Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment to be released June 18

Pope Francis’ long-awaited encyclical on the environment is slated for official release on Thursday, June 18. Pope Francis is the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide and considered one of the most influential people in the world. The Pope's encyclical is expected to be a call to moral action for Catholics (and global citizens alike) to embrace environmental stewardship, as the impacts of a changing climate disproportionately affect the world's most vulnerable citizens.

In anticipation of its release, we rounded up answers to basic questions about papal encyclicals and what to expect from “Laudato Si,” which translates as “Praised Be."

We’ve also shared portions of a pre-encyclical release blog post by our friends at Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light (PA IPL), a state affiliate of Interfaith Power and Light, “a national religious response to the threat of climate change.” PA IPL is comprised of hundreds of individuals and over 40 religious institutions across the Commonwealth, bringing people of diverse faith backgrounds together to act on climate. 

As supporters of the environment, we applaud Pope Francis for choosing an encyclical topic with implications for all citizens of this earth but we’d also like to elevate the voices of those for whom this text holds special meaning. As the encyclical is a religious text intended for a Catholic audience, we plan to share commentary from faith leaders in the days after its official release. Follow the hashtags #Encyclical, #OurCommonHome, and #AllAreCalled for the latest on social media.

What’s an encyclical?

From the Pew Research Center:

Encyclicals are papal letters – the word “encyclical” means “circular letter” – usually addressed to Catholic clergy and the laity and containing the pope’s views on church teachings and doctrine in a particular area.

While encyclicals do not set down new church doctrine (the Roman Catholic Church’s core beliefs), they are in essence official statements and are considered authoritative teaching, since popes speak for the church.

How have past popes addressed environmental issues?

From the New York Times:

Recent popes have made clear that human activity is largely to blame for the environmental degradation that is threatening the Earth's ecosystems. They have demanded urgent action by industrialized nations to change their ways and undergo an "ecological conversion" to prevent the poor from paying for the sins of the rich.

Some have even made their points in encyclicals, the most authoritative teaching document a pope can issue. 

Also from the New York Times:

And then there was Pope Benedict XVI, dubbed the "green pope" because he took concrete action to back up his strong ecological calls: Under his watch, the Vatican installed photovoltaic cells on the roof of its main auditorium, a solar cooling unit for its main cafeteria and joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions.

What do we expect will be included in Pope Francis’ encyclical?

From The Guardian:

The [leaked] draft is not a detailed scientific analysis of the global warming crisis. Instead, it is the pope’s reflection of humanity’s God-given responsibility as custodians of the Earth.

At the start of the draft essay, the pope wrote, the Earth “is protesting for the wrong that we are doing to her, because of the irresponsible use and abuse of the goods that God has placed on her. We have grown up thinking that we were her owners and dominators, authorised to loot her. The violence that exists in the human heart, wounded by sin, is also manifest in the symptoms of illness that we see in the Earth, the water, the air and in living things.”

He immediately makes clear, moreover, that unlike previous encyclicals, this one is directed to everyone, regardless of religion. “Faced with the global deterioration of the environment, I want to address every person who inhabits this planet,” the pope wrote. “In this encyclical, I especially propose to enter into discussion with everyone regarding our common home.”

According to the leaked document, the pope will praise the global ecological movement, which has “already travelled a long, rich road and has given rise to numerous groups of ordinary people that have inspired reflection”.

How is the environment an interfaith issue?

From Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light (PA IPL) Executive Director Cricket Hunter:

With this encyclical, Pope Francis is creating a beautiful opportunity; while meant for Catholics particularly, his instruction also opens space for all of us to reflect on climate justice, our values, and the teachings of our faiths–to hear the ways in which our diverse traditions speak in harmony and in unison on care of Creation. In this space, we have an opportunity to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, linked by our shared calls to care for the earth, care for the most vulnerable, and look together for solutions.

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

Garden for climate: Fighting climate change in your own back yard

For anyone paying attention to the California drought, you've noticed that climate change has altered the way that Californians garden. For example, homeowners now replace grass with drought-tolerant plants to reduce the frequency with which they water their gardens.

However, thinking critically about gardening in a changing climate is not limited to west coast gardeners. From unpredictable growing seasons to the spread of invasive species and pests, gardeners nationwide are experiencing the effects of climate change.

Gardeners are on the front lines of climate change and they’re taking action this May as part of the National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) “Garden for Wildlife” month. As NWF’s state affiliate, we’re happy to share the following smart and simple gardening tips to help you fight climate change and protect wildlife in your own backyard:

• Plant trees to absorb C02
• Replace invasive plants with native species
• Reduce water consumption in your garden 
• Increase household energy efficiency and reduce use of gasoline-powered tools
• Compost kitchen and garden waste
• Recognize your yard as a Certified Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation

If you’re a resident of central Pennsylvania, there's a terrific event on the horizon that will bring these tips to life. On May 30, Ed Perry of the National Wildlife Federation is hosting an event titled, “Climate Solutions: Action to Reduce Energy Consumption and Help Pollinators and Wildlife.” Participants will learn how to make their homes more energy efficient and how to provide habitat for pollinators and wildlife. Following a presentation by a great slate of speakers, local homeowners will open their homes and gardens to participants to see these solutions in action!

What’s another tool for curbing carbon pollution and protecting wildlife and habitat? Urge Congress to protect gardens, communities, and wildlife by supporting the EPA Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon pollution from power plants. Contact me at PennFuture to learn how you can get involved.


Katie Bartolotta is southeastern Pennsylvania outreach coordinator for PennFuture 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.

KXL: A bad day for tar sands means a good day for climate sanity

He did it. He said he would and, to our great relief, he did. That is to say that last evening, President Obama vetoed the bill that Congress sent to him which would have greenlighted the development of the Keystone XL pipeline. (Read the Washington Post coverage.)

I'm feeling both great relief and a sense of celebration. Extraction and processing of Canada's tar sands, and then shipping them through a highly risky pipeline through the heart of the U.S. mainland only for all of the resulting fuels to be sent overseas, has been called "the dumbest energy idea ever." I agree.

Why would this country take all the environmental risks for so few jobs (35 permanent jobs) and no new energy sources for domestic consumption (don't believe those who say otherwise)?

Huge thanks to the President for seeing sense and vetoing this bill -- as he had been promising to do.

  Lena Moffitt and NWFers gathered at the White House to thank

 Pres. Obama just hours after he vetoed the bill.

A big shoutout to my good friend and colleague, Lena Moffitt, who is federal policy manager for National Wildlife Federation's Climate and Energy Program, and has led on this issue for years.  (PennFuture is proud to be NWF's Pennsylvania affiliate). When I heard news of the veto from Lena yesterday afternoon and asked her reaction, she said with a big smile, "The President's building a climate legacy, and there's no room for KXL in it!"

I was late waking up to the threats of this ridiculous pipeline proposal; it wasn't until about three years ago that, thanks to savvy, insightful folks like Lena who were way ahead of me, I learned just how daft this pipeline idea is. Thank you, @LenaMDC, for opening my eyes. (Read the guest blog post that Lena wrote for us back in December, in which she exposes the flaws in the economic arguments in support of the pipeline.)

We can't relax just yet -- the President will still need to reject one more permit request.  We're certainly hopeful that President Obama will stick to his guns and kill this pipeline for good.

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

Who will climate change hurt the most?

James K. Boyce wrote a fascinating opinion piece ("Get ready to make tough choices") about climate change for the Philadelphia Inquirer last week. (Boyce is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network. He also presented a webinar for PennFuture several years ago on the positive economics of a cap-and-dividend approach to climate legislation.)

Professor Boyce is not the first to point out that it's now too late to prevent many of the harmful effects of climate change, so society must start making the difficult decisions now around how to adapt to climate change: Building sea walls to prevent the tragedy of the next Hurricane Sandy or Typhoon Haiyan will be hugely expensive. Cooling centers and emergency services will be needed as well as water projects to help livestock survive the coming, intense droughts.

We certainly can't afford all of these things. So, which of these do we build? Which don't we build? How will we justify our choices to those who won't be protected?
 
Jim Boyce's research predicts that on our present course, world incomes will fall 25 percent across the board in the next 20 years as a result of climate disruption. Holy cow.

Here's the truly intriguing angle that Boyce then raises:

Who will be hurt more by the loss of so much income, the poorest Bangladeshi farmer or the wealthiest Manhattan real estate baron? The Bangladeshi making a dollar a day will have to get by on 75 cents a day. Hard to fathom. Terribly unjust.

The Manhattan one-percenter making $2,000 a day will have to "scrape by" on $1,500 a day. (Strike up tiny violins playing sad music.)

My indignation aligns entirely with the Bangladeshi's plight. And yet, the math shows that Mr. Got Rocks in NYC will lose 2,000 times more money ($500 versus 25 cents a day). Conventional economic wisdom treats every dollar equally, so the wealthy person's absolute loss is viewed as much more important than the dirt-poor farmer's loss. 

Jim Boyce suggests a different calculus, one that is much fairer: let's value every person equally, as the Declaration of Independence suggests. Indeed, Article 1, Chapter 27 of Pennsylvania's Constitution guarantees that "the people have a right to clean air [and] clean water." The people, not the dollars, are what Americans hold dear in their deepest values.

Boyce ends his Inquirer piece as follows: "In the years ahead, climate change will confront the world with hard choices: whether to protect as many dollars as possible, or to protect as many people as we can."

I certainly hope we make the right choice. All lives matter.

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

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.

-------------
* 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.

More confirmation of climate disruption and the urgency that's called for

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its latest report this week on the state of climate change and it's not pretty.

Here are but a few tidbits of the bad news in the report (with my editorial comments):

• Human influence on the climate is clear and recent emissions are the highest in history. (Not surprising, but still news to some people, apparently.)
• The warming of the climate system is clear and, since the 1950’s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented.
• Each of the last three decades have been successively warmer than any decade before them going back to 1850.
• In the Northern Hemisphere, the last 30 years is likely the warmest 30-year period of the past 1,400 years.
• From 1880 to 2012, the earth has warmed .85 degrees C.
• More than 90 percent of the energy stored in the climate system from 1971 to 2010 is in the form of ocean warming; only one percent is stored in the atmosphere. (Uh-oh.)
• The upper ocean -- the top 75 meters -- has warmed by .11 degrees C per decade since 1971, offering an explanation for the so-called slowdown in atmospheric warming.  (Are you listening, climate deniers?)

Note: The report issued this week is the third part -- the "synthesis" report -- of the fifth IPCC  report issued over the years. Confused? This might help. Want to read the report for yourself? Here's the 100+ page version  and here's the 40-page summary for policy makers.

All this new bad news just reinforces what readers of PennFuture's blogs likely already know: The climate is in crisis so we must act now at all levels of government to limit carbon emissions.

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

Climate science facts: Global warming is no fiction

Climate Change: Evidence and Causes has just been published jointly by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the U.K.'s Royal Society. These two organizations are esteemed for their scientific and technical excellence, having similar missions to "promote the use of science to benefit society and inform critical debates" in their respective countries.

This report, written in accessible language and not scientific jargon, presents an excellent synthesis of current science, laying out clearly what is settled science at this point about climate, and what areas can't yet be fully predicted in detail. The authors avoid politics and any discussions of what should or shouldn't be done. "Just the facts,  ma'am." The scientific facts, fortunately.

Some settled facts: Climate is warming globally, on average 1.4 degrees (F) since 1900, with much of the warming since 1970. Sea ice is decreasing. Ocean temps and sea level are rising. This is all beyond argument.

More facts: Sun spots are not responsible for overall warming. Human activity is responsible for overall warming. However, natural phenomena like El Niño can show some slight, short-term warming. But these phenomena don't influence the decades-long warming trends we're now seeing.

The report is written in Q&A format and is easily browsable, with helpful graphics. Question 5, for example, discusses the fact that temperature change patterns are different in the upper and lower atmosphere. If human activity were not influencing global climate, science tells us that the sun would warm upper and lower atmospheres equally. But we're overwhelmingly seeing warming only in the lower atmosphere -- a human fingerprint predicted by climate models. The report mentions a couple of regional anomalies in the data, but not nearly enough to topple the models.

Some other sections I found interesting:

Q9 discusses why the rates of warming vary from decade to decade and place to place, but that this finding  doesn't contrast fundamentally with the fact that the overall climate is rising.

Q12 discusses why we're observing different patterns of sea ice changes in the Arctic versus the Antarctic. Briefly, the Arctic sea ice is steadily shrinking, while Antarctic sea ice is increasing slightly, with some localized shrinking. The authors ascribe these patterns to differences in nearby land masses and how sea winds affect the two poles, among other factors -- not as a refutation of the reality of global warming.

One of the reviewers of the report is Penn State's own Prof. Richard Alley. We at PennFuture give a big shout-out to Richard for his ongoing excellent science and leadership on the issue of climate change.

I suggest you take a look at this new report. Lots of good stuff here, and well worth your time.

Joy Bergey is federal policy director for PennFuture and is based in Philadelphia.

Climate deniers in Congress. And yet, they like the money...

Thanks to the Center for American Progress for the insightful report it has just released titled

States of Denial: States with the Most Federal Disaster Aid Sent Climate-Science Deniers to Congress.  

The report shows all too well the actual cost of carbon pollution, as we reflect on extreme weather events of recent years. These weather disasters, fueled in part by climate change, are costing the country billions of dollars, even as more than 160 members of Congress continue to deny climate change.

To quote the Center, "Interestingly, many of the states that received the most federal recovery aid to cope with climate-linked extreme weather have federal legislators who are climate-science deniers. The ten states that received the most federal recovery aid in FY 2011 and 2012 elected 47 climate-science deniers to the Senate and the House. Nearly two-thirds of the senators from these top 10 recipient states voted against granting federal emergency aid to New Jersey and New York after Superstorm Sandy."

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey voted to send aid to our neighbors in New Jersey and New York. However, Senator Pat Toomey voted not to help them. How is this compassionate, or even fair? These are fundamental American values in my perspective, so I simply don't understand how Sen. Toomey can vote this way.

I'm relieved to write that Pennsylvania is 20th on the list of states in terms of aid received, due in some part to the luck of our inland geography. And yet, Pennsylvania ranks as the third worst state in terms of producing global warming pollution. We're a big part of the problem, so a big part of the responsibility should fall on our shoulders.

We're hearing that the Obama Administration is set to publicly propose this Friday (September 20) a carbon pollution standard for new power plants, as authorized by the Clean Air Act. This regulation, if allowed to stand by Congress, will ensure that no new power plant built in this country will be permitted to release unlimited amounts of dangerous carbon pollution into the air, endangering public health and fueling the storms that are devastating communities and costing billions.

I'm only sorry that our country didn't have the foresight to do this a decade ago.

 

A lump of coal

Hailing from the heart of the historical anthracite coal mining region, I know coal well. Our PennFuture Wilkes-Barre office is in a building that, in a fitting twist, was founded in 1911 as the Miners' Bank Building, and was once home to coal barons and financiers. Our region has one of the last standing defunct coal breakers in NEPA, a 1930's behemoth on the skyline that teeters on the edge of demolition. Deep mining ended here in 1959, but its traces remain, and its stories are an essential part of who we are. A network of rails-to-trails now crosses the old tracks that carried the black gold to market. Like hundreds of thousands, my ancestors mined it, built homes alongside it, and even perished with it. Coal played a major part in our nation's and Pennsylvania's history and, as descendants of immigrant laborers, many of us wouldn't be here without it.

But it's 2013, and we've known for a long time the damage coal does -- to those who mine it, to human health, and to the planet. A recent federal report confirms the sobering news that global coal consumption ---and, thus, climate change -- will continue to increase this century, particularly in developing nations. But the United States, as the third-biggest coal consumer in the world, can lead the way in other sources of energy, despite increases in China, India, and other nations.

We have the benefit of better science and technology today to recognize our diverse energy solutions. Putting our eggs in the renewables basket is the only reasonable option, for our health and economy.

Gina McCarthy: the path to EPA confirmation becomes clearer

As most people know by now, Gina McCarthy would be fabulous as head of the EPA. It's been months since President Obama nominated her to run the agency yet she's unfortunately hit numerous, and pointless, brick walls in the Senate on her road to confirmation. In May, congressional conservatives boycotted her vote in committee in order to impress, um, er, um...the Tea Party?? Cooler heads prevailed and she won committee endorsement.

Since then, Gina has been awaiting a full vote in the Senate. Why the wait? Conservatives again have been making mischief, threatening to filibuster the vote. Nobody doubts that McCarthy is qualified. Even that climate denier extraordinaire Sen. Jim Inhofe (Republican from Oklahoma) said in March that he expected to be friends with McCarthy as head of EPA.

But hold the presses! We just learned that Senator David Vitter (Republican from Louisiana) has announced there will be no filibuster on Gina. Glory Hallelujah!

Why this change of heart? Are certain members of Congress realizing that the Tea Party is becoming increasingly irrelevant in American politics? Have those members of Congress decided to study the actual science of climate change and, thus, now realize how incredibly serious the situation is?

Or perhaps it was Sen. Majority leader Harry Reid's talk of imposing the "nuclear option" and ending filibusters on Presidential nominees that made them see sense.

Whatever the reason, we'll take it. The word is that Gina's floor vote in the Senate could come as early as the week of July 15. We hope beyond words that she gets confirmed.

Can't wait to see Gina get to work as EPA administrator.  We need her. Now.

Quick news from around the web

Some good news
Where are the flying cars?  The 70's-era Jetson cartoon family gliding happily home in their car-spaceship isn't a reality yet. But higher-tech, more fuel efficient cars are everywhere -- and model year 2012 autos were the best yet. Why? More from Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Think Progress

Other news
In more ominous news for the safety of pipelines, ExxonMobil's tar sands pipeline leaked again. It's a glaring reminder that the Keystone XL pipeline carrying climate-killing tar sands is still awaiting approval. Background on Keystone XL from NWF. More from Grist

Fun stuff
Okay, maybe your best dance moves don't rank you up there with Beyonce or Baryshnikov. But if you had this particular dance floor, you'd be helping the planet reduce dirty fuels -- and even run the electricity for the revolving disco ball. Now that's a reason to learn the merengue. From PSFK.com