The signatories of the Montreal Protocol agreed on November 5, after seven years of discussion, to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of chemicals that can warm the atmosphere up to 12,000 times more than comparable amounts of carbon dioxide. Eliminating HFCs should prevent 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming (0.9 Fahrenheit), a significant amount as the world community seeks to keep global warming below 2 Celsius.

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EESI welcomes the Obama Administration’s more ambitious Clean Power Plan, whose final version will be unveiled today according to a White House press release. Drafts of the plans called for reducing carbon emissions by at least 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The final plan sets the reductions goal at 32 percent. "This is a very big deal," said Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) Executive Director Carol Werner. "An extra 2 points may not sound like much, but they lead to a 6.7 percent more ambitious target. The Administration is clearly trying to push other countries to be similarly ambitious in their carbon reduction goals ahead of the climate change talks in Paris at the end of this year. That’s excellent news.”

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On April 7, the White House announced a series of actions to protect communities from the health impacts of climate change. "Many excellent reports, apps, data gathering and educational initiatives were announced,” said Laura Small, a Policy Associate at the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. "We’re pleased to see the President taking action to gather more data about the public health impacts of climate change, and we're particularly excited about the decision to educate new healthcare professionals about climate change health risks. However, we hope the Administration will announce direct actions to shore up the health sector's ability to deal with climate change exacerbated vector-borne diseases, mental health issues, decreased air quality, and physical threats from wildfires and other extreme weather.”

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In a sign that the Obama Administration takes an international climate deal seriously, the White House met the March 31 deadline to submit its plan to cut domestic greenhouse gases, known in U.N. jargon as its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), to the United Nations Forum Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The U.S. plan represents a critical step in crafting an ambitious, global deal to stop climate change.

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The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) salutes the climate change agreement reached by the leaders of the United States and China. According to EESI Executive Director Carol Werner, "This climate agreement represents what many Members of Congress said was an essential precondition for stronger U.S. commitment on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The onus is now on Congress to support climate change action.”

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The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) salutes the imminent release of the 'Summary for Policymakers,' the culmination of five years of work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate change. The 'Summary for Policymakers,' expected to be unveiled on Sunday, November 2, 2014, is a synthesis of three IPCC reports released over the past year, which covered the science of climate change, our vulnerability to it, and what options are available to mitigate it.

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Once again, a seminal scientific report is confirming that climate change is happening and is already having adverse impacts throughout the United States. Today, the federal government released the Third National Climate Assessment (NCA), the most comprehensive and transparent examination of peer-reviewed science on climate change impacts in the United States ever produced. The NCA echoes the findings of the latest reports from the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change, which state with high certainty that emissions from human activities are causing global climate change.

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Carol Werner, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), issued the following statement on the release of the president’s FY 08 budget for the U.S. Department of Energy.

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