The summer of reason: The G7 pledges to act on climate.

Global climate change is front and center this summer. Earlier this week, the Group of Seven (G7), comprised of leaders from seven of the world’s largest industrialized nations, convened in Germany for a two-day annual summit to discuss global economic challenges. 

As part of the summit, the G7 announced its commitment to phase out fossil fuels by the end of this century. A majority of the participating G7 countries have already set carbon emission reduction goals. For example, the United States has pledged an 83 percent reduction from its 2005 greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. But for countries that have been less proactive in this realm such as Canada and Japan, this agreement indicates a new and exciting commitment to address climate change. 

Much credit was given to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also known as the “climate chancellor,” for making climate change a priority in G7 planning. From The Guardian:

     [Jennifer] Morgan [of the World Resources Institute] praised the momentum that appears to be developing among the world’s leaders for climate action.

     “Politically, the most important shift is that chancellor Merkel is back on climate change. This was not an easy negotiation. She did not have to put climate change on the agenda here. But she did,” she said.

While the G7 agreement on de-carbonization by the century’s end is non-binding, this pledge by seven of the world’s major economies is expected to have the effect of driving investment away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and energy efficiency. Also from the Guardian (emphasis added):

     [Tom Burke, environmental advisor to Shell,] said that outside the numbers, the G7’s primary function was to send signals to other countries and to markets and that the announcement today would shift things significantly. 

     “Everyone gets over focused on what the text of the treaty is. What really matters is what gets done in the real economy and the extent that the players in the real economy react to this signal. You’re going to shift the needle of interest in the investing community away from oil and gas and towards renewables, storage and energy efficiency. And I think that’s further than probably the oil companies had anticipated,” said Burke.

Other climate news to watch this summer:

• Pope Francis’ much-anticipated encyclical on the environment will be released on Thursday, June 18.
• A mid-July release is expected for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which will be the first federal standard on carbon pollution. 

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

More good news from President Obama on climate

As we've been reporting, President Obama took a big step forward toward shrinking our national carbon footprint in November when he committed to China that we will cut our global warming pollution by up to 28 percent (compared to 2005) by 2025.

And now, on March 31, more good news from the White House:  The Administration made the November agreement more formal by submitting the terms to the United Nations. Major emitting countries were required to formally submit their plans in March, indicating how they intend to meet reductions that we hope will be formally negotiated and agreed upon in Paris in December at the next international climate conference.

Again, we urge Congress to act and put a price on carbon pollution—we know that's the best solution. But until that happy day occurs, we continue to praise President Obama for taking strong executive actions, showing the world that the White House means business, even as Congress fiddles.

Read what Politico had to say about the announcement.

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

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.

Sooty Linings Playbook -- brought to you by our frenemy, ALEC

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the innocuously-named American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC, funded by huge corporate polluters and their deep-pocketed friends like the Koch brothers, has developed a playbook to get anti-environmental laws passed in state legislatures across the land.

The strategy starts with developing model bills that can be shared with legislators, who then introduce them in state capitols. (See the Center for Media Democracy's very helpful website, ALEC Exposed.)

ALEC is shameless about how little concern they have for the public good. They ferociously attack the idea that the country should begin to limit CO2 emissions, as shown in their EPA's Regulatory Train Wreck: Strategies for State Legislators.

This struck home all too painfully this month, when the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed (and Governor Tom Corbett signed) H.B. 2354, which we like to call the Stall on Carbon bill. Coal interests carried the day in Harrisburg to get this awful bill passed. Its aim is to interfere to the maximum extent possible with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed standard to limit CO2 emissions from coal-burning power plants.

The EPA proposal offers each state abundant flexibility in meeting its state-specific targets. Ironically, H.B. 2354 could backfire on its supporters by ultimately forcing the Commonwealth to forfeit all its flexibility under the rule and forcing the EPA to impose a top-down plan on Pennsylvania. It's embarrassing that so many of our state legislators who supported this terrible bill seem not to have thought this all through in advance.

Unlike Hollywood's playbook, which so easily brings us silver linings, we in Pennsylvania may be stuck with a sooty lining thanks to our frenemy, ALEC.
                  
P.S. Want to see which fossil fuels giants are straddling the fence, claiming to care about climate change but are still part of ALEC? HuffPo sums it up nicely.

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

Even the grand old guys know we have to cut carbon

Those of us who have been adults for several decades remember the sway that big accounting firms used to have in the business world. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is one of those well-respected names that can still turn heads when they speak.

PwC just issued its 2014 Low Carbon Economy Index.

Not good news. To quote the report, "For the sixth year running, the global economy has missed the decarbonization target needed to limit global warming to 2 degrees C."

To stay on track for the two-degree-max target, we would have had to cut our carbon emissions by 6 percent in 2013. How did the world do? A miserable 1.2 percent decrease.

Last year's lapse means we now need to speed up even more to achieve the goal, specifically cutting carbon by 6.2 percent in 2014—five times last year's rate. Doesn't seem likely, does it?

To be sure, these are global measurements and projections. But is Pennsylvania doing its part? This is an especially painful question at the moment, given the horrendous step backward that the our General Assembly has just taken: They passed H.B. 2354, which throws a monkey wrench into the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposal to limit CO2 from coal-burning power plants in Pennsylvania, the major source of carbon pollution in this country.

Read what Mother Jones has to say about PwC's bad news.


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