Activists gathered outside the White House on Sunday to protest the Keystone XL pipeline after 350.org's "Do The Math" event.

In the weeks after the election, Washington insiders are trying to interpret the complicated national politics of climate and environmental issues.

Would Congressional Republicans support a carbon tax as part of a deficit reduction deal? Is the Obama Administration distancing itself from pricing carbon, hoping to let conservatives lead on the issue? What kind of trade-offs would environmental groups accept in exchange for a climate deal?

The White House plan to “lead from behind” became clear last week when press secretary Jay Carney said: “We would never propose a carbon tax and have no intention of proposing one.”

So while the President once again fails to lead on the central issue of our time, what is the climate movement to do?

Enter environmental movement-builder Bill McKibben of 350.org, who rolled into town yesterday afternoon with a very simple message: Don’t listen to Washington.

Joined by other leaders of the climate activism movement, McKibben was at the Warner Theater yesterday — just blocks from the White House — discussing his new “Do The Math” campaign, which lays out the case for divesting from fossil fuel companies. It’s a no-nonsense, make-no-apologies approach to limiting carbon emissions by attempting to weaken the finances of companies responsible for climate change.

When the lights dimmed and McKibben walked on stage to a theater full of roughly 1,800 cheering supporters, the large screen above his head prominently displayed a new mantra within the climate activism movement.

“We’re going after the fossil fuel companies.”

Simple. Aggressive. And a campaign waged almost completely outside the paralysis of national politics.

Do The Math is based on a very simple premise. In order to have a serious chance (better than 3 in 4) of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius — a threshold needed to prevent catastrophic climate change — the world can only emit about 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050. We will burn through that carbon in 16 years at our current rate. Fossil fuel companies have reported their intent to burn reserves of carbon five times that amount. So preventing uncontrollable global warming means keeping roughly 80 percent of proven carbon reserves in the ground.

The International Energy Agency backed up those calculations in a report last week that concluded two thirds of carbon reserves need to stay in the ground by 2050 in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Rather than wait on a weak signal from Washington that would likely result in very modest carbon reductions, activists are attempting to create a carbon price of their own by exposing the financial unhealthiness of fossil fuel companies.

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by Mindy Lubber, via Ceres

The fallout from Hurricane Sandy will be with us for years, and it will extend far beyond the devastation in New York City, New Jersey and other parts of the East Coast.

The immediate cleanup costs and economic losses are alarming. Current estimates are $33 billion in New York alone. But a far bigger challenge lies ahead: preparing for a future in which storms like Sandy and Irene are likely to occur more frequently. It is gargantuan task with no parallels, and there are millions of people and trillions of dollars worth of property sitting in harm’s way.

As a result of rising sea levels from warming global temperatures, coastal communities will require vastly expensive upgrades to key infrastructure such as subways, power grids and hospitals to boost their resiliency to stronger storms. It will require tough decisions on whether building and rebuilding should be encouraged in flood-prone areas. Above all, there’s the daunting task of curbing the pollution that creates these risks in the first place.

To adapt, we need bold action from governments, policymakers and the business community alike. Their efforts to date have proven to be grossly insufficient.

Let’s start with the business community – specifically, the insurance industry, the sector most vulnerable to skyrocketing storm losses.

Extreme weather losses are hitting insurers with a vengeance, yet U.S. insurers barely acknowledge it. They need to recognize that climate change is fueling larger drought, wildfire and flooding losses and build this into their business models and underwriting policies. This will certainly result in some higher premiums.

They need to offer stronger financial incentives for storm-proofing buildings and be a louder voice in influencing land-use planning and building codes so that coastal properties are better protected or not built at all.

And, lastly, insurers should be pushing for policies that reduce carbon pollution. Some re-insurers already are. “The insurance industry should have an interest in mitigating global warming because if we don’t do that, then we may run into hardly manageable conditions in the second half of the century,” the head of Munich Re‘s Geo Risks Research Unit, Peter Hoppe, told the Huffington Post last week.

But there are limits to what insurance companies can do – and that’s where governments, regulators and politicians must be more accountable. Government-subsidized insurance programs have been far too lenient in allowing homes to be built and rebuilt in risky areas, resulting in enormous exposure for taxpayers.

We’ve seen this in Florida, where private insurers bolted from the state after regulators capped their premiums following a string of hurricanes. A state-run insurance program is now providing homeowners insurance, and it is on financially shaky ground. With a wide gap between premiums it collects and over $500 billion in overall exposure, it is one bad hurricane away from going bankrupt.

We’ve seen this in the National Flood Insurance Program, where artificially low premiums are grossly out of whack with the odds of losses. The New York Times cited one example in Biloxi, Miss., where a property valued at $183,000 flooded 15 times in a decade, costing the program $1.47 million. Overall, the program is $18 billion in debt and that’s before factoring in Hurricane Sandy flood losses.  One encouraging sign is NFIP recently won approval to raise premiums 25 percent a year over the next five years, but rising costs for consumers are certainly cold comfort, and critics say far more still needs to be done.

Governments have also moved too slowly to make key infrastructure more resilient to stronger coastal storms. While Europeans coastal cities have invested billions to build storm locks and barriers, Eastern U.S. cities have done relatively little, making them more vulnerable to higher sea levels and storm surges. Storm-proofing subways, hospitals, electrical grids and other key infrastructure will cost tens of billions of dollars. Congress will be under enormous pressure to help with such costs, but given the deficit reduction talks also in play, the conversations won’t be easy.

More than ever, we need strong leadership from the business community and policymakers to boost our preparedness in a post-Sandy world. With increasing threats from ever-more-extreme weather, both groups must play a key role in keeping the U.S. economy out of harm’s way.

Mindy S. Lubber is the president of Ceres and a founding board member of the organization. She also directs Ceres’ Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a group of 100 institutional investors managing nearly $10 trillion in assets focused on the business risks and opportunities of climate change.

And So The Bank Must Stop Funding All New Fossil Fuel Plants

Another day, another staid international organization reviews the latest climate science and rings the loudest possible alarm.

The World Bank’s sobering new report, “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided,” warns that “we’re on track for a 4°C warmer world marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.”

Bank President Jim Yong Kim sums up the report with this blunt headline in the UK Guardian:

The latest predictions on climate change should shock us into action

A world four degrees warmer could be too hot to handle, but the exciting prospect of low-carbon living could stop it happening

This report should end the delusion that humanity can risk the preferred strategy of either the deniers (inaction) — or the hand-waving centrists (more research and development). The findings of this report match those of PricewaterhouseCoopers, which found that limiting warming to even 7°F requires “nearly quadrupling the current rate of decarbonisation.” That means the only rational clean-tech strategy for a non-suicidal species is “Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, R&D, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy“ [yes, not in that order].

The Bank report reviews the grim projections from dozens of the latest scientific studies (which I summarized here). It warns that “there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible.” For instance, we face sea levels that could be rising an inch a year by century’s end! How do we adapt to that?

The impact on food security is particularly worrisome, with the latest science “much less optimistic” that the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment report:

These results suggest instead a rapidly rising risk of crop yield reductions as the world warms. Large negative effects have been observed at high and extreme temperatures in several regions including India, Africa, the United States, and Australia. For example, significant nonlinear effects have been observed in the United States for local daily temperatures increasing to 29°C for corn and 30°C for soybeans. These new results and observations indicate a significant risk of high-temperature thresholds being crossed that could substantially undermine food security globally in a 4°C world.

And that’s just temperature rise: “Compounding these risks is the adverse effect of projected sea-level rise on agriculture in important low-lying delta areas.” And then we have the threat to seafood of ocean acidification. Finally, we have Dust-Bowlification:

The report also says drought-affected areas would increase from 15.4% of global cropland today, to around 44% by 2100. The most severely affected regions in the next 30 to 90 years will likely be in southern Africa, the United States, southern Europe and Southeast Asia, says the report. In Africa, the report predicts 35% of cropland will become unsuitable for cultivation in a 5°C world.

That final point is worth underscoring: 4°C [7°F]  is not even the high end of projected warming for 2100 if we stay near our current emissions path (see “The IEA And Others Warn Of Some 11°F Warming by 2100).”

The first and last line of President Kim’s Foreword are “It is my hope that this report shocks us into action…. The World Bank Group will step up to the challenge.”

Let’s hope he means it. The Bank’s inconsistency on climate has been widely noted — see “Why Does the World Bank Say it Cares About Climate Change, But Continue to Aggressively Push Coal?” The Bank has kept financing large coal plants — most infamously providing a $3.75 billion loan for one of the world’s largest coal plants, located in South Africa. The Bank also pushed a 600-MW coal plant in Kosovo.

On the basis of this report, the bank must stop funding all new fossil fuel plants. I use the word “must” because that is the word the report and President Kim repeatedly use.

And it must be “all new fossil fuel plants” because the International Energy Agency has made clear this year with detailed analysis that natural gas isn’t the solution if your goal is staying far from 7°F warming — see IEA’s “Golden Age of Gas Scenario” Leads to More Than 6°F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change. It must be noted that even that IEA gas scenario, which results in too much warning, assumes that not only does global oil consumption peak around 2020 — but so does coal! So if one or both of those peaks don’t happen — and they wouldn’t without a high price of carbon and aggressively clean energy deployment starting now — then the Golden Age of Gas is just Hell and High Water, the  “devastating” scenario laid out in the World Bank report.

The time for action was a long time ago, but further delay means we are consciously abandoning our responsibility to our children and indeed all future generations.

by Cara Pike, via Climate Access

Governor Cuomo, and Mayor Bloomberg are directly calling out the need to address climate disruption, both in terms of reducing use of carbon-based fuels as well as preparing communities and individuals to better respond to extreme weather events and other climate impacts.

This is a good sign and I hope it will last with action to match the words. We need the discourse to continue in this direction so we can finally move away from a public debate based on whether global warming is real and whether there is enough certainty to act, to one focused on what leaders, communities, and individuals are doing to address climate impacts and what the benefits are of taking those actions, such as safety, security, job creation and health. Many efforts to reduce carbon and prepare for impacts are underway; however, solutions have not dominated the communications space.

2) Sorting the Solutions Grab Bag: Climate disruption needs to be addressed through a range of approaches by every sector; this makes the solutions landscape quite complex. In addition, there is not agreement over the best and most important courses of action to take. Wind power is great, yet can kill birds and block views. Energy efficiency is considered the “first fuel” by many, but others caution about the “rebound effect” (and for a countering view) of savings leading to consumption elsewhere. Some tout nuclear power as “clean,” while others point to waste problems and risk of an accident? Geo-engineering sounds interesting but are we just experimenting with planetary fate on even a larger scale with those approaches? As a start, organizations focused on communicating solutions could hone in on a few priority items and develop robust storylines that carry through over time.  Audiences often only begin to hear stories when the storytellers start getting sick of telling them.

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by Erin Auel and Matt Kasper

The Tesla Model S, the company’s first full-size sedan, won the 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year on November 12, garnering a unanimous vote from the panel of judges. This is the first electric car in the 64-year history of the auto industry’s most coveted award.

“We’re going to look back and see this as a point at which the gears of history really turned,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

It’s important not to read too much into this specific award. While electric vehicle demand continues to grow, the market has been choppy and companies still need to make important cost reductions in order to dramatically expand sales. But it does illustrate the outstanding performance and design of electric vehicles hitting the market — many of which are built in the U.S.

And as consumers get more comfortable with electric vehicles, hybrids, and smaller cars generally, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that sales of cleaner, “greener” cars are increasing due to shifting demands.

With high gas prices at the pump, fuel efficient vehicles and have remained resilient. In addition, the average fuel economy of new passenger vehicles for model year 2012 reached its highest average of 23.6 miles per gallon this year. This led the NRDC and Baum & Associates to declare that the 2012 model year was “The Year of the Green Car.” Here’s why, according their analysis:

• Model year 2012 fuel efficiency for new vehicles hit an all-time high. The sales-weighted average fuel economy of new passenger vehicles for model year 2012 was 23.6 MPG, up more than 1 MPG from the previous record high of 22.5 MPG set in 2011.  This was the single biggest one-year increase in MPG in the past five years. Calendar year-to-date 2012 fuel efficiency is even higher:  an average of 23.8 MPG through September.  (Fuel economy data is derived from the research of Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle (University of Michigan) at http://www.umich.edu/%7Eumtriswt/EDI_sales-weighted-mpg.html.)
• Higher average fuel efficiency for model year 2012 is a good thing for the American auto industry, rather than a reflection of falling sales. Auto sales for the 2012 model year reached 14.1 million units, an increase of more than 10 percent (1.7 million) from the previous model year.  In the recent past, major increases in fleet fuel efficiency were generally marked by rapid decreases in vehicle sales.  For example, the three-year period from 1980 to 1982 saw increases of 3.3, 1.3 and 0.6 MPG respectively, but vehicle sales declined by 2.5 million, 750,000, and 820,000, respectively.  Similarly, over the two-year period from 2007 to 2009, fleet fuel efficiency jumped 1.8 MPG, but annual vehicle sales dropped by over 5.7 million.  The uncoupling of rising average MPG and falling auto sales in model year 2012 was due in large part to much wider availability of vehicles with higher fuel economy.
• The number of high-MPG vehicles available to consumers is rising rapidly. Popular vehicle nameplates with improved efficiency more than doubled from model year 2009 (28) to model year 2013 (61).   Fewer than a third (17) of the model year 2013 vehicles with higher MPG are compacts or subcompacts, contrary to the assumption made by many that the only high MPG cars are “small cars.”
• Hybrids and plug-in electric car sales are on track to top half a million units for the first time in a calendar year (2012) and a model year (2013). This strong performance directly debunks the linked (and equally mistaken) notions that (1) consumers don’t want higher MPG vehicles and (2) there is no demand for the high-end technology that powers the highest MPG-vehicles.

After decades of manufacturing and employment in decline, the U.S. is seeing significant job growth anchored by a revival in advanced clean vehicle innovation and manufacturing. A wide range of businesses, from large auto-supply companies to small start-ups, are meeting increasing demands for fuel efficient technologies and electric vehicle components. The final fuel-economy and carbon-pollution standards for 2017 to 2025 will also continue to spur innovation, production, and job creation in the auto industry.

But for many consumers, the $7,500 federal tax credit incentivizes the purchase of electric vehicles. The Congressional Budget Office reported in September that the tax credits for electric vehicles aim to make the initial purchase less burdensome for consumers and therefore make these cars more competitive.

Ensuring that the U.S. is a global leader in electric and fuel-efficient vehicles will result in job-growth, consumer savings, and greater competitiveness in the world market. The auto success story demonstrates that the American industry can achieve dramatic cuts in oil demand and carbon pollution; however federal lawmakers must get behind this vision and find additional ways to support the transition to a cleaner economy.

Erin Auel is an intern on the Energy Team and Matt Kasper is a Special Assistant for the Energy Team at the Center for American Progress

by Bill Becker

In his first post-election news conference, President Obama made clear that his concern about global climate change will not push the economy and jobs off the top of his priority list.

“If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader,” he said, “I think that’s something that the American people would support.”

Before 24 hours passed, a nonpartisan group in Washington D.C. – the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) – issued a detailed, data-rich report that shows climate action meets the President’s test. It will indeed advance economic growth and create jobs.  Moreover, it will significantly improve America’s energy security.

The CCS report gives Obama some good news to share with Americans who have been victimized by extreme weather, as well as those who are victims of the recession. It also gives his Administration some good news for the international community when it meets later this month in Doha, Qatar, to continue work on a global climate treaty. In the past, the United States has been regarded as a laggard in cutting carbon emissions.

CCS – a diverse group of experts best known for helping states create and develop broad support for climate action plans – said its economic and energy modeling shows the United States is on a trajectory to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 23% by 2020, compared to estimates in 2005 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Sliced another way, we’re on the path to achieving nearly 70% of President Obama’s goal for carbon emission reductions by 2020.

Contrary to popular wisdom, our carbon glide path is not due mainly to less economic activity during the recession, or the slow recovery, or the rapidly increasing use of natural gas.  Almost half the emission reductions are due to just 8 existing policies implemented by localities, states and the federal government, the CCS said. The policies range from new vehicle efficiency standards at the federal level, to renewable energy requirements at the state level and energy efficiency building codes in communities.

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Hundreds of people who say they worry oil that would be carried the Keystone XL pipeline will accelerate climate change marched around the White House on Sunday, hoping to revive a movement credited with slowing down the permit process for the crude oil project. [Guardian]

Across the nation, tens of billions of tax dollars have been spent on subsidizing coastal reconstruction in the aftermath of storms, usually with little consideration of whether it actually makes sense to keep rebuilding in disaster-prone areas. [New York Times]

President Barack Obama, who is on a four-day trip through Asia, is reviewing material on reshaping his cabinet and is on track to announce some of his picks as early as the week after Thanksgiving, people familiar with his plans said. [Wall Street Journal]

The stubborn drought that has gripped the Midwest for much of the year has left the Mighty Mississippi critically low — and it will get even lower if the Army Corps of Engineers presses ahead with plans to reduce the flow from a Missouri River dam. [San Jose Mercury News]

Living in areas of high air pollution is an environmental risk to seniors’ brain health and function, U.S. researchers found. [UPI]

A bipartisan group of senators is asking President Obama for a meeting about the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline that the lawmakers want the White House to approve. [The Hill]

Energy companies, environmental groups, and even Hollywood stars are watching to see what decisions President Barack Obama makes about regulating or promoting natural gas drilling. [Washington Post]

A new study confirms the strong links between global temperatures, melting ice and sea level and suggests that sea level responds more quickly that previously believed, probably because of the feedback warming effect of open water. [Summit County Citizens Voice]

The drought has pressured ranchers across the West to sell breeding cattle, take on more debt, or seek supplemental work off the farm. Some, particularly in Texas last year during a crushingly severe drought, have even liquidated the whole ranch. [Climate Central]