Addressing the United Nations
climate
summit in New
York City, President Barack Obama called climate
change
a ‘global threat’ that has ‘moved firmly into the present.’ Hobbled by a
deadlocked Congress, the president offered no new major policy
initiatives.
“Our citizens keep marching,” Obama said in reference to Sunday’s
historic People’s Climate
March.
“We cannot pretend we do not hear them. We have to answer the call.”
He also commented on the rise of extreme weather disasters around the
globe, including flooding in Miami, drought and floods in the heartland,
the West’s year-long wildfire season, and the catastrophic damage of
Superstorm Sandy. “No nation is immune,” he said, recognizing that “some
nations already live with far worse.”
Obama did not directly mention fossil fuel production or his
“all-of-the-above” approach to energy policy, unlike recent speeches on
climate change to domestic audiences, in which he has celebrated the
rise in domestic production of oil and natural gas. In fact, the speech
did not include the words “coal,” “oil,” “fossil fuels,” or “natural
gas.”
Hobbled by a legislative branch stymied by Republican opposition to
climate action or international climate funding, Obama made no new grand
pledges on behalf of the United States, instead highlighting the coming
EPA regulation of carbon pollution from power
plants, voluntary actions by corporate America, and a reduction in HFCs
under the Montreal Protocol.
“I believe, in the words of Dr. King, that there is such a thing as
being too late,” Obama said near the end of his speech. As the United
States is not currently leading the way in rapidly decarbonizing the
global economy, that statement may serve to summarize his presidential
legacy.
On Monday, Google chairman Eric Schmidt announced that his company has
ended its support for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
because of its persistent climate-change denial. The decision came after
a Schmidt made the announcement in response to a listener question on
the Diane Rehm radio
show.
“I think the consensus within the company was that that was some sort of
mistake,” Schmidt said of Google’s support for
ALEC, “and so we’re trying to not do that in
the future.”
Pressed to explain further, Schmidt harshly described the conservative
lobbying organization’s opposition to climate action as “really hurting
our children” and “making the world a much worse place” by “literally
lying.”
Well, the company has a very strong view that we should make decisions
in politics based on facts — what a shock. And the facts of climate
change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate
change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting
our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse
place. And so we should not be aligned with such people — they’re
just, they’re just literally lying.
Listen here:
ALEC president Lisa B. Nelson issued an angry
press release following Schmidt’s announcement, blaming the decision on
“public
pressure from
left-leaning individuals and organizations who intentionally confuse
free market policy perspectives for climate change denial.”
Disclosure: As the campaign manager for Forecast the Facts, I founded
the “Don’t Fund
Evil”
campaign in June 2013 challenging Google to stop funding climate-denial
groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and
ALEC, and climate-denial politicians such as
Sen. Jim
Inhofe
(R-Okla.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
For over a year, Google representatives stonewalled over the company’s
conflicting stand on climate change and its political support for
climate deniers. Google’s clean-energy lead Gray Demasi had no
answer
for why his company supported ALEC, when I
asked him at a November 2013 Greenpeace green tech event.
Now, Schmidt’s words echo an opinion
piece
I wrote in December 2013 on the eve of ALEC’s
annual DC conference, which featured a keynote by Cruz:
Unlike ALEC and Cruz, Google employees
support scientific facts. Unlike ALEC and
Cruz, Google employees are investing in a future powered by 100
percent renewable energy.
The “Don’t Fund Evil” call to drop ALEC was
joined in December 2013 by the Sierra
Club,
SumOfUs,
RootsAction
and the Center for Media and Democracy. The coalition of climate,
corporate, and good-government organizations mobilized over 230,000
citizens to petition the search giant. In addition, Google was the
target of a shareholder
resolution
brought by Walden Asset Management challenging Google’s support for the
anti-climate group.
Added pressure came in August when Google competitor Microsoft left
ALEC.
At the beginning of September, over 50 organizations, including several
labor unions, environmental organizations, racial justice groups, and
other progressive organizations signed on to a public
letter
asking Google to follow suit.
Google’s decision to drop ALEC is an important
first step in restoring the integrity of its ‘don’t be evil’ motto.
Unfortunately, the company is still financing extremist groups like the
‘CO2 Is Life’ Competitive Enterprise Institute and dozens of denier
politicians. If Eric Schmidt wants to be taken seriously, he has to do a
lot more cleaning up. It’s time for Susan Molinari, who pushed Google
into this situation, to go.
Forecast the Facts and SumOfUs have since expanded the Don’t Fund Evil
campaign into the Disrupt Denial
campaign, which calls on
all corporations to stop financing climate-denial politicians.
Presidential spouse and contender Hillary
Clinton has a busy agenda at the Clinton Global Initiative this year.
She will open the conference on Monday and close it on Wednesday, with
several appearances in between. Below is her public
agenda:
Sunday, September 21
6-8 PM Clinton Global Citizen Awards
Monday, September 22
12 PM Opening Plenary: opening conversation with Jim Yong Kim,
President, World Bank Group and Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President,
and CEO, IBM
Tuesday, September 23
5 PM Plenary on job training: remarks on the commitment announcements
Wednesday, September 24
8:45 AM Plenary on equality for girls on women: opening conversation
with Bill Gates’ wife Melinda Gates
1:30 PM Breakout session: Filmed conversation with Sanjay Gupta on
“investing in babies’ minds” with John McCain’s wife Cindy McCain, Dr.
Nadine Burke Harris, Children Television Workshop’s Rosemarie T.
Truglio, Harlem Children’s Zone’s Geoffrey Canada
3:30 PM Closing Plenary: with Bill Clinton, astronauts Cady Coleman
and Reid Wiseman, X PRIZE billionaire
Peter H. Diamandis, Nelson Mandela widow Graça Machel
(President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver brief remarks at
approximately 2 PM on Tuesday, the day of the UN Climate Summit.)
According to Popular
Resistance,
a website associated with some members of the Occupy Wall Street
collective in New York City, activists meeting in Zucotti Park agreed to
attempt an occupation of the Dag Hammerskold Plaza in front of UN
headquarters.
The civil disobedience assembly is scheduled to begin during the
People’s Climate
March
taking place several blocks west on Sunday, September 21, and continue
until the conclusion of the UN Climate Summit on Wednesday.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) rejects the scientific fact of anthropogenic
global warming. In an October 2012 interview with Arizona Public
Radio,
Flake questioned whether global warming is manmade:
“Certainly, nobody can deny that we’ve had several years of warmer
temperatures. If that signals just a routine change that is manmade or
not, I don’t think anybody can say definitely.”
Listen:
In reality, the carbon-dioxide greenhouse effect is a physical fact
known since the 1800s. The only scientifically plausible systematic
explanation for the rapid and continuing warming of the planetary
climate since 1950 is industrial greenhouse pollution. WIthout global
policy to end the combustion of fossil fuels, concentrations are
expected to double from current levels within decades.
Computing giant
Microsoft has left the American Legislative Exchange Council, a
conservative lobbying group that promotes climate change denial and
opposes renewable energy, a coalition of climate-activist investors
announced today. The Sustainability
Group and Walden Asset
Management released a press release
announcing that Microsoft left ALEC in July
2014:
Last year, The Sustainability Group of Loring, Wolcott and Coolidge
and Walden Asset Management engaged Microsoft over its affiliation
with the controversial model legislation group American Legislative
Exchange Council, or ALEC. Microsoft is a
leader on carbon issues – in 2012, it committed to becoming carbon
neutral, and is one of the largest corporate purchasers of renewable
energy. Thus, we believe that its affiliation with
ALEC, which is actively fighting policies
that promote renewable energy, was incongruous. In addition, there
were numerous other ALEC actions that
conflicted directly with Microsoft’s values.
We are pleased to report Microsoft is no longer a member of
ALEC and is not financially supporting the
organization in any way.
In emails dated June 30 and July 14 2014, Microsoft confirmed this
decision:
“As we discussed, in 2014 Microsoft decided to no longer participate
in the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Communications and
Technology Task Force, which had been our only previous involvement
with ALEC. With this decision, we no longer
contribute any dues to ALEC.
“we are no longer members of ALEC and do not
provide the organization with financial support of any kind.”
We commend Microsoft on its commitment to open dialogue with
shareholders, and for making this important decision.
The full text of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s speech introducing
the draft rule for greenhouse pollution from existing power plants, June
2, 2014.
About a month ago, I took a trip to the Cleveland
Clinic. I met a lot of great people, but one stood out—even if he needed
to stand on a chair to do it. Parker Frey is 10 years old. He’s
struggled with severe asthma all his life. His mom said despite his
challenges, Parker’s a tough, active kid—and a stellar hockey player.
But sometimes, she says, the air is too dangerous for him to play
outside. In the United States of America, no parent should ever have
that worry.
That’s why EPA exists. Our job, directed by
our laws, reaffirmed by our courts, is to protect public health and the
environment. Climate change, fueled by carbon pollution, supercharges
risks not just to our health, but to our communities, our economy, and
our way of life. That’s why EPA is delivering
on a vital piece of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.
I want to thank Janet McCabe, our Acting Assistant Administrator at the
Office of Air and Radiation, and the entire
EPA team who worked so hard to deliver this
proposal. They should be very proud of their work; I know I am.
Today, EPA is proposing a Clean Power Plan
that will cut carbon pollution from our power sector, by using cleaner
energy sources, and cutting energy waste.
Although we limit pollutants like mercury, sulfur, and arsenic,
currently, there are no limits on carbon pollution from power plants,
our nation’s largest source. For the sake of our families’ health and
our kids’ future, we have a moral obligation to act on climate. When we
do, we’ll turn climate risk into business opportunity, we’ll spur
innovation and investment, and we’ll build a world-leading clean energy
economy.
The science is clear. The risks are clear. And the high costs of climate
inaction keep piling up.