Climate superpowers

Two remarkable women using lungs and heart to make a difference

Look, it’s been another long hard week. I’ve been grinding away trying to figure out how to do my small part to stave off the craziness—here’s a letter I wrote to the 100,000 folks on the Third Act mailing list about our plans (you’re allowed to read it even if you’re under 60, and there’s a bonus pic of me at our snowy local protest on Monday); here’s a piece I wrote for the New Yorker yesterday about the president declaring himself a monarch (shorter version: if there’s one idea at the base of America, it’s ‘no kings.’) But once in a while one has to refill the inspiration bank, and that’s what today is about. I want to introduce you to two women, very different in all the details but united in their spirited and effective dedication to the climate fight.

First up, Antonique Smith. Earlier today she released her latest single, a new and stripped-down version of “Love Song to the Earth,” with its composer Toby Gad playing behind her. The song came out in anthemic version in 2015, with Paul McCartney, Angelique Kidjo, Jon Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow and others joining in, “We Are the World” style. That was just before Paris, part of the successful effort of a climate movement at its apex to finally win a global climate accord; now, in this darker moment, it’s a perfect time for a reboot, and Smith is the perfect choice. I first met her in L.A. a decade ago, when she was recording a track for H.O.M.E—the Hip Hop Caucus climate change album that featured some serious talent (Common, Malik Yusef, and on and on). My dear friend Rev. Lennox Yearwood was the impresario behind the project, and so I was sitting in a church they were using for some of the recording when I first heard Smith, singing the greatest environmental song of all time: Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me.” Her voice was a revelation then (she already had a Grammy nomination), and it’s even better now—on the new song she’s more mature and resonant than ever. You can hear the church in her voice, and the planet too.

But those songs (and her version of Here Comes the Sun, which in one of my larger contributions to the climate movement I persuaded her to learn) are just the surface. She’s become a remarkable climate activist, teaming with Rev. Yearwood for The Coolest Show podcast, and in recent months launching Climate Revival, an effort to take the climate message into the Black church. We wrote back and forth this week and I hope you take the time to read it all and let it sink in:

1) Tell me about the new song--where it came from, what it means, what you hope it gets across to people?

It was first written in 2015 by my long time friend Toby Gad and Natasha Bedingfield when the UN asked Toby to create an anthem to support the Paris Climate Agreement. The beautiful song was sung by people like Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, Natasha Bedingfield, Sean Paul and many others. A bunch of us sang it together on the National Mall that year at the Pope’s climate rally.

After co-founding Climate Revival last year, it felt like a perfect addition to the songs i was already singing. Toby and i had no idea at the time who would win the election and that we’d be taken out of the Paris agreement again among many other devastating climate related executive orders. We need this song now more than when he first wrote it.

My version is very different than the original. It’s just me singing over Toby’s beautiful piano playing. It’s very heartfelt. I cried when i heard the master version. I’m praying it can unify us at a time when the world is so divided. I’m praying it gives hope and touches hearts. I’m praying it inspires action. We are the world. We have to keep it safe.

2) You've been singing Mercy Me and Here Comes the Sun for some years now. They're from about the same moment, but very different. What emotions go through you when you're channeling Marvin Gaye? What feelings when you're bringing George Harrison's song to life?

Fun facts about singing both those songs is that i first met you in the spring of 2014 at the studio when i was recording Mercy Mercy Me. That’s the night I joined the climate movement. And a year later, you asked me to sing Here Comes The Sun. Both life-changing events.

You’re so right about how different the songs are. When i sing Mercy Mercy Me, i feel sad and frustrated that things are so much worse than when Marvin wrote the song. It’s appalling. And when i sing Here Comes The Sun, i feel a mix of hopeful because the sun is one of our beautiful solutions but when i get to the lyric “I feel the ice is slowing melting, it seems like years since it’s been clear”, it’s the brief moment in the song where I’m sad. I know George Harrison was talking about winter ending but in that moment i channel the sadness of the glaciers melting from climate change and when i sing “it seems like years since it’s been clear”, I’m channeling the devastating pollution in our air. And next i say “BUT, here comes the sun and it’s alright”. So there’s a moment to acknowledge the heartbreak of our current situation but there is hope!! I love that song so much and so grateful you asked me to sing it. It really does speak to how i feel. So heartbroken but so hopeful.

3) You're in a long tradition with those songs. Have you listened to Nina Simone's version of Here Comes the Sun? Are there particular ways in which your experience as a black woman connects with that song?

I have. Nina’s version was very inspiring when i was creating my version. And yes, as a black woman, when she sings “Little darling”, it feels like she’s singing to me as a black woman to have hope and keep the faith. That hope that I’m trying to invoke in people about climate, it feels like she’s trying to invoke that in black women about the difficulty of our experience. Malcom X said “the black woman is the most disrespected person in America” and i felt that so deeply after the election that America would vote for a convicted criminal, a racist, anyone but a black woman. I must admit that broke me down for a minute. I took it very personally as if that’s how America feels about me. It still hurts but I’ve licked my wounds and i’m moving forward with that hope and faith that Nina invoked.

4) Tell me about Climate Revival--and about your own life growing up in the church--how hard or easy is it to get this message across? What things stand in the way?

Climate Revival is the nonprofit i co-founded with our mutual brother/friend, the amazing Rev Yearwood. How lucky am i that he would take the time to co-found an organization with me?

It came out of my frustration with how much worse the impacts from climate change were becoming and my desire to do more. We brainstormed on what was missing in the movement and we felt like people of faith and people of color were still not being reached the way they needed to be. MLK organized the civil rights movement in churches and we were inspired by that. We're in a new civil rights movement, fighting for the right to clean air, clean water and existence. We're informing and inspiring climate and environmental justice action using music and storytelling. Most of our events so far have been in black churches and i sing my favorite gospel songs.

I joined Bethlehem Baptist church in Newark, NJ when i was 7 and started singing in the choir. I actually prayed, asking God to give me a good singing voice as i was obsessed with sounding like Whitney Houston. That God for saying yes to that prayer. Singing in church became the foundation of not just me as a person but as a singing and performer. I try to connect with people when i sing, the same way i connected to God and my fellow choir members in church. It’s a beautiful thing.

The most difficult part of getting the climate and environment justice message across is the fact that because of how climate has already been framed and communicated, people don’t understand the direct impact on their lives. And people of color don’t see it as their issue. This makes it hard to get them to show up for the vital information. So we promote our events as concerts and church services so that folks think they’re only coming to be entertained or coming just to worship God. And they definitely get that but by the time they leave, they also understand that this movement is more than recycling and using solar panels and it’s more than about the harm being done to polar bears and ice glaciers. We inform them that biggest cause of climate change is pollution from big oil. They learn that the pollution from power plants and petrochemical factories is predominantly in communities of color and poor communities causing cancer and asthma. I talk about places like Cancer Alley in Louisiana and cancer clusters around the country like to one in NJ where I’m from.

And we connect the dots that that same pollution killing us in our communities is what is causing the climate to change leading to more crazy storms like Helene, heatwaves killing people in the street, wildfires like the heartbreaking devastation in my second home Los Angeles, droughts etc. People are hearing about climate change all the time during the weather report but haven’t been hearing what the cause is. And if you don’t understand the cause or the source, you don’t feel like there’s anything you can do about it. We share how lives are being lost, communities are being destroyed and big oil is making a trillion dollars a year and getting 20 billion dollars in tax breaks and subsidies. It’s all so crazy. People are struggling to pay their bills but billionaires are getting the tax breaks! We make it really hit home for people! Not to mention, Rev closes with a sermonette, which you already know knocks people out followed by a closing song like Here Comes The Sun. They leave feeling moved and inspired to act. There's lots to fight and we can only win if we come together. That's the mission of Climate Revival; to build a loving army to fight for our health and our existence.

5) Right now seems like a low point to a lot of people--Donald Trump has made every government agency stop working on climate change, and he's amped up racist attacks like no president in a long time. How do you deal in this moment?

We’re living in the Twilight Zone!!! It’s still hard to believe everything that’s been happening. I’ve been spending more time with my family. They’ve always been my why. My parents celebrate 50 years of marriage this year. And my little sister, who is special needs, is my whole world. I’m so grateful for them. Their love keeps me going. I’m also praying more and making more time to do little fun things. This fight has just become even more challenging than the daunting fight it already was, so we all have to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves so that we have the energy to keep fighting. I keep my focus on love. Love of God, love of my family and friends, love of myself, love of humanity. Love is everything. Love you, Bill!!!

And now to Jessie Diggins, who on the surface couldn’t be more different: blond, midwestern, an athlete. She’s at the absolute peak of her profession—as a nordic skier she’s won Olympic gold, bronze and silver, and she’s on a glide path to taking her third World Cup overall title this season. She’s—no question—the greatest winter endurance athlete North America has ever produced, and there’s no sportsperson I’ve ever rooted harder for—her signature style is pure grit, a willingness to go deepern than anyone into the pain cave. I’ve gotten to chronicle her career on occasion for the New Yorker (here, here, and here, for instance).

But she’s also a a committed activist, on two issues. The first is eating disorders, something that’s almost derailed her career twice. (Her fine book Brave Enough details both the stuggles and the triumphs). And the second is climate change—a cause dear to cross country skiers, who now often find themselves competing on narrow ribbons of manmade white winding through brown European fields. She’s been an outspoken advocate ever since her growing fame gave her a platform—she’s mostly worked with the remarkably effective group Protect Our Winters. And this month she’ll take it to a different level. The nordic world championships are about to take place in Trondheim, Norway where a hundred thousand screaming fans are expected for the races. She and her teammates (including fellow activist Gus Schumacher) will be debuting new race suits that show a melting glacier (you can see the spandex in the picture up top). This is a brave thing to be doing, mixing science and sport—particularly at this cursed moment, where every effort to help us out of our travails is dismissed as “woke.” But it will matter.

Diggins sent me an audio tape answering some of my questions yesterday, and I’m including the transcript here.

“I am really, really proud to get to wear these suits. I think they are visually very interesting. You definitely get the message with the melting ice caps, they will stand out quite well, I think, on the race track. And so hopefully we were able to race in a suit that tells a bigger story than just trying to win a ski race. And I think for me at this point in my career, it's about so much more than just trying to win a ski race. So it's about standing up for something that I believe is right, which is focusing on how to protect our planet for everyone for years to come.”

I’d also asked her about what it felt like to be representing the United States right now:

“Yeah. So to be honest, what's really interesting is that we do not receive government funding for sport in the United States. So I don't feel like I am representing the government. I am representing fans of U.S. skiing. I'm representing people who are supporting us and cheering for us, people who just want to go out there and try their best every day, I represent Protect Our Winters, because I sit on their board, as well as some other awesome nonprofits that I work for, so I don't feel like I'm representing the things that the government is representing, necessarily, and that gives me the freedom to race with a full heart, knowing that, you know, I don't have fear that officials are going to come down on me for wearing a suit that says, hey, we need to protect our planet. If anything, I hope that they pay enough attention to cross country skiing to see the suits and go, ‘Wow, that's really cool. These athletes are concerned about the future of our planet,’ and hopefully it helps spark some conversations that would be the ultimate awesome goal is to be able to have some conversations around what we're doing when it comes to climate change. But I think, yeah, I think it's important that we are able to still race in a suit that represents things that matter to us, things that we care about and not let current politics take away our ability to say, hey, we care about this.

I asked her one more thing: ‘if you could talk privately and honestly to CEOs and politicians, how would you get across what you feel?”

“I guess I would say I don't want climate change to be political. We're all on the same team here. We have one planet that we all get to live on, and we want to pass it on to the next generation, knowing that we did what we could with the time we had to make it a healthy, livable planet. And so I think it makes me sad sometimes that we have incredible technology and amazing innovation, and we're not pushing as hard as we could to use it in large scale operations where this could really swing the needle for us. So I guess I would say, yes, we are all part of the solution. Individual actions absolutely matter, but large scale policy changes and massive, massive companies that control a larger percentage of carbon footprint can make a huge, huge change. So I guess I would say, I would ask people to do what they can, where they can, with an eye, not just for profits here and now, but for our future planet and what it's going to be like to live on this earth in the future.”

I feel better now for having listened to these two remarkable humans, and I hope you do too. We need scientists and economists and policy experts, but we also need soul and body in this fight.

In other energy and climate news:

+There’s no way to avoid talking about Trump’s antics. Here’s a good one: He’s ended all climate work inside the Department of Homeland Security, which is only the agency that responds to disasters

With a workforce of more than 260,000, the Department of Homeland Security is an umbrella organization that includes Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Coast Guard, and Customs and Border Protection, among other offices. But perhaps the one most impacted by the new directive is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the nation’s primary means for organizing federal responses to disasters. As wildfires, storms and floods increase in frequency and intensity due as a result of rising temperatures, FEMA has been responding to more disasters and spending more money to help impacted communities.

Oh, and the Securities and Exchange Commission backed off a rule requiring large companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, a move that the Washington Post called (with straightforward accuracy, and in the headline to boot) an “early gift for Trump’s oil and gas supporters.”

The rule has been a primary target of fossil fuel companies since its approval by the agency under the Biden administration nearly a year ago, and three companies — led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and donors Harold Hamm and Kelcy Warren — have been at the forefront of the opposition.

Hamm’s Continental Resources, one of the largest oil producers in the Bakken shale, has likened it to “hostile energy public policy.” Warren’s Energy Transfer, a massive pipeline company, filed legal objections. And Wright’s Liberty Energy, an oil field services firm, filed suit in federal court to overturn the rule just days after it was issued, calling it a “thinly veiled attempt to inject the SEC into the world of climate politics.”

Speaking of Energy Secretary Wright, he gave a speech this week spreading what can only be called lies about the good work that Germany has done to speed up its energy transition. ASMalte Kreuzfeldt reported

Wright's unspecified statement that the energy transition has made the electricity supply unreliable is also inaccurate. In fact, it was more reliable in 2023 than in 2009, with an average outage time of less than 13 minutes per year – and more reliable by a factor of 10 to 30 than in the US, which, depending on the calculation method, had outage times of between 118 and 366 minutes per year in 2023

+Britain seemed to be emerging this week as one of the few countries willing to buck Trump on his support for Putin’s war in the Ukraine—and it also looks like the Labor government is going to be among the few holding to their climate commitments. A hundred and seventy countries missed the deadline for submitting their new plans to the UN, but the Brits

pledged to cut carbon emissions 81% by 2035 relative to 1990 levels, the only national plan so far that’s anywhere close to consistent with the Paris target, according to analysis of major emitters by Climate Action Tracker. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government now must prove its climate ambitions are viable and in line with economic growth.

+Australians shopping at Aldi can now buy a solar setup for what the local paper called “a cracking price.”

The multi-national, ultra-cheap retailer is now marketing a solar and battery package that includes 6kW of solar panels, a 5kW hybrid inverter and a 5.1kWh lithium ion phosphate (LiFePO4) battery, all for the princely sum of $7,999 – inclusive of installation.

Yes, installation included. This doesn’t work in the U.S. because we have too many permitting regulations in the way—but maybe we can start to change that on SunDay. Our sun of the week comes from Varshini Prakash, former executive director of the Sunrise movement and probably the human most responsible for the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. (Remember to do your drawing at Sunday.earth as we prepare for the launch

+Ron DeSantis is being urged to declare an emergency to deal with the red tide plaguing much of the Florida coast

Meanwhile, a page on the federal Environmental Protection Agency website still online as of Tuesday blamed the climate emergency, especially warming ocean waters, for more toxic and frequent algal blooms such as the one menacing the Florida Gulf coast.

“With a changing climate, harmful algal blooms can occur more often, in more fresh or marine waterbodies, and can be more intense,” it states.

+A retelling of the Icarus story from Zack Fox Loehle, which I think has a few things to say about intergenerational cooperation

+Greenpeace is going on trial in North Dakota for supposedly masterminding opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline. Not only is this a ridiculous thing to go on trial for—Americans should be allowed to protest things—but as this useful Facebook post points out it’s also an insult of sorts to the Indigenous communities that actually did all the work in this epic fight

+The great campaigners at As You Sow have just released their 2025 report on the Clean 200, the biggest sustainable companies on the planet—and what do you know, their returns outperformed the average company and dramatically bettered the fossil fuel industry

On this score, as of January 29, 2025, the Clean200 outperformed the MSCI ACWI/Energy Index of fossil fuel companies on Total Return Gross — USD Basis on a sustainable revenue-weighted basis from the Clean200 inception of July 1, 2016, 190.9% against 76.7%.

To put that in context: $10,000 invested in the Clean200 on July 1, 2016, would have grown to $29,090 by Jan. 29, 2025, versus $17,670 for the MSCI ACWI/Energy benchmark for fossil fuel companies.

The Clean 200 also outperformed the MSCI ACWI, which returned 162.0% over the same time period.

+One of the most outspoken opponents of the new Trump regime has been Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker—and on clean energy goals it appears that the Land of Lincoln will continue as a leader . As Inside Climate News reports

Illinois and Chicago will continue to fund projects and remain committed to reaching climate goals, according to multiple climate groups and city officials.

“We have, for quite some time, been advancing the city’s climate goals without federal funding,” said Angela Tovar, commissioner at Chicago’s Department of Environment and the city’s chief sustainability officer.

Tovar highlighted the 100 percent renewable energy “milestone,” which she said “was a commitment that we made through our energy procurement, which was an important commitment and will help us inch closer towards … our greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.”

She also highlighted the Climate Infrastructure Fund, a city grant program that awarded portions of a $5 million pot to more than 22 environmental justice nonprofit organizations for projects related to green infrastructure, fleet conversions to EVs and charging stations.

And in New Mexico, ground being broken on the first community solar farms!

+Geoscientist Paul Bierman writes that the rapid melt underway in Greenland will make it difficult for Trump to mine the world’s biggest island, even if he can can force the locals to let him try.

Human-induced global warming, driven by fossil fuel combustion, speeds the melting of Greenland’s ice. That melting is threatening the island’s infrastructure and the lifestyles of native people, who over millennia have adapted their transportation and food systems to the presence of snow and ice. Record floods, fed by warmth-induced melting of the ice sheet, have recently swept away bridges that stood for half a century.

As the climate warms, permafrost – frozen rock and soil – which underlies the island, thaws. This destabilizes the landscape, weakening steep slopes and damaging critical infrastructure.

+Here’s a place for New Yorkers to get tickets for the premiere of a new documentary on PFAS poisoning—Mark Ruffalo is involved, so it’s obviously important. Trailer here

+And here’s good, and interesting, news: the scale of China’s commitment to clean energy is so vast that the investment is now approaching the total resources going to fossil fuels. As Reuters reports

China invested 6.8 trillion yuan ($940 billion) in clean energy in 2024, approaching the $1.12 trillion in global investment in fossil fuels, opens new tab, according to a new analysis for U.K.-based research organisation Carbon Brief.

That was despite growth in China's clean energy investments slowing to 7% from 40% in 2023 amid overcapacity. More than half of that investment came from China's burgeoning electric vehicle, battery and solar industries.