Pennsylvanians complete 100 days of climate action to call for final EPA carbon pollution standards for power plants

HARRISBURG, Pa., May 6, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- When President Obama stated at his second inauguration that we have a moral obligation to fight climate change, Pennsylvanians saw it as a call to action. Over the past 100 days, a coalition of environmental groups including PennFuture, National Wildlife Federation, Clean Air Council, PennEnvironment, and Sierra Club have joined with Pennsylvania citizens to help fulfill that obligation by holding events across the state and generating more than 6,200 grassroots activities directed toward policymakers. These actions highlighted the need for the President and his administration to follow through on his promises to limit industrial carbon pollution that causes climate change and endangers the health of our communities.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130211/DC57616LOGO)

"President Obama called climate action an 'obligation' and we spent the last 100 days showing the President we support his fulfillment of that obligation and look forward to his prioritizing American leadership on climate and clean energy during his second term," said Joy Bergey, federal policy director for PennFuture. "Right now, after the Obama Administration missed a recent court-ordered deadline, the EPA can finalize a Carbon Pollution Standard for power plants and then immediately turn its attention to curbing carbon pollution from existing power plants. These are the largest producer of dangerous carbon pollution, and a strong carbon pollution standard would be a major step forward in protecting public health, especially of our children and seniors."

In addition to the efforts in Pennsylvania, groups across the nation participated in many local actions over the last 100 days to highlight our climate action obligation that included:

1. 13,899 participants in climate change activities nationwide; and
2. 17,226 grassroots activities nationwide, such as climate change awareness events, letter writing, and phone calls to policy makers.

Those who participated say we've waited long enough for our leaders to act to protect our health and build our economy using cleaner, safer energy technology.

"People of faith recognize that we have a moral calling to care for each other and for Creation. Every year, power plants dump more than two billion tons of dangerous industrial carbon pollution into our shared air, impairing our children's health and their futures. We can work to make our lives as energy-efficient as we can, but neither individuals nor congregations can change the way power is generated," said Cricket Eccleston Hunter, executive director of PA Interfaith Power & Light. "The EPA should complete the final version of the proposed and reviewed new source standards without further delay."

There are also benefits to the economy of moving forward. "Just as the Obama administration's clean car standards are helping rebuild the American auto industry, these power plant standards to protect human health will promote the innovation and investment needed to create jobs," said Christina Simeone, director of the PennFuture Energy Center.

PennFuture is a statewide public interest membership organization, founded in 1998, with staff in Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre. PennFuture's activities include litigating cases before regulatory bodies and in local, state, and federal courts; advocating and advancing legislative action on a state and federal level; public education; and assisting citizens in public advocacy.

The Philadelphia Inquirer called PennFuture the "state's leading environmental advocacy organization;" the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette named the organization "one of the 10 most influential groups on the issue of natural gas drilling;" and StateImpact Pennsylvania, an online collaboration of NPR stations across the state, called PennFuture "the commonwealth's main environmental advocate."

Contact: Joy Bergey bergey@pennfuture.org, 215-313-1311

SOURCE Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future (PennFuture)

View the original article here

Bill Clinton and Bloomberg unveil ‘climate risk’ project

Clinton and Bloomberg at a 2009 CGI meeting (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)NEW YORK—Former President Bill Clinton and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a new climate initiative Monday to help cities measure their risk for severe weather and natural disasters. The hope is to help curb the impact of deadly storms like Superstorm Sandy, which devastated parts of New York City last October.

The project will be run through C40, a coalition of major cities around the world that united to study the impact of climate change on their municipalities. The group, chaired by Bloomberg, merged two years ago with the Clinton Climate Initiative—an offshoot of Clinton’s philanthropic foundation.

Known as the C40 Risk Assessment Framework, the "climate risk" project, as Bloomberg referred to it, would develop a consistent set of measures by which cities could assess their risk of a natural disaster, including hurricanes and floods.

“Cities simply cannot afford to close their eyes and hope for the best,” Bloomberg said, as he and Clinton unveiled the project during a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Manhattan.

“If you can’t measure a risk, you can’t manage it,” Bloomberg added, warning that a damaging storm like Sandy could happen again.

Bloomberg and Clinton argued that having a consistent measure of risk would help lawmakers prioritize on where to spend money to ward off natural disasters and sell voters on why infrastructure is necessary. Among other things, the framework would examine a city's potential for flooding or other issues related to the environment.

A framework "gives legislators something to hang their hats on ... an independent measure of what the risks are,” Bloomberg said.

The mayor added, “It’s like a rating on your bonds. People will believe it.”

Their joint appearance also had the feeling of a political lovefest. Before Bloomberg took the stage, Clinton praised Bloomberg for his work in trying to combat climate change and for his leadership before, during and in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. Bloomberg, for his part, praised Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had appeared on stage a few minutes before to announce that she and her husband plan to hold a CGI meeting in Brazil this fall to focus on development in Latin America.

To wild applause, Hillary Clinton noted that this CGI meeting was her first “as a private citizen.”

Afterwards, Bill Clinton took the stage and praised both his wife and their daughter, Chelsea, for taking greater roles in his philanthropic foundation. And he was followed by Bloomberg, who also paused in his remarks to praise Hillary Clinton, a former Democratic senator from New York whom he reportedly courted to be his successor at City Hall when he leaves later this year.

But Bloomberg made no mention of those overtures as he praised Hillary Clinton "as the real star of the show" at the meeting. "I am honored to welcome Secretary Clinton back to New York City," Bloomberg said.

View the original article here

The Man Who Could Put Climate Change on the Agenda

Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, is best known for two things: his national security chops—he had key roles on the White House National Security Council—and the high regard in which he’s held by President Obama. McDonough has been part of Obama’s inner circle for nearly a decade, and the president has called his new chief of staff one of his “closest and most trusted advisers.”

Here’s what a lot of people don’t know about McDonough: He has a background on climate change, and he takes the issue very seriously. “Denis McDonough understands the threat posed by climate change to national security more than any White House chief of staff in the 21st century,” said Daniel J. Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank where McDonough worked as senior fellow in 2006 and 2007; while there, he wrote and contributed to several papers on climate change.

Jason Bordoff, who served as the president’s special assistant for energy and climate change on the National Security Council, wrote in an e-mail to National Journal, “When Denis was deputy national security adviser … we worked together on several energy and climate-related issues. Denis recognizes that climate change is a serious problem, and that strong U.S. leadership and action is needed to address the challenge.”

Here’s why that’s important: If Obama wants to follow through on his 2013 Inaugural Address pledge to make climate change a cornerstone of his legacy, he’ll need to make a series of tough, highly controversial executive decisions. There is almost no chance Congress will pass climate-change legislation in his second term, which means that the White House will have to drive any meaningful policy action. That action will probably come in a series of aggressive Environmental Protection Agency regulations to slash pollution from coal-fired power plants, and in the president’s decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, the $7 billion project that would bring carbon-heavy tar-sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. Obama will also need to act ahead of a United Nations summit in 2015, at which the world’s nations are expected to sign a binding treaty to tackle climate change.

The pushback—from industries such as oil, coal, and manufacturing, and from powerful business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—will be strong, as will be the political and legal repercussions. Even some Democrats, particularly those from coal and Rust Belt states, aren’t enthusiastic about the White House moving forward with tough regulations that could hurt their economies. And some senior administration staffers think climate change is far from a top-tier issue and is a sure political loser.

People close to the White House say that’s where a chief of staff committed to the issue can have a big impact. Carol Browner, who was Obama’s top energy and climate-change adviser during his first term and headed EPA during the Clinton administration, said the chief of staff can help determine whether environmental policy gains traction. She cited John Podesta, President Clinton’s top staffer and a strong advocate for clean energy and environmental issues. “When I was in EPA, it made all the difference in the world when Podesta showed up and gave my issues a fair hearing,” she said.

During Obama’s first term, each of his three staff chiefs had areas of expertise, but none had much of a background in environmental issues. Former Rep. Rahm Emanuel brought congressional and political experience; William Daley a former chairman at JPMorgan Chase, was hired to win trust from the business community—and was slammed by the environmental community for advising the president to delay a key set of clean-air regulations until after the 2012 election; Jacob Lew, with his background on the federal budget, prioritized economic issues.

By comparison, Browner said, “Denis has spent a lot of time thinking about climate change in the context of national security and the military. He’s well informed and well versed on this.”

In a 2007 paper, “Balancing Our Climate Debt: The Group of Eight Have an Obligation,” McDonough and coauthor Rebecca Schultz called on the G-8 industrial nations to focus “on the devastating impact high energy costs and climate change have on the world’s most vulnerable populations.” They argued that the wealthiest economies should “offer the most vulnerable communities in the world the support they need to combat the impact of climate change and help them and the rest of the world transition to a low-carbon global economy.” The paper declared, “This is a climate debt the industrialized world owes to these poor nations.”

McDonough also contributed to a 2007 CAP report titled “Energy Security in the 21st Century,” which warned, “Climate change poses a significant and increasingly imminent security threat to the United States and the world, but the Bush administration continues to block domestic and international efforts to meet this challenge.”

In still another paper from the center, “Cleaning Up China: Opportunities Beckon for U.S. Businesses,” McDonough and coauthor Peter Ogden praised Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. for acknowledging climate change as a problem, and they urged him to push for promotion of U.S. clean-energy technology in China. “Now is the time to invest in the development of a domestic clean-energy industry that can outperform its international competitors and capture a large share of this rapidly growing market,” McDonough and Ogden wrote. “This is how America can work toward getting its trade deficit back into the black, and how we can help China to get into the green—for the good of both nations and everyone else around the globe.”

Ultimately, of course, the U.S. agenda on climate change will be set by the president himself. But Obama’s selection of a key adviser with such a deep record on the issue suggests he intends to take it seriously.

View the original article here