Background on Key Points | State of the Climate Message

The Presidential Climate Action Project has prepared the following background information for those who have signed the PCAP's State of the Climate message. The information may be useful to those who receive questions from the media or who wish to do other communications work related to the paper. Colored text indicates links to deeper background information.

This paper is not being released or associated publicly with the State of the Climate message. The information reflects the views and ideas contained in the Presidential Climate Action Plan, but not necessarily the views of those who have signed the message. The PCAP team understands that there often are differences of opinion on these issues and different interpretations of research.

The team welcomes your input.

"Global climate change remains largely unaddressed in the U.S."

Until recently, the United States and Australia were the only developed nations that had not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. L ate last year, Australians elected a new Prime Minister who ran on a climate-action platform. His first official act last December was to sign the Protocol, leaving the U.S. as the lone holdout among developed countries.

In recent years, it has been America's mayors, along with a growing number of governors and industry leaders, who have adopted goals and programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As of January 16, 2008, 780 U.S.mayors had signed an agreement to comply, at minimum, with the Kyoto Protocol's targets. Many states are developing climate action plans, and regional carbon trading programs are emerging.

There has been far less progress at the national level. As 2008 begins, Congress still has not passed legislation on carbon pricing, a national cap on emissions or a renewable energy portfolio standard. Government research on new clean energy technologies remains modest. In addition to avoiding a firm commitment to greenhouse gas reductions, the current Administration has removed carbon performance targets for the nation's largest energy user - the federal government - and has declined to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

(For the White House response to charges that the Administration is not doing enough,
see http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060711-7.html.)

In May 2007, the White House announced that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions declined 1.3% in 2006. However, that number is not a true indicator of the U.S. economy's carbon footprint because many of the goods consumed in the U.S. now are produced overseas. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have estimated that the total carbon impact of the U.S. economy was undercounted by as much as 21% in 2004 because we didn't tally the carbon imbedded in goods imported from countries such as China

In sum, national action by the Congress and the Administration is not commensurate with the urgency and scope of the threat posed by climate change.

"Climate action opens enormous opportunities for the U.S. economy."

Former President Bill Clinton has said that the need to address climate change offers the United States the greatest economic opportunity since World War II. That is an understatement. Climate action presents the largest entrepreneurial opportunity in the nation's history. Many advocates of climate action believe this message of opportunity is a story too seldom told.

When talking about entrepreneurial opportunity, it's important to avoid the impression of carpet-bagging - i.e., the idea that the United States wants to profit from suffering in those parts of the world being most hurt by the effects of global warming. Rather, as the world's most innovative nation, the U.S. can and should become a major supplier of the technologies and products that help people of all nations achieve prosperity without far less environmental impact. 

The need for low-carbon energy and products is global and will open new world markets for low-carbon resources, goods and services. For example, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimate than an investment of more than $300 billion will be needed worldwide over the next 20 years to provide low-carbon electric power and equipment to 1 billion people. Other estimates are higher.

The Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2008 report tells how climate change and other environmental issues already are having an impact on the global economy.

The transformation has begun within the U.S., too. Solar photovoltaic systems are the fastest-growing source of new electric power in the U.S.; wind power is second. More than 43,000 companies are manufacturing and assembling renewable energy systems in the United States today. The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) estimates that clean energy industries created 8.5 million jobs in the United States in 2006.

Estimates on the future job-creation potential of climate action vary, but modeling sponsored by the ASES estimates that the energy efficiency and renewable energy industries alone could create more than 40 million direct and indirect jobs by 2030.

For more information about the economic opportunities inherent in climate action, see Section 1 of PCAP.

"A post-carbon economy offers opportunities for those Americans the old economy left behind."

Making the transition to a low-carbon economy in the U.S. can and should open paths out of poverty for those Americans the old economy left behind. Blue-collar jobs and entry-level jobs can become green-collar jobs to weatherize buildings, install solar and wind energy systems and the strengthening the nation's infrastructure to adapt to climate change already underway, to name a few. As Van Jones, founder of the Ella Baker Center, points out, these are jobs that can't be exported.

The energy bill passed by Congress last December contains $125 million in green-collar job training opportunities -- enough money to train about 30,000 workers a year for jobs in emerging "green" sectors such as the solar and wind industries, green building construction, bio-fuel production and more. The new law authorizes 20% of the Green Jobs Act funds to support a green Pathways Out of Poverty Program.

"The cost of inaction is higher than the cost of action."

A seminal report on the costs and benefits of climate action was issued for the British Government last year by Sir Nicholas Stern.
Stern concluded that worldwide efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions would cost 1% of the global GDP, while inaction could cost as much as 20% of the global GDP.

In the United States, the costs of unabated climate change may include:

• Higher insurance rates due to more severe storms. By one estimate, more than a third of America's $10 trillion annual economy is susceptible to weather-related losses. Claims for weather-related losses are rising twice as fast as those from all other losses. Premiums for hazard insurance in parts of the U.S. already have gone up as much as 40%.  Taxpayer exposure in the federal Flood Insurance Program has quadrupled since 1980, nearing $1 trillion in 2005.

• Increased crop losses due to drought and insect infestations. Taxpayer exposure in the Federal Crop Insurance Program has increased 36-fold since 1980, to $44 billion. Anticipated impacts of climate change on agriculture would reduce the capacity of some farmland to produce both food and energy crops.

• Higher local taxes to repair local infrastructure damaged by severe weather. Researchers at the University of Maryland have concluded that these costs, often not calculated today, will be substantial.

• Higher public health costs due to heat waves, water contamination from flooding and the spread of disease vectors.

• The loss of ecosystem services such as recreation, erosion control and carbon sequestration.

Recent reports indicate that 2007 was one of the warmest years on record, continuing the trend of a warming planet. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies concluded that 2007 was the second-warmest year behind 2005, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that 2007 was as the fifth-warmest year on record. NOAA's team concluded that seven of the eight warmest years on record have taken place since 2001.
"We've got a sustained warming of the planet, which is unequivocal, and the best we can work out is that it's because we've been increasing the greenhouse gas emissions, primarily," said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at Goddard. "That means it's going to continue."
The team at NASA compiled their data from readings at weather stations from all over the world and included all of the readings from 2007. NOAA used the same readings, but did not include December data in their preliminary report and analyzed the readings slightly differently to account for phenomena such as the urban heat island effect.
For more information, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/11/AR2008011103483.html
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Temp/2008.htm
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/perspectives.html
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080115_warmest.html
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20080114_GISTEMP.pdf

For more discussion on the costs of inaction, see:
http://climateprogress.org/2008/01/08/cost-inaction-global-warming/  and http://climateprogress.org/2008/01/09/cost-inaction-global-warming-2/

"While climate science is complex, our options are simple."

As Dr. John Holdren puts it, we have three options: mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions), adaptation (preparing for the impacts of climate change already underway) and suffering. In reality, mitigation is mandatory if we wish to avoid the worst consequences of climate change; adaptation is mandatory if we wish to protect ourselves from the adverse and escalating impacts of emissions already in and being added to the atmosphere; and some suffering is inevitable. How much more suffering we and future generations experience will depend on how aggressively we pursue mitigation and adaptation now.

Global climate change is a national security issue.

In April 2007, 11 retired U.S flag officers concluded that climate change has implications for national security. An excerpt:

Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States. The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay.

"Today a number of our nation's most senior military officials are acknowledging that carbon emissions, oil consumption and oil dependence, and military deployments and wars are all interrelated," writes national security expert and former U.S. Senator Gary Hart.

"We must expand federal research to provide good information on the local, social and economic impacts of climate change."

Decision-makers at all levels need the best possible information about the impacts of climate change to help them anticipate and prepare.

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) oversees federal research on climate adaptation and mitigation. In September 2007, the National Research Council issued an evaluation which found that while science's ability to predict future climate changes has improved, our understanding of the impacts on society is "immature."

The NRC found that more funding is needed to research the impacts of climate change on human behavior, political institutions and economies; the CCSP should more closely study impacts at regional and local scales; and the program's communications with local decision-makers should be improved.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science reports that at the level of funding the Administration proposed in its 2008 budget for CCSP climate research ($1.8 billion), funding would be down 23% in real terms from its level in 2003.

"We must break the grip of special interests"

The PCAP's position is that fossil energy industries and the sectors that depend on them - such as the automobile, utility and rail industries - should help rather than hinder the nation's transition to a post-carbon economy. Companies such as British Petroleum and Xcel Energy already have begun investing in renewable energy technologies, for example. Electric and gas utilities can profit from energy efficiency when states "decouple" utility profits from energy sales. Part of the revenues from carbon pricing should be used to help those companies and workers most adversely impacted by climate action make the transition to the new industries needed in the new economy.

Peter Fox-Penner puts it this way: "Recognizing that certain industries and special interests will be strongly affected, we understand their reluctance to embrace the necessary policies and even their occasional outright opposition. Just as we must work hard to fashion policies that allow them and their workers a fair transition, they must not be allowed to stop or weaken policies."

 

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