A Time to Rise

In anger, in hope, in whatever gets you out the door on Saturday!

There are lots of moments for analysis, and this isn’t one of them. My only goal this week is to make sure you bring everyone you can to Saturday’s No Kings Day protests. It’s going to be chilly in the East and hot in the West, so no one is going to be out on the street by accident; people need to want to come. So I’m going to try and provide some motivation to get you out the door, and I’m going to use every trick of emotional manipulation I can muster.

There’s anger. Since the last No Kings protest in October, the administration has invaded Venezuela and attacked Iran, it has killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and it has blown up the global economy. Here’s this week’s particular barb, at least for people who care about energy and climate: they’ve taken a billion taxpayer dollars (that’s about six bucks per taxpayer) and used it to buy back offshore wind leases from Total Energies, a French firm, in an effort to make sure that this wind is never captured for clean energy. “Considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest, we have decided to renounce offshore wind development in the United States,” said Patrick Pouyanné, the CEO of the company, which should—if Democrats ever regain power—never be allowed to work on anything in America ever again.

All this while the price of energy is going through the roof thanks to our folly in the Persian Gulf—but it’s more important to bury wind energy than to provide affordable power to Americans. And according to yesterday’s Houston Chronicle, Total has been instructed to redirect the money they’re receiving to a Texas liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, one more subsidy for an industry already awash in them. And by the way, exporting more gas raises prices for the same Americans who won’t be able to heat their homes or power their cars with the cheap electricity the wind farms would have provided.

Want just a touch more anger, just at the pettiness of these guys? The Trump administration, because it can, is about to remove a bike lane in DC

The National Park Service will soon start removing a protected bike lane that runs along 15th Street NW from Constitution Avenue down to the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial, eliminating a popular cycling route just as crowds are expected to increase for the annual blooming of the cherry blossoms.

The work is expected to start on Monday, according to NPS. Once it’s done, it will sever one of D.C.’s longest protected bike lanes, stretching virtually uninterrupted from the Tidal Basin all the way up to Columbia Heights, and additionally serving as a vital cycling connection to the 14th Street Bridge into Virginia.

There are three Capital Bikeshare stations located along the stretch of the bike lane that will be removed. On Friday morning, the first day of spring in D.C., there were also dozens of Veo bikes and Lime scooters available in the area. According to DDOT, those Bikeshare stations are among the most used in the entire system.

An evaluation by DDOT of incidents along 15th Street after the bike lane was installed found that roadway crashes along the corridor had decreased by 46 percent — and bicycle injury crashes dropped even more, by 91 percent.

How does that compare with other world capitals? On Sunday, Parisians returned to power for a third term the socialists who—under the remarkable mayor Anne Hidalgo—have built a true bike city. Hidalgo is handing the job to Emmanuel Gregoire, who rode a bike-share cycle to his victory party. Here, just for kicks, is what a rational leader looks like

Under his predecessor’s Plan Vélo, Paris, according to the Bicycle Network

has gained over 1,000 new kilometres of dedicated cycling infrastructure including the now-famous ‘Corona pistes’ - pop-up bike lanes created during the COVID-19 pandemic that later became permanent due to overwhelming public support.

• During 2025 peak hour travel, bike riders account for 18.9% of trips, while car usage has dropped to 6.6%.

• There are 19,000 Vélib bikes in circulation, with 40% of them electric.

• These bikes are part of the Vélib’ Métropole system, which includes 1,480 storage stations to keep the streets neater and safer.

• 60,000 public bicycle racks are currently available across greater Paris.

Oh, and as Paris has become a bike city, air pollution has dropped 55 percent.

So, if you’re not angry enough to march now, then perhaps I can motivate you with just a soupçon of fear.

The World Meteorological Organization released its latest State of the Global Climate report on Monday, which for the first time attempts to track the planet’s energy imbalance. As Jonathan Watts puts it,

the Earth’s energy imbalance increased by about 11 zettajoules a year between 2005 and 2025, which is equivalent to about 18 times total human energy use. Last year it was more than double that average.

At present, humans and other life forms on the surface directly suffer only a small fraction of that energy backup because 91% is absorbed by oceans, 5% by the land, 1% warms the atmosphere, and 3% melts ice at the poles and on high mountains.

As Eric Niller explains in the Times,

One worrying result is that scientists are detecting more heat deeper in the ocean, rather than just at the surface, according to Dr. Von Schuckmann.

Below 2,000 meters, oceans store and hold heat longer than at the surface layer, which releases it to the atmosphere. That means that the effects of climate change will continue for a long time, she said.

“The more we have heat kept away from communication with the atmosphere,” Dr. Karina Von Schuckmann, an author of the report, said, “the more we are moving to time scales of committed climate change of 400 to 1,000 years.”

But we’re already seeing the heat at the surface. This week offered reports of Arctic sea ice at all time lows for the date, and of the highest March temperatures ever recorded in the U.S.—measurements so loony they’re almost beyond credulity. New record highs for March—112 degrees in California and Arizona—beat the old records by two degrees, and were just a degree shy of the all-time April record. As the indomitable Bob Henson and Jeff Masters write:

At least 14 states set their all-time statewide records for March heat from Thursday through Saturday, as compiled by weather records expert Maximiliano Herrera (@extremetemps on Bluesky). These include every state from the Rocky Mountains west to the Pacific coast except for Oregon and Washington, plus several others between the Rockies and the Mississippi River.

Beyond the crazy fire danger now building across the West (Nebraska last week had the biggest fire in its history, and one of the twenty biggest in American history; a new study today explicitly links shrinking snowpacks to growing fire danger), there’s another peril now fully in play: the winter saw precious little snowpack across the Rockies, and much of that melted in last week’s heatdome, which means the Colorado River is headed towards previously unknown states. As Mark Gongloff chronicles

Lake Powell, the main reservoir near the border between the upper and lower basins, will get just 52% of its usual inflow from snowmelt this year, the Bureau of Reclamation forecast last month.

Lake Powell can’t afford an off year. It recently stood at just 24% of its capacity, 170 feet below “full pool” and just 160 feet from going “dead pool,” when water can no longer escape from the Glen Canyon Dam. That would be a catastrophe for the lower-basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.

More immediately, the reservoir is just 40 feet away from “minimum power pool,” below which it will be unable to move the turbines on Glen Canyon Dam’s hydropower plant, which serves seven Western states. It generates 5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, enough to power 500,000 homes. A West filling up with data centers desperately needs this power supply.

Do you trust the Trump administration to wisely navigate the endless complications of the West running out of water? I don’t—he flushed billions of gallons of water pointlessly out to sea after the Los Angeles fires to try and make some kind of political point about his ability to control a “giant faucet.” We’re in for trouble, and the weaker Trump is, the better our chances of survival.

But maybe anger and fear aren’t what sink your boat? What about a bit of hope that once we manage to drive this guy from power there’s something left to look forward to?

I’ll offer it in limited form. We’re at such a moment of inflection, with cheap clean energy widely available, that we could make astonishingly rapid change. At least as much as Paris, China (which is slightly larger) is an entirely different place today than it was even five years ago. And that should tickle some memories for Americans—remember, once it was our cities that were filthy, and then we passed some laws, and they got remarkably cleaner remarkably fast. Indeed, Ann Carlson has a new book out detailing just how fast it happened.

Which means that if we manage to force change, it could come quickly. The news about windpower this week is very bad, as noted above. But this is also the week when—over the sabotaging efforts of the Trump administration—construction work finished on Vineyard Wind off Massachusetts and Revolution Wind off Rhode Island began connecting to the grid. Together they will supply the electricity for 750,000 homes—a not insignificant percentage of the 160 million homes in America. They proved during this winter’s cold stretch in the Northeast that they’re at least as reliable as gas-fired power plants. And now there’s infrastructure in place for the ongoing buildout. As Massachusetts State Senator Michael Barrett told WGBH this week,

“Time’s passing. Trump’s gone in under three years and the winds around here have staying power. The industry will come back if we’re smart about it and set the stage.”

I don’t need to tell anyone reading this that three years is a long time—too long. One of our jobs this weekend is to help shorten that stretch—with an overwhelming win in the midterms, Trump can be effectively weakened before this year is out. But we have to do the work.

And if we do—but only if we do—then I think we’re allowed our small bits of hope. A new survey this week found that there were 400,000 acres of old growth forest in my part of the world—the Adirondack Mountains of New York—that had been “hiding in plain sight.” It’s good news in many ways.

In these undisturbed systems, carbon is pumped into the earth through root networks and the slow decomposition of leaf litter and “coarse woody debris” (fallen logs). Unlike in managed timberlands where the soil is frequently disturbed, the soil in old growth forests remains a stable, permanent reservoir.

But mostly it’s good news because these woods are majestic and noble and good companions. I’ve hiked many of the areas the research described, and marveled at the big trees, but it’s good to know just how old they are. They’re a reminder that the planet has surprises yet, and some of them are beautiful.

We earn our hope. See you Saturday.

In other energy and climate news:

+Book alert: If you have any doubts about the power of protest to change things, pre-order The Protest Book by Annie Leonard and Andre Carrothers, who have long careers in this work and understand the what, how, and why!

+Latest data on insurance costs, in a nationwide investigation led by the good folks at Grist. As they report

A new nationwide report from the insurance price comparison firm Insurify found that the average American homeowner’s insurance bill rose 12 percent last year, reaching $2,948 per year, and will rise another 4 percent this year. This is much faster than overall inflation for the same period. (These numbers don’t include flood insurance, which most often requires a separate plan, backed by the federal government.)…

The primary culprits are the rising toll of extreme weather as the planet warms and the millions of new homes developers have built in vulnerable areas. Insured losses from natural catastrophes in the U.S. averaged $100 billion a year between 2023 and 2025, up from an annual average of around $15 billion per year a decade earlier, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

+From forest heroine Danna Smith, a fantastic essay explaining why rural communities should invest in healthy forests, not data centers.

Their enormous appetite for electricity and water accelerates resource extraction, pollution, and climate impacts. The declining forestry industry is now trying to hitch itself to this swindle, promoting the burning of trees to power data centers as a way to prop up its obsolete business model—and calling it “progress.”

Progress toward what? Much of what these AI data centers produce is inflammatory content that fuels political outrage and deepens social division. No wonder people across the country are pushing back—and winning.

In so many ways, forests are the most advanced technology the world has ever known. They regulate temperature, store carbon, support food systems, and offer psychological grounding no device can replicate. When left intact, forests are self‑maintaining, self‑renewing, and infinitely more productive than any data center.

Study after study shows that time in nature improves cognitive function and a wide range of mental and physical health markers. Research also links depression, anxiety, and attention disorders to tech overload and reduced time outdoors. Science shows what we instinctively know to be true—nature brings people together. Protecting it is one of the few remaining ways to restore health and rebuild unity in a divided time.

Equally important, forest protection is a proven economic strategy for rural communities. The outdoor recreation economy generates far more revenue and jobs than the timber industry. Conservation and recreation jobs, ecological restoration, and community‑led development create long‑term prosperity without sacrificing land, water, or health. These sectors keep wealth local, strengthen small businesses, and attract people who want to live in places defined by beauty and belonging—not destruction and noise.

+An ever-mounting series of examples shows that in serious countries the message of the Iran war is sinking home: get off fossil fuels

For example, Britain announced all new homes will be built with solar panels and heat pumps

“The Iran War has once again shown our drive for clean power is essential for our energy security so we can escape the grip of fossil fuel markets we don’t control,” U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in a statement.

That’s important because a new Europe-wide study found that the continent has done a better job growing the supply of clean electricity than in installing the machinery—like heat pumps and EVs—to make use of it. But there’s at least one EV that’s doing great. Here’s a Polish-built model from China’s Leapmotor that sells—with a good deal of help from government subsidies—for $5,600 in Italy.

Meanwhile, there has been one fine oped after another from around the globe tryinv to make the same point. Here’s Zach Brown in the Anchorage Daily News, here’s Jason Bordoff and Erica Downs writing in Foreign Policy, here’s an account from Hannah Daly in Ireland, and here’s the great British writer George Monbiot with a particularly striking piece.

As the hydrocarbon industries and their financial backers find themselves threatened by green technologies, their grip on governments and the media has tightened. They’ve poured vast sums into climate denial and public dissuasion campaigns. Politics has become harsher, less open and less tolerant. The democratic recession is in large part driven by fossil fuel interests. The entire planet suffers from the resource curse.

Oil did not cause capitalism, but it has massively extended and empowered it. Reduce our dependency on oil, and we disrupt some of the world’s most violent and exploitative relations. We defuel dictators and war machines, coups and assassinations, invasions and nuclear threats. It’s not everything of course: there will still be water wars, land wars and mineral wars to be fought: after all, the military machine can’t just sit there rusting. But it’s a lot.

+From Anna Griffin, a sweeping account of how Alaska is teetering on the edge of being a “failed petrostate,” and how the tensions are hanging over this year’s crucial midterm elections.

Those elections pose a fundamental question for Alaskans: Will voters opt for more financial austerity in the name of preserving their annual payments and almost nonexistent state taxation, or will they accept a more politically fraught reimagining of the state’s fiscal structure?…

Brett Watson, an economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage, agreed.

“Practically speaking, we are probably at the end of our ability to continue to pay a dividend, provide the same level of state services and not broadly pay taxes,” he said.

+A lovely account in the Financial Times (and oh how I wish America had a non-rightwing business paper) of how Paris “beat the car,” which expands on my brief discussion above.

Lesson two is that banishing cars doesn’t hurt an urban economy. Retailers often worry it will deter their customers. Studies repeatedly show it doesn’t. More broadly, French Hidalgo-haters need to explain why Paris is in the global top four of business-focused rankings of cities by Oxford Economics, the Mori Memorial Foundation and Kearney.

+Meanwhile, an early accounting shows the Iran war emitted five million tons of co2 in its first two weeks, or “an Iceland.”

“Every missile strike is another downpayment on a hotter, more unstable planet, and none of it makes anyone safer,” said Patrick Bigger, a research director at the Climate and Community Institute and a co-author of the analysis.

Destroyed buildings constitute the largest element of the estimated carbon cost. Based on reports by the Iranian Red Crescent humanitarian organisation that about 20,000 civilian buildings have been damaged by the conflict, the analysis estimates the total emissions from this sector to be 2.4m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e).

+From the (wonderfully named) Johnny Sturgeon at Inside Climate News, here’s an account of the decline of migratory freshwater fish around the world

Beneath the surface of the planet’s rivers and lakes, the historically heaving migrations of freshwater fish are thinning out. The blubbery-lipped Siamese giant carp of Asia’s Mekong River, the mottled brown goonch of India’s Ganges and the ancient-in-appearance beluga sturgeon of Europe’s Danube River are declining.

Facing existential threats along their migratory paths, an ecological collapse is taking place largely out of sight.

Declining faster than many terrestrial populations, 325 migratory freshwater fish species have been identified as candidates for urgent conservation efforts by the United Nations’ Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). These populations—critical for river health and economic output—have already declined by over 80 percent since 1970.

Facing accelerated decline from dam construction, overfishing, pollution, climate-driven flow changes and habitat fragmentation, many species are increasingly unable to make the journeys from spawning grounds, to feeding areas, to floodplain nurseries.

+If you find yourself in the small Venn diagram of people who care about global warming and nordic ski racing, here’s my New Yorker account of last weekend’s retirement races of the great climate champion Jessie Diggins.

+The outback opal mining town of Coober Pedy in Australia set a new record, running entirely on sun, wind and batteries for five days straight last week.

“This power station has set a global benchmark for renewable hybrid power, delivering reliable electricity at a lower cost for a community in one of Australia’s most remote off-grid locations,” the LinkedIn post says this week.

Forget Mad Max. This is the future we can have if we want it.