After a lifetime of eating with disposable knives and forks, Michael Caballero, a 25-year-old industrial engineer at FedEx, looked the plastic cutlery in his workplace cafeteria in a new way. “I think in terms of process,” he says, tallying the environmental upheaval required to manufacture each fork — the extraction of oil from the ground, the overseas shipping, the refining and molding in a factory, the waste created by its packaging — a massive amount of pollution created for just a few minutes of usage before being tossed in a landfill.
Today, thanks to EcoTech Visions, a Miami incubator for green enterprises, Caballero’s 18-month-old company, Earthware, Inc., is building better disposable silverware. At EcoTech Visions’s current headquarters in Liberty City, Fla., Caballero is a member of a class of 26 “ecopreneurs” who receive 15 months of support and have access to office space, manufacturing equipment and other environmentally-minded folks. In the co-working space, architects and designers chat with electricians and engineers — a technical collaboration that’s rare but vital to successfully manufacture products, from battery-run motorcycles and aquaponics systems to plastic-based handbags and aloe salves.
APPLY: EcoTech Visions is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program today.
The buzzing incubator is the vision of Dr. Pandwe Gibson, an African-American businesswoman who wanted to spark a sea change in commerce by supporting green jobs, particularly manufacturing ones. Because the consequences of environmental harm are so visible in southern Florida (as atmospheric temperatures rise, the sea levels follow, causing the Atlantic’s high tides to annually creep nearly one inch closer to the art deco real estate along Miami’s coastline), city residents are eager to embrace products that won’t further damage the Earth in the process. When Gibson first came up with EcoTech Visions three years ago, she used her iPad to share the idea with anyone who had time to listen to her elevator pitch. Since its launch, the incubator has created 15 new jobs, won grants for nine of its companies to work on prototypes and helped three other businesses obtain seed funding to kick start operations.
Last year, EcoTech was one of NBCUniversal Foundation’s 21st Century Solutions grant challenge winners, supporting progressive community solutions. “What we love is that it has the four Cs — it’s a catalyst for out-of-the-box solutions, it offers a destination for collaboration, it’s building a community for idea-creators and problem solvers and it’s driving local change by expanding small businesses and jobs,” says Beth Colleton, senior vice president of corporate social responsibility at NBCUniversal.
EcoTech Visions played a vital role in helping Earthware produce a durable alternative to the 16 billion pieces of plasticware thrown away in America each year (its cutlery is made with a corn-based resin that decomposes in just six months) and grow to its current state. Perhaps most importantly, the incubator covers the entry-level costs that can prohibit a business from entering the market — office space and manufacturing equipment — while Caballero still works at Fed-Ex to make a living. Without the support, he would have needed to front the money for Earthware’s first injection molding machine (which spits out products in the shape of pre-made molds) and a consultant to help him pick the right one; instead, Caballero pays a small rental fee to EcoTech in order to use the machine they purchased on his behalf.
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Additionally, the incubator introduced Caballero to other locals that could bolster his burgeoning enterprise, including sustainability advocates and potential customers, like the local school board, which recently put out a request for compostable cutlery bids. “The whole goal is to become a leading provider of compostable, sustainable products, using Miami as a hub into Latin America and the Caribbean,” footholds to an international expansion, Caballero says.
Clean tech and green manufacturing, as sectors, could provide the biggest hope of restoring jobs that have been lost due to the historic decline in American manufacturing (nationwide, about 5 million have disappeared since the millennium). Unlike other compostable products, which ship foreign-made cutlery to the U.S., Caballero’s eco-friendly business aims to create high-paying, manufacturing jobs right here in America; the two dozen other companies at EcoTech Visions will only add to this green wave of business. Caballero believes green industries will be most successful if others join the movement. The demand for sustainable products is already there, he notes, but supply will only match those levels if more entrepreneurs and manufacturers arrive on the scene. Even though they’ll technically be his competitors, there will be enough supply that prices will fall and consumers generally will see planet-friendly products as the new standard.
EcoTech Visions is looking to expand nationally, starting with Los Angeles next. If it achieves its goals, not only will Caballero be just one of countless American manufacturers producing environmentally-conscious items and providing jobs around the country, but the incubator could find itself leading the United States into the green industrial revolution.
EcoTech Visions is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!
Tag: Climate Change
The Volunteer Army That’s Powering Denver’s Environmental Revolution
A decade ago, inspired by Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Denver residents Sue Okerson and Kevin Suchlicki met up with other neighborhood activists to chat about climate change. Grand ideas like protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and tax credits for wind and solar energies were mentioned, but everyone really wanted practical ways to help the planet right now. Having a light bulb moment, Sucklicki tossed out, “Well, what about something as simple as changing out everyone’s front porch light?”
Soon after, Okerson and Suchlicki started by handing out compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) at a local food bank and canvassing their neighborhoods. “We just went out and bought the bulbs, knocked on the door, talked to people and said, ‘What do you think?’” The pair explained to homeowners that CFLs use only one-quarter the energy of a traditional incandescent bulb — saving about $30 in electricity costs over the light’s lifespan. (Not to mention the greenhouse gas emissions it removes the environment.) After hearing the benefits, most let Okerson and Suchlicki switch out their porch bulb.
After they’d covered nearby blocks, this two-man light bulb brigade reached out to Groundwork Denver, a local nonprofit that could take their idea across the Mile-High City, focusing on low-income neighborhoods. Today, the Porch Bulb Project’s work goes beyond spiral-shaped light bulbs, offering to revamp homes with the latest green technology — all for free. To date, 4,500 volunteers have swapped out 21,400 front porch bulbs, completed 2,480 home energy assessments, made major energy improvements (like adding insulation or replacing furnaces, water heaters or refrigerators) in 1,132 houses and planted 2,660 trees. “The light bulb just became the foot in the door for a bigger conversation about climate change,” says Wendy Hawthorne, executive director of the Porch Bulb Project.
When Okerson first started knocking on doors, she had a dim view of how quickly Americans could change their ways. “People are lazy,” she remarks. “It isn’t going to happen in my lifetime that the seas will rise and everything will go to hell in a hand-basket… It’s not a crisis in their face.” Yet when Okerson last went out to with a Porch Bulb Project delegation, she noticed many houses with CFLs already lighting their entryways. “Okay, so we have done something,” she thought to herself. “That’s a really good feeling.”
Hopefully that feeling will keep these environmental soldiers dedicated to their mission for a long time.
MORE: Can Americans Accept This Environmentally-Friendly Burial Method?
How Coral Reefs Might Resist Climate Change, America’s Coolest Mayor Runs for Senate and More
Unnatural Selection, The New Yorker
The ocean holds many wonders, but perhaps none are more precious and more fragile than its tropical coral reefs. Coral, at first sight, appears to be a lifeless rock, but it’s actually a miniature animal that houses an even smaller plant inside its cells — a symbiotic relationship developed over millennia. Ruth Gates, a University of Hawaii marine biologist, is attempting to speed up that evolutionary process and create a “super coral” by exposing it to the harsher conditions expected by next century: warmer, more acidic water caused by climate change. It’s a new take on conservation — call it “assisted evolution” — that’s also being tested on forests in Syracuse, N.Y., where a professor is genetically engineering a fungus-resistant chestnut tree. Can these scientists do what Mother Nature couldn’t?
This Mayor Wants To Give Struggling Cities a Front-Row Seat in D.C., Next City
Standing at 6’8” with a shaved head and tattoos on his arms, the mayor of Braddock, a Pittsburgh suburb hammered by industrial decline, doesn’t look like your typical public official. Dubbed America’s coolest mayor, John Fetterman has implemented some of the brightest ideas for urban renewal, as he replaced a moribund steel industry with public art, urban agriculture, craft beer and other hipster fare. Now, Fetterman is competing in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s Senate seat (currently held by a Republican). If he wins, he’s promised a new Marshall Plan (like the billions invested in Europe after WWII) for America’s forgotten cities. In most election cycles, Fetterman would be written off as an outsider without a chance, but in this unpredictable year, this fresh candidate may just have a shot.
The Resurrection of St. Benedict’s, 60 Minutes
Up until 1967, St. Benedict’s Prep was your run-of-the-mill Catholic boy’s school, serving upper-middle class, white families in Newark, N.J. But when racial tensions exploded into bloody riots that summer, whites fled the city en masse. The school nearly collapsed (it closed for one year), but faculty member Edwin Leahy, then 26, quickly got it back on its feet. It reopened with one big change: students would run the school themselves, keeping each other out of gangs and competing for top marks. Of its 550 students today, nearly all from poor neighborhoods, only two percent don’t finish high school — in a city with a 30 percent dropout rate. Intellect isn’t the major problem in American education, Leahy, a Benedictine monk, argues; it’s all about making students’ realizing their own potential and see “the fact that they are a gift to somebody else.”
Tech Visionaries Look to Disrupt Traditional Education, The Move to Make Climate Change a Nonpartisan Issue and More
Learn Different, The New Yorker
Brooklyn’s AltSchool is just one of seven “educational ecosystems” (there’s six in the Bay Area as well) that uses technology to create a personalized learning experience for each individual student. The brainchild of Max Ventilla, an entrepreneur and former Google employee, AltSchool aims to turn education on its head: teaching skills that are applicable to the 21st century workplace instead of the memorization of facts — creating an educational model grounded in Silicon Valley values. But can be replicated in existing public schools nationwide?
Can a GOP Donor Get Conservatives to Fight Climate Change?, CityLab
What can get politicians to put partisan bickering aside? North Carolina businessman Jay Faison is bringing congressional candidates from both sides of the aisle together to support clean energy initiatives, arguing that these policies (which are notoriously used to drive a wedge between the left and the right) increase jobs and energy independence, while also reducing carbon pollution.
Government Goes Agile, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Bringing the federal government into the digital age doesn’t have to increase the deficit — or be as disastrous as the rollout of HealthCare.gov. Implementing the commonly-used tech practice of agile development, groups like the United States Digital Services and 18F are giving citizens frustration-free, web-based opportunities to interact with their government for a fraction of the cost.
Obama Promised to Make the Environment a Main Policy Issue. Did He?
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” That’s what Barack Obama promised in 2008 upon winning the Democratic nomination. Seven years later, he’s returning to his pledge as he ponders his legacy and his final 500 days in office.
Was this really the moment when climate change reversed course? NationSwell asked dozens of scientists, historians, jurists, former EPA administrators, legislators and presidential candidates a simple question: How will future generations judge Barack Obama’s record on energy and the environment? Not surprisingly, the responses vary. Some were glowing (“Barack Obama is destined to go down as the greatest climate change-fighting president in history,” says Ed Chen, national communications director for the Natural Resources Defense Council), while others were hesitant to issue a verdict: “It’s a very unfinished climate legacy, full of steps forwards, sideways, and back,” says Bill McKibben, former staff writer at The New Yorker and founder of 350.org, a grassroots climate change movement.
Indeed, the 44th president faltered on environmental legislation in his first term, preferring to expend his political capital on the Affordable Care Act. But Obama’s use of regulatory authority and his agreement with China likely ensure his place in the pantheon of modern environmental champions.
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BACKPEDALLING FROM CAMPAIGN PROMISES
It’s taken nearly two full terms to bring his labors to fruition. Shortly after defeating Sen. John McCain in the race for the Oval Office, Obama set two bills in motion on which he would stake his legacy: the health care law in the upper chamber, and in the lower, a comprehensive environmental bill that included a market-based carbon cap-and-trade system and renewable energy standards, co-authored by Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat whose amendments strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1990.
In June 2009, Waxman’s bill narrowly passed the House by a vote of 219-212. “There was an apparent window of opportunity” in that moment, says D. James Baker, a scientist who headed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under Bill Clinton, but by December, “the administration was eager for a quick victory and opted for health care.” The climate change bill became Obama’s “stepchild,” a senior official told The New Yorker.
Offering concessions to earn goodwill from the Republican caucus, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed to delay implementation of carbon regulations for another year. Soon after, the president announced huge sections of U.S. waters along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico open for drilling and withdrew support for the versions of Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill being negotiated in the Democratic-led Senate.
“Whether with Obama’s support [a nationwide cap-and-trade law] could have happened is a good question,” says Baker, “but there is no question that the decision to back off was demoralizing to the environment and climate change community.” Days later, as oil bubbled up from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Democrats hung their heads in defeat. “The missing piece of his legacy is national climate change legislation, which he and Congress failed to pass,” says Kenneth Kimmel, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
MAKING USE OF REGULATION, NOT LEGISLATION
That’s not to say Obama failed completely during his first term. The 2009 stimulus bill designated $90 billion for a bevy of green initiatives: retrofitting homes for energy efficiency, fueling development in wind and solar power, modernizing the grid, training employees for green jobs, building high-speed rail, researching carbon capture for coal-burning plants and manufacturing cleaner cars.
“The stimulus package gave President Obama a chance to invest in renewables early in his first term, allowing him to make progress on the issues unlike most other recent presidents, who have been forced for political reasons to leave critical environmental issues to their second terms,” says Baker. If anything, the president’s preference for working outside the legislature set the standard for his later environmental accomplishments. After the bruising battle over healthcare and the Republican sweep of the 2010 midterm elections, Obama took the path of least resistance.
Waxman retired last year after 20 terms, but you can still sense his frustration with the gridlock that killed his legislation. In an email, he tells NationSwell that Congress “refuses to learn from the overwhelming scientific consensus on the dangers we are facing.” He applauded President Obama for circumventing the increasingly partisan legislature by using “the power to act domestically and internationally based on existing laws on the books, even without Congress passing new laws.” Bolstered by a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that George W. Bush’s administration had shirked their duties, Waxman’s Clean Air Act amendments provided all the authority Obama needed.
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In the past month, much of the focus has been on the Clean Power Plan, which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants 32 percent by 2030. But that’s only the latest in a long series of administrative actions. During Obama’s first term, the EPA and the Department of Transportation set new fuel efficiency standards: All cars built after 2025 must get at least 54.5 miles per gallon. This summer, those same agencies proposed raising standards for medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles as well. Despite litigation that’s made its way all the way to the Supreme Court, the EPA slashed the acceptable levels of ozone that clouds city skylines, mercury released by coal-fired plants and methane billowing from oil fields, landfills and farms. When it comes to conservation, Obama’s designated more land and water as national monuments under the Antiquities Act — 260 million acres total — than any other president.
In creating “the first-ever framework for the United States to achieve long-term emissions reductions,” says Richard Revesz, former dean of New York University School of Law, these achievements will outlast Obama’s two terms — regardless of whom the next president is. “Even if the Democrats lose the White House in 2017, the new greenhouse gas regulations will still need to be implemented,” says Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia’s Earth Institute. Those guidelines, along with states’ actions, “will probably end the use of coal as a source of energy in the U.S.”
Despite the likely positive outcomes, several Republicans interviewed chastised the president for his reliance on regulations, instead of legislation. “It will be seen as a failure that he wasn’t able to get anything through that is enforceable,” says Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who was George W. Bush’s first appointee as EPA administrator. She argues that using the “heavy-handed tool” of the EPA “will make things more difficult for the agency going forward.”
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Others had even harsher words. “President Obama has dogmatically used energy as a political tool rather than a building block of renewed economic vibrancy,” says Mike Leavitt, former governor of Utah and Whitman’s successor as EPA administrator. Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association, agrees. “He was the president who deepened the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats over these crucial intersecting issues” of energy and the environment.
CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE HEAD ON
Perhaps because the president has been “hamstrung by politics,” as one historian phrased it, he’s not staking his legacy on any one bill or rule. Instead, as his recent photo-ops in Alaska demonstrates, Obama seems to be focusing on perceptions. His prominence on the global stage — including his role in negotiating the limited Copenhagen Accord in 2010 and the recent deal with China to curb their emissions by 2030 — “helped move the issue of global environmental sustainability to the center of the American and international political agenda,” says Cohen.
As the commander-in-chief prepares to convene with leaders from 196 countries to sign a treaty at the United Nations Climate Change Conference this December, his legacy on climate change “lies in his success in making climate change a central policy obligation,” says Carol M. Browner, Obama’s advisor who directed the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy from 2009 to 2011, when Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill foundered. If the president can get millions of Americans, industry and other stakeholders to think about it while also facing opposition from Congress, he’ll be remembered for changing how climate policy is developed and implemented.
As the effects of climate change become more visible, the challenges facing Obama aren’t disappearing like glaciers are. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the president’s loudest critics are on the left. They’re fuming over the Keystone XL pipeline and off-shore oil and gas exploration in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.
“With the president’s permission, Shell is now drilling for oil in the Alaskan Arctic, and his administration has authorized the future sale of 10.2 billion tons of coal,” says Annie Leonard, Greenpeace USA’s executive director. “It’s clear that President Obama is serious about cementing his climate legacy, but until he takes steps to ensure the vast majority of fossil fuels remain in the ground, his legacy is as vulnerable as an Arctic ice sheet.”
Why Facts Don’t Work With Climate Change Deniers
Despite the overwhelming evidence and near scientific consensus, there’s a big segment of the American population that’s skeptical or in denial that we’re causing the planet to heat up. In fact, a revealing poll from the Global Trends 2014 survey found that just a small majority (54 percent) Americans believe climate change is largely the result of human activity, ranking dead last among the 20 other countries polled.
Even if there are libraries of mounting evidence on the realities of global warming, as Joe Hanson (biologist and host of PBS Digital Studios’s “It’s Okay To Be Smart“) says in the clip below, “facts don’t always work” with climate change deniers.
In his recent video, “The Science Behind Why Some People Don’t Believe In Climate Science,” Hanson uses the work of psychologists and sociologists to give several reasons why some people might not believe in global warming or that it isn’t something that needs immediate action.
Citing the work of psychologist Daniel Gilbert, Hanson explains, “Climate change is a gradual, impersonal thing that always seems to live in the future.” For example, you can’t just show a climate skeptic images of disappearing coastlines in remote regions when they’re freezing underneath piles of blankets. “When we’re faced with uncertain threats about things we might lose in the distant future, our brain will invent all kinds of excuses not to act on them today,” Hanson adds.
MORE: Watch What a Climate Change Debate Should Really Look Like
Additionally, he says that constant images of hurricanes and wild fires in the news are just making us apathetic to climate change: “Thanks to today’s hyperbole infused media, we’re almost numb or indifferent to anything that isn’t about to literally kill us.”
Psychologists Patricia Linville and Gregory Fischer have also argued that humans have a finite pool of worry (i.e. family, money, work, health, economy) and climate change isn’t allowed in the water, Hanson says.
As humans, our mode of thought is carved by our social groups, whether it’s down to a certain political party, religious organization or by our families. That means, as Hanson says, if your social group doesn’t believe in climate change, you risk being an outsider if you do believe in climate change.
So keep all this in mind the next time you find yourself in a heated debate about climate change.
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DON’T MISS: 5 Very Simple, Practical Things You Can Do to Curb Climate Change
Why Fighting Climate Change is Good Business
Tackling climate change isn’t risky businesses. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
As Co.Exist reports, corporations that are taking action on climate change are seeing more profits, better stability and offer stronger dividends to shareholders compared to other businesses. Climate-aware companies have “an 18 percent higher return on equity (ROE) than their peers, and a 67 percent higher ROE than companies that don’t disclose climate change-related actions,” and have “50 percent lower volatility in earnings over the last 10 years and 21 percent strong dividends to shareholders than companies with less transparency,” the publication writes.
These findings are based on information from the CDP (the not-for-profit organization formerly known as the Climate Disclosure Project, that allows corporations to reveal their environmental information) and its 14th annual CDP Global 500 Climate Change Report.
For the report, the CDP surveyed nearly 2,000 major international companies on their green initiatives and what they’ve done to curb emissions for the past year. From that information, the CDP created its first-ever “A List” — an index of 187 companies that are “climate performance leaders,” according to a press release. About 30 companies on the list are American, including Microsoft, Google, CVS Health, Lockheed Martin and Bank of America.
MORE: 5 Very Simple, Practical Things You Can Do to Curb Climate Change
“The A List represents just nine percent of the 1,971 companies scored this year but accounts for US$23 billion of the annual investment to reduce carbon emissions – just under half of the US$50 billion invested by the full sample,” the release states.
Encouragingly, even businesses in unlikely industries are adapting to the needs of a warming planet. Scientific American reports from the CDP report that General Motors, for example, reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 244,000 metric tons a year by “developing and promoting more fuel-efficient vehicles, adopting energy efficiency programs at its plants, and tweaking its supply chain to move more vehicles by rail instead of on highways,” which ultimately saved the auto-giant $287 million.
It’s more important than ever to be planetary stewards. The overwhelming takeaway from the newest climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is that there’s no time to lose to mitigate climate change. However, if international governments and corporations act now, the worst can be avoided.
As Paul Simpson, chief executive officer of the CDP, says in a statement,”The businesses that have made it onto our first ever global list of climate performance leaders are to be congratulated for their progress; they debunk economic arguments against reducing emissions. However, global emissions continue to rise at an alarming rate. Businesses and governments must raise their climate ambition. The data shows that there is neither an excuse nor the time for lethargy.”
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DON’T MISS: The Best Narrator on the Planet Takes on the World’s Most Important Issue
Scientists Have Figured out How to Convert CO2 Into a Useful Material
We all know that carbon dioxide, or CO2, isn’t just plant food. Due to human activity (from burning petroleum, coal and natural gas), too much of this naturally occurring gas is released into the air, where it becomes a greenhouse gas that traps heat and bakes our planet, contributing to climate change.
However, several companies are finding ways to capture this excessive carbon and turn it into a wide range of useful products. National Geographic recently featured three of these businesses that are sparing the atmosphere from this harmful pollutant.
1. Baking soda — Skyonic in Austin, Texas
This environmental engineering firm’s patented SkyCycleTM technology can capture more than 94 percent of emitted CO2 from a plant’s flue gas stream, according to MarketWatch. It then converts the captured emissions into baking soda and other chemicals that can be sold to cattle and oil industries. “We can take something that’s waste and turn it into something that’s profit,” President and CEO Joe Jones tells Bloomberg. “In a world that’s unsettled on carbon, we’re making actual progress.”
2. From wasted CO2 to fuel — Joule in Bedford, Massachusetts
This biofirm uses genetically engineered pond scum that can turn CO2 straight into fuel through photosynthesis. Sounds a little sci-fi, but what this company has done is created liquid fuel without needing a dinosaur to fossilize for millions of years underground, as National Geographic puts it. “What we are producing is really the same product that is being produced by the fuel industry today. We’re just doing it in real time,” says Tom Jensen, the company’s head of corporate development. Incredibly, if this technology is successfully scaled up, Joule’s fuel would only cost $50 a barrel, or $1.20 gallon, the company says.
3. Green plastics — Novomer in Waltham, Massachusetts
This chemical company uses carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide as a raw material to produce plastics, polymers and other chemicals. According to the company, while most plastics are manufactured almost entirely from fossil fuels, Novomer’s technology replaces up to half of the fossil fuels in the materials with carbon dioxide. National Geographic reports that the company currently sells its products in three forms: hot-melt adhesives (for autos, shoes, furniture, textiles), rigid insulating foam (used for insulating homes and buildings) and coatings (used for decoration and protection of metal, plastic and wood). “Converting carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide from pollution into valuable materials has the potential to transform the plastics and materials landscape on a global scale,” says CEO Jim Mahoney.
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The Surprising New Threat to the U.S. Military
Even though climate change has been brushed off as a liberal conspiracy in some political corners, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has once again stressed that the evidence for a warming planet is not only real — but that it’s also an increasingly dangerous threat that the U.S. military needs to be prepared for.
Hagel recently released a 20-page report (called the 2014 Climate Change Adapation Roadmap) describing how the Pentagon is taking immediate steps to respond to rising sea levels, increasing storms and other natural disasters and phenomena linked to rising temperatures here in the U.S, as well as beyond our borders.
Hagel called climate change a “threat multiplier” that can potentially exacerbate political unrest and infectious diseases across the globe. “Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict,” he says in the report’s introduction. “They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.”
MORE: The Military Is Devoted to Something That Will Totally Shock You
According to the New York Times, the Department of Defense will begin to integrate “plans for climate change risks across all of its operations, from war games and strategic military planning situations to a rethinking of the movement of supplies.”
For several years now, the U.S. military has focused on climate change as a security risk. The first time that the Pentagon addressed the growing threat was in its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review that described climate change’s major role in accelerating global instability and conflict.
As we previously reported, as the largest energy consumer in the United States, the Department of Defense is also deeply committed to reducing its own carbon footprint and has a 2025 deadline to produce a quarter of all energy from renewable sources.
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How Is Your State Preparing for Climate Change?
Can your state handle a Hurricane Sandy? A raging wildfire? A severe heat wave?
Climate change has been linked to a number of natural phenomena, and we must take the necessary steps to protect ourselves and our home. However, some states are more prepared than others.
A new online tool from Georgetown Climate Center (a D.C.-based policy research group) is tracking what each state is doing.
The interactive tool, called the State Adaptation Progress Tracker, allows anyone to check if their state is preparing or making progress in combating climate change impacts such as storms and rising seas, says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center.
MORE: Would Your State Survive a Climate Change Catastrophe?
The research group found that only 14 states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington) have adaptation plans and specific goals to protect itself — such as cutting emissions, increasing the resiliency of infrastructure, preparing for a rise in sea level, or improving conservation efforts.
Eight other states (Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin) and Washington, D.C. have some level of planning underway.
“This research shows that a number of states have started implementing changes that will actually make their communities more resilient. That’s good news. Nearly half of all U.S. states also have at least some planning underway to prepare for climate change,” Arroyo adds. “Unfortunately, the research also shows that many states are still not treating this issue with the urgency that is called for.”
According to the data, it seems like the country as a whole could be doing a lot more work to safeguard itself from climate change. However, as Mother Jones reports, the idea behind the State Adaptation Progress is to foster healthy interstate competition, as well as help lawmakers from unprepared states learn from states that are leading the way.
“We hope that transparency will inspire more progress,” Arroyo says. “[States] are right there on the front lines. So it’s their policies that will be making the difference.”
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