Over the next few days, leaders from cities, local governments and other organizations around the world will gather in Lyon, France. It is an important step toward COP21, the UN conference on climate change that will happen in Paris in December. The bold actions taken not only by local leaders but also by all the range of non-state actors to reduce greenhouse gases place them at the forefront of the fight against climate change.

Pope Francis dove into a secular subject with his first major encyclical on the theme of environment, “Laudato Si” (“Praise Be to You”), calling countries and peoples to stop ruining the Earth, “our common home." The 184-page document, which can be read here, is regarded as Francis’s critique of unrelenting global capitalism, businesses that sacrifice the environment for profits.

For the first time, climate change has received full treatment in an important State Department planning document, joining terrorism, democracy, and the global economy among the nation’s top diplomatic priorities. It’s the clearest sign yet that the warming climate has the full attention of the Obama administration.

At the center of global Catholicism, church leaders joined with politicians, scientists and economists to draft a statement declaring not only that climate change is a “scientific reality” but also that there’s a moral and religious responsibility to do something about it.

The United Nations climate change negotiations are headed towards a major deadline this December in Paris to create a new global agreement. The summit presents an ideal place for the US and Latin American and Caribbean leaders to candidly and privately discuss the issue.

But Cyclone Pam is more than just a natural disaster. It is a demonstrable effect of worldwide climate change, which scientists and development experts have long warned will hit Pacific Island states the hardest.

He wouldn’t put it this way, but Secretary of State John Kerry announced this week that the U.S. government will turn the screws on India over the country’s environmental record. In a joint event, the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency declared that they will install air pollution monitoring devices on more U.S. embassies around the world and release their findings.