Opinion: Ohio can lead on climate change

Micah Gaffney is an organizer with Environment Ohio. Tom Van Cleef is founder and CEO of both Solar Cascade and Shine On Solar Solutions.

Nobel prize-winning author Albert Schweitzer once wrote that "example is not the main thing in influencing others – it is the only thing."

This truth is crucial to keep in mind as world leaders prepare to assemble in Paris this December to negotiate a new agreement to tackle global warming. As the country responsible for more climate-changing emissions in the atmosphere than any other, the U.S. has a moral obligation to influence and lead at these December talks.

The good news, according to a new Environment Ohio Research & Policy Center report, is that, with Ohio's help, the U.S. is poised to lead by example. In the next decade, the state will cut more global warming pollution than all but four other states.

The report, Path to the Paris Climate Conference, documents expected carbon pollution reductions from existing state-level and federal policies by 2025, including renewable energy standards, fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and regional and state-based carbon caps. Nationwide, state and federal policies now underway can reduce carbon pollution 27 percent below 2005 levels. That's significant. It is as much pollution as the entire nation of Germany – the world's sixth-largest polluter – produces every year.

The biggest slice of these reductions will come from the Clean Power Plan, the proposed federal limits on carbon pollution from power plants expected to be finalized this summer. The plan requires power plant owners to reduce emissions by 28 percent in Ohio and accelerate the transition to clean energy sources such as wind and solar.

However, fossil fuel interests and their allies in Congress are trying to block the Clean Power Plan, with full House and two key Senate panels voting this month to derail it. Polluters have also been pressuring governors, including Gov. John Kasich, to refuse to comply with the Clean Power Plan.

The Clean Power Plan is a floor for action – not a ceiling. Ohio can and should do more to reduce global warming pollution beyond minimum federal requirements. For example, California and New York have both pledged to cut their emissions economy-wide by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 – demonstrating to the world what is possible.

The report comes as evidence of climate change's devastating impacts here and across the globe continues to mount. 2014 was the hottest year in recorded history. So far, 2015 is shaping up to be even hotter. Here in Ohio, this impact is happening. And all across the country, climate change is amping up weather extremes, contributing to drought, heat waves, forest fires, flooding and rising sea levels.

To avoid even more severe climate impacts like these, the truth is that we need even more aggressive cuts in all global warming emissions than we're poised to do now, and we need them more quickly.

With the backing of Ohio, the U.S. can use its own example to influence world leaders at the Paris climate conference to take acting on climate to the next level.