Climate change is not a future threat; it is happening now, and we are paying for it in lost lives and billions of dollars in damage.”

Michael Bloomberg & Jerry Brown, The U.S. Is Tackling Global Warming, Even if Trump Isn’t, The New York Times, Nov. 14.

When we viewed photographs and film of the annihilated cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we sensed that the world could be ended by nuclear weapons. Now these hurricanes [Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria] have conveyed a similar feeling of world-ending, having left whole islands, once alive in their beauty and commerce, in ruin.”

Robert Jay Lifton, Our Changing Climate Mind-Set, NY Times, Oct. 7.

[We have been] engineering first in ignorance and then in denial a climate system that will now go to war with us for many centuries, perhaps until it destroys us.”

David Wallace-Wells, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” New York magazine, July 9. (Quoted by David Roberts in We have no system to deal with escalating climate damages. It’s time to build one, at vox.com, Sept 21, in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.)

I don’t think my statements are going to change the way the administration thinks or the governor thinks, but let me tell you, people are afraid. People are understanding there is a new normal now.”

Miami (FL) Mayor Tomás Regalado (a Republican), in Harrowing Storms May Move Climate Debate, if Not G.O.P. Leaders, NY Times, Sept 14.

For scientists, drawing links between warming global temperatures and the ferocity of hurricanes is about as controversial as talking about geology after an earthquake. But in Washington, where science is increasingly political, the fact that oceans and atmosphere are warming and that the heat is propelling storms into superstorms has become as sensitive as talking about gun control in the wake of a mass shooting.”

Lisa Friedman, Hurricane Irma Linked to Climate Change? For Some, a Very ‘Insensitive’ Question, NY Times, Sept. 11.

The ‘climate lesson’ from disasters like Houston is simple: we desperately need to stop this process before it gets too bad for us to bear.”

Vox blogger David Roberts, tweeting on Aug. 27.

“All these fights trace back to the fact that current energy markets don’t value climate change properly. So states are essentially trying to find a backward way into carbon pricing, first by subsidizing renewables, and now by trying to save nuclear. It’s a really messy way of getting there.”

Energy analyst Alex Gilbert, in How Retiring Nuclear Power Plants May Undercut U.S. Climate Goals, by Brad Plumer, in The New York Times, June 13. (NB: Quote was stitched together from direct quote and reporter’s commentary.)

China’s change from being an opponent of climate action to a proponent of the same is likely a manifestation of the government’s deep concern about the political tensions created by severe urban air pollution.”

Jerry Taylor (Niskanen Center), Debating Carbon Taxes with Oren Cass (and Bill Gates), April 19, 2017.

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/debating-carbon-taxes-oren-cass-bill-gates/

The Trump administration has become the first government of a major power to take opposite actions on the Paris Agreement. It is undermining the great cause of mankind trying to protect the earth.”

Editorial in Global Times, a Chinese paper that The New York Times characterized as “a state-run nationalist newspaper” in a March 29 news story, China Poised to Take Lead on Climate After Trump’s Move to Undo Policies.

If Midwestern states like Kansas start leading on renewable energy, choosing renewable energy, working in renewable energy jobs, associating their state identity and state pride with renewables — that, more than anything, is likely to shift their opinions on global warming (and openness to serious climate policy).”

Vox blogger David Roberts, in Renewable energy draws increasing Republican support. That could shift climate politics., Feb. 16.

Other assaults on civilization and reason eventually wore themselves out—fascism, communism, imperialism. But there’s no way to wait out climate change, because this test has a timer on it.”

Bill McKibben, It’s Time to Stand Up for the Climate—and for Civilization, Wired, Jan. 18.

Take no comfort in [Rex] Tillerson’s statements that climate change is real and that Exxon supports a carbon tax; that message was never delivered to the fossil-fuel industry’s political gun decks and is a perhaps a deliberate false flag.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), in Republicans want to fight climate change, but fossil-fuel bullies won’t let them, Washington Post, Jan. 10.

We need to focus: The most serious political fight on the planet — the need to end use of coal, oil and gas — is at the center of America’s current political crisis.”

Alex Steffens, Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere: You can’t understand what Trump’s doing to America without understanding the “Carbon Bubble,” Medium, Dec. 15.

As recently as 2014 … ExxonMobil contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars … to what might be called the country’s most influential denialist group: the Republican majority in Congress.”

Elizabeth Kolbert, in Rex Tillerson’s State Of Denial, The New Yorker, Dec. 15.

Leadership on climate change policy has now gone to the developing countries, China among them.”

Erik Solheim, head of the United Nations Environment Program, quoted in “At U.N. Meeting, Diplomats Worry Trump Could Cripple Climate Pact”, by Coral Davenport, New York Times, Nov. 15.

Washington State’s coming vote on carbon taxes exemplifies the power of people to attack climate change meaningfully. It started with the efforts of one person, Yoram Bauman, who led the charge. Then more than 300,000 people signed a petition to put the issue on the ballot. And now the 4.2 million registered voters of Washington State will have a chance to register their position by checking yes or no on Nov. 8. That’s climate action, and leadership.”

Letter published in Nov. 1 New York Times from Janet E. Milne, professor and director of the Environmental Tax Policy Institute at Vermont Law School.

There is no hiding from climate change. It is real and it is everywhere. We cannot undo the last 10 years of inaction. What we can do is make a real and honest effort—today and every day—to protect the health of our environment, and with it, the health of all Canadians.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in his Oct 3 address to Parliament in which he proposed a national carbon tax to start in 2018, quoted in Associated Press story posted later that day by Rob Gillies, Trudeau says Canada to implement carbon tax.

If she beats climate-denier Donald Trump on Election Day . . . Clinton will not have the luxury of spending four or eight years taking baby steps toward carbon reduction.”

Nothing to Lose: A President Clinton Should Take Aggressive Climate Action, by David Atkins, in American Prospect, Sept. 12.

We’ve got the first carbon tax initiative on the ballot in the nation because enough of us made the leap. We left the house. We got out from behind the computer. We gave what we could, in signatures and dollars, to make this happen. We became participants in our democracy. We stopped waiting for someone else to get it done.”

Purple Haze, Yes on I-732 Campaign Update, Aug. 15.

Monthly heat records … have fallen so frequently that the news stories announcing them almost write themselves.”

Andrew Freedman, “Extreme summer: From wildfires to deadly floods, global warming is increasingly apparent,” Mashable, Aug. 19.