Foundation News

This past December, I was able to attend the 2015 United Nations Climate Conference in Paris (Paris Climate Summit). Even with nearly 200 hundred countries and countless organizations participating over those two weeks in December, the Sierra Club had a strong presence there.

The Sierra Club Foundation is a major funder of the Sierra Club’s International Climate Leadership Campaign, the primary campaign through which the Club prepared for and engaged in the Paris Climate Summit to ensure the U.S. showed leadership on international emissions reductions in support of the internationally endorsed vision of holding the global average temperature to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

With funding from the Foundation, the Sierra Club launched the #ActinParis online campaign to educate and organize the public. The Club defended the U.S. pledge made as part of the historic U.S.–China climate deal to reduce carbon emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and stay on track to cut carbon pollution 80 percent by 2050. Campaign staff met with Obama administration representatives and policymakers to support U.S. climate action. In Paris, Sierra Club representatives and Sierra Student Coalition youth engaged with the media and shared updates with supporters back home to keep them involved. 

As a result, the climate movement coming out of Paris – and more importantly the movement demanding clean energy solutions – is stronger and more energized than ever. Attendees, the media, and other stakeholders have declared the Climate Summit an historic agreement with 196 countries making country-specific pledges to be reviewed every five years (in the most ambitious climate agreement in history). What’s more, the commitments altogether aim to limit global warming to less than 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels, which was lowered from the original goal of 2°C as a result of advocacy from island nations most susceptible to flooding from sea level rise caused by rapidly-melting glaciers.

The outcome of the Paris Climate Summit sets the stage for aggressive action on the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 Campaign to challenge 100 cities to commit to 100 percent renewable energy. The Sierra Club Foundation’s Forward Fund awarded seed grants to select Sierra Club chapters and groups to launch local Ready for 100 campaigns in Pueblo, CO; Boise, ID; Cleveland, OH; Arlington and Alexandria, VA; and St. Petersburg, FL. The Sierra Club has an ultimate vision of achieving a fully decarbonized 100 percent clean energy economy in the U.S. by 2050.

I am very proud of the work the Sierra Club has done to build this movement and grateful to the activists who have ramped up pressure for climate action. We’ll keep you posted as the list of institutions and municipalities committing to 100 percent clean energy grows and as more people come to see that clean, renewable energy is the way to go to achieve a climate stable world and to create a low-carbon economy that is good for workers and communities.