2014 -- the hottest year ever. Or, at a minimum, in a long, long time.

Nope, it wasn't just our imagination, or the power of suggestion. NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has confirmed that "the globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880." (And although Pennsylvanians may think of last year as mild because of our relatively easy summer, recall that California and the west suffered a brutal weather year.)

Six months in 2014 set new records for warmth: May, June, August, September, October and December. October tied for record warmest.

If you are not convinced that looking at just one year, or five months within that year, shows a significant change, then how about this: 19 of the 20 warmest years on record have occurred in the past 20 years. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred after 2002 (with the exception of 1998).


With all this bad news, are we making any serious progress with those who run the financial and business sectors of our economy? An encouraging sign is this recent quote about climate change in Fortune magazine: "The investment community... has woken up to this threat. It is demanding more information from companies about their exposure to climate events, as well as the prospective cost of their carbon emissions.”

Are we making progress in Congress? Perhaps a tiny little bit. Last week, more than 60 senators agreed that climate change is real and is caused by human activity. Sad as it as, this represents serious forward movement over the past decade. But we have to move faster.

The bright spots in federal leadership remain the Obama Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In last week's State of the Union address, the President said much about the issue, including this: "The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we'll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it."

The EPA has taken action by proposing rules to limit global warming pollution from any new and existing  fossil fuel-fired power plants and new and modified oil and gas wells. A good start, but we need federal and state governments to do so much more. We inch toward progress while the temperatures race up the scale.

Every decision maker needs to feel the heat (literally and figuratively) to act now.

Joy Bergey is PennFuture's federal policy director and is based in Philadelphia. She tweets @joybergey.