Climate Change

During his two years leading the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis has washed the feet of inmates, proposed larger roles for women in the church, and famously shifted the institutional tone toward gay acceptance, saying, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

This week’s G7 leaders declaration struck some strong messages in speaking to the need to address climate and energy challenges and in supporting developing countries as they transition to low carbon economies. This is especially true in regards to language on the necessary phase out of fossil fuels over the course of the century. Yet the leading global economies missed some important details in mapping actions that would benefit the poor.

From WRI: Putting a Price on Carbon: A Handbook for U.S. Policymakers is the first in a series of papers that the World Resources Institute will produce with the aim of providing a clear and comprehensive understanding of the key issues that will need to be addressed if the United States ultimately imposes a national price on carbon. The Handbook lays out what is already known about the design and effects of different approaches to pricing carbon, with a focus on carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs.

The call today by Pope Francis in his transformational papal encyclical on the environment, reminds us that climate change is first and foremost about people, and it’s the poorest among us that will suffer the most.

Like the tobacco industry in its past, fossil fuel giants have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns to convince us that climate science is not trustworthy. To understand why they would do so, we need to only look at two numbers. The first is $257 billion. This is the profit made in 2014 by Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell and others for extracting, transporting, refining, distributing and trading fossil fuels in the United States and in Canada alone.

A new report by Fellow Evan Hansen's company, Downstream Stratgies, and the WVU College of Law's Center for Energy & Sustainable Development focuses on West Virginia's proposed Clean Power Plan, which sets state-specific standards that would reduce carbon dioxide pollution from existing power plants. The proposed rule provides states flexibility in the design and implementation of state plans and broad discretion in selecting pollution reduction measures and market-based mechanisms to achieve the required reductions.

Linwood Pendleton was quoted in the French newspaper Le Monde on the effects of global warming on oceans. Read more (in French)