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As Heat-Fueled Hurricane Threatens Washington, Global Climate Leaders Begin to Act in California

This article is more than 5 years old.

This week Hurricane Florence, a massive Category 4 storm made larger by warmer than normal ocean temperatures, is bearing down on the Mid-Atlantic coast, including the Washington, DC region, where President Trump and many other Republicans continue to deny the very climate change impacts happening all around them. Record flooding and rainfall are predicted.

This follows a killingly hot summer and record wildfires in North America and Europe, and parts of Asia and North Africa, and extreme weather costs of more than $300 billion in 2017 in the U.S. alone. Yet as the world bakes or deals with flooding and other climate change impacts, in recent weeks the political scene on climate change has suddenly gotten cold feet around much of the globe.

In France, Energy Minister Hulot, the key climate advocate in President Macron’s cabinet, has resigned out of frustration at the slow progress on climate action in France, the EU and globally.

In Australia, the Conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was thrown out of office when a right-wing faction in his own party refused to support his modest climate change legislation, and instead replaced him with new Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has promised to oppose the bill.

In America, Donald Trump has rolled back the key Obama-era climate regulations on power plants and vehicles, making it far harder for the US to keep up its momentum in cutting emissions, let alone assume the mantle of new climate leadership needed from the world’s largest and most technologically advanced economy. As if to dramatize America’s regression from the vanguard of climate protection under Obama to global embarrassment under Trump, Senator John McCain passed away—the last Republican Presidential nominee to make climate protection a priority.

And in Bangkok, at the latest United Nations climate negotiations, several major nations including the U.S. have attempted to water down the Paris commitment of $100 billion annually for emissions mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, by suggesting that even private sector commercial loans be counted toward this total.

All of this political backtracking is occurring at precisely the moment when new major scientific  studies are showing us that the window to prevent runaway, uncontrollable climate change is closing much faster than previously understood. This “domino effect” of cascading climate impacts means that a “hot house” super-heated planet is increasingly likely without rapid action to peak emissions by 2020, and reach zero carbon emissions by 2050, while cutting short-lived super pollutants like HFCs, methane and black carbon at three times the current rate of reduction.

For some reason, many of our global leaders seem oblivious to the stakes involved:  nothing less than out of control warming that will literally change the face of the world, displacing populations and cities, forcing millions into refugee status, crippling agriculture, and leaving billions subject to killing heat.

This leadership void must be filled, and fast. That will be the challenge for the Global Climate Action Summit set to begin September 12 in San Francisco, hosted by California Governor Jerry Brown.

Just today, Gov. Brown has signed legislation into law requiring that 60% of his state’s electric power come from clean sources by 2030, and 100% by 2045. This is just the sort of leadership that must be copied over time by others states and nations around the world.

But as climate science and policy experts Mario Molina, V. Ramanathan and Durwood Zaelke noted in a San Diego Union Tribute opinion piece immediately ahead of the Summit, “while 100 percent clean energy is critical for the world, it will only reduce future warming by about 0.2C at 2050, with its major benefits kicking in later, avoiding about 1.2C of warming by 2100.”

They cite a major study they co-chaired along with 30 other top experts last year finding that in addition to peaking global carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 and zeroing them out by 2050, the world must also cut super climate pollutants like HFCs, methane, and black carbon at roughly triple the current pace.

The super pollutants are being targeted by the UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition and its 61 partner countries, collectively responsible for more than 50 percent of methane and black carbon emissions. If the coalition’s solutions are adopted worldwide, the super pollutant mitigation by itself can avoid as much 0.60C warming before 2050 and delay the 20C threshold for another two decades. Phasing out HFCs under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol will alone avoid up to 0.50C of warming before 2100, while collectively the cuts to short-lived climate pollutants will avoid about 1.20C of warming in that period.

In conjunction with the Climate Summit, leaders in San Francisco are holding a "Super Pollutant Day" September 11 to illustrate how cutting HFCs, methane, and black carbon is a key element in keeping temperatures from runaway levels, with top Chinese climate official Xie Zhenhua, UN Environment Program director Eric Solheim and other leading experts expected.

World leaders at the Global Climate Action Summit must ignore the climate nihilists in Washington, DC and Canberra, and begin to act fast. The climate challenge is here, now, all around us, costing thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in damages a year already. If we are to prevent runaway climate destabilization, we must demand that our leaders move quickly--or elect new leaders who will.

 

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