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Meet Manhattan’s first housing co-op to electrify heating and cooling

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Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Canary Media’s ​“Electrified Life” column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power.  At 420 East 51st St., nestled in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan, a 13-story beige brick building sits among a handful of other hulking structures. Its tidy facade doesn’t particularly stand out. Nor does its height. In fact, from the street it’s impossible to see what makes the cooperatively owned 1962 building unique among most other apartment properties in New York City: Its residents opted to fully electrify the heating and cooling system. The co-op board decided in 2023 to swap out the structure’s original fossil-fuel steam system for large-scale electric heat pumps that provide space heating, cooling, and water heating. Utility and state incentives covered a whopping one-third of the $2.9 million project’s cost. The move, which the seven-member board approved unanimously, puts the co-op well ahead of the curve in complying with Local Law 97, the city’s landmark legislation limiting CO2 emissions from buildings larger than 25,000 square feet. Owners of buildings that overshoot carbon thresholds face financial penalties. The law’s first reporting deadline is May 1, and the 110-unit co-op has hit its emissions reduction targets far ahead of schedule. With the upgrades completed last September, it’ll avoid triggering penalties through 2049. Also known as 420 Beekman Hill, the edifice is among the first multifamily structures in Manhattan to switch to all-electric heating, cooling, and water heating. It also appears to be the first co-op to do so, according to staff at NYC Accelerator, a building decarbonization initiative run by the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. The retrofit provides a model for the work that will need to happen in buildings around the country in order to achieve climate goals and comply with laws similar to Local Law 97, said Cliff Majersik, senior advisor at the nonprofit Institute for Market Transformation. The co-op had originally relied on the local utility Con Edison’s district steam system, which is primarily fed by fossil gas and some fuel oil. The retrofit design team weaned the building off that piped steam, solving a problem that still bedevils building owners connected to the hundreds of steam loops operating across the country, including in Cleveland, Chicago, and Philadelphia. “Getting off steam is the most challenging transition,” explained Ted Tiffany, senior technical lead at the Building Decarbonization Coalition, who added that he was really excited the Beekman Hill project popped up on his radar. ​“This gives us an example” for how buildings on steam can go electric cost effectively and in a way that doesn’t disrupt tenants’ lives, he said. A heat pump solution for NYC buildings and beyond The vanguard achievement in the Empire City comes as four states and 10 other locales have passed their own laws to rein in emissions from existing buildings, and more than 30 other jurisdictions have committed to adopting similar rules, known as building performance standards. New York City’s policy was among the first such laws to be passed in the U.S. Under Local Law 97, 92% of buildings are expected to meet emissions standards within this first compliance period, which runs from 2024 to 2029, according to the nonprofit Urban Green Council. But getting buildings to make the deeper cuts needed to cumulatively slash emissions 40% by 2030 will take a lot more action. NYC Accelerator, which helped on the Beekman Hill retrofit, exists to support city building owners with free resources, training, and one-on-one guidance to complete decarbonization projects. “What we’re seeing most of all is that these [retrofits] are complex and sometimes difficult,” said Elijah Hutchinson, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. ​“You do need to hand-hold and get to people very early.”

Canary Media’s “ Electrified Life ” column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power. At 420 East 51st St., nestled in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan, a 13-story beige brick building sits among a handful of…

Canary Media’s ​“Electrified Life” column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power. 

At 420 East 51st St., nestled in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan, a 13-story beige brick building sits among a handful of other hulking structures. Its tidy facade doesn’t particularly stand out. Nor does its height. In fact, from the street it’s impossible to see what makes the cooperatively owned 1962 building unique among most other apartment properties in New York City: Its residents opted to fully electrify the heating and cooling system.

The co-op board decided in 2023 to swap out the structure’s original fossil-fuel steam system for large-scale electric heat pumps that provide space heating, cooling, and water heating. Utility and state incentives covered a whopping one-third of the $2.9 million project’s cost.

The move, which the seven-member board approved unanimously, puts the co-op well ahead of the curve in complying with Local Law 97, the city’s landmark legislation limiting CO2 emissions from buildings larger than 25,000 square feet. Owners of buildings that overshoot carbon thresholds face financial penalties.

The law’s first reporting deadline is May 1, and the 110-unit co-op has hit its emissions reduction targets far ahead of schedule. With the upgrades completed last September, it’ll avoid triggering penalties through 2049.

Also known as 420 Beekman Hill, the edifice is among the first multifamily structures in Manhattan to switch to all-electric heating, cooling, and water heating. It also appears to be the first co-op to do so, according to staff at NYC Accelerator, a building decarbonization initiative run by the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice.

The retrofit provides a model for the work that will need to happen in buildings around the country in order to achieve climate goals and comply with laws similar to Local Law 97, said Cliff Majersik, senior advisor at the nonprofit Institute for Market Transformation.

The co-op had originally relied on the local utility Con Edison’s district steam system, which is primarily fed by fossil gas and some fuel oil. The retrofit design team weaned the building off that piped steam, solving a problem that still bedevils building owners connected to the hundreds of steam loops operating across the country, including in Cleveland, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

“Getting off steam is the most challenging transition,” explained Ted Tiffany, senior technical lead at the Building Decarbonization Coalition, who added that he was really excited the Beekman Hill project popped up on his radar. ​“This gives us an example” for how buildings on steam can go electric cost effectively and in a way that doesn’t disrupt tenants’ lives, he said.

A heat pump solution for NYC buildings and beyond

The vanguard achievement in the Empire City comes as four states and 10 other locales have passed their own laws to rein in emissions from existing buildings, and more than 30 other jurisdictions have committed to adopting similar rules, known as building performance standards.

New York City’s policy was among the first such laws to be passed in the U.S.

Under Local Law 97, 92% of buildings are expected to meet emissions standards within this first compliance period, which runs from 2024 to 2029, according to the nonprofit Urban Green Council. But getting buildings to make the deeper cuts needed to cumulatively slash emissions 40% by 2030 will take a lot more action.

NYC Accelerator, which helped on the Beekman Hill retrofit, exists to support city building owners with free resources, training, and one-on-one guidance to complete decarbonization projects.

“What we’re seeing most of all is that these [retrofits] are complex and sometimes difficult,” said Elijah Hutchinson, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. ​“You do need to hand-hold and get to people very early.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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Pope Francis Saw Environmental and Climate Issues as Moral Concerns

In his landmark 2015 encyclical “Praised Be,” Pope Francis cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Few moments in Pope Francis’ papacy better exemplify his understanding of climate change and the need to address it than the rain-soaked Mass he celebrated in Tacloban, Philippines, in 2015.Wearing one of the cheap plastic yellow ponchos that were handed out to the faithful, Francis experienced first-hand the type of freak, extreme storms that scientists blame on global warming and are increasingly striking vulnerable, low-lying islands.But with another storm approaching Tacloban two years later, Francis had to cut short his visit to get off the island.“So many of you have lost everything. I don’t know what to tell you,” Francis told the crowd in Tacloban’s muddy airport field as the wind nearly toppled candlesticks on the altar.Francis, who died Monday at 88, was moved to silence that day by the survivors’ pain and the devastation he saw. But he would channel it a few months later when he published his landmark encyclical, “Praised Be,” which cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern. The first ecological encyclical The document, written to inspire global negotiators at the 2015 Paris climate talks, accused the “structurally perverse,” profit-driven economy of the global north of ravaging Earth and turning it into a “pile of filth.” The poor, Indigenous peoples and islanders like those in Tacloban suffered the most, he argued, bearing the brunt of increasing droughts, extreme storms, deforestation and pollution.It was the first ecological encyclical, and it affirmed the Argentine Jesuit, who in his youth studied to be a chemist, as an authoritative voice in the environmental movement. Later cited by presidents and scientists, the document inspired a global faith-based coalition to try to save God’s creation before it was too late.“I think he understood from the beginning that there are three relationships that had to be regenerated: Our relationship with God, our relationship with the created world and our relationship with our fellow creatures,” said papal biographer Austen Ivereigh. A conversion in 2007 in Brazil Francis had a steep learning curve on the environment, just as he did with clergy sexual abuse, which he initially dismissed as overblown. He himself pointed to a 2007 meeting of Latin American and Caribbean bishops in Aparecida, Brazil, as the moment of his ecological awakening.There, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been elected to draft the conference’s final document, and was under pressure to include calls from Brazilian bishops to highlight the plight of the Amazon.Bergoglio, the dour-faced archbishop of urbane Buenos Aires, didn’t get what all the fuss was about.“At first I was a bit annoyed,” Francis wrote in the 2020 book “Let Us Dream.” “It struck me as excessive.”By the end of the meeting, Bergoglio was converted and convinced.The final Aparecida document devoted several sections to the environment: It denounced multinational extraction companies that plundered the region’s resources at the expense of the poor. It warned of melting glaciers and the effects of lost biodiversity. It cast the ravaging of the planet as an assault on God’s divine plan that violated the biblical imperative to “cultivate and care” for creation.Those same issues would later find prominence in “Praised Be,” which took its name from the repeated first line of the “Canticle of the Creatures,” one of the best-known poetic songs of the pontiff’s nature-loving namesake, St. Francis of Assisi.They also would be highlighted in the Amazon Synod that Francis called at the Vatican in 2019, a meeting of bishops and Indigenous peoples specifically to address how the Catholic Church could and should respond to the plight of the Amazon and its impoverished people.“I think the pope’s most important contribution was to insist on the ethical aspect of the debate about climate justice,” said Giuseppe Onofrio, head of Greenpeace Italy, “that the poor were those who contributed the least to pollution and the climate crisis, but were paying the highest price.” How the environment affects all other ills In many ways, those same issues would also come to define much of Francis’ papacy. He came to view the environmental cause as encapsulating nearly all the other ills afflicting humanity in the 21st century: poverty, social and economic injustice, migration and what he called the “throwaway culture” — a melting pot of problems that he was convinced could only be addressed holistically.Some of Francis' strongest calls to protect the environment would come on or around Earth Day, celebrated April 22. “For some time now, we have been becoming more aware that nature deserves to be protected, even if only because human interaction with God’s biodiversity must take care with utmost care and respect,” Francis said in a video message released on Earth Day in 2021. Cardinal Michael Czerny, the Canadian Jesuit whom Francis would later entrust with the ecological dossier, said the 2007 meeting in Brazil had a big impact on Francis.“In Aparecida, listening to so many different bishops talking about what was deteriorating, but also what the people were suffering, I think really impressed him,” said Czerny.Czerny’s mandate encapsulated Francis’ vision of “integral ecology,” covering the environment, the Vatican’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, its charitable Caritas federation, migration advocacy, economic development and its antinuclear campaign.The multifaceted approach was intentional, Czerny said, to establish new thinking about ecology that went beyond the politicized concept of “green” advocacy to something bigger and nonnegotiable: humanity’s relationship with God and creation.“Everything is connected,” Francis liked to say. A legacy from Pope Paul VI He was by no means the first pope to embrace the ecological cause. According to the book “The Popes and Ecology,” Pope Paul VI was the first pontiff to refer to an “ecological catastrophe” in a 1970 speech to a U.N. food agency.St. John Paul II largely ignored the environment, though he did write the first truly ecological manifesto: his 1990 World Day of Peace message, which linked consumer lifestyle with environmental decay.Pope Benedict XVI was known as the “green pope,” primarily for having installed solar panels on the Vatican auditorium and starting a tree-planting campaign to offset the greenhouse gas emissions of Vatican City.Francis issued an update to “Praised Be” in 2023, just before the U.N. climate conference in Dubai. While consistent with the original text, the update was even more dire and showed Francis had grown more urgent in his alarm.He became even more willing to point fingers at the world’s biggest emitters of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, especially the U.S. And he called out those, including in the church, who denied the human causes of global warming.“He showed that he had an understanding of what was happening in the world, and he saw the world from the point of view, as he was like to say, of the peripheries, of the margins,” said Ivereigh, the papal biographer. “He brought the margins into the center.”Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Climate
Culture
Food

Santos wins final approval for Barossa gas project as environment advocates condemn ‘climate bomb’

Energy giant to start production off Northern Territory coast at development projected to add more than 270m tonnes of CO2 to atmosphereElection 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaignGet Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an emailSantos has received federal approval to commence production from its Barossa offshore gasfield off the coast of the Northern Territory.The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (Nopsema) decided to accept the environment plan for the project’s production operations. It marks the final approval required for the project, clearing the way for the gas giant to extract and pipe the gas to Darwin.Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email Continue reading...

Santos has received federal approval to commence production from its Barossa offshore gas field off the coast of the Northern Territory.The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (Nopsema) decided to accept the environment plan for the project’s production operations. It marks the final approval required for the project, clearing the way for the gas giant to extract and pipe the gas to Darwin.The Barossa field is known for its 18% carbon dioxide content, which is a higher concentration than other Australian gas fields.The development is projected to add more than 270m tonnes of heat-trapping CO2 to the atmosphere over its life once the gas is sold and burnt overseas.“This is Australia’s dirtiest gas project and it should never have been given the green light,” said Gavan McFadzean, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s climate change and clean energy program manager.“Barossa is a massive climate bomb that will produce more climate pollution than usable gas.”McFadzean said despite repeated requests by ACF, Santos had not properly explained how the project would comply with Australia’s safeguard mechanism or provided a “proper assessment of how the greenhouse gas emissions from Barossa will affect Australia’s environment”.“Barossa remains on track for first gas in the third quarter of 2025 and within cost guidance,” a Santos spokesperson said in a statement provided to Guardian Australia on Tuesday.Barossa field, Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct and Beetaloo sub basin Composite: Guardian graphic/Guardian graphic/Department of Industry, Science and Resources/Northern Territory Government/NOPSEMAKirsty Howey, executive director of the Environment Centre NT, said: “It is unfathomable that it has been approved in 2025, when the climate science is clear that we can have no new fossil fuel projects if we are to avoid dangerous global warming”.“This approval, in the middle of an election campaign, just goes to show the failure of climate policy in Australia to ensure the necessary phase-out of fossil fuels,” she said.“If Barossa was a litmus test for the reformed Safeguard Mechanism, that policy has failed,” she said.The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, said if Labor was reelected at the forthcoming election, the Greens would be “essential” in the new parliament to “ensure real action is taken to address the climate crisis”.“If the Albanese government wanted to, they could have worked with the Greens in this parliament to stop climate bombs like Barossa by putting a climate trigger in our environment laws,” she said.“Instead, on the eve of an election, Santos has been given the green-light to produce some of the dirtiest gas in Australia.”Guardian Australia sought comment from Labor.Approval of the production plan follows legal challenges to other components of the Barossa project, including unsuccessful proceedings related to submerged cultural heritage that were launched by the Environmental Defenders Office on behalf of three Tiwi Island claimants, over a proposed export pipeline.The federal court ordered the EDO to pay Santos’s full legal costs late last year.

Climate
Energy
Conservation

How Pope Francis Helped Inspire the Global Movement Against Climate Change

Francis framed climate change as an urgent spiritual issue and helped push the world to take action.

In a shift for the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, who died on Monday at 88, was a strong and vocal environmental advocate and used his papacy to help inspire global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. He framed climate change as a spiritual issue, emphasizing the connections between global warming, poverty and social upheaval throughout his 12-year leadership.Within the church, taking such a stance was seen by some as unnecessarily injecting politics into church matters. For environmentalists, the support of Francis was immensely meaningful.In 2015, he penned the first-ever papal encyclical focused solely on the environment. In “Laudato Si,” a sprawling call to action, the pope recognized climate change as both a social and environmental crisis, and emphasized that its greatest consequences were shouldered by the poor.That year, when 195 nations agreed to the landmark Paris Agreement, a global pact against climate change, at least 10 world leaders made specific reference to the pope’s words during their addresses to the United Nations climate conference.“Before Pope Francis, climate change was seen either as a political issue or a scientific issue. What his encyclical did was frame it as a spiritual issue,” said Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest and the editor at large of America Media, a media company with a Catholic perspective.“He really started from the standpoint that God had created the universe, had created the world and that this was a responsibility of ours — to care for it,” Father Martin said.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

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Activate climate’s ‘silent majority’ to supercharge action, experts say

Making concerned people aware their views are far from alone could unlock the change so urgently needed‘Spiral of silence’: climate action is very popular, so why don’t people realise it?The Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch the 89 Percent Project—and highlight the fact that the vast majority of the world’s population wants climate action. Read moreA huge 89% majority of the world’s people want stronger action to fight the climate crisis but feel they are trapped in a self-fulfilling “spiral of silence” because they mistakenly believe they are in a minority, research suggests.Making people aware that their pro-climate view is, in fact, by far the majority could unlock a social tipping point and push leaders into the climate action so urgently needed, experts say. Continue reading...

A huge 89% majority of the world’s people want stronger action to fight the climate crisis but feel they are trapped in a self-fulfilling “spiral of silence” because they mistakenly believe they are in a minority, research suggests.Making people aware that their pro-climate view is, in fact, by far the majority could unlock a social tipping point and push leaders into the climate action so urgently needed, experts say.The data comes from a global survey that interviewed 130,000 people across 125 countries and found 89% thought their national government “should do more to fight global warming”.It also asked people if they would “contribute 1% of their household income every month to fight global warming” and what proportion of their fellow citizens they thought would do the same. In almost all countries, people believed only a minority of their fellow citizens would be willing to contribute. In reality, the opposite was true: more than 50% of citizens were willing to contribute in all but a few nations.The global average of those willing to contribute was 69%. But the percentage that people thought would be willing was 43%. The gap between perception and reality was as high as 40 percentage points in some countries, from Greece to Gabon.Further analysis of the survey data for the Guardian showed that public backing for climate action was as strong among the G20 member countries as in the rest of the world. These states, including the US, China, Saudi Arabia, UK and Australia, are responsible for 77% of global carbon emissions.“One of the most powerful forms of climate communication is just telling people that a majority of other people think climate change is happening, human-caused, a serious problem and a priority for action,” said Prof Anthony Leiserowitz at Yale University in the US.Prof Cynthia Frantz, at Oberlin College in the US, said. “Currently, worrying about climate change is something people are largely doing in the privacy of their own minds – we are locked in a self-fulfilling spiral of silence.”Dr Niall McLoughlin, at the Climate Barometer research group in the UK, said: “If you were to unlock the perception gaps, that could move us closer to a social tipping point amongst the public on climate issues.”The existence of a silent climate majority across the planet is supported by several separate analyses. Other studies demonstrate a clear global appetite for action, from citizens of rich nations strongly supporting financial support (pdf) for poorer vulnerable countries and even those in petrostates backing a phase-out of coal, oil and gas. A decades-long campaign of misinformation by the fossil fuel industry is a key reason the climate majority has been suppressed, researchers said.Prof Teodora Boneva, at the University of Bonn, Germany, who was part of the team behind the 125-nation survey, said: “The world is united in its judgment about climate change and the need to act. Our results suggest a concerted effort to correct these misperceptions could be powerful intervention, yielding large, positive effects.”The 125 countries in the survey account for 96% of the world’s carbon emissions, and the results were published in the journal Nature Climate Change. People in China, the world’s biggest polluter, were among the most concerned, with 97% saying its government should do more to fight climate change and four out of five willing to give 1% of their income. Brazil, Portugal, and Sri Lanka also ranked highly.The world’s second biggest polluter, the US, was near the bottom, but 74% of its citizens still said its government should do more, while 48% were willing to contribute. New Zealand, Norway and Russia were also relatively low-scoring.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionResearch has also found that politicians suffer from serious misperceptions. In the UK, MPs vastly underestimated public support for onshore windfarms. In the US, almost 80% of congressional staffers underestimated people’s support for limits on carbon emissions, sometimes by more than 50 percentage points.“Perception gaps can have real consequences – they could mean that climate policies are not as ambitious as the public sentiment,” said McLoughlin.Substantial evidence exists that correcting mistaken beliefs about the views of others can change people’s views on many subjects, from opinions on immigrants and violence against women, to environmental topics such as saving energy. This is because people are instinctively drawn to majority views and are also more likely to do something if they think others are doing it too.“People deeply understand we are in a climate emergency,” said Cassie Flynn, at the UN Development Programme, whose People’s Climate Vote in 2024 found 80% of people wanted stronger climate action from their countries. “They want world leaders to be bold, because they are living it day to day. World leaders should look at this data as a resounding call for them to rise to the challenge.”This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now

Climate
Crisis
Government

Pope Francis hailed as ‘unflinching global champion’ on climate crisis

Officials and campaigners from around world pay tribute to pontiff who put environment at heart of his papacyPope Francis, groundbreaking Jesuit pontiff, dies aged 88He declared destroying the environment a sin, warned that humanity was turning the glorious creation of God into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth”, and located the cause of the climate crisis in people’s “selfish and boundless thirst for power”.The messages Pope Francis delivered on the climate and environmental crises were forceful and direct. He called the leaders of fossil fuel companies into the Vatican to hold them to account; declared a global climate emergency, in 2019; and in his final months, held a conference on “the economics of the common good”. Continue reading...

He declared destroying the environment a sin, warned that humanity was turning the glorious creation of God into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation and filth”, and located the cause of the climate crisis in people’s “selfish and boundless thirst for power”.The messages Pope Francis delivered on the climate and environmental crises were forceful and direct. He called the leaders of fossil fuel companies into the Vatican to hold them to account; declared a global climate emergency, in 2019; and in his final months, held a conference on “the economics of the common good”.Simon Stiell, the UN’s top official on the climate, paid tribute: “Pope Francis has been a towering figure of human dignity, and an unflinching global champion of climate action as a vital means to deliver it. Through his tireless advocacy, [he] reminded us there can be no shared prosperity until we make peace with nature and protect the most vulnerable, as pollution and environmental destruction bring our planet close to ‘breaking point’.”Laurence Tubiana, chief of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the 2015 Paris agreement, wrote on social media that Pope Francis had been an ‘important voice’: “By clearly setting out the causes of the crisis we are experiencing, [he] reminded us who the fight against the climate crisis is aimed at: humanity as a whole.”The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, said Pope Francis was “beacon of global moral strategic leadership” who had guided and inspired her through the “dark and desolate days” of the Covid pandemic. Describing him as her hero, she recalled spending time with him late last year, where he reinforced in her “the importance of always aligning our hearts, our heads, and our hands with our faith – to see, hear, and feel all people, so that we may help them, and to protect our planet. “His voice comforted and inspired many. His hands led him to places where others dared not go, and his heart knew no boundaries. His humour and his laughter were not only infectious but calming. Let us, each and every day, see, hear, and feel people – to fight the globalisation of indifference.”After his appointment in March 2013, Francis quickly took up the climate and environment as key themes of his papacy. “If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us,” he warned an audience in Rome in May 2014, the year before the Paris agreement was signed. “Never forget this.”His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had taken steps to green the Vatican with solar panels, and spoken of the sinfulness of environmental destruction. But Francis went further, with a landmark encyclical in 2015. Laudato Si’, translated as Praise Be to You, set out in 180 pages his vision of “climate change [as] a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political”, and warned of the “grave social debt” owed by the rich to the poor, because of it.Pope Francis, pictured here in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 2015, and who has died at the age of 88, was viewed by many as a champion of climate action. Photograph: Ettore Ferrari/EPA“This is his signature teaching,” said Austen Ivereigh, a papal biographer, at the time of the publication. “Francis has made it not just safe to be Catholic and green; he’s made it obligatory.”“Laudato Si’ was a wonderful achievement and vision – an environmentalism of hope and justice that profoundly resonated,” said Edward Davey, head of the UK office of the World Resources Institute.This was followed by a fresh encyclical, Laudate Deum, in October 2023, with even starker warnings, that humanity was taking the Earth “to breaking point”.Part of what made Francis’s words stand out was their clear focus on the social justice aspects of the climate crisis. St Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century Italian friar from whom Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina took his papal name, was known for living among the poor and in close harmony with nature.As Pope, Francis seemed equally determined to bring the two together. “We have to hear both the cry of the Earth, and the cry of the poor,” he wrote in Laudato Si.Mark Watts, executive director of the C40 Cities group of mayors supporting climate action, said: “He established for a worldwide audience that the climate crisis is not just an environmental challenge but a profound social and ethical issue, exacerbated by greed and short-term profit seeking, disproportionately affecting the world’s most marginalised communities. His leadership highlighted how inequality and the climate crisis are inextricably linked, mobilising community-led climate action.”In Laudate Deum, Francis called for “a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the western model”, and defended protesters, writing: “The actions of groups negatively portrayed as ‘radicalised’ … are filling a space left empty by society as a whole, which ought to exercise a healthy ‘pressure’, since every family ought to realise that the future of their children is at stake.”He was regarded by some as too radical himself – as he noted: “[I have been] obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic church.”This year’s UN climate summit, Cop30, will be held in Brazil, in November, and campaigners had been hoping that, despite his increasing frailty, the first ever Latin American pontiff might be able to make it. Few figures of such authority have staked their reputation on the climate crisis, and fewer still have so publicly yoked together social justice with the environment.Stiell said: “His message will live on: humanity is community. And when any one community is abandoned – to poverty, starvation, climate disasters and injustice – all of humanity is deeply diminished, materially and morally, in equal measure.”

Climate
Crisis

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Silent Skies - The First Electric Plane Flyover

Silent Skies follows the groundbreaking journey of three Pennsylvania college students who orchestrated and piloted the first ever fully electric airplane stadium flyover. Stunning fans with a whisper-quiet show, this event signaled the dawn of America's transition to electric aviation. The students completed a record breaking trip flying the airplane from its base in Hartford, CT to the stadium in Easton, PA, recharging at enroute airports directly from a fleet of electric F-150 trucks. The air travel industry faces an unprecedented challenge: decarbonization. Historically, new aviation technologies are met with consumer skepticism. Demonstrating electric aircraft today, ahead of widespread adoption, is key for building consumer trust, political support, and sustained investment. The flyover was witnessed by 10,000+ attendees, thousands more on ESPN+ and created a precedent for the FAA to approve manned electric aircraft demonstrations over populated areas. Textron eAviation and Ford amplified the event through their social media channels and the film premiered at San Francisco Climate Week.

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THE SPRAYER

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Animation

Sounding the Alarm ~ America's Climate Crisis

"It's really hard being a fire family. Every day it's getting worse." -Brett, wife of Marin County Battalion Chief in California.Every day, Americans who live close to the land and sea face the dangers of climate change—from a firefighter in California, to a beekeeper in Arizona, to a climate refugee losing her home in Florida. The changing climate affects our food systems, water and way of life. These American families are in the trenches sacrificing everything while facing depression, PTSD, and suicide—collateral damage of a crisis unchecked. Award-winning filmmaker, Peter Goetz, captures America's faces and voices, shot in 2020 leading up to the presidential election. Goetz and the Biden campaign made history, producing the first national climate spot to run during a presidential election. But this film dives deeper into the American climate crisis to explore the lives of the people who are sounding the alarm, worried about their grandchildren’s future, asking, "If not us, then who?" This is a story of the resilience, perseverance, and ingenuity of the American people. Ever hopeful, they collectively take on a common enemy. As the young, Navajo solar visionary Brett Issac insists, "We've got to turn this train around before it's too late."

Climate
Crisis
Government

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