The Tipping Point For Climate Change Action

2015 may quite possibly be the year that the world finally wakes up and responds to the challenge of climate change.

2014 provided a glimpse of what the new year may hold.

It seems the rhythm may have changed. Where before the challenge was to get people to understand and believe the reality of climate change, now the challenge is to get the people to act and to call on those in positions of power and influence to act.

In 2015, the focus will be on Paris where world leaders will meet in November in an attempt to work out a major global warming deal. The populist activism that began this year can be expected to gain even more momentum as the climate talks approach.

Also in 2015 Pope Francis is expected to issue a major Encyclical calling on the world’s 1.5 billion catholics, including the  world’s 5,000 bishops and 400,000 priests, to take action on climate change.

The leading religious and political leaders of the world are poised to have a major impact on the environment – the political as well as the natural environment – in the new year. If they do, it will because the year now ending has set the stage.

2014 was a big year for climate action.

In June, President Obama took his biggest step yet in the fight against global warming by introducing regulations to limit greenhouse gases from existing coal-fired power plants. In one of the strongest actions ever taken by the United States government to fight climate change, the President proposed new Environmental Protection Agency regulations to cut carbon pollution from the nation’s power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by the year 2030.

Climate denial also took a hit in 2015, with four former EPA administrators who served under repugican presidents told a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee June 18 that they support immediate action on climate change and urged repugican opponents of action to stop efforts to derail actions. Other repugican members of Congress have also publicly called to the science to be taken seriously and for the nation to act on climate change.

In September, hundreds of thousands of protesters around the world marched to demand climate action. The People’s Climate March was a large-scale activist event to advocate global action against climate change, which took place on Sunday, September 21, 2014, in New York City. With an estimated 311,000 participants, it was the largest climate change march in history.

This November an historic deal between the US and China to curb greenhouse emissions may have breathed new life into international climate negotiations. The world’s two biggest economies and greenhouse gas emitters, United States and China, said they will partner closely on a broad-ranging package of plans to fight climate change, including new targets to reduce carbon pollution

2014 will also be remembered as the year that public outcry began to shut down fracking. New York took the lead by banning fracking entirely.

And finally, after a series of last-minute compromises, leaders from nearly 200 countries produced the Lima Accord, which, for the first time, calls on all nations to develop plans to limit their emissions. It was less than many had hoped for, but more than many others had expected. An agreement – even a tepid one – was a major first step on the road to something more substantial in Paris in 2015.

Lima also produced agreements in principle to work toward eliminating the world’s dependence on fossil fuels entirely. The world’s oil-producing countries took this seriously, and the global oil market took a major hit. Gasoline prices dropped as the prospect for reduced demand loomed.

All of this activity in 2014 has been a prelude to an even more action-oriented 2015. Expect to see more and larger climate action protest marches and increased lobbying efforts on the part of environmental organizations and people’s coalitions as the Paris climate talks approach.

The political, environmental, even spiritual climate in the world is changing. And perhaps finally for the better

As we turn the page on 2014 and stand at the threshold of 2015 perhaps we are balanced on a tipping point. Perhaps we are entering a new era of popular political action and new hope for our planetary home. The challenge of climate change is now a call to action.

Will climate historians one day point to the year 2015 as the year in which climate action reached a tipping point? Or will they argue that the tipping point was reached earlier, in 2014?

Change is happening now. We can speculate on change in the future, we can reflect on changes in the past, but change always happens in the now.

this new year as we turned the page from 2014 to 2015, perhaps the change is becoming a little more positive and the now is looking just a little more hopeful.