In April 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day, as a confluence of environmental disasters — chronic air pollution, the effects of DDT on birds and other wildlife, a massive oil spill off of Santa Barbara, and the Cuyahoga river in Cleveland catching on fire, to mention just a few – touched a nerve in the body politic. Congress and President Nixon responded by enacting a host of new laws including the Clean Water Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Endangered Species Act, strengthening the Clean Air Act, and establishing the Environmental Protection Agency.

On that first Earth Day, I joined other students from my high school in rural Vermont for a march along the Connecticut River Valley on Interstate 91, picking up roadside trash along the way. Fifteen years later, I was in Washington, DC, serving as Executive Director of Environmental Action, the group that organized the massive 1970 Earth Day demonstrations. In a special 15^th anniversary issue of EA’s bimonthly magazine, I observed that despite all the laws that had been passed and the progress that had been made since 1970, “acid rain still ravages our lakes and forests. Our industries generate more and more hazardous waste and continue to dump it in dangerous ways. Widespread deforestation and climate change threaten the entire planet.” Looking forward to Earth Day 2000, I warned that “the task confronting us is daunting: making our society’s most powerful institutions, the corporations, accountable.”

That task is even more daunting today, as armies of lobbyists, enormous marketing and public relations war chests, and a dysfunctional and corrupt campaign finance system have combined to give polluting corporations and their trade associations enormous sway over federal and state policymaking. But public awareness and concern about climate change and other threats to our health and well-being is growing, youth climate activism has surged over the last few years, and more and more investors are pressing companies to take bold action on climate change.

Perhaps most importantly, as both the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis continue to highlight the shortcomings of our current policies and politics, there is strong alignment amongst those advocating for workers’ rights, environmental justice, economic fairness and opportunity, and environmental protection and conservation on the need for transformational changes that put people first.  There is also tremendous resilience and creativity in this increasingly interconnected movement, as demonstrated by the organizers of Earth Day Live, the three-day livestream mobilization starting on April 22.

While I’m older (and considerably greyer) than I was on that first Earth Day in 1970, I’m still as convinced as ever that a better world is possible – and is damned well worth fighting for.

Peter Frumhoff is director of science and policy and chief climate scientist at UCS

Earth Day 1970. I was a thirteen-year old living in the San Fernando Valley suburbs of Los Angeles. I grew up less than a mile from the hills separating the Valley from downtown LA, but most days the smog was so thick I could not see them. My lungs ached after running the mile in gym class.

Now, fifty years later, the number of cars and trucks on LA streets and freeways and the number of miles they are driven each day are far greater. But the thick layers of smog that fouled the city of my youth have greatly diminished.

Los Angeles, 1973

That didn’t just happen on its own.

The environmental movement that rose to national prominence on that first Earth Day galvanized bipartisan support for the Clean Air Act of 1970 and other federal and state policies that dramatically improved air quality and public health in my hometown and across the nation. It drew upon robust research led by Cal Tech biochemist Arie Haagen-Smit, research that showed how smog formed when uncombusted hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide emissions from vehicle tailpipes reacted with sunlight.

And it overcame tremendous opposition from the oil and automobile industries. Using the same disinformation tactics as the tobacco industry, they tried hard to undermine public support for clean air policies by attacking Haagen-Smit’s research and besmirching his reputation.

The 50^th anniversary of Earth Day is an opportunity to reflect on the power of science and environmental advocacy – to acknowledge and appreciate, but not to rest upon the gains that have been made. There remain vast inequities in who benefits from current environmental protections and who does not. And the gains that have been made are now under grave threat.

The bipartisan support for science-based environmental regulation has largely vanished. Polluting industries and their allies in Congress and the Trump Administration are working feverishly to roll back science-based environmental protections and to stall climate action – doubling down on rollbacks, perhaps hoping that our attention is diverted as we confront the pandemic.

We must not allow them to succeed.

Join me in supporting the Earth Day Live climate strikes and make your voice heard for science-based climate action.

Brenda Ekwurzel is director of climate science in the Climate and Energy program at UCS

Let’s check the pulse of the Earth and compare the first Earth Day with the 50^th, in terms of three climate change indicators: atmospheric carbon dioxide, global sea level and Arctic sea ice volume.

Atmospheric CO₂ measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, increased from the 1970 April monthly average of around 327 parts per million (ppm) to the daily average on April 14, 2020 of 416 ppm.

Global sea levels have risen around 4.8 inches in the past 50 years, if we calculate that according to tide stations, in 1970 seas had already risen 4 to 5.5 inches above the 1880 baseline, and satellite data shows that 2019 sea level was 9.5 inches above the 1880 level.

Arctic sea ice volume decreased from around 35,000 cubic kilometers in April 1970, based on historical reconstruction, to around 22,300 cubic kilometers in 2019.

Over the next 50 Earth Days, it is clear that we must dramatically reduce heat-trapping emissions to slow the pace of change.

Roger Stephenson is the Northeast regional advocacy director in the Climate and Energy program at UCS

Near the first anniversary of the first Earth Day, my high school classmate Bruce Beque started recycling newspapers at Ridgewood High School. Bruce is a pretty clever guy and Tom Sawyer’d me into helping. It was hard work—we were hauling and baling paper in the dark recesses of a tractor trailer. It was my first inkling that there were real responsibilities to preserving the natural world I was growing to love, and real contributions I could make.

I recently learned that Bruce is a UCS supporter and we got to reconnect after all this time. Today Bruce is a nurse in Maine, and like the work of all health professionals, his responsibilities likely include treating people suffering from COVID-19. I always think of Bruce as “one person who makes a difference” in my life and the lives of many others.

Adrienne Hollis is the senior climate justice and health scientist at UCS

Earth Day focuses on creating a healthier environment by protecting the planet and resources. During this 50^th Anniversary of Earth Day, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is incumbent upon us to focus on communities disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution. These are the people who live in the unhealthiest environments and who, in most cases, lack access to even the most basic resources. They are suffering most from COVID-19 too, likely in part because of poor environmental quality.

Historically, Earth Day has not focused on environmental justice and the needs of our most vulnerable communities. That those communities are additionally threatened by climate change is a fact. Climate change affects environmental justice, Indigenous, and people of color communities first and worst. It intensifies already detrimental conditions. It is indeed a threat multiplier.

Marchers at the Peoples’ March for Climate, Jobs, and Justice, April 2017.

Earth Day was created to demonstrate support for environmental protections. We should use this significant anniversary to reexamine that concept and to ensure that all people—especially environmental justice communities, Indigenous Peoples and communities of color—enjoy a safe and environmentally sound world. I am encouraged by the youth climate movement’s emphasis on Black and Indigenous leadership in calling for a society rooted in sustainability and justice during their three-day livestream mobilization.

Erika Spanger-Siegfried is the lead climate analyst in the UCS Climate and Energy program

I was born the same year as Earth Day, and like many Gen Xers who have become parents, my Gen Z daughters and their friends have become part of the youth climate movement. The year I graduated from high school, climate change was newly in the news – a new threat, the big one. I was certain we would solve it, but you know how that went.

Austin Dowd and her socks have something to say, September 2019 Youth Climate Strike.

This year, my eldest is graduating high school. Isolated at home with no graduation in sight, I expect some malaise and disillusionment from these people. But when I asked them what they’re thinking amidst COVID-19, with Earth Day around the corner and just… all of it, they did what they do: inspire.

“The coronavirus is pointing out everything that we need to change”, says 17-year old Betta Tham, class of 2020, “the high uneven distribution of pollution that harms black and brown people, the healthcare system, the classism and disrespect and disregard for the safety of lower-income workers, the lack of help for those who need shelter and food and water.”

Her fellow 17-year old, Austin Dowd, shared similar thoughts. ““Right now, it’s difficult to think about the future. How can I make a positive impact while I’m stuck at home?” But a path has opened up, she finds, to help amplify the truth of environmental racism that COVID-19 has laid bare. “Seeing cold, hard facts about Black people accounting for 70% of Chicago’s COVID-19 deaths is opening previously unheard-of conversations about how income inequality affects public health and about the reality of environmental racism.”

As she and Betta see it, to truly overcome the climate crisis, we need climate and environmental justice at the center of our solutions, and an appreciation of environmental racism by mainstream America is key to this.

For them, climate activism has never been more crucial. “Not only do we need to talk about environmental and climate justice right now, we must elect representatives that will fight for those things as the economy is rebuilt”, says Austin. They are not fearless; they worry that politicians will ignore the climate while trying to restore the economy, and that the strain of COVID-19 will make people forget about each other and what really matters. But they’re hopeful.

“I know first-time voters like me will show up in the fall to elect pro-climate candidates” says Austin. “I’m inspired by my generation, and our homebound activism amidst this pandemic has only strengthened that.”

I see how hard these young women and their peers are working to make this Earth Day matter at this strange, sad, challenging time.

Happy birthday, Earth Day. You’re in good hands.

I was honored to moderate the discussions with the first three candidates appearing at the town hall: Senator Amy Klobuchar, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Governor Bill Weld. Henry Herndon of Clean Energy New Hampshire and Tiernan Sittenfeld of the League of Conservation Voters moderated the discussions with the three other candidates as well as the surrogates for Senators Sanders and Warren.

Climate emergency a top issue for voters

Panels of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students engaged in climate research, clean energy, sustainable business, and environmental studies at colleges and high schools across the state pressed each of the candidates and surrogates to lay out in detail how they would address the climate emergency. Each candidate/surrogate had 45 minutes to respond to questions on a range of issues, from the role of nuclear power and natural gas in our energy system to how they would generate enough pressure from the American people to get ambitious climate legislation through Congress. Several of the questions focused on the disproportionate impact of climate change on communities of color, and the need to ensure that climate solutions are grounded in economic and environmental justice.

The students put a lot of thought into framing their questions, and it showed. Senator Klobuchar told the students questioning her that “These are literally the best questions I’ve ever had at a forum. Maybe we should just take you guys on the road to all the presidential forums!”

The town hall was livestreamed, with the archived webcast available online, and it received extensive coverage from national, regional, and state media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and New Hampshire Public Radio. The event took place as polls are showing that climate change and the environment rank as the most important issue for likely Democratic voters in today’s New Hampshire primary.

Here are some of the highlights from the town hall for each of the candidates and surrogates, listed in the order that they appeared.

Senator Klobuchar plans to “get to carbon neutral by 2050”

In her opening remarks, Senator Amy Klobuchar said that “great leaders make decisions not just for this generation, but for seven generations from now. It’s on us in this election to make sure we have a president that’s going to take this on and work with the rest of the world to get it done. I am convinced we can do it. But we have to have a president that can bring people with her and talk about it in a way that makes sense to people.”

She asserted that “the money that we bring in from a carbon tax, cap-and-trade, or a renewable electricity standard–or some combination of all of it–we need to make sure that money goes right back to people, to help them with their heating and cooling bills, or we’re never going to get it passed. Some of that money will go for incentives to areas that are going to see job changes. Making sure that this policy is airtight so that the money goes to the people who…most need the help is going to be critical, because it’s right for the country, it is right for the world, but it is also right practically–because it is the way that we pass it.”

She was asked about methane emissions from oil and natural gas production, and the need for a “managed phase-out of natural gas as a source of fossil energy;” she responded that as president, she would put strong methane regulations in place, halt permits for new natural gas production, and review all existing natural gas permits for both safety and environmental impacts. She said that “the only way you can get to carbon neutral by 2050…is by phasing out these kinds of fossil fuels,” and that we need to pursue “all the exciting possibilities we have as we look at replacing fossil fuels, including natural gas.”

The final question to Senator Klobuchar was “how will you inspire Americans who have given up hope in our nation’s ability to tackle the climate crisis, and how will you yourself remain hopeful when things get tough?” She replied that while “we lost an election in 2016, we didn’t lose hope,” and pointed to “the day after the inauguration, where millions of people peacefully marched across this country.” Then “on day 100, my favorite march – the March for Science [took place] and my favorite sign: ‘What do we want? Science! When do we want it? After peer review!’” She closed by saying to the students that “it is your generation that is leading the way when it comes to climate, when it comes to gun safety, when it comes to education policy.”

Pete Buttigieg backstage with New Hampshire students (Tuck School of Business)

Mayor Buttigieg: Look at “what laws were broken” by fossil fuel industry’s disinformation campaign

Pete Buttigieg called climate change “the global security challenge of our time,” and said that “if everybody is vulnerable to climate harms, everybody can participate in the solution. And that’s the corner I think we have to turn in order to actually get anything done. This is too big, too important, too existential to be another partisan, political tug-of-war.” He added that “we need to make sure that when we think of our approach to climate, the main thing we feel is pride–an emotion that will propel us into actually getting these things done.”

Responding to a question on the role of agriculture in addressing the climate crisis, he said that “farming holds a big part of the key to carbon removal–soil has the potential to remove as much carbon as the whole global transportation system puts out.”

On whether nuclear power should play a role, he asserted that “this is not a time to be dogmatic, because the carbon emergency has reached crisis proportions. I don’t believe that we should be adding new nuclear,” but we “shouldn’t take a meat cleaver solution when we’re talking about the nuclear capacity we currently have.” Talking about all of President Trump’s rollbacks to protections of air, water, and public lands, he said “my hand will be very sore from reversing a lot of executive orders with that presidential pen on day one.”

I asked Mayor Pete what the federal government should do about the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long disinformation campaign about the harms of climate change. He replied that “part of what law enforcement is about is examining what laws were broken during that process. Any kind of wrongdoing that can be demonstrated, any kind of liability that was created through knowingly deceptive practices that caused concrete, measurable harm–that’s part of why we have a justice system to begin with.”

Buttigieg closed on a hopeful note, saying that “at a moment when US credibility is hanging by a thread, here is an opportunity for us to be leading the world on doing something about something the world knows is very important. If there was such a thing as global climate diplomacy being practiced by the United States, that would be…the kind of thing that we could unite on as a country…and that would have appeal across the partisan divides right here at home.”

Former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld delivers his opening remarks (credit: Roger Stephenson)

Governor Weld: Would declare climate national emergency, join climate protests as president

When Governor Bill Weld was asked what immediate actions he would take on climate change if elected president, he replied that he would seek a price on carbon of $40 to $50 dollars a ton with the money returned to the American people through reductions in the payroll tax. “Ideally it would be done by an act of Congress, but if Congress wouldn’t play ball, if elected president, I would most certainly declare a national emergency.” He added that “by using the bully pulpit, I would make it completely socially and financially undesirable to finance fossil fuel industries.” But, he said, “because this is a planetary emergency, it is no longer responsible to say we’re going to absolutely have no natural gas, just as I think it’s even more irresponsible to say we’re going to have no nuclear power in our mix.”

He said he accepts the idea of some intrusion into business and consumer freedom on the climate issue, which he calls an exception to his overall libertarianism. “The economies of scale, the amounts of money that have to be spent or diverted in the environmental area are so massive that you can’t really rely on a single business or single individual to solve that problem,” he asserted, “so it has to be the government.”

Asked how he would respond to youth climate protests if he were president, Gov. Weld replied “I think sufficiently like a young person so that I would be joining the protest, even if it was on the steps of my building. I would hope to be participating in – not leading – but participating in that protest.”

Sanders Surrogate Varshini Prakash: Bernie’s Green New Deal is grounded in science

Sunrise Movement co-founder and executive director Varshini Prakash (Twitter profile picture)

Sunrise Movement co-founder and executive director Varshini Prakash, who stood in as a surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders, started by laying out the workers’ rights and racial justice elements of Sanders’ $16-trillion-dollar Green New Deal plan. “Bernie Sanders has been the most consistent on this issue his entire political career,” she said. “What Bernie Sanders understands…is that we need to tackle the climate crisis along with the crisis in economic insecurity in this country, along with the crisis of white supremacy in this country.”

Varshini noted that “people have called his plan too ambitious or unrealistic or impractical. But the truth is, the reason why his plan is so ambitious and far-reaching is because it is actually grounded in the science and grounded in what justice has mandated is necessary to save millions of people’s lives.”

She called out the fossil fuel companies that knew about the implications of their products for the climate crisis back in the 6os and 70s: “they knew that their profit model was contributing to the eventual breakdown of our ecological and our global society – and yet they continued to burn and pollute; even worse that that, they doubled down. They waged massive misinformation campaigns, they elected politicians to office who were climate deniers, who were using the strategy of climate denialism for political gain.”

Asked how Senator Sanders would protect those vulnerable to job loss in the transition to a clean energy economy, Varshini replied that Sanders believes that “workers have to be protected in the transition…and that this can’t be an afterthought – it has to be foregrounded in the creation of any kind of climate policy.” She said Sanders would push for passage of a “workers’ bill of rights,” with those affected by the transition getting priority in placement for jobs in the new economy, worker retraining, guarantees of 3 to 5 years of equivalent pay to what they were making in their previous jobs, and if they were older, the opportunity for early retirement.

Former Governor Deval Patrick with the author (left) and UCS Northeast Regional Advocacy Director Roger Stephenson (credit: Roger Stephenson)

Governor Patrick: A track record of “setting most aggressive standards in America”

Deval Patrick started off by asserting that when he was governor of Massachusetts, he set “the highest and most aggressive standards in America for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.” He noted that “all the signatories to the Paris Accords are going to have to step up our commitments and in fact set more ambitious goals.” He called for either a cap-and-trade regime or a carbon tax to be put in place, “with all of the proceeds plowed back into accelerating our move to a carbon-free future.”

He said that he found “that as governor, the greatest power I had was the convening power, meaning you call a meeting and people will come. A lot of people will come to your table who need to be part of the conversation [but] who wouldn’t talk to each other outside of the conversation. I very much look forward to using that kind of power in service of our climate change response as president.”

He focused on the need to deal with the impact of the energy transition on fossil fuel-dependent communities, saying “we do innovation well, but we stink at transition, in my view. We get around to the impact of innovation later, if at all. I’d love to be able to go to coal country and say look, the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. We have a better idea, and you [can] be a part of it, and how about you take this or that part of our transition to a clean and green future.”

He ended by noting that “it is often people who look like me who are right in harm’s way. I am so grateful that we are thinking about the impact of this climate crisis on everybody, and the fact that the most vulnerable are likely to be the most deeply affected. I am interested in policy where it gets right down to touching people and affecting how they have the opportunity – how we have the opportunity – to live better, more prosperous, more just lives.”

Andrew Yang delivering his opening remarks (credit: Roger Stephenson)

Andrew Yang: We’re losing on climate because “our government does not respond to the people”

Andrew Yang outlined the political challenge we face: “When you say we need to fight climate change,” he said, “what [people] hear is you want to raise prices, you want to make my life more difficult and inconvenient, and you want to eliminate jobs. Right now there’s a mindset of scarcity that is making it very, very hard to address big problems like climate change.” He noted that most people are thinking month to month, and we need to give them a sense that their future is assured if we’re going to make progress on climate change. We also “need to let Americans know that doing nothing is actually incredibly expensive.”

In response to questions from the students, he said that we “need to make really significant changes to encourage sustainable agriculture, small family farms, regenerative agriculture,” and that when it comes to climate policy, a carbon fee and dividend approach “will reward more efficient operations in a way that [companies] can actually measure and profit from.”

In his closing remarks, he asserted that on climate, “we are losing on a colossal scale, and we are not losing because our people don’t know what to do. It’s because our government does not respond to the people anymore.”

Tom Steyer onstage with students and moderator Tiernan Sittenfeld of LCV (credit: Roger Stephenson)

Tom Steyer: If climate “isn’t priority one, we’re not going to solve it”

Tom Steyer started by asserting that “I’m the only person [in the presidential race] who’s saying this is my number one priority; other people have plans and I’m sure that other people care, but if you look back at history, in at least the 21^st century, the president gets one thing.

President Obama got health care, Mr. Trump got his tax plan, George W. Bush got the war on terror, but it’s pretty much one thing, and I’m saying this is my one thing. And if you don’t say it’s your one thing, you can have a plan, but the question is, is that plan ever going to happen?” He said the climate threat “is a crisis, and there’s no second place for this crisis that we’ll get to it after. I know we have a lot of issues in the United States of America, and I believe we can address them. But if this isn’t priority one, we’re not going to solve it.”

He pledged to “declare a state of emergency on day one,” and to set strong rules on how fast we’re going to move to clean energy, on what kind of cars get built in the US, on how we develop or don’t develop) oil and gas on public lands, how the federal government buys things, and whether we export oil and gas. “The president can do a lot of things just by declaring a state of emergency and acting. And I would do that.”

Steyer challenged other candidates by saying “if this isn’t your number one priority, and you don’t declare a state of emergency, than explain to me how with any credibility and effect, you can go to India, China, Brazil, Poland and Turkey and explain to them what they have to do. There is zero chance.”

He noted how he “follows the climate science on a daily basis, just to make myself nervous.” He said if you’re looking at someone who’s running for president and talking about climate, ask [them] what they’ve done,” then proceeded to outline his decade-plus worth of activism on the issue. He said his in his climate plan, “we start with environmental justice, we start in the black and brown communities where this society chooses to concentrate its poison,” and he outlined examples of his support for front-line communities in their fights against dirty water, polluted air, and toxics.

Responding to the students’ questions, Steyer touched on a wide range of issues, including healthy soils and carbon sequestration, the importance of girls’ education in developing countries, phasing out single use plastics, how Republican voters support clean energy, and getting away from consumerism as a source of meaning. But he said it all comes back to politics and the need to rein in the power of corporations in shaping our lives. “That’s really what this 2020 presidential election is about – the fight between the people of the United States against the corporations who want to do whatever they can to make money, including poisoning us and ruining the world. That’s my honest-to-god feeling.”

Steyer closed by saying “this will be so fun. Good grief! When is the last time America kicked ass doing the right thing? We’re like the empire in the Star Wars movie: ‘do what we want, or we will shoot you.’ Since when is that America? I’m being serious – when is the last time we stood up for what is right and did it and led the world? And isn’t that the whole point behind America, seriously? So why don’t we just go and have a ton of fun and kick some ass; why not? That’s what I want to do.”

Warren surrogate (and UCS Science Network member) Dr. Ayana Johnson backstage with the author and Roger Stephenson (credit: Roger Stephenson)

Warren surrogate Ayana Johnson: “youth activism has moved the needle on climate policy”

The final segment of the day saw Dr. Ayana Johnson, a marine biologist, CEO of Ocean Collectiv, and a member of Union of Concerned Scientists’ Science Network, speaking as a surrogate for Senator Elizabeth Warren. She started by talking about Sen. Warren’s anti-corruption plan, “which is key to climate policy so that we don’t have elected officials who are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, we don’t have lobbyists writing our laws.”  She described Sen. Warren’s twelve separate climate plans, “on topics ranging from green jobs to environmental justice to farming to clean energy…of the scope and scale to address the crisis we are facing.”

Dr. Johnson quoted another Warren supporter, Representative Ayanna Pressley, as saying “Warren speaks my love language, which is policy,” and she outlined her own role in helping craft Sen. Warren’s “Blue New Deal” plan to protect the oceans. Responding to a question on the cost of implementing climate solutions such as a carbon tax, Dr. Johnson said we need to put this in the context of the massive costs of climate inaction. She noted that, in addition to carbon pricing with the revenues returned to consumers, we need regulations and other policies.

Discussing how to take care of workers affected by the transition away from fossil fuels, Dr. Johnson said “if there’s one thing I’ve learned from working with the Warren campaign, it’s that they are very deliberate and strategic and caring about the impacts of all on this on people; all of the plans are centered around people. It’s really about how do we support communities and jobs in this transition.” She acknowledged that “the honest answer to your question is that all the details are not worked out yet, but of all of the candidates, I most trust [Senator Warren] to get in the weeds on those details and make sure that it is a transition that will, in fact, work for everyone.”

Asked how Senator Warren would get ambitious climate legislation through Congress, Dr. Johnson pointed to Sen. Warren’s call to abolish the Senate filibuster, as well as her record of building bipartisan support for legislation over the years. “It’s hard to get major, ambitious policy through the Congress; that’s always been the case,” she said. “But we are at a very different moment in history now, where even Republicans are having to introduce climate policy for the first time…because young Republicans are concerned about climate.”

Dr. Johnson ended by saying that “youth activism has moved the needle on climate policy in America, the way that young people are holding their elected officials accountable – every single Democrat who is running has had to come out with a robust climate plan, and this is first time that has happened in the history of our nation.  We’ve had nationally televised climate town halls; that is because of youth climate activism. We’ve had Senator Warren and others signing the no fossil fuel money pledge because of youth activism. So I just want to encourage all the young people to really keep it up because that’s important, and that is what creates the political climate for climate policy to become what it needs to become.”

There couldn’t have been a more fitting note upon which to close this amazing day of inspiration and commitment.

At the high-level opening of COP 25 on Monday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres underscored the message of urgency and laid down a clear challenge to the negotiators: “COP25 must convey to the world a firm determination to change course…and finally demonstrate that we are serious in our commitment to stop the war against nature,” he said. “There is no time and no reason to delay. We have the tools, we have the science, we have the resources. Let us show we also have the political will that people demand from us.”

Unfortunately, over the next two weeks, political will was in very short supply in the negotiating rooms of the massive Féria de Madrid conference center. I have been attending these climate negotiations since they first started in 1991, and in those almost 30 years, I have never experienced such a sharp disconnect between what the science clearly requires and what growing numbers of people around the world are demanding from their governments on the one hand, and what COP 25 delivered in terms of meaningful action on the other. This is true both when it comes to raising the ambition of countries’ emissions reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement, and also when it comes to mobilizing much greater support for the vulnerable countries and communities who are facing ever-more-devastating impacts of climate change.

Show us some ambition

A little over two months earlier, at Secretary-General Guterres’ Climate Action Summit in New York, we saw many of the world’s most vulnerable countries joining state and local government officials, business leaders, investors and others in announcing ambitious climate action commitments. But the world’s biggest emitting countries — accounting for nearly 80 percent of global carbon emissions — were nowhere to be found. If these big countries continue to evade their responsibility to substantially increase the ambition of their existing emissions reduction commitments under Paris, they will make the task of meeting the well below 2 degrees Celsius temperature limitation goal — much less the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal  — almost impossible, as the latest United Nations Environment Program Emissions Gap report makes clear.

In a rational world, this fact would be explicitly acknowledged, and countries would be urged to make every effort to raise the ambition of their emissions reduction commitments. But in Madrid, such clarity was actively resisted, with big developing countries like China, India, and Brazil joining developed countries like the U.S., Japan, and Australia in opposition to strong ambition language.

In the end, the best we could get in Madrid was four paragraphs in the Paris Agreement decision that:

• “acknowledges the growing urgency of enhancing ambition and responding to the threat of climate change;”
• “re-emphasizes with serious concern the urgent need to address the significant gap” between the current collective ambition of countries’ emissions pledges under Paris and what is needed to meet the Agreement’s temperature limitation goals;
• “recalls” that each country’s Paris pledge should “reflect its highest possible ambition;” and
• “recalls the request” in the 2015 decision adopting the Paris Agreement that countries should consider updating their current national action plans by 2020, and urges them “to consider the [ambition] gap with a view to reflecting their highest possible ambition when responding to this request.”

Even this restatement of past agreed language was hard fought, and was one of the factors contributing to COP 25 earning the dubious distinction of running the longest overtime of any of the annual climate summits to date. But these paragraphs do at least provide a basis for pressing countries to step up climate action over the next year in the run-up to COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland.

All eyes are on Europe

With President Trump taking formal action just weeks before COP 25 to initiate U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and doing all he can to undermine domestic climate and energy policies, no one expects American leadership to address the climate crisis until at least January, 2021. Instead, all eyes are upon the European Union. At the European Council meeting at the end of last week, EU leaders announced their commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, but made no progress on raising the ambition of the EU’s 2030 emissions reduction pledge under Paris. It is essential for EU leaders to reach agreement on this critical issue early next year, so that the EU can engage constructively with China, India and other major-emitting countries in discussions on substantially increasing their ambition as well, in the run-up to COP 26 in Glasgow next November.

The summit to be held in Leipzig, Germany next September between EU leaders and Chinese President Xi Jinping is shaping up as perhaps the key moment on next year’s climate calendar. If the EU and China can jointly announce they will raise the ambition of their Paris pledges, it could break the current logjam and encourage other big countries to join them. But to reach such an achievement, the EU must move first.

Lost and damaged

The issue of “loss and damage” — the now unavoidable impacts of climate change on vulnerable countries and communities around the world — has been increasingly prominent in the climate negotiations in recent years. It is abundantly clear that the current support for those on the front lines of the climate emergency is grossly inadequate, and that we need a path forward that gives vulnerable countries the assurance that they will see finance and capacity-building support substantially scaled-up to address the loss and damage they are already experiencing.

The United States has been the most vociferous opponent of initiating meaningful discussions on ways to increase support for developing country action, but other developed countries such as the EU, Australia, and Canada are also responsible for the logjam in negotiations over loss and damage that took place in Madrid. The final decision on loss and damage established the Santiago Network for Averting, Minimizing, and Addressing Loss and Damage, aimed at catalyzing technical assistance to vulnerable countries from relevant organizations, bodies, networks, and experts, and urged that finance, technology, and capacity-building support to address loss and damage be scaled up. But vulnerable countries will have to press hard to get any serious political engagement from developed countries at COP 26 and beyond on specific ways to mobilize this support.

For detailed reports on these and other official outcomes of COP 25, see the Earth Negotiations Bulletin’s summary here, and Carbon Brief’s excellent analysis here.

The real United States shows up

While the official U.S. delegation resisted meaningful discussions on climate finance and could say nothing helpful about raising ambition, there were others who came to Madrid to assure the world that when it comes to addressing the climate emergency, President Trump isn’t the true face of America.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a Congressional delegation to COP 25 consisting of fourteen Representatives, including the chairs of four key House committees focusing on climate change, as well as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). They arrived on the Sunday before the negotiations started, and engaged in a whirlwind set of activities over the next two days.

At a reception held on Sunday by the U.S. ambassador to Spain, I was able to directly relay to Speaker Pelosi an invitation from the Climate Vulnerable Forum — an international partnership of 48 countries, highly vulnerable to a warming planet — for her to come address their high level Leaders Event the next morning. Two other U.S. NGOs reinforced the ask with Speaker Pelosi’s staff, and she decided to add the event to her already packed schedule. In her remarks to the presidents, prime ministers, and other dignitaries assembled for the event, she said the vulnerable countries were “at the heart of the matter,” and assured them that “we are here to say to all of you, on behalf of the House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States, we’re still in it.  We are still in it.” She and the rest of the delegation echoed that message at a press conference later that day.

At the end of the first week of COP 25, the We Are Still In coalition — a group of governors, mayors, business leaders, and others working to meet the U.S. commitments under Paris despite President Trump’s irresponsible decision to withdraw from the Agreement — launched the U.S. Climate Action Center, which featured four jam-packed days of events describing the range of actions being undertaken to decarbonize the U.S. economy. The highlight of the four days was the launch of the America’s Pledge report on December 10^th, describing how much states, cities, and businesses deploying aggressive best-practice climate policies can do to cut U.S. emissions by 2030, as well as how much more could be achieved with reengaged federal government layering aggressive, post-2020 climate action on top of these subnational efforts. After remarks by actor and climate activist Harrison Ford as well as former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, the co-chair of America’s Pledge — former New York City Mayor and current presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg — presented the report to the UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Patricia Espinosa.

Climate activism on steroids

Over the two weeks of COP 25, there were a range of actions and events organized by the Fridays for Future initiative launched by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, as well as by a broad coalition of civil society constituencies supporting climate action. These included:

• Marches in Madrid and other cities around the world on December 6^th, calling for much greater climate action;
• A Unite Behind the Science panel discussion organized by Greta and her fellow youth activist Luisa Neubauer on December 10th, which included my colleague Rachel Cleetus;
• A Climate Emergency high-level event On December 11^th, featuring Greta, Greenpeace co-executive director Jennifer Morgan, Potsdam Institute of Climate Studies director Johan Rockström and others;
• An unsanctioned protest on December 11^th by over 300 climate activists, including many young climate strikers from around the world, standing up for women’s and indigenous people’s rights and calling for ambitious actions from rich countries (many of these activists were forcibly evicted from the premises by UN security, with most able to re-enter the conference center the next day); and
• A People’s Closing Plenary on December 14^th, where representatives from the Indigenous Peoples, people living with disabilities, Climate Justice Network, Climate Action Network, faith communities, and the Women & Gender, Youth, and Trade Union constituencies discussed what the COP 25 negotiations could have delivered if negotiators were putting the interests of their citizens above those of the fossil fuel industry and other opponents of action to address the climate crisis. I was pleased to be able to offer some remarks on the upwelling of climate action across the United States, and how it contrasts with the positions taken by the Trump Administration.

These events, along with the dozens of side events, press conferences, and campaigner actions both inside and outside the conference venue, demonstrated the growing pressure for climate action and climate justice being generated all around the world. Despite the dysfunction on exhibition from the ministers and country negotiators at COP 25, this wave of activism gives me hope that a better world is possible.

Since COP 17 in Durban, South Africa in 2011, I have carried with me a lanyard imprinted with the inspirational saying of Nelson Mandela: “it always seems impossible until it’s done.” During the closing hours of COP 25, when I felt a mix of anger, grief, and exhaustion about to overcome me, that lanyard gave me strength and confidence that just as Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement overcame incredible obstacles in the fight for justice in South Africa, the forces represented at the People’s Closing Plenary will prevail in the fight for climate justice and a sustainable planet for our children and grandchildren.

The outlook is uncertain–growing public concern about the mounting impacts of climate change and the sharp reductions in the cost of solar, wind and other clean technologies provide political and economic rationales for higher ambition, but President Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement and the trade war he has launched with China are creating headwinds against bold action.

The growing ambition gap

As I noted when the agreement was reached, it is a triumph of multilateral diplomacy, representing the culmination of 25 years of intense negotiations over how to confront the immense challenge of climate change (with lots of ups and downs along the way).

It requires countries to put forward national climate action plans (referred to as “nationally-determined contributions,” or NDCs), and to periodically report on their progress towards implementing those plans, but leaves it up to each country to determine the plan’s content and level of ambition. This last feature has resulted in near-universal participation in the agreement.

That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that the collective level of ambition of the initial round of country NDCs, most of which extend out to 2030, is well short of what is needed to have any chance of meeting the ambitious temperature limitation goal set forth in the Paris Agreement: “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels.”

This ambition gap was explicitly acknowledged in the decision adopting the agreement, which also requested the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prepare a report on what it would take to meet the 1.5ºC and 2ºC goals.  That report, released last October, found that:

“In model pathways with no or limited overshoot of 1.5°C, global net anthropogenic CO2 emissions decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 (40%–60% interquartile range), reaching net zero around 2050 (2045–2055 interquartile range). For limiting global warming to below 2°C CO2 emissions are projected to decline by about 25% by 2030 in most pathways (10%–30% interquartile range) and reach net zero around 2070 (2065–2080 interquartile range). Non-CO2 emissions in pathways that limit global warming to 1.5°C show deep reductions that are similar to those in pathways limiting warming to 2°C.”

The sharp disconnect between the pathways that the IPCC report says are needed to hit the 1.5ºC and 2ºC goals and the emissions trajectories associated with the current Paris Agreement pledges is illustrated by this graph from the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) team.

Before Paris, the world was on track for warming of 4ºC or more by 2100; the Paris pledges, if fully implemented, would bring that down to a 2.6º to 3.2º range. But the emissions curve must bend sharply downward to get on pathways consistent with the Paris temperature limitation goals. (Source: Climate Action Tracker, December 2018 update.)

And as CAT’s latest update makes clear, nations are far from making progress in closing this gap. In fact, the situation is getting worse. After three years of little or no increase in global carbon dioxide emissions, we have seen sharp increases in 2017 and 2018, with every expectation that we’ll see the same again this year.

The NDCs of most major emitting countries are rated by the CAT team as “insufficient,” “highly insufficient,” or “critically insufficient” (spoiler alert: the U.S., along with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Ukraine, is in that last ignominious category).

What’s clearly needed – and soon — is a massive injection of political will.

Not all the news is bad

There are some signs of hope. A number of countries, including France, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, have set net zero emissions targets in national law, meaning that any emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases will need to be fully offset by actions to remove or sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, and several other countries have adopted such targets as policy positions, but not yet embodied them in law. Most of these countries are aiming to reach this goal by 2050, while Norway, Finland and Sweden intend to reach this target much sooner. The European Union is now considering whether to adopt a collective 2050 net zero emissions target for its 28 member states.

Twenty-two countries and more than 200 states, provinces, and cities all over the world are members of the Under 2 Coalition, committing to “limiting emissions to 80%-95% below 1990 levels, or to below 2 annual metric tons per capita, by 2050 – the level of emission reduction necessary to limit global warming to under 2°C by the end of this century.”

And more than 200 companies – including Coca-Cola, Dell, Kellogg’s, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble, and Sony – have adopted science-based targets “in line with what the latest climate science says is necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.” Here in the U.S., nearly 4,000 states, cities, counties, companies, and other institutions are members of the We Are Still In coalition, which is committed to meeting the U.S. emissions goals under the Paris Agreement despite President Trump’s irresponsible decision to withdraw the United States from the agreement.

Show me your plans

These initiatives are all most certainly to be welcomed. But the hard fact remains that unless more countries–especially those that make up the G20, which are collectively responsible for about 85 percent of global emissions–commit to significantly increasing the ambition of their existing Paris commitments, the possibility of staying well below a 2ºC increase in global temperatures, much less meeting the 1.5ºC limit, will be totally foreclosed.

Recognizing this fact, United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Antonio Guterres announced over two years ago that he would hold a leaders’ climate summit in conjunction with the opening of the UN General Assembly in September of 2019. The summit is scheduled for September 23 at UN headquarters in New York, and Secretary-General Guterres has been quite clear as to what he wants from world leaders:

“I am telling leaders: ‘In September, please don’t come with a speech; come with a plan.’ I am calling on leaders to come to New York…with concrete, realistic plans to put us, once and for all, on a sustainable path. These plans must show how to enhance Nationally Determined Contributions by 2020. I also want leaders to demonstrate how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next decade and get to net zero emissions globally by 2050. That is what science says is needed.

I will also ask leaders to address issues such as a just transition–where no one is left disadvantaged by necessary climate action. And I will ask them to demonstrate the many benefits of climate action, such as job creation, reduced air pollution and improved public health.”

In addition to announcements of commitments to enhance country NDCs, the summit also intends to showcase transformative actions in a number of key sectors, including energy, industry, infrastructure and cities, nature-based solutions, climate resilience and adaptation, and climate finance and carbon pricing.  It will also attempt to respond to “the unprecedented mobilization of young people worldwide who are demanding ambitious climate action” with several initiatives, including a Youth Climate Summit on Sunday, September 22.

Speaking of youth, Greta Thunberg and other leaders of the student climate strike movement have announced they are organizing a global climate strike to be held on September 20^th and 27^th, and they are calling on adults everywhere to join them.  “Our house is on fire,” they declare. “The climate crisis is an emergency but we’re not acting like it. People everywhere are at risk if we let oil, coal and gas companies continue to pour more fuel on the fire. Millions of us will walk out from home, work, school or university to declare a climate emergency and show our politicians what action in line with climate science and justice means. The climate crisis won’t wait, so neither will we.”

Photo Credit: Alden Meyer

A marathon, not a sprint

No one is under any illusions that the UNSG’s climate summit and the global climate strikes are going to lead to an immediate shift in the thinking and actions of world leaders — this is a marathon, not a sprint, and the forces of denial, delay, and obstruction of climate action are powerful indeed. The fossil fuel industry has a track record of nearly 40 years of deception and harm, and there’s little indication that they intend to transform their business models to be compatible with the Paris temperature goals.

The real test will come over the next year-and-a-half, as countries face the end-of-2020 deadline set out in the decision adopting the Paris Agreement to determine whether to increase the ambition of their initial NDCs. There will be opportunities galore this year and next for countries to showcase their commitments to enhanced climate action, including at the annual Conference of the Parties meetings being hosted by Chile in Santiago this December, and likely by the United Kingdom in November of 2020.

President Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement and his efforts to dismantle climate action at the federal level mean the United States will be on the sidelines of the climate fight until January of 2021 at the earliest. In the meantime, all eyes are on the other major emitting countries, in particular China and the European Union.

Can the EU persuade the four Eastern European member states that blocked agreement earlier this summer on a collective long-term net zero emissions goal and a commensurate increase in the EU’s 2030 NDC to drop their opposition? Are China’s leaders ready to follow through on the pledge they made together with France on the sidelines of the G20 summit in June to “update their nationally determined contributions in a manner representing a progression beyond the current one and reflecting their highest possible ambition,” by announcing a significantly strengthened NDC? Or will the uncertainties created by the current US-China trade war lead them to be more cautious?

Perhaps most intriguing is whether the EU and China could make a joint announcement on enhancing the ambition of their NDCs; conversations on this are underway but getting to yes requires overcoming their differences on trade, security, and other issues, and there are no guarantees.

Such an announcement could have a real impact on other major emitters, much as the U.S.-China joint announcement in late 2014 on the two nations’ intended post-2020 climate actions helped spur progress in the last phase of negotiations leading up to adoption of the Paris Agreement.

Time is not on our side

Meanwhile, the climate clock keeps ticking, with heat waves breaking temperature records across Europe this summer and accelerating ice loss in the Arctic and Greenland, water shortages affecting cities and villages across India, and extreme flooding devastating farm communities across the American heartland, to mention just a few recent examples. As former Vice President Al Gore has been saying for several years now, “every night on the network news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelations.” Each of these events is just one more reminder that the climate system is reality-based – it doesn’t respond to plans and speeches, but to emissions.

The Paris Agreement provides the framework for countries to collaborate on the bold action we need to confront the climate emergency, but realizing its promise requires much greater leadership, especially from presidents and prime ministers. We will soon know whether that leadership is forthcoming at the pace and scale needed to start bending the emissions curve down sharply, as the world’s scientists have made clear we must do to avert climate catastrophe.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives will vote on H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act, which would prohibit any federal funds from being used to advance the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change.  The bill, which was introduced by Rep. Kathy Castor (FL-14), Chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, would also require the president to develop and submit to Congress a plan for how the U.S. will achieve its pledge under the Agreement to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Given its overwhelming support from House Democrats, H.R. 9 will pass the House; it may even attract a few yes votes from Republicans.  Of course, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has no intention of bringing it up for a vote in the Senate.  But the vote later this week will send a signal that at least one body of Congress stands with the strong majority of Americans who want the U.S. to stay in the Paris Agreement and be a global leader on climate change, and with the thousands of U.S. companies, states, and cities that have committed to take the actions needed to meet our Paris obligations.  As House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Frank Pallone put it when H.R. 9 was unveiled on March 27^th, “we are going to do whatever we can to say to the president, ‘Look, you say you’re going to withdraw from Paris. What is your plan? How are we going to address these climate issues?’”

Making the U.S. a rogue nation

Climate change is happening now, as the recent spate of floods, wildfires, superstorms and other extreme events here in the United States and around the world makes clear.  The latest international and U.S. government scientific reports are unequivocal: to keep these impacts from getting much, much worse, emissions must be cut sharply, starting immediately.  Every fraction of a degree of warming that we can avoid matters.

As the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the United States has a responsibility to stay in the Paris Agreement and to implement policies and measures to meet its 2025 emissions reduction pledge.  The Agreement has overwhelming support from other nations; in fact, after President Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the Agreement, Nicaragua and Syria – the only two countries that had yet to sign it – announced that they would do so.

By contrast, President Trump is dead set on making America a rogue nation on climate change, with harmful implications not only the environment but for our economy and our standing in the world.  As AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka put it, “pulling out of the Paris climate agreement is a decision to abandon a cleaner future powered by good jobs.  A deteriorating environment is not the only thing at stake here.  When our leaders isolate America from the rest of the world, its hurts our ability to raise incomes for working families and achieve fairness in the global economy.”

Rhetoric vs. Reality

As the debate takes place this week on the House floor, we can expect to hear many well-worn critiques of the Paris Agreement from opponents of climate action: that it imposes unfair obligations on the United States, it would hurt our economy, it doesn’t require developing countries like China and India to do anything, or it won’t make a dent in global emissions.

These talking points bear little or no relation to reality:

• Emissions reduction commitments under Paris are nationally-determined; no other country is telling the U.S. what to do. Each country is expected to put forward pledges that represent the best effort they think they can make, to report on how they are doing in meeting those pledges, and to periodically update them based on developments in science, technology, economic feasibility, and other factors.  If a country falls short of its intended goals, there are no penalties – no fines, no trade sanctions, no other consequences.  This architecture, with universal participation by both developed and developing countries, self-determined commitments, and a robust and transparent reporting regime, represents what U.S. administrations — of both parties — have called for over the last two decades.
• Reducing emissions is good for the economy; increasing climate impacts are the real threat. US Greenhouse gas emissions have come down substantially over the last 20 years, as a result of technological advances and policies that have been put in place at the federal, state, and local levels – although that trend was at least temporarily interrupted in 2018.  The sharp cost reductions in wind, solar, LED lighting, and other clean energy technologies, together with low natural gas prices, is already leading to the shutdown of a substantial share of U.S. coal generating capacity, and analysts predict we will soon see similar tipping points reached for electric vehicles in the competition against gasoline-powered cars and light trucks.  Over 4 million Americans work in the clean energy economy, with the renewable energy industry employing about five times as many people as the coal industry.  And when the costs of climate impacts are factored in to the equation, it is clear that it is inaction on climate change — not bold action – that poses the real threat to the U.S. and global economies.
• Major developing countries like China and India are taking significant action to constrain their emissions and are considering doing more.  China is on track to meet its goal of reducing the carbon intensity of its economy (emissions per unit of GDP) by 48 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and to achieve a peak in its national emissions well before the 2030 date put forward in its Paris pledge; an internal debate is now underway in China on increasing the ambition of its pledge.  Both China and India are making massive investments in deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies, with India putting forward some of the world’s most ambitious renewable energy policies, including a national goal of ramping up solar installed capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2022.
• The aggregate commitments made under the Paris Agreement, if fully implemented, will have a substantial impact on global temperature increases, though much more must be done. The Climate Action Tracker consortium of analysts projects that these commitments would limit warming to about 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, compared to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s baseline projections before Paris of a 4.1 to 4.7 degrees C temperature increase. Of course, as last October’s IPCC special report makes clear, much more needs to be done if the world is to meet the ambitious temperature limitation goals set out in the Agreement: keeping well below a 2 degrees Celsius increase in global average surface temperature above pre-industrial levels and aiming to get as close as possible to a 1.5 degree Celsius limit.  The need for additional action was explicitly recognized in the decision adopting the Paris Agreement in 2015, and many countries are now considering how they can increase the ambition of their initial pledges under the Agreement before they are finalized next year.

What comes next on Paris?

After this week’s vote on H.R. 9 on the House floor, the debate will continue over the Paris Agreement and the issue of climate action more broadly.  Voters are ranking climate change as one of their top issues, and activists – including the inspiring youth climate strikes – are pressing national, state, and local policymakers to take bold action.

There is unanimity amongst the large field of contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination that one of their first acts if elected president would be re-entering the Paris Agreement (assuming that President Trump follows through on his announced intention and withdraws the U.S. from Paris in November, 2020 – the earliest he is allowed to do so under the terms of the Agreement).  Climate change is already featuring as an issue as candidates campaign in the early primary states, and will certainly come up in the round of Democratic debates that start in late June.

On the Republican side, the one announced opponent of President Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, has said that the United States “must rejoin the Paris climate accords and adopt targets consonant with those of other industrialized nations.” And Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who is reportedly considering entering the Republican primary contest, is a founding member of the U.S. Climate Alliance – governors from 23 states who have committed to implement policies that will help meet America’s Paris pledge, and whose states collectively represent over half of America’s population and economic output.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will be holding a leaders’ climate summit in New York on September 23^rd during the opening week of the U.N General Assembly; he is calling on national leaders to come to the summit “with concrete, realistic plans to put us, once and for all, on a sustainable path,” and “to demonstrate how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade and get to net zero emissions globally by 2050. That is what science says is needed.”  While it is unlikely that President Trump will attend the summit, his isolation from other world leaders on the need to implement and strengthen the Paris Agreement will once again be on full display, even in absentia.

Finally, between now and 2020, countries will be considering whether to increase the ambition of their emissions pledges under the Paris Agreement.  Some have already announced their intention to do so, and others may join them at the September climate summit.  Also, states, cities, businesses, and other subnational actors will continue to build on the broad suite of commitments they announced at last September’s Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, helping lead the way to the decarbonization of the global energy economy that is needed to address the climate crisis.

This week’s House vote on the Climate Action Now Act adds to this drumbeat and will provide some hope to international observers that the United States may soon return to the fold of countries committed to climate action.

As a soon-to-be-67-year-old advocate who’s been working on US and international climate policy and politics for some 30 years—as well as the father of a 24-year-old daughter—I welcome the passion, energy, and directness these young leaders are bringing to the conversation. As I listened to the powerful statements that youth leaders made at the rally at the US Capitol, I found myself experiencing a range of emotions: inspiration, hope, humility, and sadness.

I am inspired by the strength and moral clarity of the students’ demands, and hopeful that their actions will help drive leaders in both the public and private sectors to pursue the transformational changes that are required to come to grips with the climate crisis.

I am humbled by the recognition that despite our best efforts—as well as the significant victories we have won on renewable energy and clean vehicle policies, reducing deforestation, and other important fronts—I and the many other advocates of my generation have fallen well short in our efforts to drive climate action on the scale that’s needed.

And I am profoundly saddened by the fact that even if we are able to dramatically ramp up emissions reductions so as to meet the temperature limitation goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, the world these students will experience during their lifetimes will be severely stressed by the impacts of climate change.

Youth activism on climate is certainly not new; for example, youth groups in Europe, the US, and other countries have been attending the international climate negotiations for more than 20 years, and in 2005, they formed the International Youth Climate Movement to coordinate their efforts. And the youth-driven Power Shift conferences that started in Washington, DC in fall 2007 and spread around the world have engaged thousands of young activists in the fight against coal and oil and for a clean, renewable, energy-efficient world.

Greta’s gift

But the strategy of school climate strikes is much more recent; it began last August, when a then-15-year-old student in Sweden, Greta Thunberg—inspired by the March for Our Lives protests on gun control organized by students at Florida’s Margory Stoneman Douglas high school—began what she called the Skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for the climate).

I saw Greta speak at last December’s UN climate summit meeting in Katowice, Poland, and her clear and passionate words are still ringing in my ears: “You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake,” she told the ministers and negotiators assembled in the plenary hall. “You are not mature enough to tell it like is. Even that burden you leave to us children… You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.”

She ended with this clear warning: “We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again. We have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people.”

Politicians take notice

In the last six months, the spark that Greta lit has become a wildfire, with school strikes and student marches and demonstrations all across the world. And they have struck a nerve. In the United Kingdom, where student strikes took place in 60 cities and towns across the country last month, government ministers—and even Prime Minister Theresa May—at first criticized the strikers. But after commentators from a range of publications expressed their support for the strikes, several of these ministers reversed course, announcing their support for the children. Within a month of the strikes, Parliament held the first debate on climate change it has had in years – though it was lightly attended by members of the governing Conservative party.

And just last week, at the United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, French President Macron gave a shout out to the climate strikers: “Young people are telling us ‘you’re not going fast enough’, he said. “And they’re right, because we have been too slow. We all have to move: governments, big business, citizens.”

Last Friday, more than 2000 student actions took place in more than 120 countries, according to the FridaysForFuture organizers. Here in the United States, Youth Climate Strike organized actions at state capitols, city halls, and universities across the country. Among the reasons they give for the strike:

• because decades of inaction has left us with just 11 years to change the trajectory of the worst effects of climate change, according to the October 2018 UN IPCC Report.
• because our world leaders have yet to acknowledge, prioritize, or properly address our climate crisis.
• because marginalized communities across our nation—especially communities of color, disabled communities, and low-income communities—are already disproportionately impacted by climate change.
• because if the social order is disrupted by our refusal to attend school, then the system is forced to face the climate crisis and enact change.

The political—and personal—impacts of the student strikes

At the conclusion of each of the major international climate negotiating milestones over the last 30 years—including the Rio framework treaty in 1992, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and the Paris Agreement in 2015—my message to policymakers and reporters has been frustratingly consistent: “this (fill in the blank) agreement represents an important step forward, but much more must be done.”  For as the Chinese philosopher Laozi (or Lao Tzu) said, “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”  And as the world’s scientific community has made abundantly clear, where we are currently heading on climate change is unacceptable.

The time for incrementalism is over; bold action is needed, and now. As my colleague Peter Frumhoff noted when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC was released last October, “every fraction of a degree of warming we can avoid matters.”

When I first came to UCS in 1989 to start up our work on climate change and energy issues, we had many choices, many paths to take, and many opportunities to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The hard truth is that we didn’t make the choices that we should have, and now the paths ahead range from hard to hellish and the opportunities to avert truly catastrophic climate change are narrowing with each passing year. Adults of conscience feel real guilt and shame and sadness over this, as we should—along with deep anger at the short-sighted politicians and self-interested corporate leaders who have worked so hard to block progress at every turn.

The young climate strikers who were out on the streets last Friday know their whole future is on the line, and they’re finding the courage to throw themselves into the fray. Their actions are creating cracks in the status quo through which real light and possibility can flow; we need them to keep pressing to make those cracks wider and wider, until the whole edifice of denial, delay, and delusion on climate change comes tumbling down.

Adults like me will stay in the fight, working side-by-side with these young new leaders to confront the powerful fossil fuel lobby and others who are standing in the way of bold climate action, and to prod our political leaders to start acting as grown-ups.

But thanks to the growing wave of youth action, the bitter mix of grief, fatigue, frustration, and anger that so many of us grizzled climate warriors all too often feel will now be overlaid with something fresh, inspiring and beautiful: new hope, and gratitude for it. We owe you, young friends.

The report will provide vital information to countries as they consider whether to enhance the ambition of their emissions limitation pledges (which are referred to as “nationally-determined contributions,” or NDCs) under the Paris Agreement; as the report makes clear, those current collective pledges are nowhere near adequate to meet the goal set forth in the Agreement of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2⁰C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5⁰C above pre-industrial levels.”  As I noted just after the Paris Agreement was adopted, “getting the 1.5⁰C reference in the Agreement represents a major victory for small island states and other countries who have been correctly making the case that a 2 degrees C limit is by no means ‘safe,’ and for some island states, in fact poses an existential threat.”  The special report will make these dangers abundantly clear; as my UCS colleagues detail here and here, there are substantial differences between temperature increases of 1.5 and 2⁰C when it comes to extreme precipitation and extreme heat.

The report will also inform the actions of states, provinces, cities, businesses, and other subnational actors as they develop or strengthen their own emissions limitation commitments.  More on that below.

Some context

The special report was requested by the member states of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the historic Paris climate summit in December 2015; in their decision adopting the Paris Agreement, the IPCC was invited “to provide a special report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 ⁰C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways.”  That same decision “notes with concern that the estimated aggregate greenhouse gas emission levels in 2025 and 2030 resulting from the intended nationally determined contributions do not fall within least-cost 2 ˚C scenarios…and also notes that much greater emission reduction efforts will be required than those associated with the intended nationally determined contributions in order to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2 ˚C above pre-industrial levels…or to 1.5 ˚C above pre-industrial levels.”

The Paris Agreement itself acknowledged the transformational nature of the actions required to meet its long-term temperature limitation goal, stating that: “Parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century, on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.”  The IPCC report will flesh out in great detail what will be required to meet this profoundly challenging objective – as well as the very serious consequences of failing to meet it.

The reason countries asked the IPCC to complete its special report by 2018 is because they decided in Paris that they would organize a “facilitative dialogue” at the climate summit being held this December in Katowice, Poland, in order “to take stock of the collective efforts of Parties in relation to progress towards the [Paris Agreement’s] long-term goal…and to inform the preparation of nationally determined contributions.”

The Talanoa Dialogue

When Fiji became the first small island country to hold the rotating presidency of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC in November of last year, its Prime Minister announced that this process would be renamed the Talanoa Dialogue.  As the UNFCCC background page explains, “Talanoa is a traditional word used in Fiji and across the Pacific to reflect a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue. The purpose of Talanoa is to share stories, build empathy and to make wise decisions for the collective good. The process of Talanoa involves the sharing of ideas, skills and experience through storytelling.”

The Talanoa dialogue asks countries to address three simple questions: ‘where are we,’ ‘where do we want to go,’ and ‘how do we get there.’  There has already been a rich and in-depth preparatory phase of the dialogue, involving inputs from countries as well as states, cities, businesses, and every sector of civil society seeking to answer these questions; the IPCC special report will add greatly to this technical background.

The current Fijian and incoming Polish COP presidencies will conduct a political phase of the Talanoa dialogue at COP24 in Katowice; they have declared that “the outcome of the dialogue is greater confidence, courage and enhanced ambition; this outcome is expected to capture political momentum, and help Parties to inform the preparation of nationally determined contributions.”  The IPCC will be asked to present the key findings of its special report to ministers and negotiators at the opening of this high-level political event on December 11^th, which will be followed by a series of interactive roundtables where ministers and non-Party stakeholders (representatives of subnational governments, business, and civil society) will be asked to address the question of ‘how do we get there.’

The 21 Talanoa sessions held at the May UNFCCC negotiating session in Bonn, Germany, displayed a constructive tone and open exchanges between the participants that contrasted sharply with the zero-sum, finger-pointing dynamics that are all too prevalent in the climate negotiations themselves.  As one participant put it, “Everybody talked to each other like people, not like parties.”  We can only hope that the high-level roundtables in December benefit from a similar spirit, and help pave the way for more countries to join the Declaration for Ambition issued last June by the Marshall Islands and 22 other countries, which declared “we commit to exploring the possibilities for stepping up our own ambition, in light of the forthcoming IPCC Special Report on 1.5⁰C…[and] call on other countries to join us in expressing their desire to lead from the front.”

The UN Secretary-General’s Climate Leaders Summit

In May of last year, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that he would hold a summit of world leaders during the opening session of the General Assembly in New York in September, 2019 to address the need for enhanced climate ambition.  “Climate change is a direct threat in itself and a multiplier of many other threats — from poverty to displacement to conflict,” he said. “The effects of climate change are already being felt around the world. They are dangerous and they are accelerating. And so my argument today is that it is absolutely essential that the world implements the Paris Agreement – and that we fulfil that duty with increased ambition.”

In a speech in New York last month, the Secretary-General reiterated his warning about the mounting threat of climate change. “As the ferocity of this summer’s wildfires and heatwaves shows, the world is changing before our eyes,” he said. “We are careering towards the edge of the abyss. It is not too late to shift course, but every day that passes means the world heats up a little more and the cost of our inaction mounts.”

He also elaborated on his vision for the summit:  “The Summit will provide an opportunity for leaders and partners to demonstrate real climate action and showcase their ambition. I want to hear about how we are going to stop the increase in emissions by 2020, and dramatically reduce emissions to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. I am calling on all leaders to come to next year’s Climate Summit prepared to report not only on what they are doing, but what more they intend to do when they convene in 2020 for the UN climate conference and where commitments will be renewed and surely ambitiously increased.”

In addition to enhancing ambition at the national level the summit will challenge states, regions, cities, companies, investors and citizens to step up action in six areas: the energy transition, climate finance and carbon pricing, industry transition, nature-based solutions, cities and local action, and climate resilience.  Building on the commitments announced at last month’s Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, UN agencies and key countries will work with non-governmental stakeholders over the next year to identify high-impact actions that can be taken in each of these areas.  The IPCC Special Report provides a roadmap to the transformational actions that will be required on these and other fronts, and will help both to inform and to gauge the adequacy of these actions. My colleague Rachel Cleetus lays out the technical and policy implications of the IPCC report in much greater detail here.

The 2020 moment

All of this is building towards the end of 2020, which is when the decision adopting the Paris Agreement requests countries to put forward new or updated NDCs; of course, as these pledges are “nationally-determined,” it is entirely up to each country to decide whether or not to enhance their ambition.  But as the science being assessed in the IPCC Special Report makes clear, if the collective ambition of these pledges out to 2030 is not significantly raised, the option of holding temperature increases below 2⁰C – much less anything approaching 1.5⁰C – will be foreclosed.  But there will be good news in the report as well: technological advances and rapid reductions in the costs of photovoltaics, LED lightbulbs, and many other climate-friendly technologies over the last several years mean that greater emissions reductions can be achieved at less cost than countries envisioned when they were preparing their initial NDCs in the run-up to Paris. These gains can and should be harnessed for the benefit of the planet in the form of enhanced NDCs.

As 2020 draws closer, we’re seeing momentum building for enhancing ambition. The “Call to Action” issued by the several thousand governors, mayors, corporate CEOs, major investors, and other leaders attending the Global Climate Action Summit calls on national governments to step up the ambition of their NDCs by 2020, as well as to develop net-zero mid-century emissions plans.  Nineteen countries – including twelve member states of the European Union – are now members of the Carbon Neutrality Coalition.  They are joined by the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, the Under2 Coalition, and the Science-Based Targets initiative involving nearly 500 companies, in working to develop and implement long-term decarbonization plans that are in line with the Paris Agreement’s temperature limitation goals.  And the Climate Vulnerable Forum – a group of around 50 countries that as its name implies, are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – has announced that it will hold a Virtual Summit on November 22^nd, combining interactive live sessions with statements by Heads of State to amplify the findings of the IPCC Special Report and build momentum for increased climate ambition just in advance of COP24 in Poland.

These are hopeful developments, but they are not enough.  As the IPCC Special Report will make crystal clear, time is running out; we can – and must – do more.  The Talanoa Dialogue, the Secretary-General’s Climate Leaders’ Summit, and the 2020 deadline for countries to “step up” on enhancing their NDCs all provide important international moments to focus public attention and showcase examples of the climate ambition we need.  But it is at the national and subnational levels that the battle to limit the impacts of climate change will be won or lost.

During India’s struggle for independence from Great Britain, Mahatma Gandhi said that “the future depends on what you do today.”  Future generations will celebrate those elected officials, corporate CEOs, and leaders from the academic, faith, environmental justice, labor, and other communities who have the courage to rise to the challenge so clearly outlined by the IPCC’s Special Report.  We can only hope that enough such leaders step forward to make the difference we need.

Meanwhile, he failed to even mention a host of other issues where actions being taken by his administration are threatening the health and well-being of all Americans, including the assault on science-based policymaking at federal agencies, the dismantling of strategies to limit and respond to the mounting impacts of climate change, and the dangerous changes being considered to US nuclear weapons policy that would make nuclear war more likely.

Of course, President Trump’s words and actions have contributed to a number of other disturbing trends, including increased expressions of bigotry and racism, a lack of kindness and common decency, growing disrespect for facts and expertise, and a focus on short-term gain for the powerful and wealthy at the expense of longer-term investments for the public benefit. UCS president Ken Kimmell has more to say about that.

Trump’s tax cuts: largesse for the most fortunate endangers benefits for the rest of us

President Trump waxed eloquent last night about the tax cuts he signed into law in December, whose benefits go overwhelmingly to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. While the jury is out on how much of this windfall may eventually trickle down to middle- and working-class Americans, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the tax cuts will increase the federal deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. This will increase pressure for cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, food assistance, and other programs that benefit low- and middle-income families, along with reduced investments in scientific and medical research, education and job training, infrastructure, and other public goods.

Federal government investments in science research and innovation have led to discoveries that have produced major benefits for our health, safety, economic competitiveness, and quality of life.  This includes MRI technology, vaccines and new medical treatments, the internet and GPS, earth-monitoring satellites that allow us to predict the path of major hurricanes, clean energy technologies such as LED lighting, advanced wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, and so much more. The work of numerous federal agencies to develop/implement public health and safety protections against exposure to toxic chemicals, air and water pollution, and workplace injuries has also produced real benefits to the American people.

The threats to these federal programs aren’t hypothetical; they were spelled out clearly in President Trump’s FY18 budget proposals last spring, which UCS president Ken Kimmell aptly called “a wrecking ball to science.” Other UCS colleagues detailed the devastating impacts of these proposed budget cuts on the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, worker health and safety, the Forest Service, and early career scientists.

While these cuts have yet to come to fruition (in large part because Congress has been unable to agree on anything other than very short-term spending bills), indications are that President Trump intends to put many of them forward again when he unveils his FY19 budget as early as February 12. The higher deficits resulting from the tax bill will almost certainly be cited by some in Congress as a reason to make these cuts.

“Regulatory rollbacks” = less protection for all Americans

Last night, President Trump touted his success in rolling back a number of science-based safeguards, claiming that “we have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history.”  While there’s no doubt his administration has been hyperactive on this front, there’s also no doubt who benefits from slashing protections for workers and average Americans: the banks, chemical companies, coal and oil producers, and other corporations whose harmful behaviors led to the regulations in the first place.

At a White House photo op event last month heralding his push for deregulation, President Trump announced that he has canceled or delayed more than 1,500 planned regulatory actions, “more than any previous president, by far,” and said “we’re going to cut a ribbon because we’re getting back below the 1960 level and we’ll be there fairly quickly.”  Of course, not everything was hunky-dory back then, as UCS senior writer Elliott Negin reminds us: “smog in major US cities was so thick it blocked the sun. Rivers ran brown with raw sewage and toxic chemicals. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River and at least two other urban waterways were so polluted they caught on fire. Lead-laced paint and gasoline poisoned children, damaging their brains and nervous systems. Cars without seatbelts, air bags, or safety glass were unsafe at any speed. And hazardous working conditions killed an average of 14,000 workers annually, nearly three times the number today.”

At the White House event last month, President Trump assured us that “We want to protect our workers, our safety, our health, and we want to protect our water, we want to protect our air, and our country’s natural beauty.” But as my colleague Yogin Kothari points out, it is the very regulations that President Trump and his appointees are assailing “that keep our air and water clean, our food safer to eat, our household products and our kids’ toys safer to play with, and our workers safer at work. And it is these regulations that can and should have the greatest positive impact on low-income communities and communities of color, who are often disadvantaged and facing some of the worst public health and environmental threats.”

Infrastructure: the devil is in the details

Last night, President Trump said “I am calling on the Congress to produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion for the new infrastructure investment we need,” and White House officials have signaled that he will be putting forward a detailed infrastructure proposal to Congress within the next few weeks. The need for a robust and equitable infrastructure package has never been greater; in its latest comprehensive assessment of the nation’s infrastructure conditions and needs, the American Society of Civil Engineers says that to bring our infrastructure up to a B grade from its current D grade, we need to invest $4.6 trillion by 2025 – some $2 trillion more than the estimated funding now in place.

At first blush, President Trump’s promised infrastructure plan may sound like it’s responsive to that need; but a closer look reveals serious concerns. A White House memo leaked last week indicates that only about 20 percent of these funds would be direct federal investment, with the rest needing to come from state and local governments and private sector investment. Even worse, a White House adviser told the US Conference of Mayors last week that the federal share of the funds would be offset by cuts to existing programs such as Amtrak and mass transit (talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul!).

Another leaked memo indicates the Trump administration will seek radical changes in environmental and other permitting procedures for new infrastructure projects, falsely claiming that these procedures—rather than the investment shortfalls noted above—are the source of the woeful state of our nation’s infrastructure. Scott Slesinger of NRDC charges that “the leaked provision would repeal critical clean air, clean water and endangered species protections and undermine basic environmental statutes. It would also set up a process guaranteed to neuter public input into federal actions and give agency heads free reign to virtually exempt any project from the National Environmental Policy Act, free from court challenge.”

While the leaked White House memos raise serious concerns, it is Congress that will determine the final shape and scale of any infrastructure bill. As my colleague Rob Cowin notes, any infrastructure bill must go beyond traditional investments in highways, bridges, and water projects, by seeking to ensure that our nation’s infrastructure is made increasingly resilient to the worsening impacts of climate change, as well as accelerating deployment of renewable energy, energy storage, and smart grid technologies that can enhance electricity system resiliency, while creating jobs and reducing environmental impacts. An infrastructure package that neglects these vital priorities, cuts other worthy programs to fund new investments, or attempts to gut important environmental review safeguards is not worth supporting.

President Trump’s assault on science and federal agency scientists

The importance of science to American prosperity, well-being, and international leadership went unmentioned in Trump State of the Union address. This is unsurprising, as President Trump’s administration and the 115th Congress have been actively dismantling science-based health and safety protections, sidelining scientific evidence, and undoing recent progress on scientific integrity. More than a year after taking office, President Trump has failed to appoint a presidential science advisor, and three-quarters of the key science and technology positions across the government also remain unfilled.

As my colleague Genna Reed put it recently in an article in Scientific American: “In its first year, the Trump administration has amassed a dismal record on science and science advice. Throughout the federal government, political appointees have misrepresented scientific information, overruled the recommendations of scientific experts, scrubbed scientific content from websites, and even reportedly forbidden some staff from describing their work as “science-based” in budget documents.”

UCS’s Center for Science and Democracy maintains a running list of Trump administration attacks on science—disappearing data, silenced scientists, and other assaults on scientific integrity and science-based policy. Among them:

• A ban on employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using the words “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based” in documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

• Political interference in the process of reviewing and awarding discretionary grants for scientific research at the Department of Interior (DOI) and the Environmental Protection Agency.

• Attacks by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt on the independence of EPA’s scientific advisory committees, by ordering that no scientists receiving EPA grant funding could serve on EPA’s Science Advisory Board, Board of Scientific Counselors, or Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. (UCS and Protect Democracy have teamed up to challenge this directive in court).

Unfortunately, these are but a few examples of the administration’s abuses of science—and federal agency scientists—since President Trump took office, and new ones seem to come to light each month. These actions are doing long-term damage to the capability of these agencies to fulfill their mission, and causing real harm to public health and safety; it’s no wonder the president doesn’t want to talk about them.

Ignoring the climate crisis

Despite his brief shout-out to “everyone still recovering in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, California, and everywhere else” from the damages caused by last year’s extreme weather events, President Trump continued to ignore the role of human-induced climate change in worsening those impacts. A federal government report outlines how the costs of these and other natural disasters exceeded $300 billion last year, setting a new US record that blew past previous totals. President Trump’s omission of these facts is not surprising, as he and his administration have been working overtime to dismantle federal government strategies to limit and respond to the mounting impacts of climate change.

Ignoring the advice of other world leaders, the CEOs of hundreds of major corporations, Pope Francis, and many other important voices, President Trump last June announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, jeopardizing the health and prosperity of every American as well as people all over the world.  Fortunately, not one country has indicated that they will follow President Trump out the door; in fact, during last November’s climate summit in Germany, Syria announced that it intended to join all the other countries of the world in the agreement, rather than be lumped in with the United States as a climate scofflaw. And the ‘We Are Still In’ coalition of US states, cities, businesses, and other sub-national actors was at the climate summit in full force, unveiling America’s Pledge, committing to meet the US Paris Agreement emissions reduction goals despite the irresponsible and short-sighted actions of President Trump and his administration.

On the domestic front, the Trump administration has systematically moved to roll back President Obama’s climate action plan, including by repealing the Clean Power Plan, announcing a review of the highly successful clean car standards, and undercutting the agreement reached in 2016 with Canada and Mexico to sharply cut oil and gas sector methane emissions. What do these actions have in common?  They all put the short-term economic interests of favored corporate interests ahead of the health, security, and prosperity of the American people. While these and other harmful actions are being challenged in court and are being partially offset by the leadership of US states, cities, and businesses, they will make it more difficult to meet the ambitious temperature limitation goals in the Paris Agreement, and are harming America’s reputation across the world.

Increasing the threat of nuclear war

Finally, while President Trump made extensive remarks last night about the security risks posed by North Korea and Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, he failed to mention that his administration is poised to revise America’s nuclear weapons policy in ways that would intentionally lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. As my colleague Lisbeth Gronlund notes, “Every US president since the end of the Cold War has explicitly reduced the role, the types and the number of US nuclear weapons. This leaked draft lays out a policy that does exactly the opposite. It would increase the risk of nuclear use and reduce national security.”

The yawning gap between rhetoric and reality

So there you have it. While President Trump called for American pride and unity in his State of the Union address, and claimed his actions are bolstering our nation’s security and prosperity, there is a yawning gap between the rhetoric and the reality.

One year in to his administration, the damage being done is clear. But like my colleague Rachel Cleetus, I see grounds for hope as well – not only on the issues discussed above, but in the growing resistance to the threats this administration poses to our democracy, our values, and our basic human rights.

The week before COP23 started, the United Nations Environment Program released its annual Emissions Gap Report, which found that the global warming emission reduction commitments put forward by countries under the Paris Agreement “cover only approximately one-third of the emissions reductions needed to be on a least cost pathway for the goal of staying well below 2°C.”

The report said that current commitments make a temperature increase of at least 3^oC above pre-industrial levels by 2100 very likely, and if this emissions gap is not closed by 2030, it is extremely unlikely that the goal of holding global warming to well below 2°C can still be reached.  The report’s warning was reinforced by analysis released by the Global Carbon Project during the talks, projecting that after three years in which global CO₂ emissions have remained flat, they are likely to increase by 2% in 2017.

The UNEP report contains good news as well, outlining practical ways to slash emissions in the agriculture, buildings, energy, forestry, industry and transport sectors, along with actions to control hydrofluorocarbons and other high-potency greenhouse gases.  The report finds that nominal investments in these sectors could help to avoid up to 36 GtCO₂e per year by 2030.  Almost two-thirds of this potential is from investment in solar and wind energy, efficient appliances, efficient passenger cars, afforestation and stopping deforestation — actions which have modest or net-negative costs; these savings alone would put the world well on track to hitting the 2^oC target.

In the context of these risks and opportunities, the progress made at COP23 was far too modest compared to what is needed.  But negotiators did succeed in laying the groundwork for more substantial achievements down the road, and the fact that countries pushed ahead despite President Trump’s announced intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement is in itself a welcome accomplishment.

Getting the rules right

A major focus of the negotiations in Bonn was on hammering out the detailed rules (or “implementation guidelines”) for the Paris Agreement, on a range of issues including transparency and reporting, accounting standards for both emissions and finance, the new market mechanisms created in the agreement that would allow reductions achieved in one country to be credited against another country’s emissions reduction commitments, how to raise the ambition of national actions over time, and actions needed to cope with the mounting impacts of climate change.

Countries had set a goal in Paris of resolving these and other implementation issues at the 2018 climate summit in Poland next December, so there was no expectation of final agreements on any of these issues at COP23.  Rather, the objective at COP23 was to narrow the differences amongst countries and to clearly frame the options on the key issues involved, so as to facilitate their resolution next year.

Progress was made across the range of rulebook topics, but it was uneven.  A bright spot was on the sensitive issue of transparency and reporting, where differences were narrowed and a fairly clear set of options was laid out.

By contrast, the negotiations on “features” of the “nationally-determined contributions” that countries are required to put forward under the Paris Agreement, as well as accounting standards for these NDCs and the up-front information requirements to ensure their “clarity, transparency, and understanding,” were much more polarized, and the end result was an unwieldy 179-page list of issues and options.

The most charged discussions were around finance, specifically the requirement in Article 9.5 of the Paris Agreement, that every two years developed countries must provide “indicative quantitative and qualitative information” on their future support for developing countries, including, “as available, projected levels of public financial resources to be provided.”  The African Group of countries pushed for more clarity and detail on this projected financial support by developed countries for developing country actions, a move that was strongly opposed by the U.S. and other developed countries.

Developing countries want greater certainty of the financial resources available to them going forward, so they can plan projects accordingly; but developed countries are loathe to make multi-year commitments that they can be held accountable for. This issue will be revisited at the intersessional meeting in Bonn next spring, and then brought to ministers at COP24 in Poland in December, 2018.

We left Bonn not with the draft negotiating text on the Paris rules that some had hoped for, but instead with a set of “informal notes” produced by the co-facilitators of each of the working groups, which capture and organize the proposals put forward by countries.  Much work lies ahead to meet the goal of adopting the full Paris rulebook at COP24, and while negotiators can work out some of the technical details in advance, it will clearly be up to ministers to resolve the political differences on the major crunch issues.

Catalyzing higher ambition

The decision adopted in Paris explicitly acknowledged the substantial shortfall in collective ambition that could keep the world from meeting the aggressive temperature limitation goals embodied in the Paris Agreement, and called for a “facilitative dialogue” at COP24 next year to address ways to close this gap.  Working with last year’s Moroccan COP22 presidency, Fiji put forward its vision of how this process should be conducted, renaming it the “Talanoa dialogue.” As Fiji explains, “Talanoa is a traditional approach used in Fiji and the Pacific to engage in an inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue; the purpose of Talanoa is to share stories, build empathy and trust.”

This will be a year-long process consisting of a preparatory phase starting in early 2018 and a political phase involving ministers at next year’s climate summit in Poland. The dialogue will be structured around three key questions: “Where are we? Where do we want to go? and How do we get there?”  One major input will be the Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change examining the impacts of global warming of 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, scheduled for completion next October.  Additional analytical and policy-relevant inputs will be welcomed in the preparatory phase, not just from countries but from NGOs, businesses, research institutions, and other stakeholders as well.

To succeed, this process must do more than reaffirm the ambition gap; it must spur concrete steps to close it.  A central focus will be on the need for countries to signal, by 2020, their intention to raise the ambition of their existing commitments between now and 2030.  But the dialogue should also examine how states, cities, businesses and other “non-state actors” can contribute to closing the ambition gap, and encourage a range of sectoral initiatives on renewable energy, energy efficiency, forestry and agricultural sectors solutions, carbon pricing and other areas.

The Talanoa dialogue process will be jointly led by Fiji and Poland, as the current and incoming COP presidencies. Given Poland’s heavy dependence on coal-generated electricity, there are legitimate concerns about that government’s interest in generating the specific outcomes from the dialogue needed to enhance ambition.  It is clearly up to all countries to ensure the dialogue stays on track and produces meaningful results.

Dealing with climate impacts

Even if we are able to close the emissions gap and hold temperature increases well below 2 degrees Celsius, as leaders committed to in Paris, the world is going to suffer increasing climate impacts over the next several decades, as a result of the emissions we have already put up in the atmosphere.  Developing countries, together with environmental and development NGOs, pushed in Bonn for faster progress on helping vulnerable countries and affected communities cope with these impacts, both through enhanced measures to adapt to current and future impacts, as well as strategies to deal with the now-unavoidable “loss and damage” they are facing, both from “slow-onset” impacts such as sea level rise and desertification, and from typhoons, hurricanes, floods, and other extreme events.  At COP19 in Poland in 2013, countries established the Warsaw Implementation Mechanism on Loss and Damage (or “WIM”), and explicit provisions on loss and damage were included in the Paris Agreement.

Sadly, not enough was accomplished in Bonn on this front.  Five European countries did pledge a total of $185 million of renewed support for the Adaptation Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund.  But developed countries blocked a push by vulnerable countries to make the issue of mobilizing the much greater level of financial resources to deal with loss and damage a standing agenda item at future negotiating sessions.  All they would agree to is to hold an “expert dialogue” on this issue at next spring’s subsidiary body meetings in Bonn, which in turn will inform technical analysis on financial resource mobilization for loss and damage activities that is already being undertaken by the WIM.

Expect this issue to continue to be a major topic of debate in the negotiations going forward, including at COP25 in late 2019, where countries have agreed to conduct a full-blown review of the WIM.

The elephant in the room

When President Trump announced in June of this year his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, there was widespread condemnation from other countries, as well as from business and civil society both in the United States and around the world.  Not one country indicated that they intended to follow President Trump out the door; in fact, during the first week of the Bonn climate summit, the only other Paris Agreement holdout, Syria, announced that it intended to join all the other countries of the world in the agreement, rather than be lumped in with the United States as a climate scofflaw.

The U.S. negotiating team in Bonn kept a low profile, hewing largely to past positions on issues like transparency and reporting for developing countries and robust accounting standards.  They were quite tough in the negotiations on climate finance and loss and damage, though, perhaps out of concern that any sign of flexibility risked an unhelpful response from the Tweeter-in-Chief.

White House staff organized a side event on the role of coal, nuclear, and gas technologies as climate solutions, which generated a well-organized and creative protest led by U.S. youth groups.  It was also overshadowed by the launch of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a coalition of 20 countries led by Canada and the United Kingdom that is committed to phasing out use of coal no later than 2030.

California Governor Jerry Brown, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and other officials at the Nov. 11th launch of America’s Pledge at the U.S. Climate Action Center in Bonn. Photo: By the author.

But the real energy at the Bonn climate summit came from the We Are Still In initiative of university presidents, mayors, governors, business leaders, and NGOs who showcased their steps to reduce climate pollution and pledged their intention to meet America’s emissions reduction commitments under Paris, regardless of President Trump’s efforts to dismantle federal leadership on climate policy.

Through an intensive schedule of side events, press briefings, and bilateral meetings with ministers and business leaders from other countries, this U.S. subnational delegation went a long way to assuring the rest of the world that President Trump represents a short-term deviation in U.S. policy, not a long-term trend.  Of course, until there is a clear demonstration of bipartisan political support at the federal level for climate action, other countries will understandably continue to harbor concerns about the reliability of the United States as a partner in this endeavor.

What lies ahead

Negotiators will reconvene in Bonn on April 30 for a two-week session of the UNFCCC’s subsidiary bodies, working to make progress across the range of issues to be decided at COP24 in Katowice, Poland next December, and Fiji and Poland will convene several informal ministerial discussions over the course of 2018 focusing on the key political decisions that must be reached at COP24.

There are a number of other events where ministers and even heads of state will be discussing ways to enhance climate action over the next year, including:

• The One Planet Summit being convened by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, with a focus on mobilizing increased public and private sector climate finance.
• Two more sessions of the Ministerial Meeting on Climate Action (MOCA), a dialogue launched by Canada, China, and the European Union in Montreal in September; the next meeting will be hosted by the EU next spring, followed by a meeting hosted by China next fall.
• The ninth meeting of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, a ministerial-level discussion to be co-hosted in mid-2018 by Germany and Poland, as the incoming presidency of the Conference of the Parties.
• The G7 leaders’ summit, to be hosted by Canada on June 8^th and 9^th 
• The Global Climate Action Summit being hosted in San Francisco next September by Gov. Jerry Brown, which will bring together national, state and local political leaders, businesses, scientists, non-profits and others to “showcase the surge of climate action around the world – and make the case that even more needs to be done.”
• The G20 leaders’ summit, hosted by Argentina and starting just two days before COP 24, on November 30^th.  Leaders should build on the Climate and Energy Action Plan adopted at the G20 summit last July under the German presidency, which was agreed to by all G20 countries except for the United States.

All of these events can – and must – contribute to accelerated progress at COP24 in Katowice and beyond in implementing and strengthening the Paris Agreement.  As the UNEP report and other analyses clearly show, we have the solutions we need to the crisis we face. But what we need now is a much greater level of political will.

At least six Republican Senators are reported to have serious concerns about the bill, either because they fear it would add too much to the deficit or because it favors large corporations more than small business owners. If three or more of those Senators end up opposing the bill (and no Democrats break ranks and support it), the bill will die.  For the reasons outlined below, it should.

Equity is in the eye of the campaign contributor

As was the case with the tax bill passed by the House on November 16th, there’s been a fierce debate over the distributional impacts of the Senate bill.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center finds that if the bill becomes law, most taxpayers would see a reduction in their tax bills in the years out to 2025 – although the cuts would be heavily skewed towards the top 1 percent of the income distribution (households with more than $750,000 in annual income).

But this changes dramatically in 2026 and beyond, because of Senate Republicans’ decision to make the corporate tax cuts permanent while sunsetting the individual tax cut provisions after 2025 (they did this to comply with the prohibition on increasing the deficit after ten years when using the reconciliation process).  As a result, by 2027, the TPC projects that some 50 percent of taxpayers would see an increase in their tax bills, while only 28 percent would still be getting a tax cut.  And once again, the impacts would be skewed: for taxpayers with incomes in the top 0.1 percent of all Americans, less than 2 percent would see an increase in their taxes, while 98 percent would enjoy a tax cut averaging nearly $224,000 in 2027 alone.

The Senate bill also eliminates the tax penalty that individuals who choose not to purchase health insurance must pay under the Affordable Care Act, in order to achieve deficit reductions that can be used to offset the cost of the permanent reductions in corporate tax rates.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates this will reduce the deficit by $338 billion over the next ten years, as the number of Americans with health insurance would decrease by 13 million by 2027, reducing government outlays both for Medicaid and for subsidies for individuals purchasing health insurance in the ACA’s marketplace.  Meanwhile, health care premiums would increase by 10 percent for individuals in the non-group marketplace, compared to the baseline.

This is Robin Hood in reverse – robbing the poor to pay the rich – and represents yet another effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without putting anything credible in its place to deal with the health care needs of millions of Americans.

Deficit, schmeficit

Some Republicans have claimed that the Senate’s tax cuts will largely pay for themselves as a result of higher economic growth rates.  But analysis using a highly-respected economic model estimates the Senate bill would increase the deficit by some $1.4 – 1.6 trillion over the next ten years; this closely tracks the $1.4 trillion deficit increase estimate by the official Congressional scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation.  And of course, these estimates assume that Congress allows the individual tax cuts to expire after ten years, allows the generous business deduction for investments in factories and equipment to expire after five years, and allows other tax increases scheduled to take effect in 2026 to stand.  If (as is more than likely) those provisions were to be reversed by a future Congress and President, the resulting deficit would swell further, creating even greater pressure for cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, food assistance, and other programs that benefit low- and middle-income families, along with reduced investments in scientific and medical research, education and job training, infrastructure, and other public goods.

As I’ve noted previously, federal government investments in science research and innovation have led to discoveries that have produced major benefits for our health, safety, economic competitiveness, and quality of life.  This includes MRI technology, vaccines and new medical treatments, the internet and GPS, earth-monitoring satellites that allow us to predict the path of major hurricanes, clean energy technologies such as LED lighting, advanced wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, and so much more.

The work of numerous federal agencies to develop and implement public and worker health and safety protections against exposure to toxic chemicals, air and water pollution, workplace injuries, and many other dangers has also produced real benefits. All of these programs (along with veterans’ care, homeland security, transportation and other infrastructure, law enforcement, education, and many other core government programs) fall within the non-defense discretionary (or NDD) portion of federal spending, which has been disproportionately targeted for spending cuts over the last decade. As an analysis by Paul Van de Water of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities points out, “NDD spending in 2017 will be about 13 percent below the comparable 2010 level after adjusting for inflation (nearly $100 billion lower in 2017 dollars).”

The aging of the American population, continued increases in health care costs, the need to replace crumbling infrastructure and pay billions to help communities devastated by hurricanes and wildfires, and other factors will drive a substantial increase in federal spending over the next few decades.

One estimate is that federal spending will need to grow from 20.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 23.5 percent of GDP by 2035, largely as a result of increased costs for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In order to keep the national debt from growing faster than the overall economy, federal revenues will need to increase from some 17.8 percent of GDP in 2016 to at least 20.5 percent in 2035.

The need to increase spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, along with pressure to maintain (or increase) defense spending, will continue to squeeze NDD expenditures in the years ahead, even without the higher deficits created by the Senate Republican tax cut bill.

The game plan is clear as can be: pass massive tax cuts that add hundreds of billions of dollars each year to the deficit, then starting next year, use those higher deficits as an excuse for slashing programs that benefit middle- and lower-income Americans.

There’s a better way

The outcome of this week’s Senate action on the tax bill will not only determine whose tax bills will go down (or up) and by how much, important as that is; it will also impact America’s ability to maintain our global leadership on scientific and medical research and technology innovation, improve our air and water quality, avert the worst impacts of climate change (and cope with the impacts we can’t avoid), upgrade our transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure, and make investments in other critical areas.

Senators face a momentous choice.  They must refrain from handing out trillions of dollars in tax breaks to profitable corporations and the wealthiest Americans, while eroding health care coverage and laying the groundwork for deep cuts in a broad range of important federal programs down the road.  Instead, they should start over, and work across the aisle to craft a real tax reform plan that clears away the dense thicket of special interest loopholes and simplifies the tax code in a way that’s equitable to all Americans, without exploding the deficit and endangering the ability of the federal government to meet America’s current and future needs.

We know it’s possible to legislate in such a responsible, bipartisan manner; after all, it’s happened before.

What’s gotten less attention is the impact of this plan on the public science enterprise and the well-being of all Americans.

An unprecedented assault

Federal government investments in science research and innovation have led to discoveries that have produced major benefits for our health, safety, economic competitiveness, and quality of life.  This includes MRI technology, vaccines and new medical treatments, the internet and GPS, earth-monitoring satellites that allow us to predict the path of major hurricanes, clean energy technologies such as LED lighting, advanced wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, and so much more. The work of numerous federal agencies to develop and implement public and worker health and safety protections against exposure to toxic chemicals, air and water pollution, workplace injuries, and many other dangers has also produced real benefits.

These essential programs are already under unprecedented assault. UCS president Ken Kimmell has called President Trump’s proposed FY18 budget “a wrecking ball to science.” Others at UCS have detailed the devastating impacts of Trump’s proposed budget cuts on the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, worker health and safety, the Forest Service, and early career scientists.

UCS and our allies are pushing back hard on these proposed budget cuts, and we remain vigilant to ensure that when Congress takes final action on the FY18 appropriations bills in December, these irresponsible cuts will be rejected.

All these programs (along with veterans’ care, homeland security, transportation and other infrastructure, law enforcement, education, and many other core government programs) fall within the non-defense discretionary (or NDD) portion of federal spending, which has been disproportionately targeted for spending cuts over the last decade. As an analysis by Paul Van de Water of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities points out, “NDD spending in 2017 will be about 13 percent below the comparable 2010 level after adjusting for inflation (nearly $100 billion lower in 2017 dollars).”

Even if the draconian Trump budget cuts are beaten back, the very real need to increase spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, along with a push by many in Congress to maintain (or increase) defense spending, will continue to squeeze NDD expenditures in the years ahead.

Creating long-term pressure on essential programs

Here’s where the Republican tax plan comes in, as it will almost certainly reduce government revenues substantially and add to the national debt. While Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told ABC News that the tax plan would generate higher economic growth rates and “will cut the deficit by $1 trillion,” few independent economists agree with that rosy outlook.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the plan could increase the deficit by $2.2 trillion over the next decade; CRFB president Maya MacGuineas cautioned that “tax cuts shouldn’t be handed out like Halloween candy,” and said they “certainly don’t pay for themselves.”

Senate Republicans openly acknowledge that the tax plan will increase the deficit; the Budget Committee resolution that they plan to put before the full Senate for a vote later this month contains reconciliation instructions to the Finance Committee that would allow the deficit to increase “by not more than $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.”

Deficit spending is sometimes justified, such as for investments in infrastructure, education, public health, and other forms of physical and human capital that more than pay back over time, or to kick-start the economy when unemployment is high. But that’s not the case here; as discussed below, the bulk of the benefits from this plan would flow to the wealthiest Americans, with low- and middle-income Americans receiving only modest direct benefits, if any.

Moreover, the resulting increase in the federal deficit would lead to louder calls for cuts in programs that benefit low- and middle-income Americans, including food assistance programs, student loans, unemployment insurance, economic development, and worker retraining.  As another analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities put it, “the majority of Americans could ultimately lose more from the program cuts than they would gain from the tax cuts.”

The government needs more revenue, not less

Looking down the road, it’s clear that the aging of the American population, continued increases in health care costs, the need to replace crumbling infrastructure, and other factors are creating pressure for federal spending to increase substantially over the next few decades.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that to accommodate these factors, federal spending will need to grow from 20.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 23.5 percent of GDP by 2035. This is largely driven by increased costs for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; CBPP projects that defense and non-defense discretionary spending will decrease somewhat as a share of GDP over the next couple of decades. As the CBPP report observes, the need to increase federal spending is “hardly a controversial notion. Budget plans from such diverse organizations as the National Academy of Sciences, the Bipartisan Policy Center, and the American Enterprise Institute have reached the same conclusion.”

To keep the national debt from growing faster than the overall economy, CBPP estimates that annual budget deficits need to be held to an average of 3 percent of GDP; this in turn means that federal revenues should increase from some 17.8 percent of GDP in 2016 to at least 20.5 percent in 2035. There are any number of ways to do this, from closing special interest loopholes in the tax code to putting a tax on carbon dioxide emissions or other forms of pollution. Of course, given the current political realities in Washington, no one expects a serious discussion of this issue anytime soon; the current challenge is just to avoid making the situation worse.

Tax fairness: the rhetoric and the reality

President Trump and Republican leaders insist that their aim is to provide tax relief for the middle class, and that taxes won’t be cut for wealthy Americans; President Trump even asserted that this tax plan is “not good for me. Believe me.”

But a preliminary analysis of the framework by the Tax Policy Center found otherwise. While acknowledging that several details remain to be filled in, TPC estimates that in 2018 under the “Big Six” plan, “taxpayer groups in the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution would see modest tax cuts, averaging 1.2 percent of after-tax income or less. The benefit would be largest for taxpayers in the top 1 percent (those making more than $730,000), who would see their after-tax income increase 8.5 percent.”

Over half of the total benefit of the tax cuts would accrue to taxpayers in the top 1 percent, increasing to nearly 80 percent of the benefits by 2027. Others have examined how the elimination of the alternative minimum tax, the abolition of the estate tax, and several other provisions of the plan would personally benefit President Trump—and his heirs.

Private interests vs. the public good

It’s clear that the stakes in the tax debate now under way in Washington are not just about the critical issue of whose tax bills go down (or up) and by how much. The outcome will also have an impact on our ability to maintain America’s global leadership on scientific and medical research and technology innovation, improve air and water quality, avert the worst impacts of climate change (and cope with the impacts we can’t avoid), upgrade our transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure, and many other important issues.

It’s hard to dispute the need for real tax reform—a plan that clears away the dense thicket of special interest loopholes and simplifies the tax code, in a way that’s equitable to all Americans. But that’s not what’s on offer right now—instead we’re seeing a drive to give trillions of dollars in handouts to profitable corporations and the wealthiest Americans, while laying the groundwork for deep cuts in a broad range of important federal programs down the road.

Our elected officials can – and should – do much better than this; if they’re unwilling to, they should observe the Hippocratic oath, and “first do no harm.”

Both of these presidents recognized that climate change poses a severe threat to the security and well-being of their citizens, and understood that effectively addressing this crisis is much less costly than coping with the mounting impacts of climate change.

In sharp contrast, President Trump’s announcement today that he intends to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement demonstrates that he comprehends exactly none of this. Ignoring the advice of other world leaders, the CEOs of hundreds of major corporations, Pope Francis, and many other important voices, President Trump took an action that jeopardizes the health and prosperity of every American as well as people all over the world.

Pulling out of Paris will diminish the standing of the United States in world affairs, and make it harder for other leaders to collaborate with President Trump on trade, terrorism, and other critical issues, as it reinforces the belief of an increasing number of their citizens that he cares not a whit for their interests and concerns.

And contrary to what President Trump says, his action today will do absolutely nothing to boost the economy or create jobs; instead, it will harm the ability of U.S. companies and workers to compete in the rapidly growing global market for climate-friendly technologies.

But the deed is done. Now attention turns to the impact of this irresponsible move on the future of the Paris Agreement and the overall drive to decarbonize the global economy as is needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

We’ll always have Paris—won’t we?

With his move today, President Trump puts the United States in elite company, joining Nicaragua and Syria as the only other nations of the world not supporting the Paris Agreement. There are no indications that any other country intends to follow President Trump out the door. In fact, just the opposite has occurred in recent weeks, as other countries have reacted firmly to President Trump’s rollbacks of domestic climate action and the prospect of US withdrawal from Paris.

Here are just some of the notable statements:

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Lu Kang: “No matter how other countries’ policies on climate change, as a responsible large developing country China’s resolve, aims and policy moves in dealing with climate change will not change.” And in a clear reference to President Trump’s infamous claim that climate change is a “hoax” made up by China, Premier Li Keqiang said this: “Fighting climate change is a global consensus, it’s not invented by China.”

European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete: “The continued leadership of the EU, China and many other major economies is now more important than ever. We see the Paris Agreement and the transition to a modern, more innovative economy as the growth engine of job creation, investment opportunities and economic prosperity.”

German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks: “Whoever tries to change into reverse gear is only going to harm themselves when it comes to international competitiveness.”

Indian Minister for Power and Coal Piyush Goyal: India is “pursuing religiously” its goal of developing 225 gigawatts of clean energy by 2022, which is “not subject to some other country’s decision.”

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland: “We believe climate change is one of the greatest threats facing Canadians and the world and it is a threat which is a global threat and which needs global solutions.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov: “President Putin signed this convention in Paris. Russia attaches great significance to it.”

Perhaps most eloquent was Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, who said: “A President’s job is to protect their citizens, grow the economy and pave the way for future generations. Acting on climate change is the best way to do all of this. While we are extremely disappointed to see the United States seeking to roll back its efforts to reduce emissions, we are heartened to see the rest of the world remains firmly committed to the Paris Agreement and to reaping the enormous economic opportunities that come with it. My country’s survival depends on every country delivering on the promises they made in Paris—our own commitment to it will never waiver.”

As these comments make clear, other countries see fulfillment of the commitments they have made under the Paris Agreement as not just their responsibility to the global community, but as squarely in their own national interest. Developing country leaders understand that the mounting impacts of climate change endanger their ability to achieve their economic development objectives, and both developed and developing country leaders are eager to share in the massive economic and job creation opportunities created by the clean energy revolution.

Other countries did not sign up for the Paris Agreement to please the United States, and President Trump’s abdication of leadership will not cause them to leave it.

The geopolitical consequences of today’s action

When President George W. Bush announced in March, 2001 that the United States was abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, he and his foreign policy team didn’t anticipate how negatively the rest of the world would react. As his Secretary of State Colin Powell said two months later, “when the blowback came I think it was a sobering experience that everything the American president does has international repercussions.”

The blowback to President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is likely to be even worse, given the much higher profile of the climate issue now compared to 2001, and the fact that some 120 world leaders participated in the opening high-level segment of the Paris climate conference in 2015.

As Nicholas Burns, deputy Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration, said earlier this year, “I think it would be a major mistake, even a historic mistake, to disavow the Paris deal… I can’t think of an issue, except perhaps NATO, where if the U.S. simply walks away, it would have such a major negative impact on how we are seen.”

In a letter to EPA administrator Scott Pruitt earlier this month, Germany’s Environment Mnister Barbara Hendricks was quite direct about the consequences of today’s decision: “I am very concerned that a US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement would cause lasting damage to the long-standing mutual trust and close cooperation between our two countries and between the US and other countries in Europe and elsewhere,” she wrote.

As Todd Stern noted in a recent Washington Post op-ed, withdrawal from Paris should be seen as “an act of diplomatic malpractice. Countries large and small, rich and poor, are deeply invested in Paris because they understand the peril of climate change and know the Paris agreement cannot be truly effective without U.S. engagement.”

Stern predicted other countries “would see withdrawal as a slap in the face, disrespecting their fundamental interests and, in turn, eroding the United States’ diplomatic capital. This matters. In diplomacy, as in life, if you tell someone, ‘to hell with what you care about,’ don’t expect open arms when you come calling with your own needs.”

The repercussions of President Trump’s action today, which some are calling his “biggest middle finger to the world yet,” will only fully play out over the coming weeks and months. But it will clearly add to growing concerns about the ability of the United States to be a responsible actor on the international stage.

What comes next?

In Paris, countries set an aggressive temperature limitation goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels,” and acknowledged that to meet this goal, countries must aim “to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.”

They also explicitly acknowledged that the initial commitments put forward under the Paris Agreement fall well short of what’s needed to constrain temperature increases to below 2 degrees C, much less to avoid exceeding 1.5 degrees C, and they included provisions in the agreement to ratchet up their individual and collective level of effort over time, as needed to close that “ambition gap.”

As a next step, countries agreed to hold a “facilitative dialogue” at the climate summit that will take place in Poland at the end of next year, in order to “take stock of the collective efforts of Parties in relation to progress towards the long-term goal…and to inform the preparation of nationally determined contributions.” They also requested the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to prepare a special report on these issues to inform the dialogue.

The expectation was that by the end of this decade, countries that had taken on 2025 emissions reduction commitments under Paris, such as the United States, would put more ambitious 2030 commitments on the table. At the same time, China, India, the European Union and other countries that had made 2030 commitments would be expected to review those commitments and as appropriate, revise them upwards. It’s already clear that many of these countries are on track to overachieve their initial commitments, partly as a result of continuing dramatic reductions in the cost of solar, wind, and other clean energy technologies.

So the feasibility of increasing ambition is not in question; it’s a matter of political will.

But it’s also clear that President Trump is not going to come to his senses, rejoin the world in the Paris Agreement, and put a more ambitious US commitment on the table for 2030. It will be up to others—starting with China and the European Union—to put their own stronger commitments on the table and challenge others to join them. It should be noted that the 48 countries making up the Climate Vulnerability Forum have already set a high standard here, by committing themselves to achieve net carbon neutrality and obtaining 100% of their energy from renewable resources—despite the fact they have a lower level of economic development than most of the world’s major emitting countries.

In that regard, the EU-China summit being held today and tomorrow in Brussels represents a significant milestone in the shift in global leadership on this issue away from the United States. Reports are that European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will issue a joint statement tomorrow saying that “The increasing impacts of climate change require a decisive response,” and that “the EU and China consider climate action and the clean energy transition an imperative more important than ever.”

Translating those strong words into collective action—not just by the EU and China, but others as well—is essential if the Paris Agreement is to not just survive, but thrive, in the wake of the at least temporary withdrawal of the world’s largest economy and second largest emitter.

Back here in the land of the free and the home of the brave

President Trump’s action today flies in the face of public opinion; fully seven in 10 Americans support US participation in the Paris Agreement. Gallup’s tracking poll shows that concern about the global warming threat have reached an 8-year high; a majority of Americans say they are worried it will pose a serious risk to their way of life. And a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 62 percent of people do not support President Trump’s policies to rollback action on climate change.

While there are partisan differences on these issues, polls show that 57% of Republican voters support US participation in the Paris Agreement and 55% of Trump voters support current policies on climate change. Another poll shows that Trump supporters overwhelmingly support renewable energy, with 84% supporting the further expansion of solar power in the US.

The business community also strongly supports climate action and the Paris Agreement. In the run-up to today’s announcement, more than 1000 American companies and investors with over $1.2 trillion in annual revenues signed a statement to President Trump urging him to stay in the Paris Agreement and to strengthen, not roll back, low-carbon policies at home to meet the US Paris commitment.

Major energy companies, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BP and Shell, Total and Statoil support the Paris Agreement; even Peabody Energy and Arch Coal told the White House they believe remaining in Paris serves US interests.

As former US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern said in his recent Washington Post op-ed, “The reasons for this support are clear. Business leaders are fact-based. There is no room for ideological nonsense in the ‘C-suite.’ Whatever their political party, corporate executives get that climate change is real and most are actively planning business strategy to manage its consequences and limit their own emissions. They see Paris as a balanced agreement they can work with.”

He also notes that “corporate leaders understand that the transition to clean energy presents one of the biggest economic opportunities of this century, that climate change is a major driver of this transition and that the United States is perfectly positioned to lead it with our unmatched culture of innovation. They also know, conversely, that opting out on climate change will undermine this chance to create jobs and wealth.”

Just a few quick facts to reinforce his last point: Over three million people work in clean energy in America, far more than work in the motor vehicles, oil and gas extraction, and coal mining industries combined. The solar and wind industries are creating jobs 12 times faster than the rest of the US economy, with employment in the solar industry alone growing by 25% in 2016 to 260,000.

State and local leaders also support the Paris Agreement: Governors from twelve states accounting for one-third of the US population and nearly 40 percent of America’s GDP recently sent President Trump a letter urging him to stay in the Agreement, as did fourteen Attorneys General. Mayors from 75 cities representing over 41 million Americans wrote to the president, saying that “Climate change is both the greatest single threat we face, and our greatest economic opportunity for our nation. That is why we affirm our cities’ commitments to taking every action possible to achieve the principles and goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, and to engage states, businesses and other sectors to join us.”

These governors, mayors, and business leaders are doing much more than just sending letters to the president. They are making commitments to significantly cut or even eliminate emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, to get 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources, to upgrade the resilience of their infrastructure and supply chains, and to take other actions to deal with the reality of climate change.

While it is deeply unfortunate that President Trump is trying to take the federal government in the opposite direction, his actions won’t cause these leaders to reverse course; if anything, his head-in-the-sand approach is leading many of them to step up even more forcefully on the issue. As my colleague Rachel Cleetus noted in her post earlier today, these actions, combined with the rapidly falling costs of renewable energy, mean that progress towards creating a US clean energy economy will continue, despite President Trump’s efforts to slow it down.

So there it is. While President Trump’s action today is misinformed, harmful to the real interests of Americans, and will do real damage to the standing of the US in the world, it will not derail the Paris Agreement, nor should it lessen the commitment of other countries, state and local leaders, companies, investors and others to take the actions needed to decarbonize the global economy and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

A banner year on climate change

In last year’s State of the Union address, President Obama stated that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” and said he was “determined to make sure that American leadership drives international action.” By aggressively implementing his Climate Action Plan—especially EPA’s standards on the amount of carbon pollution that the nation’s power plants are allowed to dump into the atmosphere—and engaging in nonstop diplomacy with China, India, Brazil, and other key countries, the president and his team laid the groundwork for last month’s historic climate agreement in Paris. Expect President Obama to claim his share of the credit for this achievement, which blows a gaping hole in opponents’ arguments that other countries won’t join the United States if we take action on climate change. Also expect him to lay out the economic, environmental, and security benefits of such action, and to commit to keep working for additional progress on this critical issue until his last day in office. Not only is this the right thing to do; it also is good politics, as the American public—including a majority of Republicans—strongly supports regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

President Obama may well mention Mission Innovation, the commitment announced in Paris by the United States and 19 other countries to double the level of government investment in clean energy technology R&D over the next five years, and call for bipartisan support for this initiative. He may acknowledge the extension of the investment tax credit and production tax credit provisions for solar, wind, and other renewable sources in the comprehensive tax bill passed by Congress last month, and how this will continue the rapid increase in electricity production these clean energy resources have experienced since he took office in 2009.

He will likely discuss how climate-related impacts—including tidal flooding linked to sea level rise, forest die-back, wildfires, heatwaves, drought, health effects, and threats to iconic landmarks and to our electricity system—are increasingly affecting local communities across the country, and ask Congress to join him in increasing federal assistance to state and local governments to prepare for and cope with the consequences of climate change.

President Obama may also highlight the need for climate justice and equity to be key components of efforts to build resilience in communities on the frontlines of climate change, and put in a plug for his solar access initiative, which seeks to ensure that disadvantaged communities enjoy full access to clean, renewable forms of energy and benefit from the rapid growth of clean energy jobs.

Clean vehicles and fuels: good progress, and more to come

The increasing fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet is a major contributor to recent reductions in oil and gasoline prices; the president was part of a bipartisan group of Senators who helped pass historic legislation in 2007 that increased the federal corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for light-duty vehicles for the first time in 20 years, and he built on that success during his first term as president by adopting even more ambitious standards for new light-duty vehicles out to 2025. He now needs to ensure that the analysis and technology assessments that his agencies use as they prepare for next year’s mid-term evaluation of these standards is based on the best information and science. That will allow the next administration to have the best data in hand when assessing how to keep the 2025 standards strong.

In his 2014 State of the Union address, the president committed to keep working to improve vehicle efficiency, “by setting new standards for our trucks, so we can keep driving down oil imports and what we pay at the pump.” This spring, the Obama administration is set to finalize these standards to increase fuel efficiency in our heavy-duty trucks, which make up less than 7% of cars on the road but use over 25% of our oil. While strong, the administration’s proposed standards could still be improved, according to UCS analysis. Stronger standards would require a 40 percent reduction in fuel consumption by 2025—a technically feasible and cost-effective target that, when compared to the current proposal, would save more fuel, and sooner. When final, these standards will be another major component of the comprehensive strategy that’s needed to cut our oil use in half through efficiency and innovation, reducing the problems oil causes our economy, our security, our environment, and our climate.

President Obama also can and should do more to address the supply side of the equation. For the fact is that unnecessary leaking, venting, and flaring of methane dramatically increases the greenhouse gas emissions associated with extracting, refining, and producing a barrel of oil. The Obama administration has already proposed regulations to address methane leaks from new and modified oil and gas production; tomorrow night, the president should announce that not only will he finalize those standards, but that he will also move to set standards for existing drilling sites before he leaves office next year.

Grounds for caution on natural gas

As he has in previous State of the Union addresses, President Obama may refer to the nation’s expanding production and use of natural gas as a benefit to our economy and environment. It’s true that substituting natural gas for coal in electricity production can help reduce carbon pollution in the near-term, though just as with oil, there are fugitive methane emissions from gas production and use, which if large enough, could overwhelm these carbon benefits. But ultimately, we need to virtually eliminate carbon pollution from all sources—including natural gas—if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

An overreliance on natural gas over the long-term won’t allow us to achieve the emissions reductions needed to address global warming, and could crowd out essential investments in renewable energy sources and improving energy efficiency. Also, as UCS’s toolkit on fracking makes clear, too many communities are being pressed to make decisions on new oil and gas production projects without access to comprehensive and reliable scientific information about the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on their local air and water quality, community health, safety, economy, environment, and overall quality of life. President Obama should pledge that the federal government will take a stronger role in protecting these communities, and work with states to strengthen regulation and oversight of these industries.

Protecting the government’s ability to protect us

Just last week, the House passed H.R. 1155, the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (or “SCRUB”) Act, which as the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards points out, “would establish a new bureaucracy empowered to dismantle long-established public health and safety standards and would make it significantly more difficult for Congress and federal agencies to implement essential future protections.” Fortunately, the White House has already issued a veto threat for this ill-conceived legislation, should it ever reach the president’s desk. But this isn’t the first bad idea on “reforming” the federal regulatory process to be put forward by the current Congress, and it almost certainly won’t be the last. President Obama should make it crystal clear tomorrow night that he will continue to stand up to these efforts of special interests and their allies in Congress to undermine the ability of the federal government to protect the public’s health and safety.

There is also more that President Obama can do on his own on this front. For example, in 2013, he issued an Executive Order to improve chemical facility safety and security, but as my colleague Gretchen Goldman points out, the rules that provide better information for communities and protections against the risks of chemical accidents—the EPA’s so-called Risk Management Plan—are woefully out of date. The president should ensure these rules are updated before he leaves office.

Needed: a National Food Policy

While the president may once again refer to First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, it’s unlikely he will address the disconnect between health and nutrition policies, on the one hand, and our national agricultural policy on the other. As UCS Food and Environment program director Ricardo Salvador and three colleagues put it in a November, 2014 Washington Post op-ed:

How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans’ well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality and the federal budget. Yet we have no food policy — no plan or agreed-upon principles — for managing American agriculture or the food system as a whole.

While an executive order to establish a national policy for food, health, and well-being is likely a bridge too far in the president’s final year, the lack of a national food policy needs to be an issue in this year’s presidential campaign.

In the meantime, President Obama should make clear that he will defend healthy and sustainable food and farm policies in 2016, which will likely see the passage of at least one major food bill, the Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR) Act. CNR sets nutrition standards and funding levels for school lunch and breakfast programs, and authorizes the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program, which provides food assistance to low-income families. It also authorizes the Farm to School program, which has been instrumental in connecting local and regional farmers with schools, providing a win for farmers and schools alike. President Obama can use his veto power to ensure that a CNR bill delivers healthy, affordable food for those who need it most. Additionally, he can ensure that any other food and agriculture legislation or federal rules are developed using sound science in order to protect our water, air, and soil, and our families’ health.

Reducing the threat from nuclear weapons

Less than three months after taking office, President Obama gave a stirring speech in Prague on reducing the threat from nuclear weapons. Sensibly, he sought to “put an end to Cold War thinking” and to “reduce the role that nuclear weapons play in U.S. security policy.” He set forth a bold goal by declaring “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Almost seven years later, there has been far less progress toward those goals than many—presumably including the president—had hoped. Some of that is due to Russian intransigence and misbehavior, but despite those challenges, President Obama still has time and the authority to take steps that would reduce the nuclear threat.

He could begin tomorrow night, by declaring that the United States will remove its land-based nuclear-armed missiles from hair trigger alert, a dangerous posture held over from the Cold War that dramatically increases the chances of accidental or inadvertent nuclear war. He could also cancel the proposed new nuclear-armed cruise missile, a dangerous new capability that lowers the threshold for nuclear use. In June 2013, based on a comprehensive Pentagon study of military requirements, President Obama declared that the United States could safely reduce deployed U.S. nuclear forces by one-third, but he has not done so. He could seize that opportunity in the State of the Union. Finally, he could declare that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack on the United States and its allies, a significant move that would fulfill his intention to reduce the role that nuclear weapons play in U.S. security policy.

By reducing the nuclear threat, each of these steps would lead to a significant improvement in U.S. and global security.

Making full use of the bully pulpit

President Obama can take a measure of satisfaction from the difference he and his administration have made on issues such as these that are of such vital importance to the future of all Americans. But there is clearly more work to be done, and the president has made clear he will use every remaining minute of his time in office to make more progress wherever he can.

Part of his focus over the next year—and beyond—should be on continuing to raise public awareness of the benefits of responsible government action on climate change, clean energy, public health and safety protections, arms control, and other critical issues.  This will not only build support for the actions he takes as president, but will help create positive pressure for continued constructive action after he leaves the Oval Office next January.

There was drama right up to the last minute, as a drafting error by the UNFCCC Secretariat staff that would have made the Agreement’s emission reduction commitments legally binding—thus requiring ratification of the Agreement by the United States Senate—almost derailed the negotiations. But a technical correction was read from the podium, and France’s Foreign Minister and COP 21 President Laurent Fabius quickly gaveled through the agreement. Following its adoption, there were a series of powerful statements by Minister Fabius, French President Francois Hollande, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres.

UNFCCC Exec. Secretary Christiana Figueres and COP 21/CMP 11 President Laurent Fabius, Foreign Minister, France, gavel the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Photo: Earth Negotiations Bulletin

The Paris Agreement represents a triumph of multilateral diplomacy, and a powerful indication that 23 years after adoption of the Framework Convention in Rio de Janeiro, the nations of the world are coming together to respond to the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. Having been involved in the climate negotiation process since it started in early 1991, last night’s decision was tremendously gratifying on a personal level; for almost an hour after the gavel came down, I found myself exchanging hugs and hearty handshakes with dozens of colleagues—fellow non-governmental group advocates, negotiators, and even the odd minister or two.

It was a very emotional moment.

Renewed Hope and More Work Ahead

While there is much more work ahead of us, the Paris Agreement gives the world renewed hope that we can come to grips with the mounting climate change crisis and leave our children and grandchildren with a habitable planet. The Agreement sets an even more aggressive temperature limitation goal than the 2 degrees Celsius goal set at COP 16 in Cancun five years ago: “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.”  Getting the 1.5 degrees C reference in the Agreement represents a major victory for small island states and other countries who have been correctly making the case that a 2 degrees C limit is by no means “safe,” and for some island states, in fact poses an existential threat. Of course, we are nowhere near on track to constrain temperature increases to below 2 degrees C, much less to avoid exceeding 1.5 degrees C, and achieving such a goal will be quite challenging.

The Agreement outlines what must be done to meet this aggressive temperature goal, saying countries must “aim to reach global peaking of global warming emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.” As the latest UNEP Emissions Gap report makes clear, such an objective likely requires achieving net zero emissions of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, by 2070 or so to have a likely chance of keeping temperature increases below 2 degrees C, and even earlier — around 2050 — for a 1.5 degree C goal.

Either of these scenarios will clearly require much more ambitious action than is represented by the post-2020 emissions limitation proposals (referred to as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs) put forward by 189 countries thus far, as noted in paragraph 17 of the Paris decision. The COP requested that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prepare a special report on these issues by 2018, to inform a “facilitative dialogue” amongst countries at COP 24 at the end of that year.  The aim of that dialogue is to “take stock of the collective efforts of Parties in relation to progress towards the long-term goal…and to inform the preparation of nationally determined contributions.” The decision also requests all countries to formally submit their contributions by 2020, to be recorded in a registry maintained by the UNFCCC Secretariat.

The IPCC special report, 2018 facilitative dialogue, and 2020 INDC submission deadline will combine to create a global moment at the end of this decade where countries will be expected to update their current proposed actions, in light of the science as well as technology and economic trends. The cost of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies has been coming down at a breathtaking pace; to give just one example, when I met with a team of senior negotiators from India at COP 21 last week, they told me that the price of super-efficient LED light bulbs in their country had been reduced from the equivalent of $5 each to a little over $1 each in just the last 17 months. As these trends continue over the next several years, all countries should be in a position to significantly increase the ambition of their post-2020 emissions proposals, thus helping close the “ambition gap” — the difference between the collective level of emissions expected between now if countries implement the proposals they have put forward, and the much higher level of reductions needed to get on a pathway to hold temperatures below 2 degrees/1.5 degrees C.

Clear and Powerful Message to Fossil Fuel Industry

The Paris Agreement sends a clear and powerful message to the fossil fuel industry: after decades of deception and denial, their efforts to block action on climate change are no longer working. Growing public concern about climate impacts, and the availability of cost-effective efficiency and renewable energy solutions are giving leaders the political will to stand up to fossil fuel polluters and to put us on a path to create the global clean energy economy needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

But even if we succeed in holding the increase in global temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius, the impacts of climate change will continue to increase over the next several decades, as a result of global warming emissions over the last two centuries. Vulnerable countries require scaled-up assistance to cope with these impacts, which they had almost no responsibility for creating. While some progress was made on this front in Paris, much more remains to be done, and ramping up developed country public finance for both adaptation activities and responses to loss and damage — the costs of dealing with both sudden disasters like typhoons and floods, and slow-onset impacts like sea-level rise and droughts — must be a priority going forward. These issues need to be a major focus of the next Conference of the Parties meeting, to be held next November in Marrakech, Morocco.

Finally, let me express my thanks to the tremendous UCS team that worked so hard here in Paris —staff members Ashley Siefert, Doug Boucher, Jason Funk, Kathy Mulvey, Ken Kimmell, Peter Frumhoff, and Rachel Cleetus, as well as to our board chair, Anne Kapuscinski and our special delegation member, Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. Thanks also to so many other UCS staff who weren’t here in Paris, but whose skillful analysis, advocacy, outreach, and public communications work helped contribute to this historic outcome in Paris. While we are by no means finished, I am convinced that years from now, Paris will be seen as the tipping point when the transition away from fossil fuels really picked up pace and the dawn of the age of renewables became inevitable. I am so grateful to be part of this amazing team of smart, savvy, and dedicated people.

The papal encyclical that Pope Francis released in May, Laudato Si, left no doubt as to how deeply he cares about the impacts that climate change is already having, particularly on the most vulnerable amongst us. And he reiterated that concern in his remarks at this morning’s welcoming ceremony at the White House, saying that “climate change is a problem that can no longer be left to a future generation.  When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history.”

Tomorrow morning, tens of thousands of people are expected to pack the National Mall for the rally for Moral Action on Climate Justice, organized by a coalition of faith, social justice, secular and environmental leaders; the goal is to “bring more people into the conversation that Climate Change is a Moral Issue and significantly expand the number of persons who will recognize and take action for climate justice.”  I will be speaking at the rally on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists; here is some of what I plan to say:

Climate change is not just an environmental problem; it is also one of the greatest social, economic, and moral challenges of our time.  No country is immune from its impacts, and no country can meet the challenge alone.  We can’t point fingers and say “your end of the lifeboat is sinking;” rather, we must put aside our differences and come together to address this crisis.  As the world’s largest economy and largest historical emitter of heat-trapping gases, the United States has a special responsibility to provide leadership.

The climate summit in Paris this December offers us the opportunity to meet this challenge, by taking the actions needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change.  We need an ambitious agreement that sees all countries committing to do their part, and that sets us on a clear course towards a global economy that is much more energy-efficient and is entirely powered by the sun, wind, and other renewable resources. We must do this in a way that also addresses the crises of economic inequality, poverty, and social exclusion.  At the same time, we must greatly expand support for communities that are already struggling to cope with the impacts of climate change, both in other countries and here at home.

Two months out, there are promising signs that such an agreement is possible.  Hundreds of cities, states, and provinces are making bold action commitments.  Investors are starting to shift their assets away from fossil fuels and into clean energy sources.  People around the world are taking steps to reduce the impacts of their own consumption patterns, and are coming out to rallies like this one to demand action from their political leaders.  And leaders are responding by committing to work for a successful outcome in Paris.

Of course, there are some politicians who still don’t get it, who say that action is too expensive, that other countries won’t join us if we take action, or in some cases, that the threat of climate change is a hoax.  One Member of Congress even told a reporter that when the Pope addresses Congress tomorrow, he hopes that he “emphasizes moral issues, rather than things like global warming.”  Anybody who doesn’t understand that climate change is one of the most profound moral issues we face hasn’t been paying any attention to what Pope Francis has been saying!

We can hope that these advocates of inaction will open their hearts to Pope Francis’s message, will reflect on the kind of world they want to leave to their children and grandchildren, and will change their position. But in the meantime, the rest of us must push ahead to win the change we need to see, both in Paris and here at home.   By your presence here today, you are sending a strong message to our political leaders that the science is clear, the problem is urgent, the solutions are available, and inaction is unacceptable.  Riffing off of President Obama, we are saying: Yes We Can!  Yes We Must!  Yes We Will!

Photo: Amanda Lucidon

Moving ahead on climate change

In last year’s State of the Union, the president dismissed those who question the reality of the climate threat. “The debate is settled,” he said. “Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.” Since then, the president and his team have been moving full steam ahead on his Climate Action Plan, with the latest element, on methane emissions in the oil and gas sector, unveiled earlier this week. The centerpiece of the plan, though, remains the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed standards on the amount of carbon pollution that the nation’s power plants are allowed to dump into the air, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he will do “any and everything I can to block.” Expect the president to reiterate the economic, environmental, and security benefits of his domestic climate initiatives; while he won’t persuade Sen. McConnell or other Congressional opponents to change their stance, he knows that the public — including a majority of Republicans — support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

President Obama is also likely to underscore the need for U.S. leadership on climate on the global stage, building on his forceful speech at last September’s climate summit at the United Nations, and his joint announcement with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November, where China committed to cap its total carbon emissions by 2030, if not earlier. It will take global collaboration on an unprecedented level for humanity to come to grips with the climate crisis, and as the president has acknowledged, “as the world’s largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter, as a country with unsurpassed ability to drive innovation and scientific breakthroughs, as the country that people around the world continue to look to in times of crisis, we’ve got a vital role to play.”

Finally, climate-related impacts — including tidal flooding linked to sea level rise, forest die-back, wildfires, heatwaves, drought, health effects, and threats to iconic landmarks and to our electricity system — are increasingly affecting local communities across the country. Mayors, governors, and other local leaders are on the front lines of the real-world fight to avert the worst impacts of climate change; several of them served on President Obama’s Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, which presented its recommendations to the president last November. President Obama will likely refer to these impacts in his speech, and he should call on Congress to join him in ramping up federal assistance to state and local governments to prepare for and cope with the the consequences of climate change.

Clean vehicles and fuels: good progress, and more to come

The increasing fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet is a major contributor to recent reductions in oil and gasoline prices; the president was part of a bipartisan group of Senators who helped pass historic legislation in 2007 that increased the federal corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for light-duty vehicles for the first time in 20 years, and he built on that success during his first term as president. In last year’s State of the Union address, the president committed to keep working to improve vehicle efficiency: “When we rescued our automakers,’ he said, “we worked with them to set higher fuel efficiency standards for our cars. In the coming months, I’ll build on that success by setting new standards for our trucks, so we can keep driving down oil imports and what we pay at the pump.” Those standards are expected out in March, and will be another major component of the comprehensive strategy that’s needed to cut our oil use in half through efficiency and innovation. By taking additional steps to cut oil use, we can reduce the problems oil causes our economy, our security, our environment and our climate.

Grounds for caution on natural gas

As he did last year, President Obama may refer to the nation’s expanding production and use of natural gas as a benefit to our economy and environment. It’s true that substituting natural gas for coal in electricity production can help reduce carbon pollution in the near-term, though we must make sure that fugitive methane emissions from gas production and use don’t overwhelm these carbon benefits. But ultimately, we need to virtually eliminate carbon pollution from all sources — including natural gas — if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. An overreliance on natural gas over the long-term won’t allow us to achieve the emissions reductions needed to address global warming, and could crowd out essential investments in renewable energy sources and improving energy efficiency. Also, when it comes to expanded oil and gas production, the federal government needs to take a much stronger role in protecting communities, and work with states to strengthen regulation and oversight of these industries. As UCS’s toolkit on fracking makes clear, too many communities are being pressed to make decisions on new production projects without access to comprehensive and reliable scientific information about the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on their local air and water quality, community health, safety, economy, environment, and overall quality of life.

Protecting the government’s ability to protect us through science-based regulations

The new Congress is wasting no time in resuscitating bad ideas on “reforming” the federal regulatory process.  While the White House issued a veto threat to the Regulatory Accountability Act passed by the House earlier this week, this is only the first in a likely onslaught of such bills. The president should make it crystal clear next Tuesday night that he will stand up to these efforts of special interests and their allies in Congress to undermine the ability of the federal government to protect the public health and safety.

Not so fast on trade deals

The President is almost certain to mention the trade pacts now being negotiated with the European Union and with a set of key Asian countries, and may call on Congress to give him “fast track” authority to require only an up-or-down vote when he submits those agreements for approval. But there are mounting concerns amongst both public interest groups and members of Congress about the substance of these new agreements, as well as the lack of transparency in the negotiating process. It is crucial that these and other trade agreements are crafted to protect public health and safety and the environment, with standards based on the best available science. And these agreements must be negotiated in the sunlight, permitting the American public and law makers access to their details before they are concluded.

Needed: a National Food Policy

While the president is likely to once again refer to First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, it’s unlikely he will address the disconnect between health and nutrition policies, on the one hand, and our national agricultural policy on the other. As UCS Food and Environment program director Ricardo Salvador and three colleagues put it in a recent Washington Post op-ed, “how we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans’ well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality and the federal budget. Yet we have no food policy — no plan or agreed-upon principles — for managing American agriculture or the food system as a whole.” Pursuing such a shift in food and farm policies would require taking on some real sacred cows (pun intended), and given the president’s need to defend his environmental, health care, immigration, and financial reform accomplishments, it’s understandable, though unfortunate, that he will likely leave this issue to the next president to take on.

Increasing the safety of nuclear weapons

Less than three months after taking office, President Obama gave a stirring speech in Prague, where he said “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” And in last year’s State of the Union address, he observed that “American diplomacy has rallied more than 50 countries to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands, and allowed us to reduce our own reliance on Cold War stockpiles.” Locking down nuclear materials is an important achievement that UCS fully supports, but there are other steps the president can and should take to protect Americans, such as taking our missiles off dangerous high alert levels. This would also be a good signal to countries that are looking for signs that the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states are committed to reducing the nuclear threat, prior to the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference this spring. The State of the Union address presents a great opportunity for President Obama to signal such an initiative, though there are no indications that he intends to do so.

But these developments had done little to resolve the sharp disagreements about which countries are responsible for taking which kinds of action on climate change, and these different perspectives on the issue of differentiation nearly derailed the final decision in Lima. As it was, the Lima decision on the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) was a disappointing, minimal outcome. If these conflicts over the issue of differentiation are not resolved, or at least significantly narrowed, they could threaten the prospects for agreement in Paris next December on a new, comprehensive post-2020 climate regime.

Some background…

In the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, countries were split into two groups; the developed countries who collectively were responsible for the majority of historical greenhouse gas emissions were placed in Annex 1 of the treaty, and the developing countries were labeled as non-Annex 1. Under the Kyoto Protocol, only Annex 1 countries were required to take on binding emissions reduction commitments.

At COP 17 in Durban in 2011, countries agreed that the post-2020 actions to be negotiated by next year’s climate summit in Paris would be “applicable to all.”  To the U.S., other developed countries, and some developing countries as well, this phrase meant that the strict “firewall” between Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 countries would not continue in the post-2020 agreement; different countries would take on different kinds of actions, but those would be based on their capabilities and their current national circumstances, not by the binary division of the world in the 1992 Framework Convention.  However, other countries, in particular the Like-Minded Developing Countries group continue to insist that obligations in the post-2020 agreement must be based on the Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 groupings.

At the COP 19 climate summit last year in Warsaw, countries agreed that the obligations under the post-2020 agreement would be “nationally-determined,” with each country deciding for itself what kinds of actions it would take to reduce emissions.  While there is general agreement that developed countries should continue to take on economy-wide emissions reduction commitments, there is no guidance in the Warsaw decision as to what kinds of obligations developing countries should take on, nor could there have been, given the deep divisions on this issue.

In the November 12th U.S. China Joint Announcement on Climate Change, China pledged to achieve an economy-wide peak in its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 or earlier.  While this represents a significant advance in China’s national position over its previous intensity-based approach, it had no effect on its international stance in Lima on the post-2020 agreement, nor on the positioning of the Like-Minded Developing Countries group, of which China is a leading member.  These countries continue to insist that developing countries should only take actions based on provision of finance and technology support from developed countries (which, of course, is not a condition of China’s pledged post-2020 emissions cap).

In Lima, these disputes about the responsibility of different countries arose not only in the discussions of post-2020 mitigation actions, but also in debates over finance, adaptation, and technology transfer.

In the final decision text put forward by COP President Manuel Pulgar-Vidal and adopted by consensus in the wee hours of Sunday morning, a new paragraph appeared: “Underscores its commitment to reaching an ambitious agreement in 2015 that reflects the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.”  This language was taken directly from the U.S.-China announcement, and was enough to paper over the clear differences on the differentiation issue and to allow unanimous adoption of the decision.

Differing approaches on differentiation

In their written submissions earlier this year, countries spelled out their approaches to several issues, including the issue of differentiation in the post-2020 agreement.  While these positions reflect the well-known divisions between the developed countries and the Like-Minded Developing Country group, there are several proposals from other developing countries that provide a more nuanced view of the issue and represent a potential landing ground for the agreement next year in Paris.

In its submission, the European Union notes that one of the most challenging aspects of negotiating the post-2020 agreement in Paris will be how it reflects the Framework Convention’s principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR&RC). The EU believes that “to be consistent with this principle, Parties’ obligations must reflect evolving realities, circumstances, responsibilities and capabilities in a fair and dynamic way that is ambitious enough to keep us on track to achieve the below 2 degrees C objective.” The EU sees the process of countries submitting their Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions, or INDCs, together with the international process to consider and analyze them, as the way that CBDR&RC will be operationalized in the post-2020 agreement.

The U.S. also believes that differentiation will be determined by the INDCs put forward next year. The U.S. is quite clear that it cannot support a post-2020 agreement “based on a 1992-era bifurcated approach,” unless that approach “were on the basis of categories that are updated, in line with evolving realities.”

Norway calls for all countries to participate in the post-2020 regime, and sees a need to “differentiate according to the actual differences among Parties, and not on the basis of fixed categories of Parties.”  Norway says that it “would expect all Parties with reasonable capacity and significant responsibility for global emissions” to put forward economy-wide emission reduction or emission limitation commitments.

Taking a directly counter approach, the Like-Minded Developing Countries group has called for the post-2015 agreement to be strictly differentiated between Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 countries, with the former taking on “economy-wide mitigation commitments” and the latter taking “mitigation actions subject to provision of support” from developed countries. China, which is a leading member of the LMDC, is quite firm in its belief that the goal of the negotiations on the new post-2020 agreement is “by no means to create a new international climate regime, nor to renegotiate, replace, restructure, rewrite, or reinterpret the Convention and its principles, provisions, and Annexes.”

Brazil, on the other hand, has proposed an approach it calls “concentric differentiation,” that would see all countries putting forward “quantified mitigation targets and actions.” These could include economy-wide reduction targets relative to a previous base year, relative to a future projection of emissions, relative to unit of GDP (intensity target), or on a per capita basis, or actions that aren’t economy-wide. Developed countries would be expected to take the first approach, while least-developed countries would be encouraged to put forward non-economy wide actions. Other developing countries would be expected to put forward “economy-wide mitigation targets, leading to absolute targets over time, in accordance with their national circumstances, development levels, and capabilities.” Brazil’s proposal is summarized in this graphic:

Brazil sees this approach as fully consistent with the principles of the Convention, including differentiation between developed and developing countries. But to me, it represents a much more dynamic and effective approach to increasing ambition than the Annex 1/non-Annex 1 division of responsibilities that some countries state should be maintained ad infinitum.

In its submission, Mexico calls for developed countries to take the lead by putting forward economy-wide emission reduction targets, and for “other Parties in a position to do so” to follow their lead by doing the same.  Similar to Brazil, Mexico envisions a spectrum of other possible commitments, including absolute limits on emissions, intensity targets, deviation from business-as-usual, and sectoral mitigation plans and strategies.

The Association of Independent Latin American and Caribbean countries (AILAC) states that while developed countries must take the lead, all countries should put forward contributions under the post-2020 agreement, based on their “national context, capabilities, responsibility and challenges,” and all countries should be “ambitious in contributing to global efforts to combat climate change.”

Finally, the Least-Developed Countries also call for developed countries and others in a position to do so to take on economy-wide emission reduction commitments, and for other countries to take on emission limitation commitments “in a form that is appropriate to meet their national circumstances.” They call on themselves to develop and implement low-carbon development strategies.

The way forward

The differentiation issue nearly blocked the final decision in Lima, where the stakes were actually quite small. In Paris next year, the stakes will be quite high: nothing less than the shape of the climate regime for the next several decades.  It will not be possible to paper over sharp differences on this issue with artful language that different groupings can interpret in a way favorable to their position, as happened in the last hours of Lima.

Given the opposition of developed countries and of many developing countries to maintaining the Annex 1/non-Annex 1 groupings as the basis for obligations in the post-2020 agreement, it is clear that the position of the Like-Minded Developing Countries group is not viable.  But the notion of purely self-determined obligations is not appealing to the vast majority of countries either; while it may represent the de facto basis for the first round of commitments under the Paris agreement, there will need to be more guidance in the agreement for subsequent mitigation commitments, as well as for the provision of finance, capacity-building, and technology transfer to developing countries, if it is to be acceptable to all. The submissions from Brazil, AILAC, Mexico, the Least-Developed Countries and others have much to offer in this regard.

Given that these submissions were made only recently, they have not received full discussion in the negotiating process. Creating the space for a full and focused discussion of the differentiation issue should be a priority for the new ADP co-chairs, Dan Reifsnyder of the United States and Ahmed Djoghlaf of Algeria.  For as more than one delegate observed in Lima, differentiation is “the elephant in the room.”  To make real progress towards agreement in Paris, there will need to be greater alignment around a shared vision of post-2020 differentiation.  My hope is that through constructive discussion of the proposals put forward recently, together with the reality of differentiated INDCs being put forward by countries starting next March, we will start to see some breaking down of the polarization around the differentiation issue.  Whether it will be enough to enable us to reach a comprehensive, ambitious post-2020 climate agreement in Paris remains to be seen — but it is an effort well worth making.

As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently said, “Time is running out. The more we delay, the more we will pay. Climate change is accelerating and human activities are the principal cause… The effects are already widespread, costly and consequential — to agriculture, water resources, human health, and ecosystems on land and in the oceans. Climate change poses sweeping risks for economic stability and the security of nations.”

Photo: southbendvoice/Flickr

The Climate Summit is the unofficial beginning to a process that must eventually result in commitments across the globe to slash carbon emissions, reduce the world’s exposure to the risks of a warming planet and find fair ways to support nations that face the consequences of any warming we can’t contain.

World leaders attending the summit must demonstrate that they fully understand the dangers that climate change poses to the prosperity and well-being of their citizens; they must also acknowledge their collective responsibility to act urgently to reduce this threat.

The good news is that more and more countries are taking action to cut emissions of the heat-trapping gases that drive climate change, as a report by the Global Legislators Organization recently documented. Almost 100 developing countries now have renewable energy policies in place. Carbon pricing is gaining traction around the world as 40 national and 20 sub-national governments have some form of it; over 20 percent of all the world’s emissions are covered by a carbon cap or price.

But even greater action is needed if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Most importantly, governments and the private sector alike must urgently shift investments away from the polluting fossil fuel sources that have caused the problem, and towards the efficient and renewable energy technologies that can solve it.

There will be useful initiatives launched at the [AL1] summit across a range of sectors, involving action commitments by governments, business, and non-governmental groups. But these will only be a down payment on the national emissions reduction pledges that countries have agreed to put forward in the runup to the December 2015 meeting in Paris, where a comprehensive new climate agreement is to be reached.

Much has been made about the expected absence of a few major country leaders from the summit – such as Chinese President Xi Jinping, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While it would have been desirable for these leaders to join their peers in New York, their absence doesn’t mean they don’t understand the climate threat, or that they are not taking action at home to address it.

Take China: Just recently, Chinese leaders announced that a national carbon emissions trading program would begin in 2016, building on the experience gained through the seven regional programs now underway. While China remains the world’s largest emitter, the nation’s emissions intensity, which is the amount of emissions produced for each unit of GDP growth, has declined. And just last week, China’s State Council put forward the draft version of a new law to crack down on air pollution from coal burning, which severely affects Chinese citizens’ health. China will be represented at the New York Summit next week by Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, who will be the most senior Chinese official to attend a climate talk since the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference. He is expected to elaborate on China’s plans to put limits on its consumption of coal, which is the source of some 80 percent of the country’s carbon emissions.

Germany has also taken significant action to address climate change. The country has undertaken one of the most successful energy transformations in the world, while remaining the strongest economy in Europe. Germany currently generates almost 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources, and is on track to increase that to 45 percent by 2030. Germany has committed to cut its global warming emissions by some 55 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. And at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin in July, Chancellor Merkel pledged 750 million Euros towards capitalizing the new Green Climate Fund to help developing countries cut their emissions and deal with the impacts of climate change. So while Germany’s Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks will represent the country at the Climate Summit and not Chancellor Merkel, its clear that German leadership and action on climate change will both be front and center at the UN summit.

The Climate Summit isn’t just the largest collection of heads of state focusing on climate change in five years; it comes at a time when there is unprecedented public support to take action. On Sunday, the largest climate demonstration ever took place in the streets of New York as part of the People’s Climate March; similar marches also were held on the same day around the world.

Polling in Europe, the U.S. and other countries also shows support for climate action. American voters say they are more than twice as likely to vote for a candidate that supports climate action than for a candidate who does not. A whopping 84 percent of Germans want to move to a fully renewable energy economy as quickly as possible, and down under, three out of five Australians wanted to keep the carbon tax scrapped by Prime Minister Tony Abbott. So while leaders have the opportunity to talk the talk in New York, it’s clear that voters will be demanding that they walk the walk when they return home from the Summit.

What happens in New York will set a tone for the climate leadership needed from world leaders between now and the Paris meeting in 2015. They will need to keep engaging with each other over the next 15 months to work out the political compromises that will allow ministers and negotiators to craft an equitable and ambitious agreement.

This will happen through both bilateral and multilateral discussions. For instance, just one week after the Climate Summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting with President Obama in Washington, and as Secretary of State John Kerry made clear when he visited India in July, climate change is front and center in the U.S.-India dialogue. At the APEC Summit in Beijing in November, climate change and energy issues will be on the agenda, as they will in the bilateral meeting that President Xi of China will hold with President Obama the day after the summit. Similarly, Chancellor Merkel has made it clear that climate change will be a prominent topic of discussion when she hosts the G-7 summit in Germany next June.

The Climate Summit won’t be the end of this process; it’s just the beginning. As Secretary General Ban Ki-moon aptly put it in a speech in Brussels in April, “Much heavy lifting is required. We need to apply political courage, technological knowhow, and sensitivity toward human need. Humankind has caused this problem. We can only look to ourselves for the solution.”

Note: This post originally appeared as a guest post at Jeff Nesbit’s blog, “At the Edge”, at usnews.com.

Climate change: full speed ahead

On climate change, the president brushed aside those in Congress and elsewhere who question the reality of the problem. “The debate is settled,” he said. “Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.”

The president underscored how climate-related impacts are already affecting local communities across the country, stating that “we have to act with more urgency – because a changing climate is already harming western communities struggling with drought, and coastal cities dealing with floods.” UCS and others have documented how these impacts – and their costs – will increase in the years to come if we don’t take concerted action. Mayors, governors, and other local leaders are on the front lines of the real-world fight to avert the worst impacts of climate change; it would have been good to hear the president more directly acknowledge the need for the federal government to ramp up its assistance to them in that fight.

In last year’s State of the Union address, the president called on Congress “to get together, pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But,” he warned, “if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.” This time around, he didn’t even bother to call on Congress to act.  For the sad reality is that Congress is AWOL on this issue. Too many members reject the science and many more buy the economic scare stories the fossil fuel industry is selling.

Given this paralysis, the president is right to do exactly what he said he was going to do in last year’s address, by moving full steam ahead on the Climate Action Plan he laid out at Georgetown University last June. The centerpiece of that plan is the president’s memorandum ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to establish standards on the amount of carbon pollution that the nation’s power plants are allowed to dump into the air; the proposed rule for existing power plants is to be put forward no later than June 1 of this year.

As the president has noted in previous speeches, it will take global collaboration on an unprecedented level for humanity to come to grips with the climate crisis, and the United States is an essential player in this process. President Obama clearly gets it that to be a global leader on climate change, other countries need to see we’re doing our part here at home. By recommitting his administration to action last night, the president has further bolstered the nation’s credibility and leverage on the international stage.

Clean vehicles and fuels: good progress, but not done yet

The president called on Congress last night to provide additional incentives for more efficient trucks, advanced vehicles, and cellulosic biofuels; there’s a little more detail in the White House’s State of the Union fact sheet than there was in the speech itself. While the devil will be in the details, these initiatives are welcome, and deserve bipartisan support from Congress.

President Obama also committed to keep working to improve vehicle efficiency. “When we rescued our automakers,’ he said, “we worked with them to set higher fuel efficiency standards for our cars. In the coming months, I’ll build on that success by setting new standards for our trucks, so we can keep driving down oil imports and what we pay at the pump.” The President is right that there is more we can do to cut our oil use in half through efficiency and innovation. By cutting oil use, and being smart about managing all our fuel sources, we can reduce the problems oil causes our economy, our security, our environment and our climate. But we must not undermine that practical goal by giving oil companies carte blanche to go after so-called “new oil” that is dirtier, more difficult and expensive to extract.

Natural gas: not so fast

President Obama devoted a fair amount of attention in last night’s speech to the nation’s expanding production and use of natural gas, stating that “if extracted safely, it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.” Substituting natural gas for coal in electricity production can indeed make a contribution to reducing carbon pollution in the near-term, though we must make sure that fugitive methane emissions from gas production and use don’t overwhelm these carbon benefits. But ultimately, we need to virtually eliminate carbon pollution from all sources — including natural gas — if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. An overreliance on natural gas over the long-term will not achieve the emissions reductions needed to address global warming, and threatens to crowd out the investments we need to build a low-carbon electricity future based on renewable energy sources and improving energy efficiency.

Also, when it comes to expanded oil and gas production, the federal government needs to take a much stronger role in protecting communities, and work with states to strengthen regulation and oversight of these industries. As UCS’s toolkit on fracking makes clear, too many communities are being pressed to make decisions on new production projects without access to comprehensive and reliable scientific information about the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on their local air and water quality, com­munity health, safety, economy, environment, and overall quality of life. President Obama needs to act on these issues despite resistance from the fossil fuel companies and their allies in Congress.

Three missing issues

Finally, there were several important issues that received surprisingly little attention in President Obama’s speech last night.

Trade:  While the President stressed the benefits of trade, and briefly mentioned the trade pacts now being negotiated with the European Union as well as with a set of key Asian countries, he didn’t address the mounting concerns amongst both public interest groups and members of Congress about the substance of these new agreements, as well as the lack of transparency in the negotiating process. It is crucial that these and other trade agreements are crafted to protect public health and safety and the environment, with standards based on the best available science. And these agreements must be negotiated in the sunlight, permitting the American public and law makers access to their details before they are concluded.

Food and farm policy: While the president referred to First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, he neglected to address the disconnect between health and nutrition policies, on the one hand, and our national agricultural policy on the other. Far too many adult Americans are struggling with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic ailments linked to diet; the treatment of these diseases costs our healthcare system hundreds of billions of dollars a year. As my colleague Ricardo Salvador points out, the government recommends “filling half our plate with fruits and vegetables [as] the most potent and effective prescription for avoiding health-impairing, life-threatening diseases,” but then ends up “undermining its own recommendations by pouring taxpayer dollars into agricultural subsidies that make junk food cheap.”

As a recent UCS report documents, “transitioning the American diet to one that includes less processed food and meat, and more fruits and vegetables, would…have positive effects—not only in improved nutrition and health for consumers but also in the form of significant benefits for the environment and farm country’s local economies.” Of course, pursuing such a shift in food and farm policies would require taking on some real sacred cows (pun intended), and it’s perhaps understandable why on the eve of politically sensitive votes in the House and Senate on a compromise Farm Bill, the president was reluctant to raise these issues last night.

Nuclear weapons: President Obama boasted in his speech that “American diplomacy has rallied more than 50 countries to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands, and allowed us to reduce our own reliance on Cold War stockpiles.” Locking down nuclear materials is an important achievement that UCS fully supports, and the president should be applauded for reducing U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, his speech included no steps to either further reduce the bloated U.S. nuclear stockpile or to take our missiles off dangerous high alert levels.

The long-term objective must be to de-legitimize nuclear weapons as instruments of national security and eventually lead to a world free of nuclear weapons. Unless the United States and other nuclear weapons states start taking more steps in this direction, more countries—and eventually terrorists—will acquire nuclear weapons. Less than three months after taking office, President Obama gave a stirring speech on this issue in Prague, where he said “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” It’s too bad that he didn’t use the occasion of the State of the Union address to signal his own personal commitment to make real progress towards this goal during his remaining years in office.

Regardless of what you think about the first President Bush, Margaret Thatcher, or the Gulf War, her challenge certainly helped stiffen President Bush’s resolve in mobilising the world community to roll back Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait.

World leaders are gathering in New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly debate.

It is exactly one year ahead of a special meeting to be convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for Heads of State focused exclusively on climate change, and two years ahead of the Paris climate conference where governments have committed to forge a new international climate change agreement.

As they meet, the world is in desperate need of greater resolve to confront the mounting threat of climate change.

As the Iron Lady herself noted in her speech to the General Assembly in 1989, “Of all the challenges faced by the world community…one has grown clearer than any other in both urgency and importance – I refer to the threat to our global environment.”

She warned the other leaders gathered in New York that day that “the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all,” and “the environmental challenge which confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out.”

She was not gazing into a crystal ball 24 years into the future; she based her concerns on the best available science at the time.

And as the report to be released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changelater this week will make clear, the world’s scientific community is more certain than ever about the dangerous impacts that human activities – such as the burning of fossil fuels and agricultural and land use practices – are having on the global climate system.

In 2009, in part spurred by the last such report from the IPCC, world leaders committed themselves to the goal of keeping global temperature increases below 2°C as compared to pre-industrial levels.

Not that this is a “safe” level of warming – it represents more than twice the warming the earth has experienced over the last century, a level that is already having serious consequences.

But it is far preferable to the catastrophic damage the World Bank and others have warned we will face from the much higher temperature increases the world will see if we do not change our ways.

Action

The problem, of course, is that nations are not taking the collective level of action needed to meet the 2°C goal set by their leaders.

In fact, as a series of reports by the United Nations Environment Program makes clear, the gap between the commitments made and those needed by 2020 to give us a halfway decent chance of meeting this goal is not shrinking year-by-year – it is widening.

The good news is that we have the know-how, the technologies, and the investment capital needed to close this gap and get back on track to staying below 2°C; what is lacking is the political will.

The unfortunate truth is that far too few leaders are willing to stand up to the fossil fuel polluters and put in place the policies needed to drive us towards a sustainable future. In doing so, they are failing to represent the best interests of the vast majority of the people they represent.

Leaders must therefore come to the Secretary General’s meeting one year from now fully prepared to turn this around.

They must announce much more ambitious actions to rein in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. And by ambitious, we mean nothing short of what it will take to close the gap between promises and action.

They must also mobilise the necessary levels of funding to help developing countries meet the climate challenge, by deploying clean technologies, eliminating tropical deforestation, and making their communities and economies more resilient to the mounting impacts of climate change.

For its part, civil society must step up the pressure, remind leaders of the commitments they’ve made to limit the damage from climate change, and borrowing a page from Lady Thatcher, warn them in no uncertain terms, ‘This is no time to go wobbly!’

NOTE: This post was originally published at Responding to Climate Change, rtcc.org.

Co-author Kelly Rigg is the Executive Director of GCCA. She has been leading international campaigns for 30 years on climate, energy, oceans, Antarctica and other issues.

For the record, scientists don’t have enough historical data about tornadoes to say whether or not climate change is influencing them. By contrast, scientists can say with a great degree of certainty that climate change is making some extreme weather worse, including coastal flooding and heat waves. It’s also shifting precipitation away from lighter and toward heavier downpours.

Regardless, the Oklahoma tornado response is still instructive. I’d wager very few folks in Moore are concerned about climate change and tornadoes. Those resilient Americans are quite rightly focused on picking up the pieces and talking about how to be better prepared in the future.  Right now, climate science doesn’t have much to tell them. By contrast, Americans who saw their homes and properties destroyed by Sandy can use science to better prepare for future storms. Scientists know sea levels in New Jersey and New York will be much higher in the future because of climate change. That information should absolutely inform decisions about how to rebuild and prepare.

What citizens expect from their government in dealing with disasters – whether entirely natural or made more extreme due to human-induced climate change – is to help them respond, prepare and rebuild. So while we’ve been dealing with coastal floods, heat waves and droughts for centuries, how we deal with them is changing because our climate is changing. We’re seeing more and more local officials – water engineers, coastal planners and wildfire first responders – grappling with human-induced climate change. As they look for more information and more cooperation from the federal government, it will become increasingly difficult to deny the reality of the science or favor inaction.

Further, we see a powerful new constituency arising in the climate debate: towns, cities and states that are adapting, whether it’s to longer wildfire seasons in Western forests or accelerating sea level rise on the East Coast. Talking about these visible impacts of our changing climate is not polarizing, because they are challenges we face together in places we know and love. Smart politicians understand they need to get out ahead of our changing climate and make sure their constituents know they are part of the solution.

In his first post-election press conference, President Obama called for convening local officials, scientists, and engineers to address this pressing issue. He should follow up on that publicly and tell us how the federal government can help the country prepare for more climate change. He could have done that earlier this week in Asbury Park, New Jersey, as he was looking at the rising sea and discussing the state’s recovery efforts. He talked about the boardwalk and Bruce Springsteen and reminded the country that the iconic Jersey Shore is open for business. We need to hear more. We need to hear that there’s a plan to make sure the Jersey Shore will remain open for business not just this summer, but 40 summers from now, when Rutgers University scientists estimate local sea levels will be more than a foot higher than they are today. Given the stark realities of a changing climate, politicians can’t be afraid to discuss climate change. They should be comfortable with it because it is increasingly becoming a fact of life, just like changes in the economy and foreign policy.

Finally, we need to hear more about pending Environmental Protection Agency rules that could dramatically reduce coal-fired power plant carbon pollution, along with other steps the administration can take to help cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. After all, it’s the human-induced build-up of these gases in the atmosphere that is helping drive these local changes in the first place.  And as the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The missing past president — for obvious reasons — was John Holdren, President Obama’s science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. (Full disclosure: the letter’s organizer, Dr. James McCarthy, is not only Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography at Harvard University, but chairman of the UCS board of directors.)

Gina McCarthy

The letter praises Gina’s “candor, pragmatism, and fidelity to science as the foundation for public policy decisions, as well as her openness to diverse stakeholders,” and notes her leadership in developing the first-ever air emission standards for mercury and air toxics and the standards nearly doubling fuel economy for new cars by 2025. The letter will complicate any efforts at tomorrow’s Environment Committee confirmation hearing by opponents of McCarthy’s nomination to portray her record and approach to environmental regulation as somehow disconnected from the best available science.

Opposition to Gina’s confirmation as EPA administrator is also made more difficult by the fact that she served as a state regulator under six governors — all but one of them Republicans — and that she is widely acknowledged to be fair, a good listener, and well, just hard not to like — even by those in industry who may often disagree with her stance on particular issues.

As Gloria Berquist, vice president of the Alliance of American Automakers, told the National Journal, Gina is “a pragmatic policymaker. She has aspirational environmental goals, but she accepts real-world economics.” John McManus, American Electric Power’s vice president of environmental services, reinforced this point in the same article, saying “My sense is that Gina is listening, has an open mind, she wants to hear the concerns of the regulated sector.”  And Donna Harman, president and chief executive of the American Forest and Paper Association, told the Washington Post that Gina is “very data- and fact-driven, and that’s been helpful for us as well as the entire business community.

As UCS President Kevin Knobloch put it in his letter to Senators supporting Gina’s nomination, Gina McCarthy “is uniquely qualified to be the next Administrator of EPA. In her 30 year career she has repeatedly demonstrated her ability to use sound science and thoughtful stakeholder collaboration to craft effective, yet flexible, public policy responses to pressing public health and environmental problems.”

In 2009, the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, confirmed Gina McCarthy to serve as Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. Given the plaudits for Gina’s record and character from leaders in both the business and scientific communities, one can only hope the outcome will be the same this time around.

“We want our children to live in an America…that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.” (Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images)

Next Monday, President Obama will deliver his second inaugural address, and on February 12th, he will make his fourth State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. Americans—and people around the world—will be listening carefully for indications of how the president intends to deliver on the climate issue in his second term.

What’s needed is a comprehensive strategy that combines additional actions to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, efforts to increase the resilience of communities and ecosystems to the mounting impacts of climate change, and a sustained campaign to increase public awareness of the reality, impacts, and costs of climate change, as well as the availability of cost-effective solutions. The President and his team should pursue a synergistic, iterative approach, taking the actions they can now while seeking to transform the political climate on the issue so that even more can be done later on.

Near-Term Emissions Reductions

President Obama should continue to use his executive authority to take actions that reduce carbon pollution, building on the accomplishments of the last four years. As my colleague, David Friedman, noted last month, the standards issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) for new cars, light trucks, and commercial trucks will cut oil consumption some 2.6 million barrels per day by 2025, while saving consumers $120 billion a year and cutting global warming emissions by the equivalent of taking over 70 million typical cars and light trucks off the road for a year. In his second term, the president should go farther, by pursuing a goal of cutting U.S. oil use in half by 2030.

The president should also address the single largest source of U.S. carbon emissions—coal-fired power plants—by supporting EPA in moving forward with standards on carbon emissions from existing power plants. This will not be an easy fight, as the coal and utility lobbies will go all out to foment opposition to such standards by exaggerating their cost and impacts on electric system reliability. But the benefits to public health and the environment far exceed the costs, by as much as 15 to 1 in the case of a specific proposal unveiled last month by the Natural Resources Defense Council. And as the recent UCS “Ripe for Retirement” report documents, a substantial fraction of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal plants can be closed down while still maintaining a reliable electricity system.

While these are the two biggest initiatives in terms of emissions reductions, there are a host of other things the president and federal agencies can and should do; the Presidential Climate Action Project laid out a comprehensive agency-by-agency road map late last year.

There is also potential for legislative action this year and next on specific energy efficiency and renewable energy issues, despite the partisan divide in Congress. One interesting proposal from Senator Coons (D-DE) would allow wind, solar, biomass, and other renewable energy projects to take advantage of “master limited partnerships,” a tool that fossil fuel industries have used for decades to lower both the cost of taxation and the cost of capital. There’s also the bill introduced by Senators Shaheen (D-NH) and Portman (R-OH) in the last session of Congress, whose stated purpose was “to increase the use of energy efficiency technologies in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors of our economy, while also fostering job creation.” Even the Chamber of Commerce supported that bill.

Thinking Big

In the last two years of his second term, President Obama could have the opportunity to do two more big things to address the climate crisis: put an economy-wide price on carbon pollution, and negotiate an ambitious and equitable long-term climate treaty that requires action by all of the major emitting countries.

Economists of all political persuasions have long supported the idea of a carbon tax—either in the context of deficit reduction or comprehensive tax reform—as a way of internalizing the costs imposed on society by carbon pollution. While there is a lively debate among economists and others over just what this “social cost of carbon” is, there is unanimity that it is not zero. A tax set at a rate of $25 per ton of carbon dioxide (which would add about 21 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline) would generate an estimated $125 billion per year in revenues for the federal government—not enough by itself to solve the deficit, but about twice the amount raised by the recent “fiscal cliff” deal on the expiring Bush tax cuts.

Last fall, there was enough buzz about the prospects for a carbon tax—even under a potential Romney administration—that die-hard climate denialists at places like the Competitive Enterprise Institute felt compelled to launch an effort to make such a tax toxic among Republicans. Of course, given both the skepticism of many Republicans about the reality of climate change and their allergy to discussion of new revenues, this didn’t prove too difficult, and resolutions against carbon taxes were soon introduced in both the House and Senate. With prospects dimming for either a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction or comprehensive tax reform, a price on carbon doesn’t appear likely anytime soon.

But by 2015 or so, this could well change.

First, as Americans become more aware and concerned about the impacts and costs of climate change, the anti-climate-action stance taken by many Republicans (and some Democrats) will become less tenable politically. It has not gone unnoticed in Republican political circles that four of the five House Republicans targeted for defeat last November by the League of Conservation Voters’ “Flat Earth Five” campaign because of their anti-science stands on climate change went down to defeat at the polls, and the fifth survived only by the skin of his teeth. Also, Republicans like former Representative Bob Inglis are actively working to change their party’s position on the issue. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a likely candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, was acknowledging the reality of human-induced climate change well before Hurricane Sandy devastated his state.

Second, by 2015, the need to address the federal debt problem will be even more apparent than it is today; more to the point, pressure from the global financial markets could mount sufficiently for politicians of both parties to feel compelled to take action. If that happens, the need for increased revenues will be squarely on the table, and a tax on carbon pollution could be too. Of course, President Obama can’t by himself guarantee that conditions will be ripe for putting a price on carbon by the end of his presidency, but by educating Americans about the very real costs of climate change, he can help increase the odds that they will be.

The time frame for international action on climate change is somewhat more clear. At the December, 2011 climate summit in Durban, South Africa, the United States and other countries agreed to negotiate, by 2015, a climate treaty with commitments to action by all countries that would take effect by 2020. They also agreed to pursue more ambitious emissions limitation strategies between now and 2020. Leadership from President Obama and his incoming Secretary of State, John Kerry, is essential to the success of these negotiations.  This includes:

• demonstrating that the U.S. intends to meet—or hopefully, exceed—the commitment President Obama made at the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen to reduce our emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, by moving forward on EPA power plant carbon standards and other fronts;
• putting forward a comprehensive plan for the much deeper emissions reductions needed after 2020, and fighting for the economy-wide measures, including a price on carbon, needed to achieve those reductions;
• pursuing ways to ramp up financial support for developing country activities to deploy clean energy technologies, preserve rainforests, and cope with the mounting impacts of climate change; and
• helping educate Americans on why an ambitious and equitable international climate regime is essential to our future prosperity and well-being.

Using the Bully Pulpit

Finally, while recent public opinion research indicates that public awareness and concern about climate change is growing in the wake of recent extreme weather events, there is much more work to do to educate the American public about the real impacts and costs of climate change, as well as the availability of cost-effective solutions. The scientific community can and should step up its efforts on this front, as should groups like UCS.  But as the leader of the nation, President Obama has a unique ability—and responsibility—to shape the public conversation on the climate issue. A White House summit on climate change can play an important role in this regard. UCS was involved in the last such summit, led by President Clinton and Vice President Gore in July of 1997; we have offered our support to the White House for any such effort to be led by President Obama.

But much more than a summit will be needed to create the level of public awareness and urgency that will drive real action on climate change. Sustained attention is required from the president on down, as part of a focused campaign that brings the full resources of the White House, the Cabinet, and all the relevant agencies to bear on this issue. Such a campaign is essential to support the domestic and international policy actions needed to address the threat of climate change, and to counter the efforts of the fossil fuel industry and climate denialists to confuse and mislead the public on climate science, impacts, and solutions. This effort should be coordinated by a senior adviser within the White House – someone who brings knowledge and passion to bear on the issue, and who enjoys the full confidence of the president and his Cabinet needed to coordinate all the moving pieces of such a campaign.

With the seemingly endless series of upcoming showdowns over the federal budget and deficit, conflicts in many regions of the world, and other priorities such as immigration reform and reducing gun violence, President Obama has a lot on his plate as he prepares to take the oath of office for a second term. But fifty or a hundred years from now, the fiscal cliff, the current tensions with Russia, and many other issues that now seem pressing will be remembered dimly, if at all. What will be remembered is whether, as then-Senator Obama said in June of 2008, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” It was an inspiring call to action then; in the wake of the droughts, the wildfires, and hurricane Sandy, it’s even more so now.

One big unknown is how Republican leaders will respond to the president’s re-election victory.  In October of 2010, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell  said “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”  With that goal no longer an option, will Senator McConnell and his fellow Republican Senators be more open to compromise with the president?  Or will they be looking over their right shoulders at possible Tea Party primary challengers like those who took out Dick Lugar this year and Mike Castle in 2010 (Richard Mourdock and Christine O’Donnell. respectively, both of whom lost in the general election)?  Similarly, with a continuing solid margin of control in the House and a structural advantage because of redistricting in the 2014 elections and beyond, will Speaker Boehner and other House Republican leaders be inclined (and able) to reach deals with a Democratic president and Senate, or are we fated to ever more polarization and gridlock? With the looming fiscal cliff negotiations over taxes, spending, and the debt ceiling, we’ll have the answers to these questions fairly soon.

The president’s science agenda

President Obama laid out a clear science-based agenda for the next four years in his answers to the questions posed by Science Debate 2012, a consortium of science groups including UCS:

• doubling funding for key research agencies and training 100,000 new science and math teachers over the next decade to”meet the urgent need to train one million additional science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) graduates over the next decade;
• taking additional steps to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, and to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy resources;
• bolstering the use of organic farming methods, minimizing pesticides and antibiotics in our food, and further strengthening the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to improve our food safety system; and
• developing a comprehensive approach to improve water quality, restore rivers and critical watersheds, and promote more efficient use of our clean water supplies;
• building on his first term scientific integrity agenda, “by ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda, making scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology, and including the public in our decision making process.”

But none of these issues received much attention in the presidential campaign, with the possible exception of climate change during this past week, in the wake of superstorm Sandy and Mayor Bloomberg’s endorsement of President Obama. And the continued split party control of Congress, combined with the difficult fiscal environment, will make progress on these and other science-based issues difficult, to say the least. It will take leadership from the president and his team to rally public support and build bipartisan coalitions for action on any of them.

Addressing climate change

Take the issue of climate change. With growing public awareness and concern about our changing climate in the wake of this year’s extreme weather events — even before Sandy — President Obama has a real opportunity to move the national conversation beyond the false debate over the reality of the science towards a serious effort to both better prepare for the mounting impacts of climate change and to sharply reduce the carbon pollution that is driving it. This will require effective and sustained use of the “bully pulpit,” convening leaders from the science, business, security, faith, and other communities to build support for action, and using all the authorities available to him at the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies to move ahead in the face of Congressional gridlock, particularly on emissions from power plants.

Cutting oil use in half

On a related front, cutting our oil use in half by 2030 is both scientifically and technically possible. Neither the science behind the plan nor the benefits of the solutions – for consumers, security, and public health – are partisan. This is about making the US a clean transportation leader, relying on our technological and scientific strengths, and both Democrats and Republicans should be champions for this approach.

In President Obama’s first term, action by EPA and DOT to set higher fuel economy standards for new cars, light trucks, and heavy-duty vehicles represented the single biggest step taken to reduce global warming pollution and oil consumption in the United States. The collaborative approach taken by the agencies, the car companies, California and other states, and clean car advocates in promulgating these standards demonstrates that we can achieve progress even in trying and fractured political circumstances. We should build on this success by taking additional steps to cut our oil use, reduce pollution, and generate savings for consumers.

Investing in sustainable agriculture

One immediate piece of unfinished business is reauthorization of the Farm Bill. Sharp divisions among House Republicans prevented Congress from acting on the Farm Bill before the elections, putting countless programs at risk. Reaching agreement between the House and Senate and getting this legislation to the president’s desk should be a priority in the lame duck session of Congress.

Of course, reauthorizing the Farm Bill is just the first step; we need action from President Obama and Congress on other fronts as well, including support for sustainable agriculture, investing in local food systems, and preventing overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture. These issues were barely addressed in the campaigns across the country this year, but they are vitally important to the health of all Americans and the economic well-being of our rural economy.

Bolstering scientific integrity

On the issue of scientific integrity, President Obama made good progress on his Inauguration Day promise to “restore science to its rightful place.” With four more years in office, he can build on his March, 2009 executive order on scientific integrity in federal agencies. But there is much more work to be done, on a range of issues from protections for scientist whistleblowers, to ensuring the independence of scientific advisory committees, to increasing transparency and scientific independence in federal decision-making.

We need to go beyond these individual solutions to restoring respect for evidence-based approaches to solving our problems. Hewlett Foundation President Larry Kramer put it well recently when he said that we “have a serious problem when facts don’t matter because every idea or position is judged not by the evidence for or against it but by how it lines up with ideological pre-commitments. It’s no longer enough merely to generate good solutions to problems…in the long run we need to rebuild a world in which rational, evidence-based policymaking is possible.”

Beyond the Beltway