Giving Compass' Take:

• It has been over a year since the Trump Administration pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement. Since then, federal efforts to address climate change have been cut, but local governments are moving to enact their own policies to protect the environment.

• How can funders make an impact on climate change? Can local action make up for federal leadership? 

• Learn how climate change will force migration in coming years and decades.

Under brilliant sunshine and blue skies on June 1st, 2017, President Donald Trump stood at a podium in the Rose Garden to announce the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. Trump described the pact, signed by every single other nation on Earth, as “an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.”

Opinion polls show that concern about climate change is rising, as Americans are finally seeing that climate change is not an issue in the future, but is here now. The issue, unfortunately for the development of effective policy, has become deeply partisan.

An international research team puts out a thermometer estimating where we are headed in terms of global warming, given national pledges under the Paris Agreement. The U.S., sadly, is in the worst category, ranked “critically insufficient.” That is the bad news, since defenders of the Paris agreement are protecting an unproven voluntary approach, which relies on fear by nations of being “named and shamed” by civil society and other parties.

Climate efforts at statehouses are advancing and can benefit state economies in similar ways. There are glimmers of hope for federal and state or regional carbon taxes, if they can be part of the solution to bigger problems. For example, there is the upcoming California Climate Summit in September, extended carbon pricing and emissions trading among certain states, and climate-related financial disclosures being endorsed by cities and states. Investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy produced locally could keep billions of dollars at home and create thousands of jobs.

Read the full article about the Paris climate agreement by Timmons Roberts at Brookings.