A global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions would prevent nearly 70,000 premature American deaths annually by the end of the century while sparing the country hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of economic losses, according to a major government study on the cost of climate change.

Slowing the carbon build-up in the atmosphere would also prevent severe damage to a wide range of critical ecosystems, from Hawaiian coral reefs that support tourism to shellfish beds off the East Coast, said the report released by the White House on Monday.

The report, a five-year, peer-reviewed analysis that assesses the benefits of alternative strategies for dealing with climate change, concludes that every region of the country could be spared severe economic disruptions that would result if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to soar.

Sometimes we need to look back in order to see the road forward.

Whenever I reflect on the success of California's climate policies, I like to hop in my time machine and dial it all the way back to ancient history - circa 2010 - when I was a young staffer in Washington D.C. fresh out of grad school with big policy dreams and an even bigger student debt.

For climate advocates, they were the best of times, which quickly became the worst of times. In 2010 the Senate was considering a federal climate bill to finally reign in the carbon pollution driving climate change, while jump-starting a clean energy economy to help pull us out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Visions of hope and change ran high.

Pope Francis’ clarion call on climate change has been duly hailed as a potential game changer in the long-elusive effort to gain a global commitment for action. His 184-page encyclical, released last week, framed the issue in stark moral terms. The former chemist warned of the planet devolving into “an immense pile of filth” from its wealthier economies’ overreliance on fossil fuels.

As the United Nations prepares to gather world leaders in Paris for yet another conference on the issue this fall, its climate-change chief is citing another factor that could help galvanize support from wary nations: the California experience.

“From an international perspective, developing countries are the ones who are going to have to make most of the changes, because that is where most of the energy demand is in the future; that is where most of the growth is going to be in the future,” said Christiana Figueres, who leads the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In an address to the California Senate on Thursday, the UN’s top climate change official praised California for its landmark climate legislation and the fact that it has been able to decouple its greenhouse gas emissions from its economic growth, and called on the state to mobilize similar leadership in other regions of the world.

California is the seventh largest economy in the world and has the goal of a 40 percent emissions reduction by 2030 based on1990 levels - the most ambitious target in North America. UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres has been visiting California ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, at which a new universal climate change agreement will be signed. 

The program's quarterly auctions of emissions allowances have gone on largely without a hitch. The program has fit in, as was expected, with other emissions reduction programs implemented under AB 32, the state's landmark greenhouse gas legislation, including mandates for renewable fuels sources for electrical utilities and emissions standards for new cars and trucks.

It has done so without a measurable drag on economic growth. The program generated $969 million in revenue for the state through the end of 2014, and is expected to generate $2 billion a year or more in the future. The money must be spent on efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

"What we've learned is that a cap-and-trade system will not kill the California economy," says Stanford economist Lawrence H. Goulder, who advised the ARB on the program's design. "The economy has continued to flourish."

California Democrats are optimistic that the state will be able to achieve sweeping new environmental objectives outlined in recently passed legislation, the state’s Senate president said Wednesday.

His assessment was expressed at an event in Sacramento hosted by RealClearPolitics and sponsored by the Diesel Technology Forum. RCP Washington Bureau Chief Carl Cannon quizzed Kevin de León, president pro tempore of the California Senate, as well as environmental and business experts about the state’s energy and climate challenges.

De León, a Democrat, lauded Senate Bill 350, which passed the upper chamber last week and now heads to the state Assembly. But its prospects in the lower chamber are less certain than they were in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where no Republicans voted for the measure.

The California Senate voted Wednesday in favor of legislation that would require the state’s — and country’s — two largest pension funds to divest of their investments in thermal coal power companies. The bill’s next stop will be a vote in the California State Assembly. If California passes the coal divestment legislation, it will become the first U.S. state to do so.

Continuing the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, California lawmakers approved expansive legislation Wednesday that will require ambitious new renewable energy and pollution standards over the coming decades.

In the Senate, the effort was led by President Pro Tem Kevin de León and fellow Democrats, who touted the economic benefits of building a green economy.

“This package of bills will put California on a pathway to sustainable economic growth,” de León said at a news conference following the vote, “protecting the health of our communities and the integrity of our environment, while also spreading a wave of innovation in our energy and transportation sectors.”

When the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worked together to pass Assembly Bill 32, skeptics said we set naive and unrealistic targets and that the California Air Resources Board could not be trusted with its implementation. Yet here we are, well on our way to meeting our carbon reduction targets, with an economy that is stronger than ever.

Many of the same voices are now casting doubts about Senate Bill 350. Unsurprisingly, the loudest are led by the billion-dollar oil industry. Looking to the future, we know an economy built on fossil fuels is not sustainable. We have to aim high to change the way we do business, or else we lose ground in building the new economy.