Some 4,000 state and city officials, non-governmental organization leaders, and businesspeople have gathered in San Francisco this week for the Global Climate Action Summit. Although the main happenings are taking place at the Moscone Convention Center, the summit comprises a collection of more than 200 mostly invitation-only events sprawling across the Bay Area and a few other locations in California. The summit is hosted by outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with appearances by former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Vice President Al Gore, and several governors. And it’s packed with other public- and private-sector leaders eager to address climate change in spite of the Trump regime’s reckless policies driven by climate science denial and fossil fuel money.
Highlighting California’s role as leader in this effort, Brown signed a law Monday that set a goal of 100 percent clean electricity for the state by 2045 and boosted the 50 percent goal for 2030 to 60 percent. Sixteen years ago, naysayers claimed it was impossible to get to 20 percent, a goal reached in 2010. Brown also signed two bills blocking the regime’s new offshore drilling plans.
Getting the 100 percent law was a hard-won two-year effort of a loose coalition of legislative Democrats led by State Sen. Kevin D. León, who is running for the Senate seat now held by Dianne Feinstein, and environmental activists, one of the most visible of whom has been RL Miller, a long-time member of Daily Kos, chairperson of the Democratic Party's Environmental Caucus, and founder of Climate Hawks Vote.
While Brown has been praised for his actions on climate, many environmental activists who are gladdened by the 100 percent goal see his record on oil and gas drilling as hypocritical. Over the nearly eight years of his two terms as governor, his administration has approved more than 200 new wells in state waters, and more than 23,000 oil and gas drilling permits in total. And he has chosen not to oppose fracking, the chemical-and-water injection process that pries oil and gas from shale rock formations and has greatly boosted U.S. oil production into record territory while creating serious environmental problems.
The refusal to put the brakes on California oil production tarnishes Brown’s mostly solid record as a climate crusader. And this week it brought out climate protesters, including numerous indigenous people from the United States and Latin America. On Saturday, about 30,000 protesters marched in San Francisco in a Rise for Climate, Jobs & Justice.
Many of the indigenous activists have remained in the city for the summit to demonstrate their support for policies that keep fossil fuels in the ground with a rapid phase-out of their use and an end to creating fossil fuel infrastructure with a 60-year lifespan. Getting Justice is also on their minds given that low-income people and people of color, including the indigenous, have typically been those who have suffered most from fossil fuels’ environmental and health disasters. But because the summit is a closed-door affair, the people who want to deliver that message have been barred from the Moscone Center. Some were arrested Thursday morning.
There’s much, much more to discuss on the environmental justice front, and on California’s 100 percent goal, and I’ll return to both in later commentaries.
Right now, however, let me put the spotlight on a 172-page report released Wednesday: Fulfilling America’s Pledge.
In a time of increasing bad news about how climate change is affecting the Earth’s environment and all life on it, the report contains some reasons for optimism. States, cities, and businesses have been taking action that could come close to reaching the U.S. pledge made when President Obama signed the 2015 Paris Agreement. This report was set into motion by Brown and Bloomberg in the summer of 2017 after Pr*sident Trump announced he was withdrawing the United States from the agreement.
Signatories to the Paris Agreement, which included almost every nation on the planet, agreed to take action to keep the Earth’s temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, with an aspirational goal of 1.5 degrees. For its part, the U.S. pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to between 26 percent and 28 percent by 2025, compared to 2005 emissions. Based on the report’s calculations, actions by states, cities, and businesses already have us headed for a 17 percent reduction by the deadline. The report’s authors believe that by adopting a strategy focused on 10 solutions that can be implemented now, we can reduce emissions 21 percent by the deadline. A more aggressive approach would take it to 24 percent, close to the U.S. pledged it would do.
This can be done without federal engagement by whom “Fulfilling America’s Pledge” labels “real economy actors.” That is everybody but the federal government.
Adele Peters at Fast Company reported:
“Certainly one thing would you not want people to take away from this report is that it’s all going to be okay without federal action, because it’s not,” says Paul Bodnar, a managing director at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, which co-led the analysis with the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland. “But to a very surprising degree, progress is being made and can be made without the federal government.” [...]
It’s possible for non-federal action, alone, to nearly meet longer-term targets. “Even in the absence of federal leadership, these real economy actors have the ability to drive the accelerated pace of decarbonization after 2025, almost to the rate that’s needed to get to the really long-term targets that science says are necessary,” says Bodnar.
Because sustainable options already make economic sense—in many cases renewable energy is often the cheapest option, and there were around twice as many solar jobs than jobs in coal in 2017—it’s becoming easier for companies and governments to move quickly. “This is not some sort of difficult choice between saving the planet and growing their economies,” he says. “It’s sort of that now they’re going with the grain instead of against the grain.”
A lot of detail can be found in the report’s 172 pages (or you can read the 28-page executive summary). If you’d like to read the whole document but are short on time, Chapter 2 is a good place to start after reading the introduction. It focuses on what is already being done by those real economy actors. An example regarding zero emissions vehicles (ZEV):
Five states (California, Illinois, Maryland,Rhode Island, and Vermont) have fleet procurement goals that are aimed at increasing the number of ZEVs owned and managed by the state government. Fleet procurement creates a reliable demand for electric vehicles,which in turn helps EV technologies achieve economies of scale. At least 34 out of the 285 most populous U.S.cities have goals to procure alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) such as hybrids, electric plug-in vehicles,and vehicles that run on biodiesel or renewable natural gas that can lower the emissions of city-owned buses,cars, and trucks. Our analysis specifically included eight goals from majorU.S. cities (Atlanta; Austin, Texas;Chicago; Denver; Indianapolis; Los Angeles; New York; and Portland,Oregon) to procure light-duty ZEVs for their municipal fleets, as well as electric bus procurement targets in Madison, Wisconsin; Los Angeles; and New York. Taken together, these fleet procurement goals will promote investment in advanced vehicle technology including developing efficient batteries for buses that could have applications in other transportation subsectors (e.g., other medium- and heavy-duty vehicles).
Chapter 3 is titled Accelerating Progress: State, City, and Business Opportunities. It focuses on “Ten Climate Action Strategies and Enhanced Engagement Scenarios.” These are:
- Double down on renewable energy targets
- Accelerate the retirement of coal power
- Encourage residential and commercial building efficiency retrofits
- Electrify building energy use
- Accelerate electric vehicle adoption
- Phase down super-polluting hydro-fluorocarbons
- Stop methane leaks at the wellhead
- Reduce methan leaks in cities
- Develop regional strategies for carbon sequestration on natural and working lands
- Form state coalitions for carbon pricing
The authors go into considerable detail, with examples, on all 10 of these.
For instance, they estimate that doubling down on renewables could mean another 130 terawatt-hours of renewable energy beyond what is expected, adding up to 990 TWh by 2025.
One proposed push would be to get all states to commit to a 25 percent renewable portfolio standard (the proportion of electricity mandated as renewable by a certain date). California and Hawai’i have set a goal of 100 percent by 2045, while South Carolina has a 2 percent non-binding RPS goal by 2012. Thirteen states, mostly in the South, have neither mandated nor set non-binding RPS goals.
Cities and businesses can leverage ambitious city and corporate renewable targets and develop integrated strategies across the state/city/corporate/utility stakeholder groups to drive faster progress. Cities and businesses can also build coalitions of support for higher state RPS, for more ambitious clean energy commitments from utilities, and for policies that enable cities’ renewable energy goals. Cities can partner with one another and with corporations and universities to aggregate energy demand and facilitate bulk purchasing of renewable energy.
An example of this approach is The Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA). Four nonprofit organizations set up REBA to help energy buyers whether corporations, cities, or public institutions power their operations with clean energy by bringing “all market actors through annual gatherings and monthly calls to collectively overcome the largest barriers to meeting ambitious renewable energy targets. Today, over 250 companies and institutions participate in REBA to accelerate the transition in the energy sector toward a low-carbon future. Since 2013, these organizations have announced over 12 [gigawatts] of new renewable energy capacity,” the authors say.
Many readers will be moved to shake their heads and say of “Fulfilling America’s Pledge,” not enough, not fast enough. They will be right, of course. The Paris Agreement itself doesn’t do enough, fast enough. Climate activists have argued for three decades that delaying action would ultimately mean having to take tougher action, even draconian action in the future. So, obviously, given all the delays caused by propaganda and purchased politicians, we now have no choice but to do more and better and faster.
But the authors aren’t claiming that what they show is already happening or are pushing to happen in the near future will achieve everything that must be done. These are not naive analysts. Their comprehensive report does, however, provide significant reasons for optimism in an arena where much of the news has been anything but encouraging.