to take a bow. But this new Harvard data, which comes on the heels of other aerial surveys showing big methane leakage, suggests that our new natural-gas infrastructure has been bleeding methane into the atmosphere in record quantities. And molecule for molecule, this unburned methane is much, much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

The EPA insisted this wasn’t happening, that methane was on the decline just like CO₂. But it turns out, as some scientists have been insisting for years, the EPA was wrong. Really wrong. This error is the rough equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange announcing tomorrow that the Dow Jones isn’t really at 17,000: Its computer program has been making a mistake, and your index fund actually stands at 11,000.

These leaks are big enough to wipe out a large share of the gains from the Obama administration’s work on climate change—all those closed coal mines and fuel-efficient cars. In fact, it’s even possible that America’s contribution to global warming increased during the Obama years. The methane story is utterly at odds with what we’ve been telling ourselves, not to mention what we’ve been telling the rest of the planet. It undercuts the promises we made at the climate talks in Paris. It’s a disaster—and one that seems set to spre2ad.

The Obama administration, to its credit, seems to be waking up to the problem. Over the winter, the EPA began to revise its methane calculations, and in early March, the United States reached an agreement with Canada to begin the arduous task of stanching some of the leaks from all that new gas infrastructure. But none of this gets to the core problem, which is the rapid spread of fracking. Carbon dioxide is driving the great warming of the planet, but CO₂ isn’t doing it alone. It’s time to take methane seriously.

To understand how we got here, it’s necessary to remember what a savior fracked natural gas looked like to many people, environmentalists included. As George W. Bush took hold of power in Washington, coal was ascendant, here and around the globe. Cheap and plentiful, it was most visibly underwriting the stunning growth of the economy in China, where, by some estimates, a new coal-fired power plant was opening every week. The coal boom didn’t just mean smoggy skies over Beijing; it meant the planet’s invisible cloud of carbon dioxide was growing faster than ever, and with it the certainty of dramatic global warming.

So lots of people thought it was great news when natural-gas wildcatters began rapidly expanding fracking in the last decade. Fracking involves exploding the sub-surface geology so that gas can leak out through newly opened pores; its refinement brought online new shale deposits across the continent—most notably the Marcellus Shale, stretching from West Virginia up into Pennsylvania and New York. The quantities of gas that geologists said might be available were so vast that they were measured in trillions of cubic feet and in centuries of supply.

The apparently happy fact was that when you burn natural gas, it releases half as much carbon dioxide as coal. A power plant that burned natural gas would therefore, or so the reasoning went, be half as bad for global warming as a power plant that burned coal. Natural gas was also cheap—so, from a politician’s point of view, fracking was a win-win situation. You could appease the environmentalists with their incessant yammering about climate change without having to run up the cost of electricity. It would be painless environmentalism, the equivalent of losing weight by cutting your hair.

Climate Change: Human Activity is Causing Sea-level Rise -- We Must Take Action

WNY can be a key player in the effort to fight the impact of climate change

EDITORIAL  |   The Buffalo News

on February 27, 2016 - 12:01 AM

If this week’s alarming report on rising sea levels doesn’t get everyone’s attention, it’s hard to see what will, short of bodies floating in the water. Scientists reported on Monday that the oceans are rising at the fastest rate in 28 centuries – since the founding of ancient Rome – and that flooding is increasing more frequently in coastal cities and will only get worse.

Isn’t it time to be serious? The scientists make a credible case that the cause is human activity, but it’s not even necessary to accept that to understand that rising seas are a fact – for whatever reason – and they portend expensive, life-altering calamities.

Two critical things need to happen if humanity is to respond most effectively to the threat. Defensively, coastal cities such as Miami Beach, Fla.; Charleston, S.C.; Norfolk, Va.; and New York City need to buffer themselves against the coming tide. The need for that has already been documented.

In Charleston, for example, the number of flood days has increased to 219 in recent years from just 34 in 2005, based on measurements of a tide gauge. Other cities, including Annapolis, Md., and Key West, Fla., have also seen dramatic increases in the number of flood days. Climate Central, a research organization in Princeton, N.J., has calculated that about three-quarters of tidal flood days along the East Coast are occurring because of rising sea levels caused by human-driven carbon dioxide emissions.

The consequences of warming are already being felt and will, experts say, inevitably become worse before humans have any chance even to slow the pace of climate change. It will be crucial to prepare.

But Americans, and the world, owe it to future generations to acknowledge that their activities are causing much of this problem and to act accordingly. Fundamentally, that means moving away from carbon-based fuels and to renewable sources, including wind, sun and even sea.

This is an inevitable shift, since other resources – coal, oil, natural gas – are finite. Solar and wind energy are renewable, although reliability varies. The technology for harnessing wind and solar on a large scale is still being developed, but the technology will improve, as is always the case, creating greater efficiency and reliability and lowering the cost. This is going to happen. The question is how quickly and, clearly, faster is better.

That will be good for mankind and it will be good for Western New York, too. Not only is this one of the windiest places in the Northeast and already home to wind farms taking advantage of the power provided by air movement, but Buffalo is about to become home to the largest solar manufacturing plant in the Western Hemisphere. Those are critical technologies to develop and to refine if the world is to turn back from the kind of crises that a warming climate not only threatens, but is already producing.

The naysayers remain, and probably always will. No amount of evidence will change those minds. Some of those in denial, like Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., are particularly rabid in their insistence that the doubters are right and the vast majority of scientists are wrong. It’s time to leave them behind.

When experts with credibility report that seas are not only rising, but rising faster than they have since before Jesus walked the Earth, then it’s time to be done with those who are so invested in denial that they risk the well-being of millions of people.

Instead, governments and businesses must get on with the urgent task of protecting the coastal populations at increasing risk and acting, finally, in the interests of our descendants who will praise or curse their forebears who either acted to protect the planet or who, selfishly and against all evidence, chose to do nothing.

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Bill McKibben: An Agreement to Finally Begin Addressing Global Warming

The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

Falling Short on Climate in Paris

By BILL McKIBBEN    DEC. 13, 2015

Paris — THE climate news last week came out of Paris, where the world’s nations signed off on an agreement to finally begin addressing global warming.

Or, alternately, the climate news came out of Chennai, India, where hundreds died as flooding turned a city of five million into an island. And out of Britain, where the heaviest rains ever measured over 24 hours in the Lake District turned picturesque villages into lakes. And out of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, where record rainfalls flooded atolls.

In the hot, sodden mess that is our planet as 2015 drags to a close, the pact reached in Paris feels, in a lot of ways, like an ambitious agreement designed for about 1995, when the first conference of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change took place in Berlin.

Under its provisions, nations have made voluntary pledges to begin reducing their carbon emissions. These are modest — the United States, for instance, plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 by 12 to 19 percent from their levels in 1990. As the scrupulous scorekeepers at Climate Action Tracker, a non-government organization, put it, that’s a “medium” goal “at the least ambitious end of what would be a fair contribution.”

And that’s about par for the course here. Other countries, like gas station owners on opposite corners looking at each other’s prices, have calibrated their targets about the same: enough to keep both environmentalists and the fossil fuel industry from complaining too much. They have managed to provide enough financing to keep poor countries from walking out of the talks, but not enough to really push the renewables revolution into high gear. (Secretary of State John Kerry, in a fine speech, doubled America’s contribution — to $800 million, which is more than Congress is likely to appropriate, but risible compared to the need.)

So the world emerges, finally, with something like a climate accord, albeit unenforceable. If all parties kept their promises, the planet would warm by an estimated 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, or 3.5 degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels. And that is way, way too much. We are set to pass the 1 degree Celsius mark this year, and that’s already enough to melt ice caps and push the sea level threateningly higher.

The irony is, an agreement like this adopted at the first climate conference in 1995 might have worked. Even then it wouldn’t have completely stopped global warming, but it would have given us a chance of meeting the 1.5 degree Celsius target that the world notionally agreed on.

Instead, as we now know from recent revelations about Exxon Mobil, those were exactly the years the fossil fuel industry set to work to make sure doubt replaced resolve. Its delaying tactics were cruelly effective. To meet that 1.5 degree target now would require breakneck action of a kind most nations aren’t really contemplating. At this point we’d need to leave almost all remaining coal and much of the oil and gas in the ground and put the world’s industries to work on an emergency basis building solar panels and windmills.

That we have any agreement at all, of course, is testament to the mighty movement that activists around the world have built over the last five years. At Copenhagen, world leaders could go home with nothing and pay no price.

That’s no longer true.

But what this means is that we need to build the movement even bigger in the coming years, so that the Paris agreement turns into a floor and not a ceiling for action. We’ll be blocking pipelines, fighting new coal mines, urging divestment from fossil fuels — trying, in short, to keep weakening the mighty industry that still stands in the way of real progress. With every major world leader now on the record saying they at least theoretically support bold action to make the transition to renewable energy, we’ve got a new tool to work with.

And we’ll try to keep hoping that it adds up fast enough to matter. That’s a little hard, as the hottest year ever measured draws to a close. One doesn’t want to rain on the Paris parade — but that’s what seems to be happening somewhere every day now.

Like Washington State, where high temperatures and heavy rainfalls led the governor to declare a state of emergency late last week, as landslides closed highways. Or Portland, Ore., which had the rainiest December day in its recorded history. Or Norway, which had the worst flooding in more than a century of record keeping. Or …

Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org, the global grass-roots climate campaign. He teaches environmental studies at Middlebury College.

Article online at the New York Times: Falling Short on Climate in Paris

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@billmckibben on Twitter

"We've got a 1.5 degree target, and a 3.5 degree plan. So, let's get to work"

~  Bill McKibben 

Climate Change NEWS

‘An Era Of Extreme Weather': Report Shows Big Weather Events Cost U.S. $19 Billion In 2014
Those events — which included historic drought, flooding, and storms — affected 35 states in total. In the last four years, the report found, extreme weather events across the United States caused 1,286 fatalities and $227 billion in economic losses across 44 states.
Read the article at Think Progress


California’s Next Megadrought Has Already Begun
As California limps through another nearly rain-free rainy season, the state is taking increasingly bold action to save water.
Article by Eric Holthaus in Slate

  Editorial cartoon by Adam Zyglis in The Buffalo News

The Number of Sea Lions Washing Up on Californian Shores Is Higher Than Ever
Rising sea temperatures mean less food for the mammals.
Report in TIME


Church Should Lead, Not Follow on Climate Justice
As people of faith, we are called to be the rock of the climate justice movement, the solid rock of hope that remains strong on the darkest days. 
Article by Tim DeChristopher in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin


Energy Bombshell: CO2 Emissions Stabilized in 2014
Solar, wind and other renewables are making such a big difference in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide that global emissions from the energy sector flatlined during a time of economic growth for the first time in 40 years.
Read the article at Climate Central


This conservative group is tired of being accused of climate denial — and is fighting back
Facing a loss of high-profile corporate sponsors, a conservative state-level policy group — the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — threatened action in recent weeks against activist groups that accuse it of denying climate change.
Report in the Washington Post


What will happen after people stop ignoring the evidence on climate change
It’s possible that we’re living through a moment that will later be remembered as a key marker in the decline of climate change doubt as a whole.
Article in the Washington Post

PUBLIC HEARING: NY State's Energy Vision - Raise Your Voice!

Can't afford your energy bills?

Concerned about climate change?

Want more local control over our energy future?

Raise your voice at the upcoming Public Hearing on NY State's "Reforming the Energy Vision" plan.

Each Public Hearing will be preceded by an Informational Forum sponsored by the State Public Service Commission.

DATE: Thursday, January 29, 2015
FORUM / HEARING Times: 2:00PM/3:00PM;  6:00PM/7:00PM
PLACE: Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, 1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo [Map]

The Public Service Commission (PSC) is seeking to inform and obtain public comment on their regulatory component of Gov. Cuomo's "Reforming the Energy Vision" (REV) plan. The plan will promote more energy efficiency, greater use of renewable energy resources such as wind and solar, and “distributed” energy resources, such as micro grids, on-site power supplies, and storage.

As part of the REV process, the PSC is planning a 10-year phase out of government support and subsidies for clean energy development, in favor of a market-oriented approach. The REV proceeding will determine what role New York’s utility companies, like National Grid, will play in the energy system of the future. The PSC proposes to give utilities more control over designing, planning and managing the new energy markets in the hopes of motivating them to promote energy efficiency and renewables.

The Public Service Commission needs to hear the voices of the public, not just those of utility companies.

KEY ISSUES:
Grassroots public interest organizations from across New York have emphasized the following issues in response to the strong influence of utility companies and other for-profit corporations in the REV proceeding so far:

• Every New Yorker should have access to the benefits of clean energy

• New York must set and meet ambitious goals for greenhouse gas reductions

• There needs to be democratic participation in the energy system

• There is a need for regulation and consumer protections

TALKING POINTS:
The local Sierra Club is encouraging area residents to testify at the Public Hearing. To read suggestions for Talking Points by the Sierra Club Niagara Group, click here.

Detailed descriptions of Key Issues, additional Talking Points, a brief video and more are available at the Alliance for a Green Economy: click here. To download a printable description of REV plus Talking Points, click here, and a Testimony worksheet, click here.

PSC PUBLIC HEARING:
It is not necessary to be present at the start of the hearing, to make an appointment in advance, or to present written material to speak at the hearing. Persons will be called to speak after completing a request card.

For additional information provided by the PSC, click here.

Public Service Commission: Reforming NY State's Energy Industry and Regulatory Practices

The energy industry is in transition. Technological innovation and increasing competitiveness of Renewable Energy resources, combined with aging infrastructure, extreme weather events, and system security and resiliency needs, are all leading to significant changes in how electric energy is produced, managed and consumed.

The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) is conducting informational forums and public hearings across the State to seek public input and comment on the PSC’s regulatory component of Governor Cuomo’s overall strategic energy plan, ‘Reforming the Energy Vision’, or REV.

The REV initiative will lead to regulatory changes that promote more efficient use of energy and a deeper penetration of renewable resources such as Wind and Solar. The PSC is considering a new business model for energy service providers where distributed energy resources (Tomorrow's Energy Model, see below) will become a primary tool in the planning and operation of the electric system.

 

















PSC identified six policy objectives supporting the REV effort:

• Enhance customer knowledge and tools to enable customers to manage their energy bills and provide them more choice in how they use energy

• Animate the market and leverage ratepayer contributions

• Promote system-wide Efficiency

• Increase fuel and resource diversity

• Enhance system reliability and resiliency

• Reduce Carbon Emissions

PUBLIC HEARINGS:
Two Informational Forums with Public Hearings will be held in Buffalo, NY on  THURSDAY, January 29, 2015:

• FORUM / HEARING Times: 2:00PM/3:00PM;  6:00PM/7:00PM

• PLACE: Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, 1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo [Map]

It is not necessary to be present at the start of the hearing, to make an appointment in advance, or to present written material to speak at the hearing. Persons will be called to speak after completing a request card. Each public statement hearing will continue until everyone wishing to speak has been heard or other reasonable arrangements have been made.

For more information from the PSC, click here.   

Global Climate Change: 2014 Officially the Hottest Year on Record

Excerpts from a report at TheGuardian.com

The numbers are in. The year 2014 – after shattering temperature records that had stood for hundreds of years across virtually all of Europe, and roasting parts of South America, China and Russia – was the hottest on record, with global temperatures 1.24F (0.69C) higher than the 20th-century average, U.S. government scientists said on Friday.

In North America, California saw its hottest year, with annual average temperatures 4.1F (2.3C) higher than 20th century average, and scant relief for a punishing drought. Surprisingly, Alaska showed record warm temperatures as well. But for the remainder of North America, it was the opposite story [see Global Map and color Key, below].

 

The world was the hottest it has been since systematic records began in 1880, especially on the oceans, which the agency confirmed were the driver of 2014’s temperature rise.

The scientists said 2014 was the 38th consecutive year of above-average temperatures. That means nobody born since 1976 has experienced a colder-than-average year.

“Any one year being a record warm one is not in itself particularly significant, but this is one in a series of record warm years that are driven by the continuing underlying long-term global warming,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies.

Thirteen of the 15 hottest years have occurred since 2000.

“We expect that heat records will continue to get broken – not everywhere and not every year – but increasingly, and that does not bode well for a civilization that is continuing to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere at an increasing rate.” “Nineteen eighty-eight was also a record warm year at the time. Now it doesn’t even rank in the top 20,” Schmidt said.

The last record cold year was more than a century ago in 1911.

“We can safely say it’s probably the warmest year in 1,700 and 2,000 years, and I think it’s probably safe to say 5,000 years,” said Don Wuebbles, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois who has worked on a number of IPCC reports. “You have a continuous upward trend over the last century and that is telling us something. We have a clear signal that our climate changing, and when you look at the evidence it’s because of human activities.”

“The evidence is so strong I don’t know why we are arguing any more,” Wuebbles said. “It’s just crazy.”

The odds of that temperature shift occurring because of natural climate variability were less than one in 27 million, according to the Climate Central research group.

“The data from NASA and NOAA is the latest scientific evidence that climate change is real, and we must act now to protect our families and future generations,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat and climate champion. “Deniers must stop ignoring these alarms if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

Campaign groups said the milestone ought to spur new efforts to fight climate change. “The Obama administration must back international efforts to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050,” said Shaye Wolf, the climate science director with the Center for Biological Diversity. “We need a global agreement that keeps most dirty fossil fuels in the ground and provides ample support for developing nations to leapfrog into clean energy economies.”

On the current emissions trajectory, the world will attain average warming of 7.2F or 9F [4C or 5C] by 2100, which climate scientists say would be catastrophic.

Read the full report at TheGuardian.com


VIDEO: Watch 135 Years of Global Warming in 30 Seconds.  This NASA video animation depicts how temperatures around the globe have warmed over the years from 1880 to 2014.

 

U.S.-China Climate Accord -- Roundup of News and Opinions

US and China reach historic climate change deal, vow to cut emissions
By Matt Hoye and Holly Yan, CNN
updated 11:59 AM EST, Wed November 12, 2014

Beijing (CNN) -- In a historic climate change deal, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced both countries will curb their greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades.

Under the agreement, the United States would cut its 2005 level of carbon emissions by 26-28% before the year 2025. China would peak its carbon emissions by 2030 and will also aim to get 20% of its energy from zero-carbon emission sources by the same year.

"As the world's two largest economies, energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gases, we have a special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change," Obama said Wednesday in a joint news conference with Xi.

The announcement marks the first time China has agreed to peak its carbon emissions, according to the White House. Xi is calling for "an energy revolution" that would include broad economic reforms addressing air pollution.

Game changer for global talks?

Obama, who was in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, said he hopes the deal will spur other nations to tackle climate change.

"We hope to encourage all major economies to be ambitious -- all countries, developing and developed -- to work across some of the old divides, so we can conclude a strong global climate agreement next year," Obama said.

Xi said both sides were committed to working toward the goals before the United Nations Climate Conference in Paris next year.

Read more at CNN.com

What Climate Scientists Have To Say About Obama’s Deal With China  
by Emily Atkin, Posted on November 12, 2014 at 3:25 pm

It didn’t take long after the U.S. and China announced a historic agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions on Wednesday for the reactions to start pouring in. Democrats and climate hawks praised the deal as an important step forward in the battle against sea level rise, habitat degradation, and extreme weather. Republican leaders deemed it an economic disaster, a continuation of the so-called “war on coal.”

Policymakers aside, however, it is also important to note the reactions of the people who actually measure climate change and predict how it will impact humans in the future. What do they think about the deal? Is it enough to make a real difference in the fight against catastrophic global warming?

For the climate scientists ThinkProgress asked on Wednesday, the answer was a resounding yes, with a side of caution. Scientists confirmed that the announcement, which has China agreeing to cap its emissions by 2030 and the U.S. committing to a 26 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2025, represented a huge first step toward building the kind of political cooperation needed to effectively combat a global problem.

“My take is that this is an historic agreement for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we now have a good faith effort on the part of the planet’s two leading carbon emitters to work together to lower planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions,” said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

One of the main Republican-driven arguments against policies that fight climate change has been the mere fact that global warming is global — it can’t be solved by one country alone. The argument has manifested itself many times in our political discourse: Why should the U.S. implement climate policies if China isn’t doing it too? Why should the U.S. do anything if it’s not actually going to make a difference?

The argument is “very weak substantively” — China is still developing, while the U.S. is already developed — but it has been effective politically in preventing climate action in the United States, according to Paul Higgins, a climatologist and Director of the American Meteorological Society’s Policy Program. Now that Obama has sealed cooperation with China, Higgins said, that argument is essentially moot.

Read more at ThinkProgress.org


U.S.-China pact is an accord the planet needed
By Eugene Robinson, Opinion writer, November 13, 2014

The minute we glimpse a flicker of hope in the fight against climate change, Republicans in Congress announce their intention to snuff it out. Fortunately for the planet, it seems they can’t.

This week’s stunning announcement of a long-range agreement between the Obama administration and the Chinese government over carbon emissions is the best environmental news in years. Not to sound grandiose, it means the world still has a chance to save itself from unmitigated disaster.

The significance of the accord, which was doggedly pursued by Secretary of State John Kerry, is not just that the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases have agreed to take action. China’s ambitious target of generating 20 percent of its energy from sources other than fossil fuels by 2030 promises massive investment and innovation — a huge boost for clean-energy technologies, with impact worldwide.

Pay no attention to the “Yes, but” chorus. It is true that China could have committed to an earlier date for carbon emissions to level off and should have set interim targets. It is true that meeting the new U.S. goals will be no trivial undertaking. It is also true that the multiplying smokestacks of India, the third-largest emitter, will continue to spew heat-trapping carbon at an unfettered pace — for now.

These caveats are overshadowed by the fact that the U.S.-China agreement has the impact of a defibrillator upon U.N.-sponsored international negotiations for a global climate treaty, which have been sputtering for years and were on the verge of flat-lining. The deal makes irrelevant the argument that the whole endeavor is pointless unless the world’s two biggest emitters — together responsible for about 40 percent of the carbon being pumped into the atmosphere — are willing to commit themselves.

That argument has also been used domestically by foes of President Obama’s science-based climate policy. But if you expected Tuesday’s earthshaking announcement to change the hyper-partisan U.S. debate, well, you don’t know much about today’s Republican Party.

Read more at WashingtonPost.com


Racing to the Top with China
By Michael Brune, Exec. Director, Sierra Club
November 12, 2014

What a difference a week makes. This morning we awoke to the news that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have negotiated a historic joint announcement on climate change and clean energy cooperation. Coming from the world's two largest economies and two biggest carbon emitters, the new targets set by President Obama and President Xi Jinping have put the international community on notice: It's time to put up or shut up.

Three major, overarching goals were announced: 

•     The U.S. will cut its net greenhouse gas emissions to between 26 and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

•     China will attempt to peak its CO2 emissions by 2030 (and possibly sooner).

•     Also by 2030, China will increase the share of non-fossil fuel energy it uses to around 20 percent.

China's pledge to cap its emissions is momentous -- and should compel India and other developing nations to set their own ambitious targets. But the game changer in this announcement -- and an under-reported one at that -- is China's goal of producing 20 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources by the end of the next decade. To accomplish that, China will need to install 800 to 1,000 gigawatts of energy with zero emissions by 2030 -- an amount almost equal to current total U.S. electricity generating capacity.

Such rapid clean-energy growth will accelerate a positive feedback loop. As China drives toward its goal, clean energy prices will continue to drop. Solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels in many places already; as prices plummet even further, the transition from dirty fuels will pick up speed, helping China, the U.S., and other countries meet and exceed their climate targets and save money in the process.

Read more at the Sierra Club Newsletter

Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News

Weak climate change deal with China is at least a start toward averting disaster
EDITORIAL - The Buffalo News
on November 15, 2014 - 12:01 AM

The United States and China struck what may be a significant agreement this week on reducing emissions that are heating the Earth to dangerous levels.

Or they may have painted a pretty face on what is an otherwise very ugly canvas, hoping no one will notice.

The truth is today uncertain, but this much is fact: The two adversaries, which together produce about 45 percent of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases, made a start on what is undoubtedly the single biggest environmental challenge of the 21st century. In that, alone, this counts as a significant step.

That is true even if the agreement has more loopholes than all of Albany’s ethics laws put together. It’s true because it counts as a start and it should lead to more significant action down the road. It may lead to nothing, it is true, but without a start – and one that includes the two most conspicuous polluters – nothing is all that is guaranteed.

Read more at BuffaloNews.com

CLIMATE CHANGE NEWS

Rapid carbon emission cuts vital to stop severe impact of climate change, UN IPCC Report says

Most important assessment of global warming yet warns carbon emissions must be cut sharply and soon -- Report says solutions are available and affordable.

Climate change is set to inflict “severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts” on people and the natural world unless carbon emissions are cut sharply and rapidly, according to the most important assessment of global warming yet published.

The stark report states that climate change has already increased the risk of severe heatwaves and other extreme weather and warns of worse to come, including food shortages and violent conflicts. But it also found that ways to avoid dangerous global warming are both available and affordable.

“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in the message,” said the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, attending what he described as the “historic” report launch. “Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.” He said that quick, decisive action would build a better and sustainable future, while inaction would be costly.

Ban added a message to investors, such as pension fund managers: “Please reduce your investments in the coal- and fossil fuel-based economy and [move] to renewable energy.”

The report, released in Copenhagen on Sunday by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is the work of thousands of scientists and was agreed after negotiations by the world’s governments. 

It is the first IPCC report since 2007 to bring together all aspects of tackling climate change and for the first time states: that it is economically affordable; that carbon emissions will ultimately have to fall to zero; and that global poverty can only be reduced by halting global warming. The report also makes clear that carbon emissions, mainly from burning coal, oil and gas, are currently rising to record levels, not falling.

Read more at the The Guardian.
The IPCC's Summary Report intended for policymakers is Here.

The Military Takes on Climate Change Deniers

The idea that climate change poses serious risks to U.S. national security, long contested in conservative circles, is now an integral part of Pentagon planning. 

On Oct. 13, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel made it official with the release of the Pentagon’s 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, a 16-page document that lays out the effects of extreme weather events and rising temperatures on military training, operations, acquisitions, and infrastructure.

Two previous editions, issued in 2012 and 2013, treated climate change as a future threat, but this year’s cast it as a reality that must be dealt with quickly. “Climate change will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the Nation and poses immediate risks,” the document begins.

The Pentagon’s move sets up a showdown between the military, a cautious institution run by some of the most conservative people in the U.S. government, and congressional Republicans, who continue to deny that climate change is real, let alone that it requires action.

Read more at BusinessWeek.com
The Pentagon's 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap is Here.

The IPCC is stern on climate change – but it still underestimates the situation

By Bill McKibben
 
UN body’s warning on carbon emissions is hard to ignore, but breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry won’t be easy.

At this point, the scientists who run the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change must feel like it’s time to trade their satellites, their carefully calibrated thermometers and spectrometers, their finely tuned computer models – all of them for a thesaurus. Surely, somewhere, there must be words that will prompt the world’s leaders to act.

This week, with the release of their new synthesis report, they are trying the words “severe, widespread, and irreversible” to describe the effects of climate change – which for scientists, conservative by nature, falls just short of announcing that climate change will produce a zombie apocalypse plus random beheadings plus Ebola. It’s hard to imagine how they will up the language in time for the next big global confab in Paris.

But even with all that, this new document – actually a synthesis of three big working group reports released over the last year – almost certainly underestimates the actual severity of the situation. As the Washington Post pointed out this week, past reports have always tried to err on the side of understatement; it’s a particular problem with sea level rise, since the current IPCC document does not even include the finding in May that the great Antarctic ice sheets have begun to melt. (The studies were published after the IPCC’s cutoff date.)

But when you get right down to it, who cares? The scientists have done their job; no sentient person, including Republican Senate candidates, can any longer believe in their heart of hearts that there’s not a problem here. The scientific method has triumphed: over a quarter of a century, researchers have reached astonishing consensus on a basic problem in chemistry and physics.

And the engineers have done just as well. The price of a solar panel has dropped by more than 90% over the last 25 years, and continues to plummet. In the few places they have actually been deployed at scale, the results are astonishing: there were days this summer when Germany generated 75% of its power from the wind and the sun.

Read more at The Guardian.



Giving Up Fossil Fuels to Save the Climate: The $28 Trillion Writedown  

“We’re not going to be able to burn it all.” With those 10 words, Barack Obama uttered one of the most stunning, far-reaching statements ever made by a U.S. president. He also completely contradicted his own energy policy. Yet no one seemed to notice. 

Obama was asked about the international goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 deg.F) since the start of the industrial era. Going past 2 degrees, noted the interviewer, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, would “cross into some really dangerous, unstable territory: Arctic melting, massive sea-level rise, disruptive storms.” 

The International Energy Agency has concluded that meeting the 2 deg.C target will require leaving two-thirds of the earth’s known reserves of oil, gas, and coal underground, unburned, Friedman said. Did Obama agree with that conclusion?

“Well, science is science,” the president replied. “And there is no doubt that if we burned all the fossil fuel that’s in the ground right now, that the planet’s going to get too hot and the consequences could be dire.”

This new scientific imperative—to leave the bulk of earth’s fossil fuels in the ground—has not yet penetrated most government or private-sector policy discussions, much less mainstream media coverage or public awareness. Its political and economic implications, however, are huge.

Read more at BusinessWeek.com


'This Changes Everything,’ by Naomi Klein: Book Review

Naomi Klein’s latest book may be the manifesto that the climate movement — and the planet — needs right now. Mainstream environmental groups and politicians alike support the notion of “green growth,” in which the world can continue with largely unfettered markets and still manage to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions. Klein argues that this is a fallacy, that capitalism and the climate are fundamentally at odds.

Because of its focus on the economic system, “This Changes Everything” stands

out from most books on climate change. Klein has spent the past couple of decades steeped in the fight against corporate power and free-market ideology, writing two best-selling books, “No Logo” and “The Shock Doctrine.” She shows how free-market, growth-above-all ideology has been built around World Trade Organization deals that stymie local action on cutting emissions, and into laws and norms that make corporations obligated to continue extracting more fossil fuels, as long as there’s profit in it. “The bottom line,” Klein writes, is that “our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. … Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.”

Those who deny the existence of climate change grasp this better than most liberals, Klein argues. The battle over climate change cuts to the heart of “the central ideological battle of our time — whether we need to plan and manage our societies to reflect our goals and values, or whether that task can be left to the magic of the market.” Deniers have to reject climate action — otherwise they’d lose this ideological battle.

Read more at SFGate

Cost of Inaction on Climate Change

Robert Rubin: How ignoring climate change could sink the U.S. economy

By Robert E. Rubin - Council on Foreign Relations co-chair, Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999.

When it comes to the economy, much of the debate about climate change — and reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling it — is framed as a trade-off between environmental protection and economic prosperity. Many people argue that moving away from fossil fuels and reducing carbon emissions will impede economic growth, hurt business and hamper job creation.

But from an economic perspective, that’s precisely the wrong way to look at it. The real question should be: What is the cost of inaction? In my view — and in the view of a growing group of business people, economists, and other financial and market experts — the cost of inaction over the long term is far greater than the cost of action.

Read more at The Washington Post.

The Coming Climate Crash

Lessons for Climate Change in the 2008 Recession

By HENRY M. PAULSON Jr. - Chairman of the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago and served as secretary of the Treasury from July 2006 to January 2009.

There is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my work in finance, government and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage.

For too many years, we failed to rein in the excesses building up in the nation’s financial markets. When the credit bubble burst in 2008, the damage was devastating. Millions suffered. Many still do.
We’re making the same mistake today with climate change. We’re staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our environment and economy. The warning signs are clear and growing more urgent as the risks go unchecked.

This is a crisis we can’t afford to ignore. I feel as if I’m watching as we fly in slow motion on a collision course toward a giant mountain. We can see the crash coming, and yet we’re sitting on our hands rather than altering course.

We need to act now, even though there is much disagreement, including from members of my own Republican Party, on how to address this issue while remaining economically competitive. They’re right to consider the economic implications. But we must not lose sight of the profound economic risks of doing nothing.

The solution can be a fundamentally conservative one that will empower the marketplace to find the most efficient response. We can do this by putting a price on emissions of carbon dioxide — a carbon tax. Few in the United States now pay to emit this potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere we all share. Putting a price on emissions will create incentives to develop new, cleaner energy technologies.

Read more at The New York Times.

Money men tally cost of climate change

NEW YORK (AP) — Climate change is likely to exact enormous costs on U.S. regional economies in the form of lost property, reduced industrial output and more deaths, according to a report backed by a trio of men with vast business experience.

The report, released Tuesday, is designed to convince businesses to factor in the cost of climate change in their long-term decisions and to push for reductions in emissions blamed for heating the planet.

It was commissioned by the Risky Business Project, which describes itself as nonpartisan and is chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Thomas F. Steyer, a former hedge fund manager.

"If we act immediately, we can still avoid most of the worst impacts of climate change and significantly reduce the odds of catastrophic outcomes," Paulson said.

Among the predictions: Between $66 billion and $106 billion in coastal property will likely be below sea level by 2050, labor productivity of outdoor workers could be reduced by 3 percent because extremely hot days will be far more frequent, and demand for electricity to power air conditioners will require the construction of more power plants that will cost electricity customers up to $12 billion per year.

"Every year that goes by without a comprehensive public and private sector response to climate change is a year that locks in future climate events that will have a far more devastating effect on our local, regional, and national economies," warn the report's authors.

The analysis and calculations in the report were performed by the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, and Risk Management Solutions, a catastrophe-modeling company that works for insurance companies and other businesses. It was paid for by the philanthropic foundations of Bloomberg, Paulson and Steyer, among others.

The report analyzes the impacts of climate change by region to better show how climate change affects the businesses and industries that drive each region's economy.

— The Northeast will likely be most affected by sea level rise, which will cost an additional $6 billion to $9 billion in property loss each year.

— The Southeast will likely be affected both by sea-level rise and extreme temperatures. The region, which has averaged eight days of temperatures over 95 degrees each year, will likely see an additional 17 to 52 of these days by midcentury and up to four months of them by the end of the century. This could lead to 11,000 to 36,000 additional deaths per year.

— Higher temperatures will reduce Midwest crop yields by 19 percent by midcentury and by 63 percent by the end of the century.

— The Southwest will see an extra month of temperatures above 95 degrees by 2050, which will lead to more frequent droughts and wildfires.

The report does not calculate the cost of these droughts or wildfires, or many other possible costs such as the loss of unique ecosystems and species and the possible compounding effects of extreme weather conditions. Nor does it calculate some of the ways economies could adapt to the changing climate and reduce the costs of climate change.

Beyond the three co-chairs, the members of the group's risk committee include Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Cargill CEO Gregory Page, and George Shultz, former treasury secretary and secretary of state.

"These are people who have managed risk all their lives and have made an enormous amount of money doing so," Yohe said.

Read the AP Report at The Buffalo News

Risky Business Report: The U.S. economy faces significant risks from unmitigated climate change. The Risky Business report presents a new approach to understanding these risks for key U.S. business sectors, and provides business leaders with a framework for measuring and mitigating their own exposure to climate risk. Explore the report here: http://riskybusiness.org.

Inaction on Climate Change: The Cost to Taxpayers

When we examine the full costs of public programs that pay for disaster relief and recovery from extreme weather events—ad hoc disaster assistance appropriations, flood insurance, crop insurance, wildfire protection, and state run “residual market” insurance programs—we can begin to understand the price to U.S. taxpayers of inaction on climate change.

As the frequency and severity of extreme weather events intensify with the effects of climate change, our federal and state disaster relief and insurance programs will become increasingly unsustainable as losses from such events increase. The net present value of the federal government’s liability for unfunded disaster assistance over the next 75 years could be greater than the net present value of the unfunded liability for the Social Security program.

Boosting our resiliency to today’s extreme weather events is an urgent priority. Investing concurrently in forward-looking measures that over time will reduce the climate-altering carbon emissions contributing to extreme weather is essential to our long-term physical and economic well-being.

Download the Ceres report here.

 

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