Climate Change

Here is a statement from Brett Walter, Founder & CEO, Climate Action Now:

Although it sometimes doesn’t feel that way, the last four years have seen unprecedented progress on climate. Millions of people worldwide worked tirelessly to achieve these gains, but the achievements of one person in particular stand out above all others: those of President Joe Biden.
Under Joe’s leadership, the U.S. government:

• Rejoined the historic Paris Climate Agreement and reclaimed a measure of U.S. leadership on climate that had been forfeited under Trump.
• Passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which allocated significant funding for climate-related projects, including electric vehicle charging infrastructure, public transit, and clean energy research and development.
• Passed the historic Inflation Reduction Act, which unlocked hundreds of billions of public and private dollars to accelerate the energy transition, creating hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs.
• Paused expansion of a catastrophic build-out of LNG infrastructure.
• Passed historic regulations to reduce emissions in our transportation and energy sectors.
• Protected 3.5 million acres of natural areas for future generations.
• Tailored policies to address environmental justice and promote equity in climate.
  And so much more.

It has been an extraordinary record of achievement on climate.

On Sunday, July 21, President Biden made the ultimate sacrifice for any politician — he put aside his political ambitions for the sake of the nation.
We grieve the loss of Joe’s leadership after his current term, and we are immensely grateful to him for his vision, his perseverance, and his unwavering commitment to protecting our planet for future generations. His legacy as a great climate president will be remembered. We dedicate ourselves to protecting and building upon that legacy.

Although we have entered a new period of uncertainty, we believe the next few months will see a rebirth of hope and democratic energy. Trump’s strongest line of attack — Joe’s apparent infirmity — has vanished with a single Tweet. Big donors sitting on the sidelines will come flooding out onto the field. Young minds that were closed to Joe because of Gaza will reopen. Those who had decided against him because of his debate performance are back in play. And those climate warriors who have soldiered on under a cloud of dread will have their hearts lifted with new hope. The 2024 Democratic Convention will be the most watched and exciting event of the year and a testimony to the vitality of our democracy. We can’t wait to watch it unfold!

The only question that remains is whether Joe’s sacrifice and the newfound hope and energy will be sufficient to defeat a Republican Party that, until Sunday, was jubilant and confident of victory. Today, they are not so jubilant. And perhaps a bit less confident.

In the coming months, we will spend countless hours writing postcards and sending texts to disengaged environmental voters. We will dig so deep into our pockets that our arms will hurt. We will use the CAN app to send hundreds of thousands of messages to media organizations, business leaders, politicians, and others urging them to make climate an issue because this is the issue on which Trump is most vulnerable.

The good news is that this fight is winnable. Trump is a weak candidate. Most Americans do not share his values or goals and don’t want him to be president again. Our job is to ensure that he isn’t.

Action is the antidote to despair. Our actions have more power than we often realize—especially when we’re not acting alone. And now, more than ever, we are united.

So, let’s get to work!

Author: CBS News
URL: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/extreme-weather-opinion-poll-2023-1-10/
As Americans look ahead, more than half are pessimistic about the prospect of extreme weather events and climate, particularly those who report having faced more extreme weather in their local area in recent years. They say this experience with extreme weather has led them to be more concerned about climate change.

And climate is an issue most Americans want to see addressed by political leaders: a big majority want their representative in Congress to *support* efforts to fight climate change, rather than *oppose* such efforts.

Some see climate change as a more urgent issue than others. Younger Americans, in particular, place a lot of importance on tackling climate change — it’s among the top priorities they want this Congress to focus on. The percentage of those ages 18-29 who say it should be a “high” priority is the highest of any other age group.

The U.S. Has Billions for Wind and Solar Projects. Good Luck Plugging Them In.

Author: Brad Plumer

Wind and Solar Projects

An explosion in proposed clean energy ventures has overwhelmed the system for connecting new power sources to homes and businesses.

Plans to install 3,000 acres of solar panels in Kentucky and Virginia are delayed for years. Wind farms in Minnesota and North Dakota have been abruptly canceled. And programs to encourage Massachusetts and Maine residents to adopt solar power are faltering.

The energy transition poised for takeoff in the United States amid record investment in wind, solar and other low-carbon technologies is facing a serious obstacle: The volume of projects has overwhelmed the nation’s antiquated systems to connect new sources of electricity to homes and businesses.

More than [8,100 energy projects](https://emp.lbl.gov/queues) — the vast majority of them wind, solar and batteries — were waiting for permission to connect to electric grids at the end of 2021, up from 5,600 the year before, jamming the system known as interconnection.

PJM Interconnection, which operates the nation’s largest regional grid, stretching from Illinois to New Jersey, has been so inundated by connection requests that last year it [announced a freeze on new applications](https://insidelines.pjm.com/ferc-approves-interconnection-process-reform-plan/) until 2026, so that it can work through a backlog of thousands of proposals, mostly for renewable energy.

Fewer than one-fifth of solar and wind proposals actually make it through the so-called interconnection queue, [according to research](https://emp.lbl.gov/news/record-amounts-zero-carbon-electricity) from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The landmark climate bill he signed last year [provides $370 billion in subsidies](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/02/climate/manchin-deal-emissions-cuts.html) to help make low-carbon energy technologies — like wind, solar, nuclear or batteries — cheaper than fossil fuels.

But the law does little to address many practical barriers to building clean energy projects, such as [permitting holdups](https://thebulletin.org/2023/02/cutting-the-red-tape-for-cleaner-energy-the-pros-and-cons-of-permitting-reform/), [local opposition](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/climate/wind-farm-renewable-energy-fight.html) or transmission constraints. Unless those obstacles get resolved, experts say, there’s a risk that billions in federal subsidies won’t translate into the deep emissions cuts envisioned by lawmakers.

A potentially bigger problem for solar and wind is that, in many places around the country, the local grid is clogged, unable to absorb more power.

That means if a developer wants to build a new wind farm, it might have to pay not just for a simple connecting line, but also for deeper grid upgrades elsewhere.

These costs can be unpredictable. In 2018, EDP North America, a renewable energy developer, proposed a 100-megawatt wind farm in southwestern Minnesota, estimating it would have to spend $10 million connecting to the grid. But after the grid operator completed its analysis, EDP learned the upgrades would cost $80 million. It canceled the project.

A better approach, Mr. Gramlich said, would be for grid operators to plan transmission upgrades that are broadly beneficial and spread the costs among a wider set of energy providers and users, rather than having individual developers fix the grid bit by bit, through a chaotic process.

As grid delays pile up, regulators have taken notice. Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed two major reforms to [streamline interconnection queues](https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/ferc-proposes-interconnection-reforms-address-queue-backlogs) and encourage grid operators to [do more long-term planning](https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/ferc-issues-transmission-nopr-addressing-planning-cost-allocation).

If the United States can’t fix its grid problems, it could struggle to tackle climate change. Researchers at the Princeton-led REPEAT project [recently estimated](https://repeatproject.org/docs/REPEAT_IRA_Transmission_2022-09-22.pdf) that new federal subsidies for clean energy could cut electricity emissions in half by 2030. But that assumes transmission capacity expands twice as fast over the next decade. If that doesn’t happen, the researchers found, emissions could actually increase as solar and wind get stymied and existing gas and coal plants run more often to power electric cars.

theguardian.com

December 17, 2022

Enshrining the curriculum in law insulates the subject from budget cuts and culture wars related to the climate crisis.

• Author: the Guardian
• Category: article
• URL: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/17/climate-change-studies-connecticut

Starting next July, Connecticut will become one of the first states in America to mandate climate change studies across its public schools as part of its science curriculum.

The new law passed earlier this year comes as part of the state’s attempts to address concerns over the short duration – and in some cases, absence – of climate change studies in classrooms. The requirement follows in the footsteps of New Jersey, which in 2020 became the first state to mandate K-12 climate change education across its school districts.

Connecticut state representative Christine Palm

who is vice chair of the Connecticut general assembly’s environment committee, first launched her legislative efforts to pass a climate education mandate in 2018. Through various surveys and petitions, Palm found that to many students and educators, climate change education is either not being taught at all in schools or not being taught enough.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a set of K-12 science content standards, are currently adopted by Connecticut and include standards pertaining to climate change studies which more educators will rely on as the requirement kicks in next year. So far, only 20 states and DC have adopted the NGSS.

A global survey conducted last year amongst 10,000 children and young people across ten countries, including the US, found that 59% of respondents were very or extremely worried about the climate crisis. Over 50% reported feeling emotions including sadness, anxiousness, anger, powerlessness and guilt. Seventy-five percent of respondents said that they think the future is frightening.

“We absolutely have got to face it head on, and it starts when children are very young. We need to arm them with the tools to be part of a solution to a problem they had no hand in creating.”

Pull investments from companies not committed to environment, pope says – VATICAN CITY (Reuters).

Pope Francis urged people to pull investments from companies that are not committed to protecting the environment, adding his voice to calls for the economic model that emerges from the coronavirus pandemic to be a sustainable one.

Francis spoke in a video message for an online event called “Countdown Global Launch, A Call to Action on Climate Change”.

“Science tells us, every day with more precision, that we need to act urgently … if we are to have any hope of avoiding radical and catastrophic climate change,” he said.

The pope listed three action points: better education about the environment, sustainable agriculture and access to clean water, and a transition away from fossil fuels.

“One way to encourage this change is to lead companies towards the urgent need to commit to the integral care of our common home, excluding from investments companies that do not meet (these) parameters … and rewarding those that (do),” he said.

He said the pandemic had made the need to address the climate crisis and related social problems even more pressing.

“The current economic system is unsustainable. We are faced with a moral imperative … to rethink many things,” he said, listing means of production, consumerism, waste, indifference to the poor, and harmful energy sources.

In June, a Vatican document urged Catholics to disinvest from the armaments and fossil fuel industries and to monitor companies in sectors such as mining for possible damage to the environment.

Other speakers and activists at the online event included actress Jane Fonda, Britain’s Prince William, former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.