In my opinion, this is exactly the sort of result expected when so-called "climate activism" is restricted to legal channels because of two reasons:
(a) Those that define what is legal are often the ones with the most power
(b) In tough times, those that gain the most power are those who often cheat, lie, and take advantage of the conditions ruthless capitalism provides
Legal-only climate activism is exactly the sort of activism governments (and the elite) want. They want it because during the "good times", they can adopt whatever measures the climate activists want at a rate that THEY DEFINE using the surplus of the good times. That appeases the activists and diverts attention from the destructiveness of their longer-term goals. And, in the "bad times", those who only care about themselves can vote for people like Trump (even if it's not in their best interests), and throw climate activism out the window.
The fact is, legal, mainstream climate activism is a bit deluded for two reasons:
(a) They overemphasize short-term successes, thinking that the savage opposition will never fight back and cause regressions.
(b) They constantly emphasize peace and legal recourse because that is the safe position. However, not all actions can be dealt with in such a pandering way. When you cut your finger, you can peacefully put a bandaid on it and let the cut heal. No body part is affected. When a finger gets gangrene, it's better to cut it off with force lest the gangrene spread to the rest of the body.
Climate activism will ALWAYS be subservient to the unsustainable growth model for as long as it insists on playing by the rules, and what is happening today with Trump and his budget cuts is a great example. If government agents came into homes and started shooting peoples loved ones, people would actually fight back. But that is what the governement is doing today to the very foundation of what keeps us alive – the planet – and we insist on continually asking them for permission to do something about it.
These are dark times, no doubt. But perhaps there's a silver lining. The plethora of environmental organizations are notorious for not playing nicely together. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and we are all under attack. Trump's attacks are clearly illegal, and he's already lost in court again and again. A lawsuit by numerous environmental groups over his attempts to weaponize the IRS would almost certainly succeed.
So nice to find out the great stuff going on around the world to address the climate emergency, despite what the current regime is trying to do to undermine it and threaten us. We must and will stand united. Thanks!
What do you think is the game here? We have an administration that seems to be intent on destroying the country. Do they also want to destroy the planet? I'm not being facetious.
> Do they also want to destroy the planet? I'm not being facetious.
Well....YES. The reason why countries like the U.S. have been so successful economically is precisely because they are the best at exploiting the natural world as a commons to grow the economy what it is today. It seems like your question is coming from a perspective that we are just bumbling along, figuring out how to do things better as a collective group. That's very much not the case: we are aggressive and efficient and purposeful at destroying the planet. That's one of the reasons why Trump is in power: because the U.S. has cultivated a sizable subpopulation that simply is callous to the needs of life, and the only reason why they exist is because of the surplus wasteful lifestyle that has been going on for decades.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If a country goes for success based on a fossil fuel economy, then it also encourages the growth of a large subset of people who are a result of that economy – careless and wasteful and uncaring people.
There is also a nihilistic approach to life that Trump & his cabal have been taking, greedily gobbling up everything they can get a hold of, leaving nothing for anyone else, especially future generations, because why should Trump care about future generations since he'll be gone in a few years (if that long), & he cares nothing about anyone but himself, which is basically the mindset of everyone he surrounds himself with. Apparently Musk, Thiel, & a number of other billionaire technocrats, are accelerationist nihilists, doing their utmost to bring an end to prosperity & civilization, so that the few that are left, which they naively expect to be themselves, can start anew.
Regardless, those who remain silent in the face of this nihilism are a large part of the problem. There is a quote often attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Exactly! At one time, this extremely selfish approach was merely instinctual. Now it is overt and declarative, as the billionaires have no doubt thought of "starting anew" in their tech dystopia!
No matter how much these braindead MAGA Trumpers try to stifle research and deny its existence. Climate change is happening, and it’s costing America in extreme weather, and threats to public health. We are chained to the deck of the Titanic, while the rest of the world is attacking the problem and planning for it. The rest of the world will advance, while we fall behind.
And this is our fate in virtually every aspect of our national affairs, from the economy to the environment to health to education to science to arts to law & justice. And it will remain that way as long as Trump & the Republicans are in power.
Bill, ICYMI, as serendipity would have it, this is the third of three emails sent to you and Andy Revkin:
Bill, Andy,
As I was typing the errata, my UK colleague and Google Group PRAG* founder and Chair dipped his oar as follows-up to Graeme Taylor with the following, which synthesized the pickle we are in and must face squarely, on the table, openly, direly;
Subject: [prag] Re: [HPAC] Daniele Visioni's TEDx Talk on solar geoengineering
Hi Graeme,
Thanks for that. Daniele makes a good case for treating SAI as a reasonable option for reducing the impacts of climate change and therefore worthy of further research. He doesn't explain what a dreadful situation we are in, with the Earth System accelerating away from the norms of the late Holocene on which our civilisation has grown to depend. SAI might have to be deployed as a desperate measure to avoid reaching a point of no return when catastrophic climate change and sea level rise become inevitable. Certainly emissions reduction cannot produce the cooling effect required; nor can greenhouse gas removal.
In particular, the vicious cycle of warming and melting in the Arctic has to be broken in order to start lowering the Arctic temperature and prevent an otherwise inevitable rise in sea level of many metres. At the end of the Younger Dryas there was a dramatic warming and sea level rose 20 metres in 400 years: 5 metres per century. We could see this rate occur again and there would be nothing to stop it if the Arctic temperature could not be lowered.
Perhaps this is all too scary for a TedX talk; but excellent research by Wake Smith, Doug MacMartin et al. suggests that the Arctic could be refrozen by deploying high-flying aircraft to spray SO2 into the stratosphere at mid to high latitudes. This would cost a few tens of billions of dollars per year: a small price to prevent catastrophic climate change and sea level rise. The risks from adverse effects of SAI are reckoned to be small; and are certainly miniscule in comparison with the risks from leaving cooling intervention too late.
However, there is a very positive side to rapid SAI intervention: climate change can be reversed; sea level rise can be slowed; and, together with greenhouse gas removal, the planet can be returned to the late Holocene conditions that we began to leave four or five decades ago.
Indeed, as we struggle with the legal an political obfuscations and obstructions, we are running out of time to take effective urgent triage intervention to avert insidious irreversible collapse of ecosystems
Bill ICYMI, I sent you and Andy Revkin the following email Thursday:
Hi Bill and Andy,
Perhaps your respective audiences would benefit hearing your take on this … (circulating in a current Google Group email thread to my global climate colleagues)
<<A lifelong world-traveling coral expert (sexagenarian PhD) who works with and advises Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to try and preserve and restore fast-bleaching coral reefs today bemoaned report that 84% of the world reefs are bleached and dead.
<<His email within a long thread states:
<<“For a more complete global picture see our preprint:
<<“I’m just back from Grand Cayman where one of the two most common corals is gone entirely, and the other survives as a dozen fragments in a tank.”
<<HOPE IT WAS A HAPPY EARTHDAY 🫤
~~~~~~
Best,
Doug
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And followed-up Friday with this email:
Bill, Andy,
Tom Goreau is not a sexagenarian as I stated below, he’s just 3 years younger than me … making him a septuagenarian.
BTW, a couple hours ago, one of our Aussi colleagues Graeme Taylor (lead author of this paper [https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/6244] with Peter Wadhams, Daniele Visioni, Tom Goreau, Leslie Field, Heri Kuswanto) sent the following, which complements the coral bleaching story.
I know you are already aware and get it, but this is fresh from TEDx by Cornell professor and co-author Daniele Visioni yesterday:
“Imagine yourself 25 years from now. Maybe a lot of the other solutions that people have been talking about, maybe they all work, and 25 years from now we've managed climate risk perfectly—and that would be great.
“But what if we haven't? What do you wish you would have known or you would have started to build now in order to make the meaningful difficult decisions that we will need to make in the future?
“That's what SAl research is all about.”
I believe your respective audiences will appreciate hearing your thoughts and dialogues with a variety of strategically thinking experts on this admittedly contentious issue.
Mr. McKibben, I look forward to your Substack entries. Those of us who are grieving from our climate version of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" find your climate reporting work a beacon of light that is providing hope in our current desert landscape of elected leaders who are proud of their climate legislative malpractice. I reflect your truth-telling on my faithinclimateaction.org website
Another great column Bill! By not addressing climate Trump will not only get blamed but the economy and the rich he’s trying to protect will crash—this due to insurance problems, climate migration, heat, etc. Removing climate from websites, harassing nonprofits, canceling research and data collection won’t stop this from happening.
I know this may be off-topic a bit, but one thing that greens can do in this time is begin to rethink strategy for the future. One of those strategies should be to quickly develop both the science of and techniques for ecological rebuilding and then financing that in part by carbon offsets. Here's a promising new development, and certainly a show of visionary leadership by Delta Airlines:
"Delta will spend $1 billion over the next 10 years to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and invest in ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Starting next month, the airline will work toward canceling out emissions from its flights and ground operations."
BM, and others, could start paying down their own (large) personal carbon emissions, perhaps; or, if they lack the ability to that, they could fly Delta or offset their own flights with good offsets going forward. Not to mention other emissions.
Yes, I know, some offsets have had difficulties, have had crooked managers, and are affected by a lack of knowledge and certainty of carbon sequestration. But, some have worked, and we might be able to get good at it.
This would also require an attitude shift of continually blaming others (like fuel companies); demanding carbon cuts that some advocates themselves don't exemplify; and taking some personal responsibility! This could possibly open up more solutions: not just cutting carbon, but rebuilding ecological systems.
In my opinion, this is exactly the sort of result expected when so-called "climate activism" is restricted to legal channels because of two reasons:
(a) Those that define what is legal are often the ones with the most power
(b) In tough times, those that gain the most power are those who often cheat, lie, and take advantage of the conditions ruthless capitalism provides
Legal-only climate activism is exactly the sort of activism governments (and the elite) want. They want it because during the "good times", they can adopt whatever measures the climate activists want at a rate that THEY DEFINE using the surplus of the good times. That appeases the activists and diverts attention from the destructiveness of their longer-term goals. And, in the "bad times", those who only care about themselves can vote for people like Trump (even if it's not in their best interests), and throw climate activism out the window.
The fact is, legal, mainstream climate activism is a bit deluded for two reasons:
(a) They overemphasize short-term successes, thinking that the savage opposition will never fight back and cause regressions.
(b) They constantly emphasize peace and legal recourse because that is the safe position. However, not all actions can be dealt with in such a pandering way. When you cut your finger, you can peacefully put a bandaid on it and let the cut heal. No body part is affected. When a finger gets gangrene, it's better to cut it off with force lest the gangrene spread to the rest of the body.
Climate activism will ALWAYS be subservient to the unsustainable growth model for as long as it insists on playing by the rules, and what is happening today with Trump and his budget cuts is a great example. If government agents came into homes and started shooting peoples loved ones, people would actually fight back. But that is what the governement is doing today to the very foundation of what keeps us alive – the planet – and we insist on continually asking them for permission to do something about it.
These are dark times, no doubt. But perhaps there's a silver lining. The plethora of environmental organizations are notorious for not playing nicely together. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and we are all under attack. Trump's attacks are clearly illegal, and he's already lost in court again and again. A lawsuit by numerous environmental groups over his attempts to weaponize the IRS would almost certainly succeed.
Another excellent update, Bill. Thank you for this.
Cuts to research are such bad news. I'm hearing less and less interest in climate work from academics now.
So much to worry about in face to stupid Trump and his cronies. Fear for great grand children
So nice to find out the great stuff going on around the world to address the climate emergency, despite what the current regime is trying to do to undermine it and threaten us. We must and will stand united. Thanks!
What do you think is the game here? We have an administration that seems to be intent on destroying the country. Do they also want to destroy the planet? I'm not being facetious.
> Do they also want to destroy the planet? I'm not being facetious.
Well....YES. The reason why countries like the U.S. have been so successful economically is precisely because they are the best at exploiting the natural world as a commons to grow the economy what it is today. It seems like your question is coming from a perspective that we are just bumbling along, figuring out how to do things better as a collective group. That's very much not the case: we are aggressive and efficient and purposeful at destroying the planet. That's one of the reasons why Trump is in power: because the U.S. has cultivated a sizable subpopulation that simply is callous to the needs of life, and the only reason why they exist is because of the surplus wasteful lifestyle that has been going on for decades.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If a country goes for success based on a fossil fuel economy, then it also encourages the growth of a large subset of people who are a result of that economy – careless and wasteful and uncaring people.
There is also a nihilistic approach to life that Trump & his cabal have been taking, greedily gobbling up everything they can get a hold of, leaving nothing for anyone else, especially future generations, because why should Trump care about future generations since he'll be gone in a few years (if that long), & he cares nothing about anyone but himself, which is basically the mindset of everyone he surrounds himself with. Apparently Musk, Thiel, & a number of other billionaire technocrats, are accelerationist nihilists, doing their utmost to bring an end to prosperity & civilization, so that the few that are left, which they naively expect to be themselves, can start anew.
Regardless, those who remain silent in the face of this nihilism are a large part of the problem. There is a quote often attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Exactly! At one time, this extremely selfish approach was merely instinctual. Now it is overt and declarative, as the billionaires have no doubt thought of "starting anew" in their tech dystopia!
Remember when Dick Cheney said it was humans God given right to plunder the Earths resources (and I paraphrase)
No matter how much these braindead MAGA Trumpers try to stifle research and deny its existence. Climate change is happening, and it’s costing America in extreme weather, and threats to public health. We are chained to the deck of the Titanic, while the rest of the world is attacking the problem and planning for it. The rest of the world will advance, while we fall behind.
And this is our fate in virtually every aspect of our national affairs, from the economy to the environment to health to education to science to arts to law & justice. And it will remain that way as long as Trump & the Republicans are in power.
Bill — realize this is slimmest of silver linings, but wouldn’t greens be able to engage in overt political activity then?
Adjust, adapt and overcome.
Change the words, shift the thinking.
Get more immediate.
Stop saying climate change. It’s here.
Get more real.
Talk about
The Trump Heat Barrier is arriving.
128 degrees Fahrenheit or
53 degrees Centigrade is
The end of civilization.
Ask the people of Delhi.
30 million at 126 F.
Hiding under trucks
at work.
Packing.
Walking
away.
?
Do you see this Massachusetts?
"Stop saying 'climate change'". This is climate chaos. Climate disruption. Global heating. Global scorching. Climate catastrophe. Environmental destruction. Ecological disaster. Biospheric calamity.
Bill, ICYMI, as serendipity would have it, this is the third of three emails sent to you and Andy Revkin:
Bill, Andy,
As I was typing the errata, my UK colleague and Google Group PRAG* founder and Chair dipped his oar as follows-up to Graeme Taylor with the following, which synthesized the pickle we are in and must face squarely, on the table, openly, direly;
From: John
Date: April 25, 2025 at 5:38:21 PM EDT
To: Graeme
Cc: HPAC <healthy-planet-action-coalition@googlegroups.com>, Daniele Visioni, PRAG <planetary-restoration@googlegroups.com>, Wake Smith, Douglas MacMartin
Subject: [prag] Re: [HPAC] Daniele Visioni's TEDx Talk on solar geoengineering
Hi Graeme,
Thanks for that. Daniele makes a good case for treating SAI as a reasonable option for reducing the impacts of climate change and therefore worthy of further research. He doesn't explain what a dreadful situation we are in, with the Earth System accelerating away from the norms of the late Holocene on which our civilisation has grown to depend. SAI might have to be deployed as a desperate measure to avoid reaching a point of no return when catastrophic climate change and sea level rise become inevitable. Certainly emissions reduction cannot produce the cooling effect required; nor can greenhouse gas removal.
In particular, the vicious cycle of warming and melting in the Arctic has to be broken in order to start lowering the Arctic temperature and prevent an otherwise inevitable rise in sea level of many metres. At the end of the Younger Dryas there was a dramatic warming and sea level rose 20 metres in 400 years: 5 metres per century. We could see this rate occur again and there would be nothing to stop it if the Arctic temperature could not be lowered.
Perhaps this is all too scary for a TedX talk; but excellent research by Wake Smith, Doug MacMartin et al. suggests that the Arctic could be refrozen by deploying high-flying aircraft to spray SO2 into the stratosphere at mid to high latitudes. This would cost a few tens of billions of dollars per year: a small price to prevent catastrophic climate change and sea level rise. The risks from adverse effects of SAI are reckoned to be small; and are certainly miniscule in comparison with the risks from leaving cooling intervention too late.
However, there is a very positive side to rapid SAI intervention: climate change can be reversed; sea level rise can be slowed; and, together with greenhouse gas removal, the planet can be returned to the late Holocene conditions that we began to leave four or five decades ago.
Cheers, John
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you, John! 🙏
Best regards,
Doug
* Planetary Restoration Action Group
Indeed, as we struggle with the legal an political obfuscations and obstructions, we are running out of time to take effective urgent triage intervention to avert insidious irreversible collapse of ecosystems
Bill ICYMI, I sent you and Andy Revkin the following email Thursday:
Hi Bill and Andy,
Perhaps your respective audiences would benefit hearing your take on this … (circulating in a current Google Group email thread to my global climate colleagues)
https://open.substack.com/pub/alexsteffen/p/after-earth-day?r=r590f&utm_medium=ios
I shared this substack post including my comment:
<<A lifelong world-traveling coral expert (sexagenarian PhD) who works with and advises Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to try and preserve and restore fast-bleaching coral reefs today bemoaned report that 84% of the world reefs are bleached and dead.
<<His email within a long thread states:
<<“For a more complete global picture see our preprint:
<<“https://www.globalcoral.org/2024-record-temperature-effects-on-coral-bleaching-ocean-circulation/
<<“I’m just back from Grand Cayman where one of the two most common corals is gone entirely, and the other survives as a dozen fragments in a tank.”
<<HOPE IT WAS A HAPPY EARTHDAY 🫤
~~~~~~
Best,
Doug
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And followed-up Friday with this email:
Bill, Andy,
Tom Goreau is not a sexagenarian as I stated below, he’s just 3 years younger than me … making him a septuagenarian.
BTW, a couple hours ago, one of our Aussi colleagues Graeme Taylor (lead author of this paper [https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/6244] with Peter Wadhams, Daniele Visioni, Tom Goreau, Leslie Field, Heri Kuswanto) sent the following, which complements the coral bleaching story.
I know you are already aware and get it, but this is fresh from TEDx by Cornell professor and co-author Daniele Visioni yesterday:
Understanding climate intervention methods to reduce climate risks | Daniele Visioni | TEDxBoston. [https://youtu.be/yPSHZqZjjxU]
Please scan the description ⬇️
image0.jpeg
image1.jpeg
Wait for it—his concluding statement:
“Imagine yourself 25 years from now. Maybe a lot of the other solutions that people have been talking about, maybe they all work, and 25 years from now we've managed climate risk perfectly—and that would be great.
“But what if we haven't? What do you wish you would have known or you would have started to build now in order to make the meaningful difficult decisions that we will need to make in the future?
“That's what SAl research is all about.”
I believe your respective audiences will appreciate hearing your thoughts and dialogues with a variety of strategically thinking experts on this admittedly contentious issue.
Best regards,
Doug
thank you for your work and continued efforts on belhalf of climate, community, justice, humor, and decency.
Thank you Bill for the excellent Update & Summary. Happy, snowy trails Ahead!
In Solidarity,
Heather Howell
Cdntral Coast CA
805-234-5644
Mr. McKibben, I look forward to your Substack entries. Those of us who are grieving from our climate version of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" find your climate reporting work a beacon of light that is providing hope in our current desert landscape of elected leaders who are proud of their climate legislative malpractice. I reflect your truth-telling on my faithinclimateaction.org website
Another great column Bill! By not addressing climate Trump will not only get blamed but the economy and the rich he’s trying to protect will crash—this due to insurance problems, climate migration, heat, etc. Removing climate from websites, harassing nonprofits, canceling research and data collection won’t stop this from happening.
I know this may be off-topic a bit, but one thing that greens can do in this time is begin to rethink strategy for the future. One of those strategies should be to quickly develop both the science of and techniques for ecological rebuilding and then financing that in part by carbon offsets. Here's a promising new development, and certainly a show of visionary leadership by Delta Airlines:
"Delta will spend $1 billion over the next 10 years to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and invest in ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Starting next month, the airline will work toward canceling out emissions from its flights and ground operations."
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/14/21137782/delta-carbon-neutral-greenhouse-gas-emissions-climate-change-airlines
BM, and others, could start paying down their own (large) personal carbon emissions, perhaps; or, if they lack the ability to that, they could fly Delta or offset their own flights with good offsets going forward. Not to mention other emissions.
Yes, I know, some offsets have had difficulties, have had crooked managers, and are affected by a lack of knowledge and certainty of carbon sequestration. But, some have worked, and we might be able to get good at it.
This would also require an attitude shift of continually blaming others (like fuel companies); demanding carbon cuts that some advocates themselves don't exemplify; and taking some personal responsibility! This could possibly open up more solutions: not just cutting carbon, but rebuilding ecological systems.