Australia’s $234 Billion Climate Gamble

The Climate Change Guy

As of last year, China and the US were first and third on the list of Australia’s trading partners. Australian trade with China was worth $152.53 billion - a total that has grown by 12.2% on average over the last 5 years. Australia’s trade with the US was worth $60.43 billion as of 2014, having grown 4% on average over the last 5 years.

See more on Australia’s trade figures here

In March this year, China raised a number of concerns regarding Australia’s Intended Nationally Determined Commitment (INDC) for greenhouse gas emissions in the lead up to the Paris Climate Summit in December. In particular, they queried whether replacing the planned Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) with the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) will yield the reductions that were likely under those two. The US also queried whether the ERF will primarily replace the ETS or whether other Policies and Measures will be considered.
I discussed a number of issues regarding the ERF (the Flagship of the Australian Government Direct Action plan) and the first Auction in April this year in an earlier blog. The second Auction will be held on 4 and 5 November, which is approximately three and a half weeks prior to the Paris Summit. It is possible that news of the second Auction results will spread as widely and quickly as for the first, including to representatives of other nations attending the Summit. The representatives may be keen to quiz the Australian party on the results, particularly if the results are questioned as extensively in social media as the results of the first Auction were. This will be very interesting to watch indeed.

See more on the second ERF Auction here 

In the time since the first Auction, it is fair to say that a lot has transpired politically in an international and domestic context that highlights and brings into focus Australia’s stance on emissions reductions. In an international context, China and the US have progressed a deal on emissions reductions reached last November with discussions earlier this month, as a result of which many cities including Atlanta, Houston, New York, Beijing, Guangzhou and Zhenjiang have pledged new actions. A number of other nations have announced their INDCs in the lead up to Paris.
Last Friday (US time) Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a nationwide cap and trade emissions program as part of efforts to tackle climate change. Cap and trade programs cap the total emissions and sources including power stations and factories purchase and sell credits. In terms of the US, although plans for a nationwide cap and trade program were defeated in 2009, California and other north-eastern states have implemented emissions trading schemes.

See more on President Xi Jinping’s announcement here

Domestically, the Government has changed leadership resulting in the installation of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister. Last week, in response to the announcement of China’s cap and trade program, Environment Minister Greg Hunt announced that the Government will stay the course regarding the ERF which is reported to be “the best, most effective scheme in the world”.

See more on the Australian Government response to China’s announcement here

 According to the Government, further reductions could be considered in 2017/18 as part of discussions on Australia’s 2030 target policy framework.


See more on Australia’s actions here

Given that China and the US (amongst others) have raised concerns with Australia’s commitment for Paris and have signed agreements to peak and reduce emissions respectively, I would be very surprised if they (and other nations attending the Paris Summit) would be prepared to give Australia until 2017/18 to consider further emissions reductions. I think it more likely that the US and China lead the charge in maintaining pressure on Australia to do more in the global challenge that is climate change.
Given the recent announcements by the Australian Government with respect to the state of the domestic economy and the discussions as to the exact nature of the problem, I struggle to fathom why they believe they can maintain one particular strategy and direction with respect to emissions reduction when an increasing number of countries are going in another.
If trade with China and the US continues on their current respective trajectories, by 2017, the combined figure is at approximately $233.7 billion (at a minimum) - $170.84 billion from China and $62.85 billion from the US. I don’t know if many Australians would be prepared to allow their Government to gamble such a figure on any matter - least of all emissions reduction specifically but climate change more generally, especially given the global nature of today’s economy. This is effectively what they are doing by continuing to ignore the rising tide of emissions trading.

China Announces National Emissions Trading Scheme – Experts React

The Conversation

Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced pledged to adopt a national emissions trading scheme from 2017. EPA/MICHAEL REYNOLDS/AAP

China has confirmed that it will launch its national emissions trading scheme.
In a joint US-China climate statement, issued as part of President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States, China confirmed that its new trading sytem will cover “key industry sectors such as iron and steel, power generation, chemicals, building materials, paper-making, and nonferrous metals”.
Below, our experts react to the development.

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John Mathews, Professor of Strategic Management, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University
Xi Jinping is scoring a propaganda coup by announcing China’s intention to introduce a national cap-and-trade scheme in 2017, while he is a guest of Obama at the White House. It will not be lost on observers that China will be introducing the very kind of scheme that failed to get through the US Congress, passing the House but being defeated in the Senate.
How interesting that China the communist country is introducing the kind of market-based emissions trading scheme that the United States was unable to launch.
There are two further points to make. The first is that China is introducing its national scheme after trying out various options as local and city-level experimental schemes over the past couple of years. In 2012, pilot programs were initiated in seven provinces, and have been closely monitored since. Here China is teaching the world a lesson in how to introduce reform: first try it out at a small scale in a variety of forms, and then scale up the most successful.
Second, China is not relying on these market-led cap-and-trade initiatives alone. It is also reducing coal consumption in its power sector through direct state intervention, and has been actively promoting solar photovoltaic and wind power through state-guided targeted investment, national planning, and local promotion programs. So the new scheme will take its place as an initiative that helps to solidify China’s trajectory towards greening its energy systems – after direct state action has done the heavy lifting.

Anita Talberg, PhD candidate, Australian-German Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne
China’s greenhouse gas emissions represent a quarter of the global total. For this reason alone, any tangible progress on Chinese climate action is encouraging. However, what is more promising is what a Chinese emissions trading scheme could mean for the world.
To date we have only seen pockets of emissions trading across the globe; most notably the EU has had a scheme since 2004 and a Californian system has been operating since 2013. Despite concerted efforts, there has been very little headway in linking regional emissions trading schemes. This is because carbon credits would become fungible.
So if one market crashes, so do the connected markets. The entire system is only as strong as the safeguards in the weakest market. The environmental effectiveness of the entire system is only as credible as the monitoring and verification in the least stringent scheme.
The EU and the rest of the world will be looking closely at the integrity and robustness of the Chinese market’s design. If China gets it right, and can elicit enough buy-in, it could represent a turning point for climate change.

Peter Christoff, Associate Professor, School of Geography at University of Melbourne
The announced introduction of China’s national emissions trading scheme in 2017 places irresistible pressure on Malcolm Turnbull to revisit the issue of an Australian ETS.
When China joins the European Union (the world’s third biggest aggregate emitter) and a number of other major emitting countries and states using cap-and-trade schemes to help cut emissions, some 40% of total global emissions will be covered by carbon markets.
Tellingly, Chinese President Xi Jinping made his announcement at a joint White House Press Conference with President Obama. Together they emphasised how the world’s two largest emitters are now collaborating closely to tackle global warming. Pressure is building within the US to create a national integrated scheme on the foundations of its regional efforts, and other major emitters, like Brazil and Russia, are contemplating similar measures.
Australia’s Direct Action Plan cannot easily be linked to this growing global carbon market. Its underfunded “reverse auction” process cannot acquire sufficient emissions to meet even Australia’s 2020 target. Its “safeguard mechanism” is unlikely to require major Australian emitters to reduce their emissions significantly. Australia is now transparently out of step with global trends and, relying only on current measures, incapable of meeting the tougher mitigation targets which will be required of it in the near future.

David Hodgkinson, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Western Australia
The Chinese government’s announcement of a 2017 national ETS is not surprising. Since 2011 China has been piloting seven trading schemes in cities including Beijing and Shanghai, albeit with varying success, and has been planning for and had foreshadowed a national scheme.
The announcement also builds on last year’s US-China bilateral agreement, which included a pledge from China (for the first time) that its emissions would peak no later than 2030 – although no mention was made of the level at which they would peak.
What is surprising is the speed with which the divide between developed and developing states enshrined in both the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol has now crumbled. Both developed and developing countries in Paris in December will now state their climate pledges, or “intended nationally determined contributions”, including China. These contributions won’t be negotiated by all the parties – that approach has long gone. And the legal character of these contributions is uncertain. But China’s announcement on Friday certainly works in favour of a more robust agreement.
The climate change problem can’t be addressed without China, the world’s largest emitter (or indeed India, the third largest). China now joins the other 75 countries (and the European Union) with frameworks for limiting emissions, and the 47 countries (plus the EU) that have carbon pricing.

Celebrated NASA Planet Hunter Shifts His Sights Back To Climate Change On Earth

The Guardian - Dana Nuccitelli

Earth rise over the Moon. Photograph: Alamy

William Borucki donated Shaw Award prize money for pioneering planet finding to the Union of Concerned Scientists for its climate change efforts
William Borucki has had an amazing scientific career. One of his first jobs was at NASA Ames Research Center, where he worked on the Apollo moon missions, including helping to develop the heat shield for the space shuttle. After the successful moon landings, Borucki shifted to NASA’s Theoretical Studies Branch in the 1970s, where he developed models of the Earth’s atmosphere to predict the effects of nitric oxides and chlorofluoromethanes on the ozone layer. Both were determined to contribute to the problem of ozone depletion and the hole in the ozone layer.
In the 1980s, Borucki began advocating the development of a space mission that could detect Earth-size planets. He published a paper in 1984 showing that a photometer 1,000 times more precise than any in existence could detect Earth-size planets. Undeterred by rejections of four proposals in the 1990s for a planet-finding mission, Borucki was ultimately appointed Principal Investigator in 2001 for NASA’s new Keppler Mission to discover these planets. During its four years of its operation, the Keppler Mission discovered over 4,600 planetary candidates, confirmed more than 1,000 as planets, and made numerous contributions to stellar astrophysics.
For his work in conceiving and leading the Keppler Mission, Borucki was awarded the Shaw Prize in astronomy. He decided to donate a portion of the award to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) to support the organization’s work in addressing climate change, explaining,

I’ve spent a large portion of my career searching for other worlds. What we’ve found has underscored how important it is to protect this one. While we can detect other worlds, we cannot go to them. Our future is here on Earth and we must do much more to ensure that our planet’s climate remains hospitable.
The UCS has a reputation for actively and successfully advocating mitigation of the climate change problem. Their arguments are based on scientifically valid arguments and on comprehensive climate data and model results.

I asked Dr. Borucki about his perceptions of the threats posed by human-caused climate change, and his thoughts on the steps we’ve taken so far to address them.

I consider the threat to be severe. Substantial changes are already occurring to the environment that effect many people; especially those who are impoverished. In the 1980s, the Climatic Impact Assessment Program warned that if changes weren’t made very soon, it would be difficult to reverse the changes. Clearly, they were correct.
I am very hopeful because the leaders of many countries (and some religious leaders) now recognize the problem as an imminent threat and are meeting to develop a consensus as to the most practical methods of mitigating it.

Searching for Earth-like planets has made Dr. Borucki appreciate our own and the need to preserve it, as he told the Huffington Post,

The Earth is a very special place. Unless we have the wisdom and technology to protect our biosphere, it could become like many other dead worlds ... It wouldn’t take a lot of change to make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves.

Borucki remains optimistic that humans will still solve the problem of climate change before the consequences become too severe.

Once mankind understands the threat, I think they will get together ultimately and conquer that threat. But they have to recognize it and really be dedicated to accomplishing the task, because the tasks are just enormous.

China Shows It’s Getting Serious About Climate Change

TIME - Justin Worland

The best thing to come out of a summit between China and the U.S. is a renewed commitment to fight global warming

Chinese President Xi Jinping listens as President Barack Obama speaks during an official state arrival ceremony for the Chinese president at the White House in Washington on Sept. 25, 2015.

China—the world’s largest polluter—has sought to portray itself as a leader in the global fight against climate change in recent years. The country has expedited the development of renewable energy power plants, experimented with cap-and-trade programs and last year committed to curb its growing carbon dioxide emissions in coming decades.
But despite these initiatives many lawmakers in the United States and policy makers around the world have viewed China’s environmental programs with skepticism—more promise than performance. China’s landmark announcement Friday of a national cap-and-trade program and other policies to reduce carbon emissions should ameliorate some of those concerns, experts said, even while the country faces roadblocks to implementation.
Last year’s joint announcement from the U.S. and China set big goals on the part of both countries to eventually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. promised to reduce carbon emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025, and Chinese officials said the country’s carbon dioxide emissions would reach peak levels by 2030.
This week’s announcement, both from the U.S. and China, follows up on that target, providing a plan to reach it. A cap-and-trade program would set a national limit in China on carbon emissions in the heavy-polluting industries of power generation, iron and steel, chemicals, and building materials and require companies to buy credits to pollute. Another program will prioritize the use renewable energy on the grid. (Right now, while China produces a great deal of renewable energy, problems with the grid means much of it goes unused.) The country will also improve appliance and vehicle efficiency standards.
“It’s really walking the talk to the commitment last year,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “China has really been working over the last year to put flesh on the bones.”
China benefits internationally from taking on climate change—especially at a time when the country is coming under pressure for alleged cyberespionage and territorial expansion—but experts say the most logical reason to trust the commitment China may be because of internal issues the country faces. Most of the country’s energy currently comes from coal. In the past, coal plants in China have been cheap and easy to build, but the fossil fuel source has led to crippling pollution and a dramatic public health problem. Air pollution in China causes 1.6 million premature deaths every year, or 4,400 per day, research has shown. At the same time, the country is the world’s largest importer of foreign oil, leaving it dependent on shifting oil prices and the messy geopolitics of the Middle East. Renewable energy provides the logical alternative, experts say.
“Their cities are choking, to put it bluntly,” said John Creyts, managing director at the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy think tank. “They need a development pathway that allows them to grow without choking their people and requiring them to be depend on external economies for the resources they need.”
In fact, China has already matched commitment with action. In 2014, for instance, the country invested $90 billion in clean energy, compared to $52 billion in the U.S., according to a U.S. government report.
Still, experts say implementing some of the policies in China will face uphill battles given the many overlapping jurisdictions and different reporting standards throughout the sprawling country. In their announcement Friday, China and the U.S. said they would develop a program to ensure transparency, but the details remain unclear.
Many in the U.S. and around the world have expressed skepticism about investing in efforts to fight climate change, arguing that costly efforts would lead to a free rider problem of sorts. They say under national plans to curb climate change, the U.S. would invest in expensive efforts to cut carbon emissions while other countries—primarily big developing nations like China and India—would reap the benefit without doing anything to slow their own emissions.
The argument has played out in public as recently as last week, when Republican presidential contenders suggested that government regulations to address climate change would leave the country at a competitive disadvantage.
“We are not going to destroy our economy,” said Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a GOP presidential candidate. “America is not a planet. And we are not even the largest carbon producer anymore, China is. And they’re drilling a hole and digging anywhere in the world that they can get a hold of.”
Meyer says this week’s announcement undercuts this opposition, leaving the U.S. to show how it will meet its commitment to cut emissions.
“This is yet another indication of momentum and seriousness,” Meyer said. “The job’s not done yet.”

China Climate Change Pledge To Barack Obama Also A Gift To Malcolm Turnbull

Fairfax - John Garnaut

Labor questions Turnbull's conviction: Labor is accusing Malcolm Turnbull of compromising on core beliefs including climate change, marriage equality and water reform. (Courtesy of ABC News 24). 

It used to be politically hard work for an Australian government to sell the case for policy action on climate change when the world's two great emitters were opting out of the game.
Now that China's President Xi Jinping has arrived in Washington with an emissions trading plan, policy inaction has become the harder sell.
Quixotic campaigns against wind farms and other acts of enviro-economic sabotage are now politically untenable, if they weren't already.

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House in Washington on Thursday ahead of crucial talks. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta

And the global headwinds on climate policy that helped destroy the Rudd and Gillard governments, and bring Abbott to power, have turned into a tailwind for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Mr Xi's national cap-and-trade emissions reduction scheme, which he will reportedly announced on Friday Washington time, will not be without problems.
Details will be hard to come by, and anyone who watched the development of other complex markets in China will rightly wonder whether it can be done.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Photo: Andrew Meares

 Efficient emissions trading schemes require a degree of trust, transparency and regulatory autonomy which simply does not currently exist in China.
China's scheme will risk being rorted and possibly paralysed amid the contradictions of Chinese market-Leninism, if recent travails in the markets for shares, futures, bonds and currencies are anything to go by.
But Mr Xi's new emissions trading plan is symbolic of changes already made as much as a promise of things to come.
Climate change has become the centre of US-China cooperation under Mr Xi and Mr Obama, at a time of otherwise darkening relations.
Both leaders have relied on tough administrative edicts to meet energy-intensity and emissions commitments, in combination with underlying economic structural change. Together, they have altered what had been a catastrophically steep global emissions trajectory.
Emissions growth in China has been slowing for several years and may have even peaked. In the US, emissions have been declining since 2007.
The old Australian excuse of waiting for the world's two great emitters is no longer viable.
The world's most powerful leaders are giving Mr Turnbull a chance of working with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Environment Minister Greg Hunt to restore Australia's constructive role in the global fight against global warming, without upsetting the delicate chemistry of the Coalition party room.
Action in this area would have the important side-benefit of re-opening a productive channel of cooperation with China, at a time of rising regional tension.
The modest commitment to the Paris climate change conference later this year will become a floor for Australia's ambitions, rather than a ceiling.
In short, the geo-political climate is changing rapidly in Mr Turnbull's favour.

The Inconvenient Truth About Direct Action Comes From Turnbull Himself

The Guardian - Lenore Taylor

Malcolm Turnbull is now defending the policy he criticised, but his truths about climate change won’t go away and this stop-gap scheme will come badly unstuck 
 

Malcolm Turnbull at the memorial dedicated to war correspondents at the Australian War Memorial this week. Photograph: Lukas Coch/EPA

You asked for this Malcolm, standing in the wind outside the war memorial this week. You said journalists had “to hold up the truth to power”. But in the case of your climate policy you’ve made our job easy. You’ve said so much on the subject that for the most part we can hold up your own truth to yourself.
This mirror reflecting back your own past verities could become a bit of a theme in your prime

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ministership, with all that you’ve said and all the things that now constrain you. Or maybe it won’t – it’s still too early to say.
But since you’ve asked for them, here are some of your own truths about climate change.
Lately you’ve claimed the $2.5bn emissions reduction fund (ERF) – part of the Direct Action climate policy you once ridiculed but have now inherited – has been “very successful” and that “all of the advice we have suggests that the government’s policies will achieve the reductions ... that we’re taking to the Paris conference of the parties.”
On Friday (as China – yes, China – announced a start date for its national emissions trading scheme) your environment minister Greg Hunt went so far as to say ours is the “best and most efficient scheme in the world”.
But we all know that’s not true. Not as it stands. And we know you know it because you’ve stuck a pin in its problems yourself.
First – trying to meet deeper emissions long-term reductions by buying them with the ERF is going to become too expensive.
The scheme might meet the 2020 target (a 5% cut of 2000 levels by 2020) but if it does it will be in large part because we vastly overestimated what our emissions would be – the job is now less than a third of what we expected.
But to get to our next target (a cut of between 26% and 28% by 2030) it will cost a bomb. As you told Lateline in 2011 “if you want to ... cut carbon emissions ... in a very substantial way to the levels that the scientists are telling us we need to do by mid-century to avoid dangerous climate change, then a direct action policy where ... industry was able to freely pollute, if you like, and the government was just spending more and more taxpayers’ money to offset it, that would become a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead.” Pretty much every expert agrees with what you thought back then.
Second, it’s very hard to know whether the ERF is actually buying emission reductions or just paying people to do things they would have done anyway.
Direct Action’s first “reverse auction” spent $660m to reduce Australia’s expected greenhouse emissions by 47m tonnes, which you and Greg Hunt now claim was a stunning success.
On close examination that’s questionable.
It spent $300m to make sure farmers around Cobar and Bourke who had already promised not to clear trees on their land, continued to keep that promise. Most of them had been getting money under the former government’s carbon farming scheme. Perhaps they would have started clearing again had they lost the government income stream but almost no one thinks they ever intended to clear all the land they were permitted to clear, and for which they are receiving payments to leave alone.
Another $200m went to ensure that garbage dumps, mines and livestock operations that were already capturing the potent greenhouse gas methane kept on doing what they were already doing. Most of those projects had been around for a long time, had already recouped their capital costs, were generating an income and would have continued even without additional government funding.
Back into 2010, you were also already onto this obvious pitfall.
“Arguments of considerable ferocity will arise as to whether a new piece of equipment would have

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been bought anyway with the risk that the government ends up funnelling billions of dollars to companies to subsidise their profits without achieving any real additional cuts to emissions,” you told parliament, with remarkable prescience.
As you knew, usually when governments pay for these kinds of projects the lucky grant-winners have to try to demonstrate that the money is essential for them to do some greenhouse-gas reducing thing in addition to what they would have done anyway.
But in the case of these projects the Direct Action legislation let them off. It assumed “additionality’ and did not require it to be proven – in the interests of “investment certainty”. We avoided the ferocious arguments you predicted but we have no idea whether all our money went on buying new emission reductions or not.
Is that really “stunning”, or as you said before “a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale?” We’re pretty sure we know what you would have concluded.
Third, there’s the other element of your policy that could possibly reduce emissions – the “safeguards” mechanism – the bit that sets “baselines” for big industrial emitters. Except the current draft rules explicitly state that it’s not even trying to reduce emissions, it just aims to make sure they don’t go up and undo all the emission reductions the ERF is buying.
And expert analysis, for example by Reputex, suggests it will fail even in that astonishingly modest aim, and instead allow the country’s biggest emitters to increase their greenhouse pollution.
You actually have a chance to change this – consultation on the draft rules closed last Monday, and independent senator Nick Xenophon is saying if they aren’t given at least some “teeth” he’ll disallow them in the Senate – a threat that may not have concerned your predecessor but he’s thinking might just give you pause.
Tougher baselines would start to create a baseline and credit emissions trading scheme. Will you do it? Is that what Hunt has planned after the review you’ll be holding in 2017? If it is you’ll have to give up on the line that you’ve found a way to reduce emissions without any impact on consumer prices.
Fourth, if we are going to reduce emissions we have to change the way we generate electricity. Yes, we have a renewable energy target, but the general policy uncertainty means even the political truce on that issue has not restarted investment. The biggest increase since the abolition of the carbon price has been the dirtiest brown coal fired power.
And we know you know this too.
“The transition from a high emission economy to a low emission one cannot be achieved without major changes to the way we generate and use energy,” you said. “Given that the cheapest fuels are generally the dirtiest, in the absence of a clear carbon price signal, new capacity is likely to be coal rather than gas, rather than renewables.”
Yes, your predecessor was forced into a deal on the renewable energy target, but the ongoing uncertainty means retailers still aren’t building the large-scale renewable developments that are required. You are going to have to give them a sign.
We understand you had to make some concessions to become prime minister. You have promised to work within the current scheme, which Hunt always hoped would morph into a baseline and credit trading scheme over time. And yes, you need time to consult and make decisions, to add or amend or change. To take your own side with you. But your own truths won’t go away and as it stands this stop-gap policy will come badly unstuck.

Pope's Climate Change Appeal Boosts Hope For Bipartisan Action In Congress

The Guardian - Suzanne Goldenberg

Climate campaigners applaud pope’s bridging of environmental issues with moral obligation as way to force Republican party leaders to reconsider position


Pope Francis calls on the US – and Congress – to lead the charge in efforts to combat climate change.

It just took one utterance from Pope Francis – “earth” – to rouse cheers from the climate campaigners who had gathered on the Mall to watch the pope’s historic speech to Congress.
The pope’s visit to what remains a fortress of climate denial among the Republican party leadership greatly boosted hopes among campaigners of elevating climate change from a narrow, partisan issue to a matter of broad public concern.
As Francis appeared on the large screen, several thousand campaigners – some carrying quotes from his encyclical on the environment on large banners trimmed in Vatican yellow, a contingent of animal rights activists dressed as nuns – whooped and cheered.
“We’re excited about the pope being here, especially his saying that climate change is not a partisan issue, and that we have a moral obligation to act,” said Ashley Aguirre, 20, and a student at Virginia Commonwealth University, who had travelled from Richmond for the rally.
Although there was only a very brief mention of the environment in his speech to Congress – he avoided a direct clash with Republican party leaders by diving into climate change deeply in his visit to the White House on Wednesday – the pope still managed to emphasise two clear points. He re-affirmed that human activity was driving climate change, and that political leaders needed to act.
“I am convinced that we can make a difference and I have no doubt that the United States – and this Congress – have an important role to play,” the pope said. “Now is the time for creative actions and strategies aimed at implementing “a culture of care”.
Francis’s intervention has produced some new alliances in the climate camp, with faith groups now coming together with civil rights campaigners and traditional environmental supporters.
His appearance in Congress came a day after his endorsement of Barack Obama’s clean power plant plan – arguably one of the biggest targets of Republicans in both houses as well as on the presidential campaign trail.
More than half of Republicans in Congress deny the existence of climate change, or oppose government regulations to cut carbon pollution.
Environmental campaigners had been thrilled at the prospect of the pope reprising his powerful message for climate action from the encyclical in front of Republican Catholics, such as house speaker John Boehner.
The musician Moby, one of the performers at the climate rally, called it “Pope-enfreude”. “Basically,

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it’s watching crazy rightwing anti-environmental Republicans who have always hidden behind religion actually be held accountable,” he told The Guardian. “To have people like [Republican presidential candidates] Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio watch the head of their church come out as an outspoken environmentalist – it’s just satisfying to me watching them squirm.”
Jairo Diaz, an artist who had come from Fort Lauderdale with a canvas of Christ, said he hoped the pope’s presence in the US – just after his encyclical and before the Paris climate negotiations – could help advance prospects of climate action. “It’s a blessing that the pope is here at this moment in this country,” he said.
Even the very mention of the words climate change are awkward for Republicans, who have typically aligned with the Catholic church on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and now find themselves out of step with the pope.
By the time of Francis’s speech to Congress, campaigners dared to believe there was already a pope effect taking hold.
“Just by being here, he is forcing the discussion on climate change,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. “With the pope coming out strong and really leaning into climate change, this is about trying to further shift the US discussion particularly in the Republican party, and get more conservatives talking about climate change.”