Thanks for covering breaking news on climate change, including two major scientific reports and the city’s new Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP). From frightening to hopeful, each underscores the urgency to take swift, decisive action and some strategies that can get the job done.
The 4th National Climate Assessment sets the U.S. price tag of unresolved climate change at multiple hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century. This on the heels of the IPCC’s Interim Report confirming that the climate is warming faster than predicted and reducing our target from 2 to 1.5 degrees C average global temperature rise. Business as usual means reaching 1.5 in slightly over a decade.
Holding this line will require swift, decisive, and unprecedented effort. Reports say that pricing greenhouse gas emissions is a necessary early step, and Flagstaff’s CAAP includes innovative carbon pricing as a way to incentivize local emissions reductions.
Flagstaff’s CAAP and our status as the first Arizona city to support a national revenue-neutral carbon price — carbon fee and dividend (CFD) — is hopeful. Congress returning climate action to the 2019 national agenda is too. CFD, supported by Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s 100,000+ members, and hundreds of business, faith, science, and community thought leaders already has traction in Washington. It reduces emissions, saves lives, protects the poor and grows the economy. There is good reason to think that this non-partisan policy can become law. Prepare for the 2019 Congress and Council sessions. Learn more get involved: www.citizensclimatelobby.org and www.flagstaff.az.gov/1732/Climate.
SHAWN NEWELL
Source: Climate change plans crucial to the future from AZ Daily Sun
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