On a Wet Night, Temperate Warnings About Climate Change

From left: Patrick McDonnell, Margaret Peloso, Mathy Stanislaus and moderator Chris Satullo

By Eileen Kenna

On a night when the rain slanted sideways and the wind turned umbrellas inside out, the Sunday Breakfast Club explored “It’s a Big Deal: How Can Philly Survive Climate Change?”

A panel of three experts  talked about the dangers Philadelphia and the planet face while trying on some level to inspire hope that we’re not yet doomed - as long as we continue to tell our stories, and state and local government and business leaders don’t drop the ball.  This despite evidence that the federal government is doing just that.

The panelists:

• Patrick McDonnell, president and CEO of the environmental advocacy group PennFuture. The former Secretary of the Pennsylvania department of Environmental Protection has more than 20 years of experience on climate, clean energy and environmental issues.

• Margaret Peloso, senior vice president and global climate officer for the Chubb Group, as well as executive director of the Chubb Charitable Foundation, which focuses on climate change and sustainability.  She's an expert on laws relating to climate change.

• Mathy Stanislaus, a vice provost at Drexel University and executive director of Drexel’s Environmental Collaboratory. He formerly worked in the Obama administration on climate and brownfield issues as an administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and played a leadership role with the Global Battery Alliance.

Locally, they said, combating climate change means focusing on the fundamentals that affect people’s lives and  building the willingness to have hard conversations.

“What do we want Philly to look like?” Peloso asked. “Do we care that in August, when Philadelphia schools opened it was so hot that kids got sent home because most schools aren’t air conditioned? Do we care that, if you have a Center City business and the Vine Street expressway floods ... and your people can’t get to and from work? We can choose a future for our city where we say, ‘You know what, sometimes we can’t go to work because the roads are flooded and our kids can’t go to school because it’s too hot" …But I don’t think that’s what we want for our city.”

All three panelists laid emphasis on environmental justice issues: Should the neighborhood where you live dictate how long you’re likely to live?

"A deep concern I have is playing out,” said Stanislaus. “What I worry about is the lack of attention to communities most at risk from things like cancer disparities and upper respiratory illnesses that can be linked to climate change. Given the federal government’s inattention, we need to focus on what we can do using state and local authorities to protect those most at-risk communities.”

McDonnell cited studies that note some areas of Philly are 20 degrees hotter in the summer than other neighborhoods, largely because “there are no trees there.”

“We have to start thinking about trees as infrastructure,” he said. “It’s a way of not just mitigating the climate but also of reducing deadly heat for neighborhoods.”

Stanislaus  noted that unnamed storms - not just hurricanes - are having major effects “on infrastructures and power grids,” around the country, including in Philadelphia.

“We really need to figure out what’s the public-private investment mechanism to deal with this,” he said.

Peloso said leaders of nonprofits and for-profit businesses alike need to keep the climate change topic front and center over time: “Adaptation is a team sport played out over a really, really long time. That’s particularly challenging to remember right now.”

All pointed out that sound climate policies can be helpful not only to communities but also to businesses. In Peloso's work at Chubb, climate change is at the top of the agenda: “As a large insurance company we deal with climate every day. We’re asking, 'How can communities remain insurable?'” Chubb works to provide its clients practical guidance about reliable resource strategies that can benefit both the insured and the company, Peloso said.

For those worried about the current federal government’s preference for increasing natural gas plants rather than renewable resources like wind and solar, McDonnell had this to say: “One of my favorite questions to ask people is, ‘What does it take to build a power plant?’ The answer is this: You cannot get a gas turbine built until at least 2030 due to supply chain issues. So even if you say you’re going to build 20 plants across the state, the equipment is not available. And how many banks are lined up to promise 10-year, 20-year money to these types of facilities? The ones that will are going to charge much higher rates.”

PennFuture, which has offices around the state, focuses on clean energy, clean water and clean air, McDonnell said: “We do all that in courtrooms, in the Capitol and in communities across the commonwealth.”

For his part at Drexel, Stanislaus said the Environmental Collaboratory has brought together  stakeholders from Pennsylvania, Delaware and parts of New Jersey to discuss the increased frequency and severity of weather events.

Some of the questions on the table, Stanislaus said included: “How do you make sure communities have effective early warning systems and know how to evacuate and how to do long-term recovery?”

All talked about what they see as the beneficial impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which includes tax credits for homeowners  and businesses that implement energy saving improvements such as solar cells. “What does it mean for solar if the IRA gets pulled back? There’s a lot of uncertainty,” McDonnell acknowledged.

Peloso, an attorney who also has a degree in environmental science from Duke University, said a large part of her work involves overseeing compliance and disclosures around climate change globally. She said the United States is lagging in that regard:

“Pretty much everywhere else in the world, they have adopted or are in the process of adopting climate and sustainability disclosure standards, many of which are focused on getting companies to do more to disclose about physical climate risks.”

The leading global measure of this is the International Sustainability Standards, which set the accounting rules on this “that everybody pretty much everywhere else have accepted except the United States and China,” she explained.

For most companies, Peloso said, huge future risks hinge on a “whole lot of policy implementation” that is currently unknown.

“What is not [in doubt] is that we’re living in a warmer, wetter and wilder world,” she said. “Supply chains are going to be disrupted because of this. U.S. companies will be impacted. That’s what companies need to be focused on.”

With such doom and gloom easy to find on this issue, what do climate experts like the panelists do to cope? And, what can the average person do in their daily lives to get involved ?

The panelists all agreed that advocating for climate friendly policies with legislators, particularly on the state and local level right now, remains the first place to start.

For McDonnell, another answer is obviously … comedy improvisation? Yes, he’s “not even kidding about that.” It’s what he does to relax in Harrisburg.

“With improv, at the end of five minutes you’ve created something that you had no idea you were going to create. That’s the kind of openness we need in these [climate change] conversations.”

Stanislaus turns to meditation morning and night to settle his thoughts. The rest of the time he tries to be optimistic about building broader partnerships around climate change than we’ve been able to do in the past: “Organizations may not agree completely on everything we do but it’s more important to define, ‘Where is the common ground to act?’ "

He also urged everyone to pack a “go bag.”

“What would you do if you only had 30 minutes to leave your house because of a climate event?”

The answer for Peloso looks to the future: “I have a son, he’s turning 10 next week. I try to stay optimistic in this work. I think about him and his friends and the kind of future I want to shape for them.”

Peloso also spends a lot of time outside in nature:

“It’s really important to remind ourselves what it is we’re trying to protect.”