[TheClimate.Vote] July 23, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/*July 23, 2020*/

[More than just CO2 in a soda fountain]
*McDonald's, Pepsi call on Congress to include renewable energy in 
COVID-19 relief*
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/508427-mcdonalds-pepsi-call-on-congress-to-include-renewable-energy-in
- -
[business in states]
*Governor Cuomo Announces Largest Combined Solicitations for Renewable 
Energy Ever Issued in the U.S. to Combat Climate Change*
https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-largest-combined-solicitations-renewable-energy-ever-issued-us-combat


[audio and text]
*Harvard Scientists Plan First-Ever Field Experiment Related To Solar 
Geoengineering*
July 22, 2020
https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2020/07/22/harvard-solar-geoengineering-climate-change



[reports CBS News]
*Wildfires in Siberia have burned down an area larger than Greece*
Wildfires in Russia have so far burned down an area larger than the size 
of Greece, according to Greenpeace Russia. On Monday, the environmental 
organization criticized government officials for their inaction in the 
region amid record heat waves.
Using satellite data, Greenpeace Russia reported an estimated 19 million 
hectares, about 47 million acres, of forests, steppes and fields have 
burned across Siberia since January. About 10 million hectares of these 
territories suffered forest fires.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wildfires-sibera-russia-burned-area-larger-than-greece-heat-wave/
--
[international photos]
https://media.greenpeace.org/shoo/27MDHU2IIOO?_ga=2.200307630.1677019769.1595385420-1125949776.1593233899
https://media.greenpeace.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=27MZIFLFN4OH



[clips from a good idea in VOX]
*Why the next president should establish a Department of Climate*
The executive branch is not yet equipped to respond to climate change.
By Allison Crimmins - Jul 21, 2020
It's been a big month for new climate policy ideas in the US, with a 
flurry of plans out, brimming with hundreds of policy recommendations. 
The presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden campaign's task force on 
climate change, for example, released new proposals on July 14 for 
reducing fossil fuel use, aiming to establish a national clean energy 
standard and rectify climate injustices.

Earlier in July, the campaign also convened a new Climate Engagement 
Advisory Council to mobilize more people in the fight against climate 
change and systemic racism. And in late June, the House Select Committee 
on Energy Independence and Global Warming put out a 500-plus-page 
Climate Crisis Action Plan.

But so far, none of these plans has included a key action that would 
strengthen the government's ability to make these policies a reality: 
the creation of a new, Cabinet-level Department of Climate.

To give these new proposals a fighting chance, the committees and 
councils must recognize that the executive branch is not yet properly 
aligned to respond to climate change, a complex problem of unmatched 
size and duration.

The idea of a high-level executive body focused on climate is not 
radical. Countries around the world -- from Austria to Australia, 
Pakistan to Portugal -- have created dedicated departments or ministries 
specifically to address climate change threats.

Establishing new Cabinet departments in the US isn't that unusual 
either. In fact, more than half of the government's 15 active 
departments have been formed in just the past 75 years, four within my 
lifetime. But among these executive-level departments and in all the 
hundreds of federal agencies, not one has a mission solely dedicated to 
the climate crisis. There isn't even one with the word "climate" in its 
name...
- -
To meet the threat of climate change, one of the first actions of the 
next administration and the 177th Congress should be to create this 
Department of Climate. Its mission would be to mitigate global climate 
change, reduce America's vulnerability to climate impacts, build 
resiliency to the impacts that do occur, and strengthen our nation's 
infrastructure by forging a sustainable, thriving, and just economy...
- -
*1) Climate change is a threat to our security -- and we need a unified 
structure to fight it*
Climate change is a critical national security challenge that will not 
be resolved over the course of one administration. In a report published 
earlier this year, the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Climate and 
Security identified several major ways in which climate change puts 
national security at risk. These include: social and political 
instability due to drought and water stress, damages to military bases 
and infrastructure from rising seas and increased flooding, and 
detrimental effects on force readiness and health caused by more 
frequent heat waves and wildfires.

But perhaps the greatest risk to national security is the fact that 
climate change threatens our health, social equity, and economy, 
weakening the nation's resilience. Current and future climate impacts 
put our very life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness at risk. It is well 
past time we defend against such threats.
- -
*2) Climate change is a threat to our health -- and we need dedicated 
resources to respond to it*
In the US, Americans are already experiencing more frequent extreme heat 
days, increases in wildfires that lead to poor air quality (which likely 
makes people more susceptible to Covid-19), more severe storms with 
long-term, devastating health impacts, and longer seasons for 
disease-carrying mosquitoes and ticks. Rising carbon dioxide levels 
means longer and more severe allergy seasons and less nutritious crops. 
Not to mention the impact on our mental health.

As the House Select Committee points out in its Climate Crisis Action 
Plan, "the United States currently lacks a comprehensive national 
strategy to respond to the health risks and harms of the climate 
crisis." Their plan calls for Congress to strengthen such planning, 
placing much of the burden of action on the Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention (CDC)...
- -
*3) Climate change is a threat to equity -- and we need to build the 
capacity to do better*
Climate change threatens our health, but it does not threaten it 
equally. Certain communities are disproportionately vulnerable to 
climate change, including children, older adults, people with 
pre-existing health conditions, low-income communities, certain 
occupational groups, Indigenous peoples, and many communities of color.

As we see with Covid-19, discrimination leads to disproportionate rates 
of illnesses and deaths from environmental health hazards among Black, 
Hispanic, and Indigenous peoples.

Climate change does not just exacerbate the impacts of racism, it is 
also caused by white supremacy, a snake eating its own tail. As Hop 
Hopkins wrote for the advocacy group the Sierra Club: "You can't have 
climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can't have sacrifice 
zones without disposable people, and you can't have disposable people 
without racism."...
- -
*What the future could hold*
The United States has faced crises in the past, as we do today, and will 
again. We don't need to look very far back in history for examples of 
how effective federal restructuring can provide the means to meet such 
challenges. Try reading these lines from the 2002 Proposal to Create the 
Department of Homeland Security with the words "climate change" swapped 
in to see just how easily a similar proposal could be created for a 
Department of Climate:

Today, no single government agency has climate change as its primary 
mission. In fact, responsibilities for climate change are dispersed 
among more than 100 different government organizations. America needs a 
single, unified climate change structure that will improve protection 
against today's threats and be flexible enough to help meet the unknown 
threats of the future.

Creating the scaffolding for such a department now would be a clear 
signal to our country's youth and to the communities most at risk that 
they don't have to take on the entire burden of addressing climate 
change themselves. And it would be a clear signal to the rest of the 
world that the United States is finally ready to be a leader among the 
global community fighting climate change.

We have the urgency of the crisis to drive us, the precedence to guide 
us, the blueprint to build it, and the experts to unify it-- everything 
we need to create a response commensurate to the size of this huge task.

Allison Crimmins is a climate scientist in Washington, DC, whose 
research focuses on the impacts of climate change on human health. The 
views expressed here are her own and do not represent those of her employer.
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/21/21332435/climate-change-department-joe-biden



[activate personal agency]
*The Perils of Explaining Climate Inaction in Terms of Psychological 
Barriers*
Michael T. Schmitt  Scott D. Neufeld  Caroline M. L. Mackay  Odilia 
Dys‐Steenbergen
First published: 19 November 2019 
https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12360Citations: 4
This article is part of the Special Issue "Sustainable consumption: The 
psychology of individual choice, identity, and behavior;" Matthew B 
Ruby, Iain Walker and Hanne M Watkins (Special Issue Editors). For a 
full listing of Special Issue papers, see: 
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josi.2020.76.issue-1/issuetoc.
We acknowledge that our work on this article was conducted on the 
unceded traditional territories of the Squamish, Tsleil‐Waututh, 
Musqueam, and Kwikwetlem First Nations. We thank Sofia Hiltner, Sarah 
Becker, and Iain Walker for their helpful feedback and suggestions on 
this article, and Kari Gunton and Maitland Waddell for their research 
assistance.
[The copyright line for this article was changed on 16th Jan 2020 after 
original online publication]

    *Abstract*
    As awareness of climate change and its consequences increases, many
    have asked, "Why aren't people taking action?" Some psychologists
    have provided an answer that we describe as a "psychological
    barriers explanation" (PBE). The PBE suggests that human nature is
    limited in ways that create psychological barriers to taking action
    on climate change. Taking a critical social psychology approach
    (e.g., Adams, 2014), we offer a critique of the PBE, arguing that
    locating the causes of inaction at the psychological level promotes
    a misrepresentation of human nature as static and disconnected from
    context. Barriers to environmental action certainly exist, and most
    if not all involve psychological processes. However, locating the
    barrier itself at the psychological level ignores the complex
    interplay between psychological tendencies, social relations, and
    social structures. We consider the ways in which psychological
    responses to climate change are contingent upon social‐structural
    context, with particular attention to the ways unequal distributions
    of power have allowed elites to block climate action, in part by
    using their power to influence societal beliefs and norms. In
    conclusion, we suggest that psychologists interested in climate
    (in)action expand their scope beyond individual consumer behaviors
    to include psychological questions that challenge existing power
    relations and raise the possibility of transformative social change.

- -
  Researchers should not let psychological processes related to climate 
(in)action overshadow social and political factors, and particularly the 
efforts of elites to block meaningful climate change mitigation. 
Psychologists who care about promoting sustainability should pay 
theoretical and empirical attention to the ways in which elites use 
their power to deter action on climate change, and the ways in which 
those power structures can be changed through collective action. To that 
end, we suggest psychologists move beyond the current focus on 
individual consumption and add to a growing body of research on 
environmental social movements, political participation, and social 
change (e.g., Bell & Braun, 2010; Farrell, 2013; Kurz & Prosser, 2020; 
McFarlane & Hunt, 2006; Schmitt et al., 2019). Psychologists could 
further contribute by examining processes of leadership and social 
influence that can change environmental norms (e.g., Haslam & Reicher, 
2012), the ways in which elites are able to mobilize action or inaction, 
as well as how others may resist the influence of elites...
More at - https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/josi.12360



[follow and obey the money]
*Climate Change Poses 'Systemic Threat' to the Economy, Big Investors Warn*
Financial regulators should act to avoid economic disaster, according to 
a letter from pension funds and other investors representing almost $1 
trillion in assets.
WASHINGTON -- Climate change threatens to create turmoil in the 
financial markets, and the Federal Reserve and other regulators must act 
to avoid an economic disaster, according to a letter sent on Tuesday by 
a group of large investors.

"The climate crisis poses a systemic threat to financial markets and the 
real economy, with significant disruptive consequences on asset 
valuations and our nation's economic stability," reads the letter, which 
was signed by more than three dozen pension plans, fund managers and 
other financial institutions that together manage almost $1 trillion in 
assets.

That financial threat, combined with the physical risks posed by climate 
change, may create "disastrous impacts the likes of which we haven't 
seen before," the letter says. It urges the Fed, the Securities and 
Exchange Commission and other agencies to "explicitly integrate climate 
change across your mandates."

Investors worry that if regulators do not act, climate change may cause 
the price of some companies to fall suddenly, the effects of which may 
ricochet through the economy. Providing more information about that risk 
-- for example, by requiring companies to disclose more about their 
greenhouse gas emissions, or which of their facilities are at risk from 
rising seas -- could help investors make better decisions...
- -
Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Federal Reserve governor and deputy 
secretary of the Treasury who wrote the foreword to Ceres's list of 
recommendations, said that regulators in the United States were falling 
behind their counterparts in other countries, which have already begun 
imposing stress tests for climate change as well as other steps.

"You see very credible central banks, like the Bank of England and the 
European Central Bank, taking the risk of a climate calamity into their 
mission in a very disciplined and structured way," Ms. Raskin said. 
"These aren't fringe ideas."

While the changes don't require congressional approval, the objections 
of some Republican lawmakers to acting on climate change have had a 
chilling effect on regulators, said former Representative Carlos 
Curbelo, Republican of Florida, who signed the letter.

"Some civil servants logically fear that certain legislators, certain 
committees would come after them or attack them," Mr. Curbelo said. "By 
and large, regulators try to stay out of controversy."

Still, Mr. Curbelo said the need to act was clear. "The risks are real," 
he said, "and those of us who live here in South Florida observe them on 
a daily basis."

Christopher Flavelle focuses on how people, governments and industries 
try to cope with the effects of global warming. He received a 2018 
National Press Foundation award for coverage of the federal government's 
struggles to deal with flooding. @cflav
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/climate/investors-climate-threat-regulators.html

- - - -
*Major Investors To Fed: Act On Climate Change Or Face 'Disastrous' 
Economic Consequences*
Alison Durkee - Forbes Staff Business
TOPLINE A bipartisan group of 72 "public and private sector leaders," 
including 40 investors with nearly $1 trillion in assets, sent a letter 
to Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell Tuesday calling for the Fed to 
take action on climate change, noting that the climate crisis "poses a 
systemic threat to financial markets and the real economy," with 
potential for "disastrous impacts the likes of which we haven't seen 
before."...
- -
KEY FACTS
The signatories say Powell has "a responsibility to act on the climate 
crisis right now, and guide our transition to a net zero future."

The letter particularly cites the vulnerability of the financial markets 
amid the Covid-19 crisis, and notes "decisions that are being made right 
now in order to revitalize the economy could have impacts on climate 
change."

In addition to taking climate change into account regarding 
Covid-19-related decisions, the signatories say Powell must "implement a 
broader range of actions to explicitly integrate climate change across 
your mandates" in order to "protect the economy from any further 
disruptive shocks."

The letter points to a recent report from the Ceres Accelerator for 
Sustainable Capital Markets, which organized the letter, that outlines 
steps the Fed can take to address climate change, including integrating 
climate change into their oversight of financial institutions and 
considering climate change when implementing monetary policy "to keep 
the economy resilient in the face of disruptive risks."

Similar versions of the letter to Powell were also sent to the Office of 
the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance 
Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity 
Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Insurance Office, the Federal 
Housing Finance Agency, the Financial Stability Oversight Council and 
state insurance regulators.

The letter's signatories include environmental nonprofits like the 
Sierra Club alongside the state treasurer's offices in Maryland and 
Illinois, major investors and pension funds, including the New York and 
California State Comptroller's Offices and the Seattle City Employees' 
Retirement System.

CRUCIAL QUOTE
"It has become painfully clear how vulnerable our economic system is to 
systemic threats. Climate risk presents significant risks to our 
financial system, with the potential to compound with other crises in 
ways that could spell catastrophe," Maryland State Treasurer Nancy Kopp 
said in a statement about the letter. "These risks are manifesting right 
now, and we need regulatory action to manage them."

BIG NUMBER
$26 trillion: The economic gain through 2030 if the world transitions to 
a "low-carbon, sustainable" economy as compared with 
"business-as-usual," as projected in the 2018 report of the Global 
Commission on Economy and the Climate.

KEY BACKGROUND
Though the Ceres letters implore federal agencies to fight against 
climate change, they may find pushback from the Trump administration, as 
under President Donald Trump, the federal government has systematically 
dismantled federal regulations and actions on climate change. Trump 
pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, and a New York Times 
analysis finds that the administration has rolled back 68 environmental 
rules thus far, with another 32 currently in progress.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/07/21/major-investors-to-fed-act-on-climate-change-or-face-disastrous-economic-consequences/#1567725b5acd 




[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - July 23, 1979 *

July 23, 1979: The National Academy of Sciences begins work on a 
groundbreaking report regarding the risks of carbon pollution. The 
report makes it clear that the consequences of a warming world will be 
severe.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150820002948/http://people.atmos.ucla.edu/brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf

http://youtu.be/XB3S0fnOr0M

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