The networks have called it for President Obama, who now gets a second chance on climate.

Obama’s legacy — and indeed the legacy of all 21st century presidents, starting with George W. Bush — will be determined primarily by whether we avert catastrophic climate change.

If we don’t, then Obama — indeed, all of us — will be seen as failures, and rightfully so. As a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report makes clear, anything other than aggressive efforts to slash carbon pollution starting ASAP likely means 7°F  to 11°F warming globally. That would cause substantially higher warming over most of the U.S. and leave much of the “breakbasket of the world” in Dust Bowl conditions much worse than this nation has ever known (see “We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temperatures — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming“).

By the end of the third decade of this century, all of American life — politics, international relations, our homes, our jobs, our industries, the kind of cars we drive, our diet — will be forever transformed by the climate and energy challenge.

Obama is the first president to articulate in stark terms both the why and how of the sustainable clean energy vision. In April 2009, he said, “The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline.” In October 2009, he said at MIT, “There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs.”

Obama has some important clean energy and climate achievements — strong fuel economy standards, doubling renewable electricity, big boost in clean energy investment. But from a historical perspective, he has two fateful failures, the climate bill and his climate silence.

Yes, most of the blame for the failure of the climate bill should go to the anti-science, pro-pollution ideologues (see “Republicans demagogue against market-oriented climate measures they once supported“). They have spread disinformation and poisoned the debate so that is no longer even recognizable.  Who could have guessed that the GOP champion of climate action would end up trashing a bill considerably weaker than the one he tried to pass twice?

Nonetheless, Obama let die our best chance to preserve a livable climate and restore US leadership in clean energy — without a serious fight (see “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2“). Equally tragic, Obama abandoned the modest messaging he did on climate in 2009 — while the disinformers redoubled their pernicious lies. To remind you of how much the President has muzzled himself, recall what he said about the “never seen before” Fargo flooding in March 2009:

“I actually think the science around climate change is real. It is potentially devastating,” Obama told reporters Monday. “If you look at the flooding that’s going on right now in North Dakota and you say to yourself, ‘If you see an increase of two degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there?’ That indicates the degree to which we have to take this seriously.“

Precisely. Yet this year we’ve had record heat, record drought, record wildfires — and record-shattering frankenstorms, but Obama has little to offer but climate silence.

From a historical perspective — and, I suspect from the perspective of most progressives — there are two huge differences between Obama and the anti-science crowd.  First, Obama is the President of the United States, a person who can single-handedly determine the agenda and the national debate.

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by Brad Johnson

Exit polls by CBS News reveal that Superstorm Sandy, and President Obama’s response, was a crucial factor for two in five voters nationwide. This recognition comes despite the Obama campaign decision to downplay the growing crisis of climate disasters and to minimize the actions of the Obama administration to build climate resilience. With Obama and Romney neck-and-neck in the polls, the reality of climate disasters and the need for strong governmental response may turn out to be the deciding element of the 2012 election.

Twenty-six percent of those polled said Obama’s broadly praised response was an important factor, and 15 percent — about one in six voters — said it was the most important factor in their vote:

IMPORTANCE OF OBAMA’S HURRICANE RESPONSE

Most important factor 15%

Important factor 26

Minor/not a factor 55

In contrast to President Obama, who has said on the campaign trail that the “droughts we’ve seen, the floods, the wildfires aren’t a joke,” Romney has mocked sea level rise and called for the privatization of the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

Recognizing the fingerprint of global warming pollution on the Sandy disaster, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Wall Street billionaire, endorsed Obama as a climate voter.

It now looks like tens of millions of Americans agree with Bloomberg: climate change is not a joke, but instead the most important reason to vote.

Brad Johnson is the campaign manager of ClimateSilence.org and Forecast the Facts

Democrat Jay Inslee, a gubernatorial candidate in Washington State, is considered a "Climate Hero."

Once upon a time, both Republicans and Democrats saw climate change as a problem. For a fleeting moment last election cycle, candidates across the board talked about the problem and supported implementing policies to do something about it.

But that (often tenuous) bipartisanship has completely reversed. As GOP lawmakers tiptoed away from their earlier support for climate action in recent years — with many eventually moving toward outright rejection of the science — the issue has become almost entirely partisan. Some former Republican lawmakers are trying to bring their party back around, but there are very few signs that climate will become less politicized after the election.

So in today’s election, a “win” in the eyes of climate advocates largely means a “win” for Democrats. As a result, environmental groups have targeted key races that will put Democratic environmental champions in office and limit the influence of Republicans with poor climate records.

Below are some political outcomes environmental groups have been pushing for that might favor climate action in the coming years.

1. Passing the Proposal 3 ballot initiative in Michigan.

This is one of the toughest fights for clean energy advocates this election. Proposal 3 is a ballot initiative in Michigan that would amend the state’s constitution and increase renewable electricity targets to 25 percent by 2025. The proposal initially had majority support from voters and a high profile endorsement from Bill Clinton. But after the state’s two largest utilities and the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity raised more than $25 million to defeat the measure, sentiment has shifted in the other direction.

In a year when clean energy has become a major political attack point, Michigan’s ballot initiative was billed as a Big Deal for establishing positive momentum. But proponents were outspent 2-1 by coal-heavy utilities, significantly weakening their campaign. If the current polls are any indication, this will be a loss tonight.

2. Defeating members of the “Flat Earth Five.”

In July, the League of Conservation Voters rolled out a $1.5 million campaign to defeat members of Congress who deny that climate change exists. Dubbed the “Flat Earth Five,” the list of Republicans includes Anne Marie Buerlke (NY), Dan Benishek (MI), Dan Lungren (CA), Francisco Canseco (TX), and Joe Walsh (IL). These five candidates represent only a small number of climate deniers in the House of Representatives. But they are more vulnerable than others, and LCV specifically targeted them for their climate views in order to influence tighter races.

In a Politico op-ed today, LCV’s President, Gene Karpinski, outlined the organization’s strategy for targeted ads and mailers: “Coming into this daunting election cycle, LCV understood that we could never match our deep-pocketed opposition dollar for dollar. But we knew from extensive polling that voters are with us on the issues; they strongly support clean energy and want leaders who will confront the challenge of global warming.”

The outcome of these House races will be an indicator of how well this strategy worked.

3. Electing “Climate Heroes” to office.

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by Daniel J. Weiss and Jackie Weidman

Lingering high oil and gasoline prices contributed to another quarter of huge profits for the big five oil companies: BP plc, Chevron Corp, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil Corp, and the Royal Dutch Shell Group. They earned a combined $28 billion in the third quarter of 2012, reaping more than $90 billion in profits through the first three quarters of the year. (see Table 1) As they did last year, the “big five” are on track to easily exceed $100 billion in profits this year.

What makes this figure all the more staggering is that these companies actually produced less oil in 2012 compared to 2011. The big five oil companies’ total oil production in the third quarter was 5 percent—or 400,000 barrels per day—lower than in the third quarter of 2011.

And despite such impressive profits, U.S. taxpayers are still subsidizing these companies. In 2012 the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that these big five oil companies would receive $2.4 billion in special tax breaks. The three U.S. oil companies among this cohort—Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil—also pay a relatively low effective federal tax rate. Reuters reports that in 2011 these three companies paid 19 percent, 18 percent, and 13 percent effective federal tax rate, respectively. These oil companies’ tax rates, Reuters concluded, are “a far cry from the 35 percent top corporate tax rate.”

So what benefits do these profits produce? Do they create new jobs, as those advocating for the tax breaks and lower corporate tax rates would lead us to believe? Not exactly. Between 2005 and 2010—the last year for which data is available—the “big five” reduced their workforce by 11,200 employees, according to a report by the Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee. And the profits certainly haven’t been used as a buffer to lower gas prices, which are still hovering around $3.50, according to the American Automobile Association. Instead, the companies used these enormous profits on some other activities.

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by Anne Polansky

Several days before Sandy made landfall, my home-insurer sent me a love note: “Hurricane Sandy is on her way,” said the email, “and you may be impacted.” But not to worry: “We’ve got you covered.” Whew!

Who are the less fortunate, I wondered, that are not getting such reassuring messages, and are not adequately covered for damage associated with extreme weather? More broadly, what is the increasingly risk-exposed insurance industry doing to prepare and plan for increasingly intense extreme weather fueled by climate change?

The answer is, not surprisingly, much, much too little.

Most homeowners’ policies now specifically exclude coverage for floods (including mine in a low-lying DC suburb). Property owners in flood-prone areas, officially designated by the federal government, now must purchase flood insurance through FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program. Others outside these zones can buy from NFIP as well. But controversy and some shady local politics have created bizarre situations where small, low-lying wealthier neighborhoods near bodies of water lie mysteriously just outside the boundary of the nearby designated flood areas — after all, being prone to floods is bad for real estate values. And, illogical beyond comprehension, the oldest most vulnerable properties that flood over and over and over again, year after year, have historically been charged lower NFIP premiums than homes in less-risky areas.

General poor planning and anticipation has created a dire situation in which the NFIP is itself under water, according to a Nov. 2 Washington Post editorial: “At the moment, the NFIP has access to about $4 billion, plus a $20.8 billion credit line with the U.S. Treasury — of which it has already borrowed $18 billion.”

In other words, sunk. Gotta make that call to Mom & Dad Uncle Sam again. How did this happen?

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A new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers finds humanity has its foot on the accelerator as we head toward a cliff. The only hope is very rapid deployment of  carbon-free technology starting ASAP.

The title of the PWC report is sobering, “Too late for two degrees?” So is its main conclusion:

Our Low Carbon Economy Index evaluates the rate of decarbonisation of the global economy that is needed to limit warming to 2^oC. This report shows that global carbon intensity decreased between 2000 and 2011 by around 0.8% a year. In 2011, carbon intensity decreased by 0.7%. The global economy now needs to cut carbon intensity by 5.1% every year from now to 2050. Keeping to the 2^oC carbon budget will require sustained and unprecedented reductions over four decades.

Governments’ ambitions to limit warming to 2^oC appear highly unrealistic.

Here are two more conclusions that can kill — or maybe cause — a hangover:

We have passed a critical threshold – not once since 1950 has the world achieved that rate of decarbonisation in a single year, but the task now confronting us is to achieve it for 39 consecutive years….

Even to have a reasonable prospect of getting to a 4°C scenario would imply nearly quadrupling the current rate of decarbonisation.

Despite the many hand-wavers who assert the optimal climate strategy is more research and development, this is yet another independent analysis that makes crystal clear such a do-little approach would be suicidal (see “Study Confirms Optimal Climate Strategy: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, R&D, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy“).

It bears repeating that warming of 7°F or beyond is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e.  4°C [7°F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level,” as climate expert Kevin Anderson explains here. Tragically, that appears to be the likely outcome of business as usual.

No wonder the report states bluntly:

The only way to avoid the pessimistic scenarios will be radical transformations in the ways the global economy currently functions: rapid uptake of renewable energy, sharp falls in fossil fuel use or massive deployment of CCS, removal of industrial emissions and halting deforestation. This suggests a need for much more ambition and urgency on climate policy, at both the national and international level.

Either way, business-as-usual is not an option.

Business leaders have been asking for clarity in political ambition on climate change. Now one thing is clear: businesses, governments and communities across the world need to plan for a warming world – not just 2ºC, but 4ºC and, at our current rates, 6ºC.

Of course, planning for 4°C [7°F] in 2100 — let alone 6°C [11°F] — is tantamount to planning for the end of civilization as we know it (see this review of more than 60 recent studies — “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

Such a world would likely mean:

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by Bill Becker

Some of us in the climate-action camp have long believed that if common sense and sound science were not enough to end denial over global warming, nature would eventually do the job. Unfortunately, that path to recognizing reality leaves a lot of victims in its wake.

The millions of home and business owners victimized by Hurricane Sandy – and the billions of dollars that will be needed to recover – are demonstrations of how much climate denial costs. But after years of extreme weather events in the United States and worldwide, Sandy is hardly the only hard evidence that climate change is here.

Because they have blocked national policies to slow down greenhouse gas emissions, to remove public subsidies for fossil fuels, and to put a price or a cap on carbon, climate deniers and those who fund them must take responsibility for the fact that perfect storms are the new normal and will be for generations and centuries to come. People are dying. Homes are swept away. Businesses are shut down, often for good. Federal spending on disaster assistance is rising. With the impact of past carbon emissions still in the pipeline and yet to be felt, it will get worse.

Still, one presidential candidate promises to implement a national energy policy that panders to oil and coal while the other hasn’t had much to say about what we should do to manage the obvious risks of global warming.

Perhaps we shouldn’t care what the rest of the international community thinks about us, or how our children will judge us, but one has to wonder what respect the United States and the current generation of adults can expect when its actions are controlled by the insatiable greed of carbon industries and the ridiculous influence of political leaders who contend that climate science is really a socialist plot to take away our SUVs.

It is long past time to recognize that when it looks like a climate duck, and it walks like a climate duck, and it quacks like a climate duck, and our best scientists conclude that it is indeed a climate duck, it’s a climate duck, not Chicken Little.

With the election only a few days away and despite early voting, we have to hope it’s not too late for voters to elect a president and members of Congress who will not stand by, or be bought off, or allow boneheaded denial to continue while weather made more dangerous and costly by climate change makes victims of us all.

Bill Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

Maya Faison. Photo: Global Kids

by Maya Faison

I am 16 years old and I am currently in my home in Laurelton, Queens.  It is day six with no heat, no power and no gas in my mom’s car to escape.

Trees are down all over my neighborhood and at night it is pitch dark, with only the moon as light. I feel paralyzed with cold. It is a freezing chill that goes deep to the bone and makes me worried about the future I can have on this planet. It scares me to know that I am going to leave my family when I go to college next year—my grandmother, mom, aunt and sister–in such an uncertain place, knowing that they can be trapped, unable to go anywhere, if another heavy storm comes.

We may not be so lucky the next time.

As a climate change activist, I knew something like this was bound to happen, but I never expected something this big. I feel proud that I’ve been working with other activists to get our elected leaders to take immediate action on climate change. However, I feel let down and disappointed that it’s taken a major storm that has taken over 40 lives and counting for my elected leaders to acknowledge the reality of climate change.  We may have heard about how climate change affects far off places such as the Maldives or the Arctic. But here in New York City, it’s our reality more now more than ever.

This past June, I traveled to Rio de Janeiro to attend the United Nations Conference on Sustainability, also called Rio+20.  Twenty years ago, before I was born, the first United Nations Earth Summit in Rio established benchmarks and promises to ensure a sustainable world for the future generation that meeting. Those promises were not kept.

I worked with other youth activists in Global Kids, a New York City based youth organization, and with many partner organizations, to persuade our leaders to attend the conference and to take action on climate change. At the conference, we were excited by the work of other citizens like us, all advocating for the changes we need to sustain our planet and our future. But we were also heartbroken that many world leaders didn’t attend and only a few were willing to commit to the necessary work that needs to be done to make sure other young people like me are guaranteed the future we deserve and the basic rights to food, water, air and health.

I am happy to hear that our Mayor has decided to endorse a President who realizes what a problem climate change is. As climate change has become more of a reality, more and more people have been trying to dispute the fact that it is as grave of an issue as it is. My message to them and to all of our leaders on the eve of the Election is simple: do not let any more time pass before you take action. Our nation is in danger and my future is in danger.

This is the future I want: a country that is better prepared for climate and environmental disasters, and is working proactively to mitigate global warming. Just like we have fire drills in school, we need to have evacuation plans and disaster preparedness kits.  We must rely less on oil and more on alternative energy, and reduce carbon emissions by any means necessary. We need more preservation of natural resources and less consumption. We cannot continue to provide subsidies to oil and gas companies that are wreaking havoc on our earth.  Science matters, and we must educate the next generation on the realities of climate change so we are all working to promote a better, more sustainable future.

I am more committed than ever to work to make the future I want a reality.

Maya Faison, a 16-year old senior at Long Island City High School, is a Global Kids leader.

by Dr. Bob Corell, Dr. Jeff Masters, and Dr. Kevin Trenberth, via Politico

As Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast last week, meteorologists and climate scientists were repeatedly asked to explain what role climate change played in amplifying the storm.

We did our best to answer: We know that a warming climate puts more energy into storms, including hurricanes, loading them with more rainfall and the stronger winds pushing more of a storm surge. That makes flooding more likely. We also know that storm surge now rides higher on sea levels that have risen over the last century due to global warming, amplifying losses where the surge strikes. On the stretch of the Atlantic Coast that spans from Norfolk to Boston, sea levels have been rising four times faster than the global average.

Overall, we know that climate change has stacked the deck so that this kind of event happens more frequently. That answer, however, prompts a deeper, more unsettling question that many want to know: is climate change worsening some recent extreme weather events like super storm Sandy?

The short answer is yes. Climate scientists broadly agree that the extreme weather we’ve seen over the past few years is exactly what we’d expect to see in a changing climate. And it’s not just Sandy; we’re on track to have the hottest year in more than a century of record-keeping in the continental United States, the country has suffered one of the most crippling droughts in history, as well as one of the worst wildfire years in history. Last year, when Hurricane Irene hit the United States, meteorologists called it “unprecedented,” yet Sandy has already outpaced the damage from Irene.

We’ll probably never know the exact point when the weather stopped being entirely natural. But we should consider Sandy—and other recent extreme weather events – an early taste of a climate-changed world, and a grim preview of the even worse to come, particularly if we continue to pump more carbon pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes up into the atmosphere.

Last weekend, millions of Americans prepared for the storm by turning to meteorologists to tell them where the storm would hit. The meteorologists relied on detailed computer models to form an accurate prediction of where it would hit and how strong it would be.

Observers agree that no matter who wins the election, there’s likely to be little in the way of comprehensive legislation or policy. With Congress deadlocked on most issues and environmental legislation a no-go for years, they say most climate and energy policy will probably come from the White House. [Inside Climate News]

While Tuesday’s election may not break the national logjam over how to address climate change, a few states will take decisive action on energy policy in the coming week. [Washington Post]

Storm-weary residents of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are facing the prospect of another significant coastal storm this week, although it will not be as severe as Hurricane Sandy. [Climate Central]

Scientists are warning that rising seas will make maintaining artificial beaches prohibitively expensive or simply impossible. Even some advocates of artificial beach nourishment now urge new approaches to the issue, especially in New Jersey. [New York Times]

The slow rate of emissions cuts in major economies has put the world on track for “at least six degrees of warming” by the end of the century, analysts will warn today. [Guardian]

China has filed a World Trade Organization case challenging subsidies provided by some European Union members to promote the solar panel industry, adding to its trade disputes with Europe and the United States. [Associated Press]

German utilities say solar power production rose by more than 50 percent on the year over the first nine months of 2012 amid a boom in installations of photovoltaic panels. [Associated Press]

Green jobs and the growing ranks of green businesses are one of the few bright spots of the UK’s recession hit economy – environmental and low-carbon business now makes up 8% of the UK’s GDP, and provided a third of what growth the economy has seen. [Guardian]

Global warming is causing aquatic animals to shrink 10 times more than land-dwellers in size, scientists say in the largest study of its kind. [ZeeNews]

While earlier studies have found that erosion can bury carbon in the soil, acting as a carbon sink, or storage, the new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that part of that sink is only temporary. [Phys.org]