I have a daughter almost as old as those who were senselessly killed at Sandy Hook Elementary school, so my heart goes out to all the victims.

She is also why I fight so hard for climate action. As Obama said in his powerful speech at the Sandy Hook interfaith prayer vigil:

With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves — our child — is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice.  And every parent knows there is nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet, we also know that with that child’s very first step, and each step after that, they are separating from us; that we won’t — that we can’t always be there for them.  They’ll suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments.  And we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear.

And we know we can’t do this by ourselves…. we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we’re all parents; that they’re all our children.

This is our first task — caring for our children.  It’s our first job.  If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right.  That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations?  Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm?  Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return?

Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no.  We’re not doing enough.  And we will have to change.

Dave Roberts at Grist has already noted that many of Obama’s words could have been written in a speech about the moral necessity for climate action, in an eloquent post, “Newtown: Tragedy, empathy, and growing our circle of concern.” I share Roberts’ (and Obama’s) call for “a basic shift in moral perspective.”

The reason Obama’s words at Sandy Hook also speak to the moral urgency of climate action is, I think, because the president has been thinking a great deal about his legacy since winning re-election, thinking about his second-term agenda in terms of how it affects future generations.

The language he used at Sandy Hook clearly echoes a new interview in Time (done before the shooting) on his second term agenda:

My primary focus is going to continue to be on the economy, on immigration, on climate change and energy….

Well, it’s a cliché, but it’s obviously true that for any parent, as you watch your kids age, you are reminded that everything you do has to have their futures in mind. You fervently hope they’re going to outlive you; that the world will be better for them when you’re not around. You start thinking about their kids.

And so, on an issue like climate change, for example, I think for this country and the world to ask some very tough questions about what are we leaving behind, that weighs on you. And not to mention the fact I think that generation is much more environmentally aware than previous generations.

There is that sense of we’ve got to get this right, and at least give them a fighting chance. In the same way that as a parent you recognize that no matter what you do, your kids are going to have challenges — because that’s the human condition — but you don’t want them dealing with stuff that’s the result of you making bad choices. They’ll have enough bad choices that they make on their own that you don’t want them inheriting the consequences of bad choices that you make. We have to think about that as a society as a whole.

You could almost flip the two speeches.

Except that, in the wake of the umpteenth senseless gun tragedy, Obama used the bully pulpit to publicly commit himself to action no matter how tough it might seem:

“In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens … in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”

He explicitly rejected the notion that “the politics are too hard.”

But for climate, no public speeches, no clarion call to action at all cost.

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by Brad Johnson

The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (PFE) has confirmed that it will no longer support the Heartland Institute, a political advocacy group that questions the science of climate change and tobacco smoking. Forecast the Facts, which is leading the campaign calling on corporations to drop Heartland, was informed of the decision by Pfizer’s Corporate Secretary Matthew Lepore. Pfizer was a major donor to Heartland, giving $45,000 in 2012 alone.

Pfizer’s decision means that there are no longer any pharmaceutical companies known to support the Heartland Institute.

Pfizer’s last contribution to Heartland was in 2012. Pfizer’s decision follows a groundswell of public outrage over the corporate support for the Heartland Institute’s toxic behavior, including a billboard campaign that equated believers in climate change with serial killers such as the Unabomber. Over 150,000 people have signed petitions to corporate leaders to drop Heartland. Pfizer is the 21st company to end its support for Joseph Bast’s organization, joining its competitors Amgen (AMGN), Eli Lilly (LLY), Bayer (BAYRY), and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), as well as major companies like General Motors (GM), State Farm, and PepsiCo (PEP).

Records from tobacco industry lawsuits show that Pfizer had joined tobacco companies in supporting the Heartland Institute since at least 1994. Cigarette makers Altria (MO) and R.J. Reynolds (RAI) continue to fund the group.

Since Pfizer’s previously undisclosed funding of the Heartland Institute became public at the beginning of the year, Forecast the Facts has led increased public pressure on the pharmaceutical maker. At first, Pfizer defended its support for Heartland by claiming the company gets “significant benefits” from its association with the toxic front group.

In May, Forecast the Facts members flooded Pfizer’s phones and social media sites with calls for the company to pull their support. During Heartland’s climate change denial conference in Chicago, Forecast the Facts, SumOfUs.org and 350.org organized their members to “crowd-fund” bicycle-driven billboards featuring Pfizer that parodied the Heartland Institute’s Unabomber ads. Forecast the Facts also mobilized a rally and protest outside the conference against Pfizer’s support for the climate denial group.

In July, more than 2,000 health professionals demanded that Pfizer immediately end its support for the Heartland Institute. Citing Heartland’s longstanding relationship with major tobacco companies, as well as its fierce denial of climate science, the doctors, nurses, and other members of the public health community co-signed a letter to Pfizer CEO Ian Read, whose company has defended its financial support of the anti-science organization. The concerned members of the medical community were mobilized by Forecast the Facts and SumOfUs.org.

In August, Forecast the Facts distributed flyers at Pfizer’s New York City headquarters and at biomedical conferences in Boston, San Francisco, and Kansas City notifying Pfizer employees and customers of its support for the anti-science Heartland Institute. That month, additional pressure was placed on Pfizer by the Union of Concerned Scientists and a coalition of shareholder activists to abandon the front group.

For more information on the status of the Heartland’s corporate funding, go to http://www.dropdeniers.org.

Brad Johnson is the campaign manager of Forecast the Facts.

by Bob Berwyn, via Summit County Citizens Voice

A major new report suggests that climate change will probably result in a net loss in global biodiversity, as plants and animal species shift their geographic ranges and the timing of their life events — such as flowering, laying eggs or migrating — at faster rates than researchers documented just a few years ago.

The report, Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Ecosystem Services, synthesizes the scientific understanding of the way climate change is affecting ecosystems, ecosystem services and the diversity of species, as well as what strategies might be used by natural resource practitioners to decrease current and future risks. It was prepared as a technical report on biodiversity and ecosystems to be used as scientific input for the 2013 Third National Climate Assessment.

“The report clearly indicates that as climate change continues to impact ecological systems, a net loss of global species’ diversity, as well as major shifts in the provision of ecosystem services, are quite likely,” said Michelle Staudinger, a lead author of the report and a USGS and University of Missouri scientist.

More than 60 federal, academic and other scientists, including the lead authors from the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Wildlife Federation and Arizona State University in Tempe, authored the assessment.

“These geographic range and timing changes are causing cascading effects that extend through ecosystems, bringing together species that haven’t previously interacted and creating mismatches between animals and their food sources,” said Nancy Grimm, a scientist at ASU and a lead author of the report.

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by Jules Boykoff

In the Pacific Northwest, activists and their allies are ramping up for a full-throttle battle over a proposal to haul coal across the west for export to China. Big Coal’s latest master plan promises to generate a second epicenter of climate-change resistance—our very own Keystone XL pipeline showdown.

With coal prices plummeting, thanks in large part to the spike in natural gas use, coal barons are desperate to offload their lucre. Showing ever-greater verve, they’re dumping it in overseas markets, especially China. The US Energy Information Administration projects US coal exports will hit an all-time high in 2012—some 125 to 133 million tons—more than doubling 2009 export levels and surpassing a record set in 1981.

When it comes to climate disruption, these are ghastly numbers. After all, 2012 looks like it’ll be the hottest year on record for the contiguous US. The year brought devastating drought and catastrophic storms. While we can’t peg any single weather event to climate change, this is precisely the sort of climate seesaw scientists have predicted. Meanwhile, the Arctic suffered record losses in sea ice and snow cover. And globally, 2012 is on course to become the ninth hottest year ever. Revving up coal consumption—the dirtiest of fossil fuels—is not going to help matters, to say the least.

That’s where the Pacific Northwest enters the picture. This month the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) staged what may well be the only public meetings on the permitting process for the US coal industry’s hail-Mary moment: to convert the western United States into a railroad and barge pipeline for coal mined in Montana and Wyoming and hauled along the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean for export to China and elsewhere.

This Morrow-Pacific coal export proposal—which is being pushed by Australia-based Ambre Energy—will annually ship overseas nearly nine million tons of coal. The plan has dredged up blistering opposition. The Sierra Club—buoyed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s donation of $50 million last year—has made it a centerpiece of its Beyond Coal campaign. Groups like Columbia Riverkeeper and the Power Past Coal coalition have rallied locals to the cause. The Yakama Nation, Lummi Nation, and other Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest have challenged the proposal’s logic and merit. The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians demanded a comprehensive environmental impact assessment while the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission questioned the wisdom of hauling coal through at-risk waterways, which could undercut the tribes’ treaty rights.

More than 800 people packed the meeting hall in Portland. Just before the event commenced, Cesia Kearns, a Sierra Club campaign representative, told me, “Coal is the culprit on climate change. If we continue to burn coal at current levels, much less increase them, we’ll have no hope of turning climate change around.”

This sentiment was shared by many people who asked questions or provided public comment. They interrogated DEQ about air pollution from open-topped trainloads of coal. They quizzed officials on the hazards the project could cause for salmon runs and other wildlife in the region. They asked about the effects additional coal-burning would have on climate change. And they pressed officials about the literal blowback that could emerge: coal burned in China produces mercury that wafts back to the Pacific Northwest.

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By 2017, the world will increase its coal consumption by more than 1.2 billion tons per year — equivalent to the current coal use of the U.S. and Russia combined. That’s according to a new report on the booming coal sector from the International Energy Agency.

Many have hailed the drop in U.S. coal consumption over the last year as a modestly positive trend for climate; however, that decrease is being overshadowed by a boom in developing countries, particularly China. The IEA projects that China will account for 70 percent of coal consumption by 2017:

Coal accounted for 45 percent of global CO2 emissions in 2011. Without a slowdown in coal consumption, China’s carbon emissions hockey stick is about to get a lot sharper. Here’s what it looks like already:

The same could be true in India as well, a country that will account for 22 percent of growth in coal consumption. According to a recent report from the World Resources Institute, there are more than 1,200 coal plants planned around the world, most of which will be built in China and India. If all the plants in the pipeline are built, they would amount to a generation capacity four times greater than the current American coal fleet.

Here are some key stats reported by the IEA in its latest assessment:

• Coal demand is growing everywhere but the United States. The trend of the last decade continued in 2011, with coal supplying near half of the incremental primary energy supply globally. Coal demand grew 4.3% in 2011, or 304 million tonnes (mt). Chinese demand grew by 233 mt. The only region where coal demand declined was the United States. That drop is neither policy-driven nor a consequence of recession but rather the result of the availability of cheap gas.
• Even though coal demand growth is slowing, coal’s share of the global energy mix is still rising, and by 2017 coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world’s top energy source. The world will burn around 1.2 billion more tonnes of coal per year by 2017 compared with today. That’s more than the current annual coal consumption of the United States and Russia combined.
• China has become the largest coal importer in the world. In 2009, China became a net coal importer for the first time. In 2011, it became the largest coal importer, surpassing Japan, which had held the position for decades. Chinese imports (including Hong Kong) reached 204 mt in 2011 and they continued to grow in 2012.
• Indonesia has become the largest coal exporter in the world. As another example of the increasing weight of non-OECD countries, Indonesia surpassed long-standing leader Australia as the largest exporter on a tonnage basis. Floods in Queensland in 2010-2011 constrained Australian exports, while Indonesia growth did not stop, surpassing the 300 mt line.

As both the World Bank and the International Energy Agency have pointed out in recent scientific summaries, we are on a path toward disastrous climate change — and only a dramatic re-thinking of policies can set us on a path toward manageable warming.

If we see any Congressional action on climate in 2013, it’s likely to come from the Democrat-controlled Senate.

In recent weeks, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has indicated that Democrats — and possibly some Republicans — will issue a series of small and large bills related to climate change in the 113th Congress.

“I think you are going to see a lot of bills on climate change,” said Boxer to reporters earlier this month. She said that three other Senators already have bills in the works for pricing carbon and adapting infrastructure to intensifying extreme weather.

As Chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Boxer is attempting to leverage concerns about climate after Superstorm Sandy and build a coalition of climate-conscious lawmakers to craft legislation. Yesterday, she talked about creating a “clearinghouse” on climate to help organize efforts. The Hill reports:

Boxer said she will co-chair the clearinghouse alongside the chairmen of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Boxer first announced the idea earlier in December, and it crystallized further at a meeting Tuesday, she said.

“We are going to review the latest information, we are going to work on supporting a major bill, we are also going to work on various smaller provisions that we think will move us forward and focus on green jobs, energy efficiency and making sure that we get the carbon out of the air, and work with the administration on some executive stuff,” she said in the Capitol.“So I think it is going to be a very major and important clearinghouse because as the science comes in, we are going to take a look at that science so that we are all up to date,” Boxer added.

She said it would be an “open forum” that will provide lawmakers a chance to raise topics of interest to them — such as reports from their states and actions in state legislatures — and ask questions too.

The clearinghouse builds on President Obama’s comments in his first post-election press conference. Although Obama failed to give any details about how he might approach climate in his second term, he talked about the need to have “a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials” on how to reduce carbon. Boxer’s climate change clearinghouse would provide a central place for lawmakers to consider the latest science, thus laying the groundwork for possible legislation.

However, even as action builds in the Senate, extreme resistance to climate in the Republican-held House would likely stall momentum on any major pieces of legislation. The Koch-funded and founded Americans for Prosperity has convinced more than 180 House lawmakers to take its “no carbon tax pledge” — including all GOP leaders in the House.

Under pressure from state lawmakers and environmentalists, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration released draft regulations for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the controversial drilling process driving the nation’s oil and gas boom. [Los Angeles Times]

An industry group representing oil and gas companies has sued a city in Colorado that outlawed hydraulic fracturing, saying voters had no right to ban the drilling practice. [New York Times]

Even in winter, the severe drought that plagued a great swath of the nation’s agricultural and ranching states this summer is taking a punishing toll on the nation’s economy, with the Mississippi River barging industry the latest sector to fall victim. [Christian Science Monitor]

Australia’s climate change adviser recommended sticking with the government’s 2020 renewable energy target to give investors confidence in the industry. [Bloomberg]

With the global total of climate-disrupting emissions likely to come in at around 52 gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes) this year, we’re already at the edge, according to new research. [Guardian]

German utilities say this year’s share of renewable energies in the country’s electricity production is forecast to rise some 15 percent on the year, largely on the back of a continuing solar-power boom. [Associated Press]

The prospect of a new U.S. secretary of state favoring tougher carbon policy should not worsen the odds of the Keystone XL oil pipeline being approved, the chief executive of TransCanada Corp, the contentious project’s proponent, said on Monday. [Reuters]

Britain set out a 5-year plan on Tuesday to unlock the solar and biomass investment needed to achieve the country’s 2020 green energy targets. [Reuters]