With the recent release of the powerful IPCC report, there is no longer any doubt about the unavoidable impact of our changing climate.  Inside Climate News summarizes the report explaining that “This summer’s extremes are only a mild preview of the decades ahead” and “no part of the planet will be spared”. But perhaps the report’s most powerful finding is that we still have a small window of opportunity to act to stop things from getting even worse. As Laurence Tubiana, one of the architects of the Paris Agreement said this week in response to the UN IPCC Report: 'Scientists did their job, it is time for leaders to do theirs.'

By now you have probably seen the headlines from the leaked upcoming IPCC report: “Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared”. It might sound like something out of a Hollywood sci fi film, but as those who are living today with the record-setting heat waves, drought and fires in the West and the flooding in the South know all too well, it is anything but futuristic fiction.

As we kick off a new and hopefully less tumultuous year, I wanted to share some GOOD climate news we already have coming down the pike in 2021. Hundreds of Climate Collaborative companies stepped up and engaged in policy advocacy last year—many for the first time—through LEAD on Climate, America is All in, and dozens of state-based efforts.

Today I can tell you, your efforts are making a difference.  

Today, ahead of Saturday's five year anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, more than 1,400+ businesses, cities, states, investors, and other U.S. institutions stood together and called for an ambitious and equitable national climate response. 

Nothing has given me more hope this year than seeing how this community has continued to push forward on climate action. Amid an incredibly eventful and challenging year, hundreds of companies from this network still showed up for the largest ever business climate advocacy day, advocacy trainings, webinars, and more.

Below, you’ll find links to resources we've developed to help businesses in our community advocate for a climate-smart recovery to the COVID economic crisis. You can watch our August 6 Advocacy Training and Briefing here.

On Friday, July 24, 79 companies in the Climate Collaborative community and network signed on to a letter to Congressional leaders requesting renewable tax credit inclusion in the forthcoming stimulus bill, identifying investment in clean energy and renewables as a concrete opportunity to bring jobs growth, economic prosperity, and climate action into the COVID economic recovery. The full letter is available below.

We are at a turning point in our country’s history, where circumstances are forcing us to redefine what we stand for—and to get involved in advocating for those changes. It has never been more important to make sure climate is part of that picture, and we are asking this industry to play a vital role in making that case to Congress this fall.

Last Friday, we held a unique all-community call to shape the Climate Collaborative’s path forward from COVID-19. We were blown away by the response, as hundreds of you joined to plan for how our industry can work together to build back to better—better ways of doing business, ensuring supply chain stability, and protecting the planet and the people and communities we work with.

If you weren’t able to join, you can view the meeting in full here, and I really hope you will. We heard from environmental author and activist Bill McKibben, our partner Ceres, and our very own Nancy Hirshberg, a Climate Collaborative co-founder who is helping us build a vital climate response to COVID-19.