Three climate actions to take this Earth Day

To celebrate Earth Day, PennFuture brings you three actions that you can take to help mitigate climate change. 

(1) Join us in thanking President Obama for his climate leadership by signing onto the United States’ Paris climate agreement pledge as a citizen signer 

This Earth Day, April 22, 2016, world leaders will gather at the United Nations in New York City to formally sign onto the Paris climate agreement. 

The historic agreement, negotiated by nearly 200 nations in late 2015, addresses the growing threat of global climate change with a pledge to hold the line on global temperature rise to “well below 2º Celsius above pre-industrial levels” and an aim to achieve carbon neutrality in the latter half of the century. 

In fulfillment of goals under the Paris climate agreement, the Obama administration has already taken significant action to mitigate climate change in the United States. This includes the Clean Power Plan, the first-ever limit on carbon pollution from the power sector, as well as the soon-to-be finalized federal methane rule. These measures are important first steps to ensure the transition to clean energy and a habitable planet for future generations. 

Lend your support President Obama’s climate agenda and to the Paris climate agreement as a citizen signer.

(2) Fight climate change in your own backyard 

Photo credit: Ronald Gibson via NWF

Believe it or not, gardeners are on the front lines of climate change. From unpredictable growing seasons to the spread of invasive species and pests, gardeners nationwide are experiencing the negative effects of a warming planet. 

As the National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) state affiliate, we’re happy to share the following smart and simple tips from its “Gardening for Wildlife” program to help you fight climate change and protect wildlife in your own backyard: 

• Plant trees to absorb CO2 
• Replace invasive plants with native species 
• Reduce water consumption in your garden 
• Reduce use of gasoline-powered tools 
• Compost kitchen and garden waste 
• Recognize your yard as a Certified Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation 

(3) Become a green power purchaser 

By purchasing green power, you can help expand the growth of solar and wind farms in Pennsylvania and beyond. Congress has extended Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Investment Tax Credit (ITC) to help tax credits solar and wind farms for the next five years. This will help give clean energy an extra push but we need smart consumers to show interest and keep these pollution-free energy sources growing. 

Photo Credit: Jeff Kubina via Flickr

Need more information on why you should make the switch to renewable energy? Or maybe just more information on how to make the switch? Check out the following short videos by PennFuture - Understanding Your Bill and Making the Switch. 

We hope you’ll take these actions on Earth Day to help mitigate climate change! In addition, feel free to join PennFuture for the many events that we are hosting or participating in throughout Earth Week! 

Katie Bartolotta is southeastern Pennsylvania outreach coordinator for PennFuture and is based in Philadelphia. She tweets @KatieBartolotta. 

Dom McGraw, PennFuture volunteer based in Philadelphia, contributed to this post.

It’s time to reject Keystone XL, Mr. President

PennFuture closely coordinates its federal advocacy work with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) -- we're their state affiliate, after all. Lena Moffitt is NWF's manager of federal policy for climate and energy. She writes a guest post this week about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Lena has my personal thanks, since reading a piece she wrote several years ago opened my eyes to what a horrible idea this pipeline really is. Thanks for your leadership, Lena.

We've been fighting the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline for nearly six years now - and

Joy Bergey and Rob Altenburg (PennFuture), Lena Moffitt (NWF),
and Chelsea Harnish (Virginia Conservation Network) left to right

the case for rejection is stronger than ever. While, yes, the Nebraska Supreme Court still has to decide whether the pipeline’s route through the state is legal or not, once that decision comes down, the time for “review” will be over and the time for rejection will be upon us.

In June 2013, in his historic climate speech at Georgetown University, President Obama said that Keystone XL would not be found to be in the national interest if the project “significantly exacerbate[s] the problem of carbon pollution.” Over the past year, it has become increasingly evident that Keystone XL would have a significant impact on destabilizing the climate, and should therefore be rejected. Since the State Department released its Final Environmental Impact Statement in January 2014, reality has demonstrated that Keystone XL is, in fact, key to expanded tar sands developments. Unlike the State Department’s erroneous conclusion, tar sands expansion is not inevitable and is, in fact, dependent on several key factors. Over the past 11 months, we’ve watched a natural experiment unfold, demonstrating what happens when a few key factors turn against the industry’s favor. These factors are detailed below:

1.  The price of oil plummeted well below the State Department’s estimates. And without high oil prices, extremely expensive tar sands projects quickly become uneconomical. *
2. Tar sands oil is not being transported by trains to the extent the State Department predicted. Rail remains an expensive, logistically difficult alternative that has not filled the place of needed pipeline capacity.
3. Other pipelines (alternatives to Keystone XL) remain on hold and face increasing opposition, both in Canada and the U.S. From Enbridge’s Northern Gateway, to TransCanada’s Energy East Project, to the Portland-Montreal line, tar sand pipelines face mounting opposition and legal battles wherever they are proposed.

In the face of these three factors, tar sands developments are slowing down. In 2014 alone, three major tar sands projects have been canceled or indefinitely put on hold - Shell’s Pierre River, Total’s Joslyn North, and Statoil’s Corner project. These three projects had the potential to produce 4.7 billion barrels of bitumen over their lifetime, which would have cumulatively released 2.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The fact is that with oil prices low, tar sands producers’ profit margins are narrow, and they need cheap pipeline transportation options to get their product to market (transporting tar sands by rail is between 40 percent and up to 150 percent greater than pipeline transport). This means that a major, dedicated tar sands pipeline like Keystone XL, which would lock in cheap transportation for tar sands to the Gulf Coast, would be hugely beneficial to this industry, triggering other projects to move ahead.

And in fact, even the State Department’s FEIS indicated just that. The State Department considered several “scenarios” in its analysis and, under a scenario that looks like what reality has turned out to be – one with low oil prices, low transport of tar sands via rail, and constrained pipeline options – Keystone XL would, in fact, have “substantial impact on oil sands production levels,” and, thus, on the climate.

While the State Department deemed this scenario “unlikely” in February of this year, it is this very scenario that reality has borne out in the interim 11 months. Simply put, even the State Department’s FEIS indicates that Keystone XL will have a significant impact on the climate under circumstances like those we are seeing today.

Given this, along with the President’s resurgent leadership on climate lately (releasing first-ever limits on carbon pollution from our power sector, announcing an historic deal with China to reduce our nations’ economy-wide emissions, sending Secretary Kerry to Lima to forge a global climate agreement), the President is well positioned to seize yet another leadership moment for protecting the climate by rejecting Keystone XL. We certainly hope he does.

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* WTI (a crude oil benchmark price) has lost around 40 percent since June. Many tar sands producers are cutting back capital expenditure as a result.


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

Making a flap about climate change

PennFuture is all a-twitter about a disturbing but important new report issued yesterday by the National Wildlife Federation. (Full disclosure: PennFuture is NWF's affiliate in Pennsylvania. We think they're great, but frankly we'd think that even if we weren't all in the family.)

Shifting Skies: Migratory Birds in a Warming World details how our changing climate could seriously hurt some of most beloved bird populations, even driving some to extinction if we don't act soon -- no, make that immediately -- to curb carbon pollution.

Although some of our fellow citizens are still inexplicably in denial about climate change, there are no deniers in the natural world of Penn's Woods.

Ed Perry, NWF's boots-on-the-ground guy in Pennsylvania, says: "Already, wildlife is feeling the effect of our warming world, and everything from smallmouth bass, to brook trout, to ruffed grouse are being harmed by climate change."  Ed has been hunting and fishing in Pennsylvania for decades, so he knows what he's talking about. And his feathers, like mine, are plenty ruffled by our nation's refusal to own up to our responsibility to cut carbon pollution.

I've been a lifelong birder, and I hate to think what our actions are doing to our native avian populations. Like the out-of-doors? Enjoy the sweet sound of birdsong? Then please do read the report -- for the birds. Then contact your members of Congress and President Obama and tell them you're watching them with eagle eyes to make sure they act soon to cut carbon.