In Case You Missed It – August 7, 2020
POW’s Action Fund Can Help You Access a Mail-in Ballot
Favorite Quote:
“We should not have to choose between our ability to stay safe and healthy and exercising our civic right to vote,” he says. “And so the way to avoid that choice is by allowing people to vote by mail.”
Our Takeaway:
POW’s sister organization, the POW Action Fund is making sure as many people can vote this year as possible––even amid the pandemic. Launching soon will be a mail-in ballot tool to make voting by mail as easy as possible. Keep your eyes peeled!
In Colorado’s climate change hot spot, the West’s water is evaporating
Favorite Quote:
“In all my years of farming in the area, going back to about 1950, 2018 was the toughest, driest year I can remember,” said Paul’s father, Norman, who still does a fair share of the farm’s tractor work at 94.”
Our Takeaway:
A bunch of counties along Colorado’s Wester Slope have already warmed more than 2˚C––that’s double the global average. And water resources are taking some of the biggest impacts. This is why it’s more important than ever to protect our playgrounds and turn out to vote this fall!
How to drive fossil fuels out of the US economy, quickly
Favorite Quote:
“A similar mobilization will be necessary for the US to decarbonize its economy fast enough to avert the worst of climate change. To do its part in limiting global temperature rise to between 1.5° and 2° Celsius, the US must reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest. To achieve this, the full resources of the US economy must be bent toward manufacturing the needed clean-energy technology and infrastructure.”
Our Takeaway:
We need BIG actions to tackle climate change. But those big actions aren’t out of reach. What is necessary to solve climate change and what is politically feasible actually have quite a lot of overlap. According to a new report, “it’s possible to eliminate 70 percent to 80 percent of US carbon emissions by 2035 through rapid deployment of existing electrification technologies, with little-to-no carbon capture and sequestration. Doing so would slash US energy demand by around half, save consumers money, and keep the country on a 1.5° pathway without requiring particular behavior changes.” Which is to say, we can do this!
Yes, Emissions Have Fallen. That Won’t Fix Climate Change
Favorite Quote:
“Writing today in the journal Nature Climate Change, an international team of scientists calculates that the coronavirus lockdown may only cool the planet by about 0.01 degrees Celsius by the year 2030. (The rough math is that 1 degree Celsius equals 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.) But. They also argue that if humanity would aggressively fund renewables in the aftermath of the pandemic, we could avoid an overall increase of 0.3 degrees by 2050—that’s 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That could keep the planet within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming from pre-industrial levels, the goal set out in the Paris Climate Agreement.”
Our Takeaway:
We’ve been saying this since the pandemic began: How we come out of the pandemic will determine how we move forward. And we need to come out funding clean energy and making those big transitions to a zero-carbon economy. As we’ve already seen, it’s entirely possible to do. So let’s get to work!
US could avoid 4.5M early deaths by fighting climate change, study finds
Favorite Quote:
“The avoided deaths are valued at more than $37 trillion. The avoided health care spending due to reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits exceeds $37 billion, and the increased labor productivity is valued at more than $75 billion,” Drew Shindell, a professor at Duke University, told lawmakers Wednesday.
“On average, this amounts to over $700 billion per year in benefits to the U.S. from improved health and labor alone, far more than the cost of the energy transition.”
Our Takeaway:
Is it weird to put a monetary value on saved lives? Yes. Does it prove a point? Also yes. Sticking with the Paris Climate Accord has MASSIVE benefits. Which means (as we’ve mentioned above) it’s time to move away from fossil fuels and toward a clean energy economy.
