by Steven Perlberg

Western wildfires, record-setting temperatures, devastating floods, and other extreme weather made more extreme by global warming have welcomed us to summer 2012. Yesterday’s solstice — marked by 66 high scorching records across the Eastern Seaboard — should serve as yet another reminder that it’s time to seriously address the carbon pollution.

Here are the top five extreme weather disasters in the U.S. for June:

1. Colorado Wildfire Blazes: This month, wildfires in northern Colorado forced thousands of families to evacuate their homes. Fueled by 40-to-50-mph winds and dry brush left after a particularly hot spring, the flames have destroyed at least 181 homes with 2000 firefighters deployed.

2. Zoo Animals Drowned in Minnesota Floods: Heavy rain in Duluth, Minnesota flooded two-thirds of the Lake Superior Zoo, drowning at least 11 animals in the process. Sinkholes and mudslides ravaged the rest of Duluth, flooding homes and shutting down roads. The flood also swept up an 8-year-old boy who luckily survived with just a few cuts.

3. Flooding in the Florida Panhandle: Earlier this month, torrential rains damaged homes and forced evacuations in the Florida Panhandle. The downpour cut power in the Escambia County jail and sent more than 100 residents to spend the night in Red Cross shelters, with 40 homes flooded in the city of Gulf Breeze.

4. Summer 2012 Poised for Record Low Sea Ice: Satellite observations analyzed by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center show that this summer looks likely to bring unusually ice-free Arctic waters. The NSIDC predicts a low-ice year, the lack of white ice allowing more heat to be absorbed into the Arctic, an amplifying feedback that further accelerates warming and ice melt.

5. California Wildfire Prompts Evacuation: A San Diego County wildfire necessitated the evacuation of 150 homes. Over 500 firefighters were dispatched to attack the 907-acre blaze, which was fanned by strong gusts of wind and sent flames burning along the highway.

According to an NOAA analysis, the Northern Hemisphere land and ocean average surface temperature for last month was the all-time warmest May on record, at 0.85°C (1.53°F) above average. And as Amanda Staudt notes, it’s time for policymakers to start connecting the dots on carbon pollution. The recent influx of western wildfires — not to mention flooding, record heat, and the like — is extremely unlikely to occur under otherwise natural conditions.

Some states and insurance companies are beginning to recognize this, and regulators in California, Washington, and New York recently announced that insurance companies will be required to assess and disclose climate-related risks they face.

Jontintinjordan, via Flickr

Today, the House of Representatives passed the Strategic Energy Production Act of 2012, H.R. 4480. This bill puts oil and gas profits above the health of the most vulnerable Americans, especially infants, children and senior citizens, in a concentrated attack on air pollution safeguards under the Clean Air Act.

The House passed this bill by a 248 to 163 vote, with 229 Republicans and 19 Democrats voting for it, and 5 Republicans and 158 Democrats voting against it.  The 248 pro-Big Oil votes received $38.6 million from the oil and gas industry – over four times more than those who voted against it.

Particularly egregious is Title II of the bill. It is the Gasoline Regulations Act, originally H.R. 4471 and authored by Congressman Ed Whitfield (R-KY). Title II of H.R. 4480 would eliminate the bipartisan mandate under the Clean Air Act that the Environmental Protection Agency set health standards for ozone (or smog) pollution based only on the best medicine and science.   It would also impair EPA’s ability to reduce dangerous pollutants from dirty industries, such as oil refining.

Instead, for the first time ever, the cost of pollution reduction would be used to determine how much health protection to require. In other words, air pollution that triggers asthma attacks and respiratory diseases would only be reduced if the polluters say they could afford to clean up.

The passage of this provision also prevents essential clean air regulations from taking effect until at least 2016, using “paralysis by analysis” to block additional health protections.

These clean air protections are essential, as more than 40 percent of people in the U.S. live in areas where air pollution levels threaten their health.

The EPA estimates that by 2020 the Clean Air Act – if properly implemented and enforced — would prevent more than 230,000 premature deaths, 200,000 heart attacks, 17 million lost work days, and 2.4 million asthma attacks per year. Should Clean Air Act requirements be substantially lifted, these numbers would certainly fall, and human and economic suffering would increase.

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by Durwood Zaelke and Andrew Light, via The Hill

For the rest of this week over 100 global leaders, and more countries, converge on Rio de Janeiro for the Rio+20 Earth Summit. As of Tuesday a negotiated text was released which so far is receiving dismal reviews as watered down and lacking in any concrete commitments or timetables for outcomes. If the meeting is considered a failure, or results only in a laundry list of promises, who is to blame? Can anything be done to salvage this global opportunity?

Already the finger pointing has begun. Some are blaming the leaders who didn’t attend, including President Obama, Chancellor Merkel of Germany, and Prime Minister Cameron of the U.K. Others are blaming Ban Ki-moon and the U.N. establishment for not pushing harder on an aggressive agenda. And many others will fault the Brazilians, who as the host, have relatively greater authority at the meeting and shaped the final negotiated text.

While other parties can comfortably deny their responsibility for one reason or another, Brazil is stuck. Like the Danes, who hosted a critical U.N. climate summit in 2009 that didn’t live up to expectations – whether it’s reasonable or not to blame them – Brazil will be forever saddled with the perception of this week’s outcome.

However the outcome of this meeting is eventually received, the truth is Brazil likely wasn’t able to get anything out of the meeting that the parties weren’t prepared to do. But they could show clearer leadership this week by reversing their position on the single biggest action that could be taken today to reduce greenhouse pollutants and cut in half the rate of global warming for the next 30 to 40 years.

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Take nothing for granted. That is the most important thing to remember when communicating with the public — or the media or any other group for that matter. Readers of Climate Progress are  immersed in the details of climate science and energy policy, but the vast majority of people aren’t.

For instance, “Natural gas is mostly methane,” but many people don’t know it, which is why I wrote that post last year.

As someone who has been working in the energy arena for over two decades, I myself sometimes forget to lead with the basics. But Sheril Kirshenbaum, director of The Energy Poll at The University of Texas at Austin, has a good post that should serve as a reminder to us all, “Americans Not So Familiar With Hydraulic Fracturing.”

She reports that after polling nearly 2,400 people (“representative of the U.S. based on census data”) on energy issues, she learned that while “everyone seems to be talking about” hydraulic fracturing, “as the poll results demonstrate, media coverage is not synonymous with public energy literacy and awareness”:

Sixty-three percent of respondents reported they had “never heard of” or were “not familiar” with hydraulic fracturing. Just 32 percent called themselves “familiar,” leaving 5 percent who answered more ambiguously, “neither.” In other words, fracking is a case where the public lags behind the science and the technology, so we are left with a highly controversial topic that few Americans understand. But this technology is not only a big deal; it’s already changing the international energy landscape.

This is why we all need to do a better job of basic energy and climate communications — because these issues are way too important to have an uninformed public. Fracking is injecting a fluid mixture into the earth to release natural gas (or oil). It has lots of impacts (see, for instance, Shale Shocked: ‘Remarkable Increase’ In U.S. Earthquakes ‘Almost Certainly Manmade,’ USGS Scientists Report). You can find more at Wikipedia or in this video from ProPublica:

That said, we also need to remember that people don’t need to know every last technical detail to make wise choices. Indeed, poll after poll makes clear the public is way ahead of  supposedly better informed politicians on supporting climate action and clean energy:

• Gallup: 65% of Americans Support ‘Imposing Mandatory Controls On CO2 Emissions’
• Poll: 75 Percent of Americans Support Regulating CO2 As A Pollutant, 60 Percent Support Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax
• Polling Expert: Is Obama’s Reluctance to Mention Climate Change Motivated by a False Assumption About Public Opinion?
• Independents, Other Republicans Split With Tea-Party Extremists on Global Warming
• Democrats Taking “Green” Positions on Climate Change “Won Much More Often” Than Those Remaining Silent

by Daniel J. Weiss

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy Daniel J. Weiss explains why the Carbon Pollution Rule is important for the environment.

(transcript, mp4)

See also:

• Big Utilities Sue the EPA and Lobby the Senate to Stop Public Health Protection

A sign at the Rio+20 summit.

by Gwynne Taraska and Stephen Lacey

The lack of ambition in the final draft text at the Rio+20 Earth Summit has made many people upset, even outraged. Although it acknowledges (and occasionally even underlines and stresses) that action on sustainable development is urgently needed, it imposes no timelines and provides few details on how to achieve its goals.

But there’s a lot going on at Rio outside of the negotiations, with side events and business meetings resulting in new announcements for public and private actions on addressing climate, energy and water issues.

For example, on Monday, 59 of the world’s largest cities formed a coalition to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 248 million tons by 2020

“We’re not arguing with each other about emissions targets,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at an event announcing the initiative.

And yesterday, the world’s largest multi-lateral development banks agreed to put $175 billion toward sustainable transportation in developing countries over the next decade.

Numerous corporations have also made voluntary commitments that include target dates. Some of those — like Microsoft’s pledge to become carbon nuetral — have been re-packaged for the Rio+20 summit. But there are plenty of new announcements as well. Below, we outline some of the key corporate commitments being made in Rio.

Background

The UN Global Compact, together with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and WWF International, has called for corporate commitments to advance the issues of its Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum.  These include Energy and Climate, Water and Ecosystems, Agriculture and Food, Social Development, Urbanization and Cities, and the Economics and Finance of Sustainable Development.

The forum, held in the lead up to the Rio summit, emphasized recent corporate commitments and private-public collaborations. According to the Executive Summary of the forum, there were approximately “200 commitments to action announced by companies during the Forum, representing both individual and collective actions, in social, economic and environmental areas.” The commitments will be cataloged in the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum Overview, which is set to be released 21 June 2012. Here are some selected pledges that businesses have made through the Global Compact.

Climate

Microsoft Corporation has committed to be carbon neutral by the end of FY2013.  It plans to reach net zero carbon emissions via offsets and has pledged to partner with government and non-government organizations on renewable energy projects.

Unilever has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions associated with its products in half by 2020.

Nike has pledged to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% by FY2015. It also has committed to cut water use by increasing efficiency (15% per unit) and to stop discharging hazardous chemicals by 2020.

Bank of America has pledged $50 billion by 2022 for initiatives on energy efficiency, energy access, and renewable energy.

By 2020, ArcelorMittal has committed to reducing carbon emissions by 8% for each ton of steel it produces.

Procter and Gamble’s sustainability goals for 2020 including meeting 30% of the energy needs of its plants with renewable energy and replacing a quarter of its petroleum-based materials with renewable materials.

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UN Women Head Michelle Bachelet. Photo: Martin Lerberg Foss

by Rebecca Lefton

Rio +20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, is renewing international conversations about how to simultaneously address poverty, protect the environment, and maintain balanced economic growth.  If progress is to be made, the agenda must reflect that achieving gender equality is intimately tied to achieving these other goals, as well as being a goal in and of itself.  But as current negotiations stand, Rio risks losing an opportunity to embrace and strengthen the link between women’s rights and gender equality and sustainable development

A draft agreement was reached on Tuesday after lengthy and painstaking negotiations. But many are disappointed, including those who support women’s equality.  Country negotiators have been working over the last several months to complete an agreement to bring before official high-level negotiations that began on June 20. In the process the text ballooned from an original 19 page document to hundreds of pages. But yesterday’s slimmed down version of 49 pages represents the lowest common denominator. Appallingly, women’s reproductive rights and references to gender equality were a casualty.

The United States, Norway, and women’s NGOs that organized through the Women’s Major Group fought hard to include language ensuring reproductive rights for women and affirming gender equality in the Rio text. However, the Holy See (the Vatican) led an opposition that ultimately prevailed in removing key sections for gender equality in the text.  The result is that language ensuring reproductive rights were completely dropped from the text.

As the language from an earlier version of the text dated June 2 shows, the Group of 77 — a negotiating bloc of developing countries known as the G77 — and the Holy See opposed the inclusion of language ensuring women’s reproductive rights.  The final text only commits to promote rather than ensure equal access of women to health care, education, basic services and economic opportunities. And the reference to women’s reproductive rights was deleted in the draft agreement.

June 2 text:

We are committed to ensure the equal access of women and girls to education, basic services, economic opportunities and health care services, including addressing women’s sexual and reproductive health [and their reproductive rights, – G77 reserves] and ensuring universal access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable modern methods of family planning. In this regard, we reaffirm our commitment to fully implement the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the key actions for the further implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development. [Holy See reserve]

Draft agreement text:

241. We are committed to promote the equal access of women and girls to education, basic services, economic opportunities and health care services, including addressing women’s sexual and reproductive health, and ensuring universal access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable modern methods of family planning. In this regard, we reaffirm our commitment to implement the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the key actions for the further implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development.

The Holy See is a non-member-state permanent member of the United Nations that has been influential in equating women’s reproductive rights with abortion in Rio conversations.  “The Holy See has made many delegations argue that reproductive rights and health is code word for abortion. It is not never has been,” said Gita Sen, Executive Committee, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, during a briefing in response to the text.

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A round-up of the top climate and energy news.

UCLA researchers say the number of days topping 95 degrees each year will jump by as much as five times. [Los Angeles Times]

The highest elevations of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountain ranges could see temperatures soar by as much as 7 degrees on average, Hall said. The higher temperatures will arise from less snowfall in winter and more snowmelt in spring, he said. The result will be a decrease in snow cover, leading to more surface absorption of solar radiation, and hence more warming….

“There will definitely be health impacts felt with that kind of a climate shift,” said Richard Jackson, chair of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA. “We should expect to see more allergies, mosquito vectors and air pollution from wildfires.”

The study raises concerns, said Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Commissioner Jonathan Parfrey, about the long-term sustainability of Los Angeles’ water supplies, which are replenished by snow and water captured by local mountain chains.

Temperatures have hit the high 90s along the Eastern Seaboard, setting records in some spots. [Associated Press]

An alliance of scientists has been formed to help promote cassava, which has emerged as a “survivor” crop able to thrive in the expected higher temperatures engendered by climate change. [IRIN Africa]

Three large Canadian oil spills over the past 30 days have increased concern over pipeline safety here, just as the government and the Canadian petroleum industry are trying to drum up support for a series of new pipeline projects. [Wall Street Journal]

As leaders from more than 130 nations convene a United Nations conference on sustainable development Wednesday, new research shows how climate change will likely exacerbate a key issue: hunger. [USA Today]

For evangelicals who are global warming activists, convincing the Christian community to get engaged has been a process. [The Christian Post]

Despite all the gloom and doom talk about the solar sector, New Jersey installed more solar systems in the first three months of the year than any other state in the nation. [NJPR]

More than three dozen House Democrats want the Interior Department to require natural-gas producers using the method called hydraulic fracturing to disclose the chemicals they’re injecting underground before they begin the process. [The Hill]