Ha, it's a frog!

On the role of humor in resistance movements

Longtime readers of this newsletter will know that, though it’s generally focused on climate and energy, it also concerns itself with organizing: we have to fight for the future we want. This weekend is one of those occasions: No Kings Day 2, when millions upon millions of Americans will gather to say, on one form or another, we don’t like the turn our country has taken in the last nine months, and we’d like our country to head in a very different direction. If you don’t know where to go on Saturday, here’s the handy tool to help you find the rally near you. (Many thanks to my colleagues at Third Act who have worked hard to turn folks out; my guess is that older Americans will be over-represented, as at past such gatherings!)

I’ll be speaking on the Battle Green in Lexington, where in April of 1775 the American battle against kings arguably began. I grew up there, and my summer job was giving tours for the waves of sightseers who would arrive each day—I got to tell, over and over, the stories of the Minutemen who gave up their lives to a mighty military machine on the principle that they were capable of governing themselves. So it will be mostly a solemn talk, I guess—though I will try not to be over-earnest. Because we actually need a fair amount of good humor in these proceedings.

In fact, I think it’s possible that one of the most effective organizers in this entire cursed year is Seth Todd, a local man who appeared at the small protests outside the Portland Oregon ICE office a few weeks ago in an inflatable frog costume. He’s been there regularly since—his most viral moment came when ICE officers angry that he was coming to the aid of another protester sprayed mace up his air vent. But he’s been on the news again and again, becoming in the process that most exalted of all humans, a living meme.

Because of the rightly central place that the civil rights movement holds in our history, we tend to think of protest as necessarily somber and dignified. Those were the moods that that intuitive master strategist Dr. King summoned most effectively. They were designed to appeal to the sentiments of the white Americans he was facing, and to give a socially acceptable form to the deep and righteous anger of Black Americans. King understood that one of his tasks was to persuade the American mainstream that segregation—an accustomed practice—was brutal; quiet dignity against ferocious assault helped make the case, and awed onlookers with the bravery—and hence the humanity—of his followers.

We’re in a different moment now, with different needs. Trump and MAGA represent an aggressive revanchism built on a series of lies, in this case that the country’s cities are dangerous hellholes protected by dimwitted blue mayors. This is easy to disprove statistically—by many measures Portland is among the safest cities in the country; New York is safer than it’s been in at least a quarter century; Boston, which Trump was threatening last week to send troops to, is among the least violent cities America’s ever seen. But statistics have a hard time competing with lurid stories about high-profile murders or (fictitious) out-of-control. “I don’t know what could be worse than Portland,” the president said last week. “You don’t even have stores anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows.”

As a counter to this, a goofy inflatable frog is pretty powerful; it quickly drives home the message that Portland is more whimsical than dangerous. If a Black woman in Sunday best presented a messaging problem for Bull Connor in Birmingham, a chubby frog presents a messaging problem for Trump, for different reasons. He hates being laughed at, which is a good indication that he recognizes the power of laughter; this is the classic ‘emperor has no clothes’ moment. Or, as Seth the frog put it, “I obviously started a movement of people showing up looking ridiculous, which is the exact point. It’s to show how the narrative that is being pushed with how we are violent extremists is completely ridiculous. Nothing about this screams extremist and violent. So it’s just a ridiculous narrative that the Trump administration wants to put out so they can continue their fascist dictatorship.”

Satire like this is not a novel aspect of protest. Americans will remember Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies—running a pig for president, scattering cash on the floor of the stock exchange. In Serbia, the Otpor movement—operating in what was a police state—used humor extensively. As the website New Tactics in Human Rights explains

In 2000, before the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, a government initiative to support agriculture involved placing boxes in shops and public places. It asked people to donate one dinar (Serbian currency) for sowing and planting crops. In response, Otpor! arranged its own collection called “Dinar za Smenu” (Dinar for a Change). This initiative was implemented several times and in different places in Serbia. It consisted of a big barrel with a photo of Milosevic. People could donate one dinar, and would then get a stick they could use to hit the barrel. At one point, a sign suggested that if people did not have any money because of Milosevic’s politics, they should hit the barrel twice.

When the police removed the barrel, Otpor! stated in a press release that the police had arrested the barrel. Otpor! claimed that the initiative was a huge success. They had collected enough money for Milosevic’s retirement, and that the police would pass the money on to him.

Hey, and Otpor won—Milosevic was toppled, and many other campaigns have picked up on the strategy around the world. As the Tunisian human rights campaigner Sami Gharbia said, “making people laugh about dangerous stuff like dictatorship, repression, censorship is a first weapon against those fears…without beating fear you cannot make any change.”

Clearly the frog moment has inspired many here. On Facebook, the Episcopalian church was sharing not just a picture, but an apropos quote from Exodus and the story of Moses against the Pharaoh: “But if you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs…The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials.”

Hey, and Moses won too.

Meanwhile, back in Portland, there’s also been a naked bike ride this week to protest ICE. A brass band has been playing outside their headquarters (the clarinetist was arrested while playing the theme from Ghostbusters).

And meanwhile back in DC, the regime is insisting that their opposition is Hamas-loving terrorists. As the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said yesterday, “this crazy No Kings rally this weekend, is gonna be the farthest left, the hardest core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party, which is a big title.”

We don’t know how Trumpism will fall. We’re in an unprecedented moment in our political history, where the normal checks and balances have failed; it’s unclear if our electoral system will survive intact enough to allow democracy to operate in any way. But for the moment our task is to drive down Trump’s popularity, relentlessly. Their greatest hope is that there will be violence they can exploit; watch out this weekend for agents provocateurs, and pay attention to the people at protests who have been trained in de-escalation. But show up—right now that’s our best way to keep building the opposition.

Humor’s far from the only tool. Sometimes the best way to build a movement is to publicize the outrages of the other side: more and more Americans are seeing the images of masked secret police dragging terrified people into unmarked cars and spiriting them away; happily, that’s helping. Here’s Joe Rogan last week: “When you’re just arresting people in front of their kids, and just, normal, regular people who have been here for 20 years. That everybody who has a heart can’t get along with that. Everybody who has a heart sees that and goes, ‘That can’t be right.’”

And sometimes the best way to do it is to dress up as a frog.

In other energy and climate news:

+Very ungood news: a record increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere last year, up 3.5 parts per million which is the fastest one-year climb since se started taking measurements. Obviously the biggest part of that is ongoing combustion of fossil fuels—but there are also worrying signs that the natural carbon sinks in oceans and forests are beginning to buckle.

Dr Oksana Tarasova, a WMO senior scientific officer, said: “There is concern that terrestrial and ocean CO₂ sinks are becoming less effective, which will increase the amount of CO₂ that stays in the atmosphere, thereby accelerating global warming. Sustained and strengthened greenhouse gas monitoring is critical to understanding these loops.”

+The insurance crisis is not just for Americans. The Guardian reports

New analysis from the insurance industry, seen by the Guardian, reveals the extent of concern in the sector, with bosses warning that large swathes of housing and commercial property in densely populated areas will be at greater risk.

Separately, experts have said that some towns may need to be abandoned as homes and businesses struggle to get insurance in areas repeatedly battered by storms and rising sea levels.

Densely populated areas including London, Manchester and parts of north-east England, are likely to be worst hit. Experts also say London’s flood defences need to be updated urgently to protect the capital from devastating floods.

+Big tech seems to be betting on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) as a low-carbon source of power. It’s a…truly terrible bet, as James Temple makes clear in the MIT Technology Review

Experts have raised a number of concerns about various approaches to BECCS, stressing they may inflate the climate benefits of the projects, conflate prevented emissions with carbon removal, and extend the life of facilities that pollute in other ways. It could also create greater financial incentives to log forests or convert them to agricultural land.

When greenhouse-gas sources and sinks are properly tallied across all the fields, forests, and factories involved, it’s highly difficult to achieve negative emissions with many approaches to BECCS, says Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University. That undermines the logic of dedicating more of the world’s limited land, crops, and woods to such projects, he argues.

“I call it a ‘BECCS and switch,’” he says, adding later: “It’s folly at some level.”

+On his substack, Bob Gottlieb reminds us that AI represents not just an energy challenge but also a water one

Data centers are often cooled by water evaporation—a process that dissipates heat and results in water being lost to the atmosphere, thus being counted as “consumed.” According to UC Riverside’s Shaolei Ren and Microsoft’s Amy Luers, the water can be drawn from the same municipal systems that supply homes and businesses. This direct water consumption by US data centers in the United States constitutes about 0.3 percent of the US water supply, a number destined to double or even quadruple in a few years, given the Data Center expanding energy use and need for cooling.

While 0.3% seems relatively modest, Ren and Luers argue that in some regions “where data centers are concentrated—and especially in regions already facing shortages—the strain on local water systems can be significant.” Or, as a May 8, 2025 headline in Bloomberg put it, “AI is Draining Water from Areas that Need it Most.”

Moreover, data centers could stress local water supplies because they need water 24/7, according to Stanford research fellow Newsha Ajami. The Data Centers, Ajami argues, are like “permanent crops.” “You put them in there, you have to continuously water them… {without] that flexibility that’s needed, especially during dry or drought periods.”

+Yaling Jiang writes that China’s attempts to cut down on competition among its solar power manufacturers in an effort to prop up prices goes very much against the national grain

China became today’s China — as the world’s manufacturing base and 2nd largest consumer society — partially thanks to its population. And when that happens, fierce competition to an excessive level naturally comes as side effects.

A Chinese saying, which sounds like a military reference, reflects this unique mindset: 千军万马过独木桥 (directly translated as ‘thousands of troops and horses crossing a single-plank bridge’). It is used to describe scenarios in the imperial examination system, the modern-day gaokao and civil servant exam — basically, competition over economic and social resources, where very few make it to the other side. There’s another one that’s universal in gaslighting but Chinese people take it even more to heart: If you don’t do it, someone else will.

As I’ve written, I very much wish the world would come together to run China’s clean-energy plants 24/7, giving us the technology we need at scale to crimp global warming.

+The remote Alaskan village of Kipnuk was supposed to receive $20 million in federal aid to protect against flooding, but the White House—equally scornful of climate change and indigenous rights—cut the funding. Then last week: inundation

Kipnuk, a village of about 970 people along the Bering Sea, is built on permafrost, ground that has been frozen in some cases for hundreds or thousands of years. Climate change is heating the Arctic region more rapidly than the rest of the planet and the permafrost has started to thaw.

“When you have permafrost it’s like you’re dealing with concrete; you could take an ax to it,” said Tom Ravens, a civil engineering professor at the University of Alaska-Anchorage who focuses on the Arctic. “Once that permafrost thaws, it becomes this gooey mess.”

As a result of melting permafrost, Kipnuk’s key infrastructure is at risk of collapsing into the river whenever it floods after a major storm. Ms. Paul said she was especially worried that abandoned fuel tanks and batteries could leak hazardous waste into the river, potentially contaminating the water and surrounding lands. On Monday, officials were investigating possible fuel spills stemming from the stations that supply local boats and airplanes.

Kipnuk has already flooded at least 30 times between 1979 and 2022, mostly after major storms, according to a report last year from Alaska’s Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

Meanwhile, Trump cuts to the National Weather Service seem to have degraded the forecast for another epic Alaskan storm this past weekend. As Andrew Freedman chronicles:

There is a gaping hole in weather balloon coverage in western Alaska — a critical shortage bedeviling US forecasts and the National Weather Service since layoffs hit the agency as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s push to shrink the federal government back in February.

Weather balloons, which are typically launched twice a day, provide crucial information on wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity and other measurements. Balloon data is fed directly into the sophisticated computer models used to predict the weather.

However, there were few, if any, balloons to take measurements of what the weather was doing as the remains of Typhoon Halong approached Alaska late last week.

+It’s always good to hear from Nicholas Stern, the British economist who twenty years ago published a landmark report explaining the true costs of climate change. Speaking at the London School of Economics last week, he said

His conclusions from 2006 remain valid today but have intensified, as the effects of global heating are arriving faster and with more severity than anticipated. “Every time you look at the science, it gets worse,” he said. For example, he said, the tipping points that were thought to be associated with 4C of global heating now look as if they could occur with about a 2C rise.

Despite this, Stern said the economic opportunities climate action presented had also intensified, due to the extraordinary pace of technological development. The cost of solar power and batteries has fallen 80% in the last decade, with offshore wind costs down 73% and onshore wind down 57%. Stern said the growing economies of scale of climate technology, more efficient use of resources and healthier populations – fossil fuel air pollution kills millions a year – would all boost productivity and economic growth.

“It’s a huge opportunity – cities where you can move and breathe are much more productive,” he said. “The world desperately needs to increase the rate of growth [and] low-carbon is the only feasible longer-run growth on offer; high carbon growth self-destructs.”

“I am optimistic about what we can do but deeply worried about what we will do. We’re trying to bring the rational argument to the table and help shape the politics around the world. But If you’re saying that the political discussion is so difficult it cannot possibly be overcome by rational argument, then we’re in for a very hard time.”

+Fossil fuel imports have declined in more than a hundred countries, the International Energy Agency reports.

The 2025 Renewables report shows that more than 100 countries have cut their dependence on fossil fuel imports and saved hundreds of billions of dollars by continuing to invest in renewables. This is despite the global full court press in favor of expanding the use of fossil fuels from the US being conducted by the current US administration.

The UK, Germany, and Chile have reduced their need for imported coal and gas by around a third since 2010, mainly by building wind and solar power. Denmark has cut its reliance on fossil fuel imports by nearly half over the same period. Renewable expansion allowed these nations to collectively avoid importing 700 million tons of coal and 400 billion cubic meters of methane in 2023, which is equivalent to about 10 percent of global consumption.

Perhaps sensing this shift, Saudi Arabia of all places is emerging as a solar colossus. As Ed Ballard reports in the Wall Street Journal,

The world’s ultimate petrostate is turning to solar power.

Saudi Arabia is building some of the world’s biggest solar farms, along with giant arrays of batteries to store their electricity till after dark. The rapid rollout is making the country into one of the fastest-growing markets for solar power from a near-standing start.

The kingdom is betting that sunshine can transform its economy and bolster its coffers. It needs electricity for new tourism resorts, factories and AI data centers.

“Today, solar is the cheapest, the fastest, the simplest and the most secure source of energy that you can install,” said Marco Arcelli, chief executive of ACWA Power, the company driving the Saudi grid overhaul.

Saudi Arabia aims to get half its electricity from clean sources by 2030. ACWA, whose largest shareholder is Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund, is charged with delivering most of the new power needed to hit the target.