A Chill Falls on the Climate Community

First the scientists, now the advocates?

It snowed last night in the Green Mountains, a typically beautiful late-season fluff-fest. Which meant I got to rise at 6 this morning and go for a ski before the spring sun turned it to slush—helpful, because I needed to clear my head a little.

The sun rising on the Green Mountains this morning

That’s because word came last night that, having dispensed with immigrants, law firms, humanitarian workers, and universities, the Trump administration was now turning its crosshairs on climate advocates. Nothing specific yet, but E&E News was reporting on widespread rumors that the administration planned (on Earth Day no less!) to cancel the tax-exempt status of many green groups

“There's lots of rumors about what terrible thing [Trump] wants to do on Earth Day, to just give everybody the middle finger,” Brett Hartl, director of governmental operations at the Center for Biological Diversity, said.

An environmental funder granted anonymity to speak freely speculated Trump might try to do to nonprofits what he’s threatened to do with universities.

“The rumors feel credible because this is playbook they use,” the funder said. “That’s why people are taking it very seriously.”

Another environmentalist expressed concern that the administration could attempt to target green groups by defining efforts to limit fossil fuel development as a threat to national security.

The threat comes amidst the ongoing decimation of federally-funded climate science. In the last few days, for instance, NOAA has announced it will no longer be maintaining its remarkable map of sea-surface temperatures, while the NIH said it was no longer gathering information on the health impacts of global warming.

The N.I.H. said in an internal document obtained by The New York Times that it was the agency’s new policy “not to prioritize” research related to climate change. The document also described the organization’s intent not to fund research on gender identity, vaccine hesitancy or diversity, equity and inclusion. N.I.H. employees were instructed to tell researchers to “remove all” mention of the topics and resubmit their applications, even if the main focus was unrelated.

The policy shift on climate change, first reported by ProPublica, stands to drastically limit U.S.-based research into its health effects, which tries to answer questions like whether events like wildfires and heat waves can affect cardiovascular health and pregnancy.

But now the administration is targeting those who take that science and try to turn it into change. They are the undergunned and outmanned equivalent of the armies of corporate lobbyists, producing the reports and briefing papers that try to stand up to the tide of rightwing media. I know a great many of these people, and I admire their work endlessly; it’s an honor to be counted among them, even if I’m only a volunteer. It was perhaps inevitable that Trump and his team would target us; together we’ve been making life harder for his clients in the fossil fuel industry. And in the new America, if you don’t knuckle under you get a knuckle sandwich. Figuratively speaking. One hopes.

Anyway, there are two questions worth asking. One is, will Trump pay any price for these attacks on climate science and advocacy? He’s not immune to the laws of politics—he clearly paid a price for his absurd tariff policy, which is why he backed off. In the case of tariffs, Trump’s problem was more or less immediate feedback: the bond market threatened to take down the American economy—”got a little queasy” as the president put it—and so he blinked. Slightly longer term feedback will likely come in the form of a recession. The phrase du jour, repeated endlessly, was that he had “touched a hot stove.”

By that standard, one assumes the administration doesn’t fear blowback from a mere hot planet. And yet even if it doesn’t work as fast the bond market, the world’s climate system is now malfunctioning in more or less real time. March was the hottest March on record, topping 2024 by just a smidge; meanwhile, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere grew at a record pace last year, apparently because overheated forests are losing some of their capacity as a carbon sink. We’re headed towards what is already forecast to be a more-active-than-usual hurricane season. Trump now owns all this in a way none of his predecessors did: they (with the exception of Joe Biden) may not have done much about climate change, but they didn’t insist it was a hoax. So when Tampa drowns or Tucson bakes or whatever happens next, it may stick to him in a way it hasn’t before. He’s got no credible scientific defenders (although the climate denial crew did enlist Musk’s Grok 3 AI to write a paper last week). Damage to his brand is at least a possibility, especially if Democrats display even the slightest skill in linking, say, rising insurance premiums to the climate crisis.

The other question is, will this stop the climate movement? Of course it will make things harder, diverting time and attention and money from important work to dealing with lawyers and auditors; I get to work with paid staff at places like Third Act, and they are not just deeply good people, they are also crucial to making volunteers much more effective.

But the conceit of the rightwing has always been that climate scientists and activists are in it for the money, right down to insisting that protesters outside Tesla dealerships have been paid by George Soros. (I’ve taken my “Kia EV’s Rule” sign out several times, and no check yet!) This has always been an absurd claim: climate scientists are not getting rich, and most activists could make more money doing almost anything else. Meanwhile, oil executives do get very rich indeed (Trump’s Energy Secretary, fracking honcho Chris Wright, is reportedly worth $171 million), and the success of their companies is due in no small part to an endless collection of tax loopholes and federal, state, and local subsidies. My guess is, very few people would drill for oil without compensation; a great many people will try to defend the planet even if it costs them a lot.

We’ll find out. We’re gearing up for the public launch of SunDay, the nationwide September mass action in defense of renewable energy. If you’re in the Boston area, come to Old North Church at 6:30 on Saturday April 26 for a launch ceremony (green lantern in Paul Revere’s steeple!); if you’re anywhere else, we’re doing a digital nationwide launch on April 28. Draw us a sun today to help! Here’s this week’s inspiration, from Lisa Gundlach

In other energy and climate news:

+A new study shows that the greenhouse gas emissions from a year’s worth of LNG exports from the Gulf effectively cancel out the emissions reductions from all the EVs on the road in the U.S. Trump, of course, is busily using tariff threats to pressure more countries into taking our LNG—but a new study (from Jeremy Symons’ impressive new thinktank!) makes clear that as we export more, the price of natural gas goes up for American consumers and pointing out that

Rising natural gas prices are a triple-cost blow to US consumers, who will pay higher natural gas bills, higher electricity bills, and higher cost of goods from US manufacturers. Rising wholesale prices could potentially double the cost of natural gas for manufacturers in some regions. These increased energy costs for US manufacturers will harm the global competitiveness of US manufacturers, significantly undermining any potential protections from new tariffs.

+Good news from the fight against the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline: EACOP opponents have persuaded a thirtieth insurance company—in this case the giant Chubb—not to underwrite the project.

"As someone who lost land and livelihood to this controversial project, I welcome this news from Chubb," said Rachel Tugume, one of the EACOP-Project Affected People. "EACOP has brought only suffering—forced evictions, destroyed farms, and broken futures for our children. No amount of money can replace what we’ve lost, but seeing global companies reject this project gives us hope. The world is finally listening to our cries."

+A two-year experiment with heat pumps in New York City public housing has yielded excellent results—87 percent less energy used, and bills cut in half.

Tia Cheng, who lives at the Woodside Houses with her grandmother, described the heat from the window-mounted heat pumps as “more consistent and comfortable” than what she got from the radiators.

“They’re definitely a lot better than the old ones,” Cheng, 24, said. “With the old ones, you really can’t control it and sometimes there’s no heat on really cold days — but when it gets warmer, sometimes the heat finally comes, but it’s too hot, and you have to open the windows.”

+The heatwave season is ramping up in India and Pakistan, which annually now record some of the highest temperatures the earth has ever seen.

Parts of Pakistan are likely to experience heat up to 8 degrees Celsius above normal between April 14-18, according to the country’s meteorological department. Maximum temperatures in Balochistan, in country’s southwest, could reach up to 49 degrees Celsius (120 Fahrenheit).

That’s like living in Death Valley – the hottest and driest place in North America – where summer daytime temperatures often climb to similar levels.

+ Third Act activist and New Yorker contributor Jim Lardner has launched an new podcast called Good Trouble where he conducts “conversations with organizers, movement-builders, and engineers and imaginers of change.” Listen here to Jim’s interview with veteran climate activist Mike Tidwell about Tidwell’s new book The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street. Fine book, fine podcast!

+It got less attention than shooting his wife (and Katy Perry) into the edge of space, but Jeff Bezos is helping bankroll what looks like a very interesting EV startup, one that might produce a basic electric pickup for $25,000. TechCrunch thinks maybe it will look like this?

+In Rolling Stone, Travis Nichols contends that Greenpeace may have lost a more than half-billion dollar court judgment in North Dakota, but that it ‘saved its soul’ in the process. Meanwhile, civil society is trying to hit back at Big Oil: join a Third Act Upstate New York webinar next week for info on a proposed law that could hold the industry accountable for greenwashing.

+As Trump’s attacks keep unfolding on clean energy, some industry voices are reticent; others are loud. Here’s an excellent statement from Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC) which also works in Ohio and DC

To the nonprofits and federal workers fighting to maintain funding that keeps families warm in winter, provides low-interest loans for multifamily building upgrades, enables small business owners to install new lighting, or allows dairy farmers to improve the refrigeration systems they rely on: VEIC stands alongside you. We share your frustration, and we’re eager to keep building solutions together.

+And to close, a little panoply of good news:

Wales is hard at work building a “sharing economy” through “libraries of things.”

Benthyg Cymru was formally set up in 2020, backed by funding from the Welsh government as part of its Beyond Recycling strategy. Wales is leading the way — not just in circular economy thinking, but in how we connect that to fairness, equity, and the long view. We’re the first country in the world to have a Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, which legally requires public bodies to act in the interest of people not yet born. It’s a bold and practical commitment to intergenerational justice — something the UN is only now beginning to champion through its Our Common Agenda and Futures work.

Benthyg Cymru is putting that vision into practice, one borrowed drill or pasta maker at a time. We’re the first nation to roll out a national network of libraries of things, embedded into community infrastructure and public systems. The idea itself isn’t new — tool libraries have been around since the late 1970s, with one of the earliest in Berkeley, California — but what’s happening in Wales is different. Here, it’s not a one-off project or a novelty. It’s a movement, grounded in policy, powered by community, and driven by the belief that everyone should have access to what they need, in their own communities.

Today, we’ve got 28 libraries of things up and running across Wales, from urban centres to rural towns. Each one is unique. Some are nestled inside libraries or community centres, while others pop up in shipping containers, public libraries or on the high street. We’ve got more in the pipeline — some led by housing associations, others by local councils or grassroots groups.

Meanwhile, French rail officials have unveiled the elegant interiors of their now high speed trains, leading Grist to ask, correctly, why America doesn’t get nice stuff like this

But at least rural Americans are starting to prosper from renewable energy development. A new University of Texas study by Joshua Rhodes finds that

Over the lifetime of those projects, they will pay more than $12 billion in taxes to the communities where they’re located – some of which do not get much revenue from other industries, like oil and gas or manufacturing.

Rhodes: “And that money then stays in the local area and funds things like roads and schools and hospital districts and other types of local services that the residents need.”

On top of that, landowners who lease property for those clean energy projects are expected to earn about $15 billion in payments over the years.

Rhodes: “And that can make a big difference for a rancher or a landholder to have that revenue. … A lot of landowners talked about wind and solar being like a drought-proof crop. It doesn’t have to rain to still get paid.”

And in the wake of disasters across the country, more and more healthcare providers are building solar microgrids so they’ll have power no matter what

“When community health centers are down, they can’t see patients,” Ben Money of the National Association of Community Health Centers, said. “Those patients that need care end up going to the emergency room, where it costs an exorbitant amount of money to get something that could be delivered at a fraction of that cost at a community health center.”

“Each day a health center is closed due to a power outage puts the organization at a financial risk,” Money said, potentially leading to reduced services, staff layoffs or even permanent closure. By contrast, a solar microgrid system can lower operating costs, allowing centers to reinvest savings back into patient care and services.

And finally a springtime story to take the edge off that snowy picture above (I know that not everyone is quite as taken with winter as I am): a new study that solar farms can host three times as many birds as nearby cropland!

Our study also showed that solar farms offer important habitat for a number of threatened bird species. In fact, birds such as yellowhammer, linnet, greenfinch and corn bunting, which are of particular concern to conservationists due to their declining national populations, were considerably more abundant on mixed-habitat solar farms.

Perhaps our results aren’t that surprising. After all, the mixed-habitat solar farms we surveyed contained many of the features birds prefer (similar to nature-friendly farms in less intensively farmed areas). These features include hedgerows, which can offer berries to eat and crevices to shelter in, particularly for birds adapted to woodland habitats. The tall and diverse vegetation around the solar panels contains a variety of habitats, with insect prey or seeds for food. The intensively managed cropland and solar farms had none of these features.

By providing the right habitat, birds have been naturally drawn to these solar farms in an area that sorely lacks it.