Great stuff Bill! I weep for what the USA and the world might have been by now had any true visionaries ever been in charge, and not greedy corporate-owned scumbags.
Great thoughts as always. I would add that yes, we need to support independent media, but that support should be focused on publications with editors. Substack and YouTube are filling in the gaps for now, but reporters need editors (and other colleagues) to check their stories for bias, missing context, a lack of clarity, and so on. Just as the U.S. government still needs a system of checks and balances, so does journalism.
Lying by omission is just as dangerous as active deception. I’ve recently seen this in 'expert' circles where inconvenient humanitarian facts are deleted to protect a specific legal narrative. When we stop looking at the human reality behind the data, we lose the truth entirely. Tomorrow I’m publishing the facts they tried to silence.
Great thoughts, Bill. We should start by renaming these people from “leaders” to “those in power” or something like that. They’re certainly not leaders in the sense of what I consider a leader. I certainly wouldn't follow their lead! As Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam said of Bush: "He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer."
Greetings and a huge thank you from Aotearoa/New Zealand. We either reform our entire economic model, with sustainability as top priority, or we blunder on with ‘disaster governance’, in the futile hope that we can outrun the coming climate change avalanche. The catch though: reforming our economic model won’t happen unless we rethink our fundamental values. “…anthropogenic ecological overshoot stems from a crisis of maladaptive human behaviours. While the behaviours generating overshoot were once adaptive for H. sapiens, they have been distorted and extended to the point where they now threaten the fabric of complex life on Earth. Simply, we are trapped in a system built to encourage growth and appetites that will end us.” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00368504231201372
Yes.......rethinking not only our priorities but our desires, are crucial now. Just maybe, pleasure is more important than profit, friends more satisfying than unlimited funds, and community what offers our greatest opportunities for satisfying work and leisure.
A lot of what we spend our resources on turns out not to be very satisfying......or durable. I loved being a teacher. But if there had been more of us...many more, the learning would have advanced more quickly and ideas would have been deep as well as flashy.......
As isolated individuals becoming addicted to something is almost unavoidable......in a caring community open to diversity and new ideas, more might have been achieved.
I don't see our current competitive growth models as intellectually or spiritually satisfying. I'd rather spend more quality time with children, animals and nature.
"Don’t give up. Telling the the truth repeatedly actually can work."
Working on it! I keep plugging away, sharing climate news and analysis with the academic world. That world is dead silent on climate action now, but I keep on.
Us too. And while the powerful (?) waffle and fall silent, let's all of us solarize, put in heat pumps where possible, buy that EV when available, forego that two week getaway to someone else's beach...........and live sustainably, supporting family and young people as much as possible.
We have solar, as do our kids, our family has two EV's so far, waiting for those Chinese ones for our third (Canadian what?), and this last summer we put in a top of the line heat pump.......which is working 90% of the time this winter.
F*ck those old fossils........and their climate killing cruise adventures...we're investing where our family lives.
What do you think of this idea? Pass legislation that requires government officials to take an oath of truthfulness before they speak or communicate with the People in an official capacity. With penalties for lying or misleading.
Companies get penalties for breaking the law all the time and they still break it because they have money and to them, the cost of the fine is often worth the profit, especially when that profit can hire a crooked high-priced lawyer.
Sorry, but you can't legislate honesty. It has to be built in as a cultural norm, and our entire capitalistic and decadent society is very far from any sort of norm like that.
Thank you for pointing out that while Americans tend to either pretend to believe Trump's lies or just ignore them, European leaders didn't. Here was the American president, the leader of the free world, talking nonsense.
Louise Penny’s latest book, “The Black Wolf” is a novel that has an uncannily current environmental/political plot involving the US government and Canada. The library straddling the Canadian and Vermont border appears in it.
It’s very prescient and scary in these times.
Always nice to hear some good news from Bill - we all need it👍
I've heard its a good read....maybe I'll give it a try. Just finishing Hannah Arendt's massive tome on Totalitarianism now.......and have learned a few things I wish we'd been taught in High School History.
THE RISE OF TOTALITARIANISM...the third section in particular...is uncanny in how Trump's personality and actions fit onto the template of the totalitarian ruler. We might be glad he's as stupid as he is...and pray that the American people will stand up against his hunger for total domination..........or is that total dummination????
My rantish essay largely culminates in deliberate lies, projection used as a tactic. It is largely based on the ICE killings of Good and Pretti, but also includes warring for oil, attacks on clean energy and EVs, and our roles in writing this generation's history. If anyone reads it, comments can be left there: https://www.earthlyreligion.com/good/
Thanks to you for your lifelong work, and to the commenters here and elsewhere also trying to help.
"A glaring example is his helicopter emergency landing story, which has not stood up to scrutiny.
But there was so much more. A team of NPR reporters and editors reviewed the transcript of his news conference and found at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes. That’s more than two a minute. It’s a stunning number for anyone – and even more problematic for a person running to lead the free world."
Yes, I'm old enough to remember when Lyndon Johnson's lies were called the "credibility gap." Who knew that we'd start to miss hypocrisy? which is said to be the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
Saddens me to know, that our leaders(mainly the GOP) when it comes to protecting climate, nature, the current generation and their future, one then has to ask, what future is that exactly, where for the sake of oil 🛢️profits and the like, they will willfully turn a blind eye to the truth as to what their doing, it boils down, time and again, to money and voters, you get what you vote for and to many still, are in the dark as to how they are voting for the wrong side and ultimately against their own best interests and or of their children
Great stuff Bill! I weep for what the USA and the world might have been by now had any true visionaries ever been in charge, and not greedy corporate-owned scumbags.
Great thoughts as always. I would add that yes, we need to support independent media, but that support should be focused on publications with editors. Substack and YouTube are filling in the gaps for now, but reporters need editors (and other colleagues) to check their stories for bias, missing context, a lack of clarity, and so on. Just as the U.S. government still needs a system of checks and balances, so does journalism.
Lying by omission is just as dangerous as active deception. I’ve recently seen this in 'expert' circles where inconvenient humanitarian facts are deleted to protect a specific legal narrative. When we stop looking at the human reality behind the data, we lose the truth entirely. Tomorrow I’m publishing the facts they tried to silence.
The mainstream reporting of the ongoing genocide in Gaza has made that glaringly obvious.
Great thoughts, Bill. We should start by renaming these people from “leaders” to “those in power” or something like that. They’re certainly not leaders in the sense of what I consider a leader. I certainly wouldn't follow their lead! As Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam said of Bush: "He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer."
Greetings and a huge thank you from Aotearoa/New Zealand. We either reform our entire economic model, with sustainability as top priority, or we blunder on with ‘disaster governance’, in the futile hope that we can outrun the coming climate change avalanche. The catch though: reforming our economic model won’t happen unless we rethink our fundamental values. “…anthropogenic ecological overshoot stems from a crisis of maladaptive human behaviours. While the behaviours generating overshoot were once adaptive for H. sapiens, they have been distorted and extended to the point where they now threaten the fabric of complex life on Earth. Simply, we are trapped in a system built to encourage growth and appetites that will end us.” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00368504231201372
Yes.......rethinking not only our priorities but our desires, are crucial now. Just maybe, pleasure is more important than profit, friends more satisfying than unlimited funds, and community what offers our greatest opportunities for satisfying work and leisure.
A lot of what we spend our resources on turns out not to be very satisfying......or durable. I loved being a teacher. But if there had been more of us...many more, the learning would have advanced more quickly and ideas would have been deep as well as flashy.......
As isolated individuals becoming addicted to something is almost unavoidable......in a caring community open to diversity and new ideas, more might have been achieved.
I don't see our current competitive growth models as intellectually or spiritually satisfying. I'd rather spend more quality time with children, animals and nature.
@ Bill Mckibben: And the children will pay and suffer from it.
"Don’t give up. Telling the the truth repeatedly actually can work."
Working on it! I keep plugging away, sharing climate news and analysis with the academic world. That world is dead silent on climate action now, but I keep on.
Us too. And while the powerful (?) waffle and fall silent, let's all of us solarize, put in heat pumps where possible, buy that EV when available, forego that two week getaway to someone else's beach...........and live sustainably, supporting family and young people as much as possible.
Hear hear!
We have solar, as do our kids, our family has two EV's so far, waiting for those Chinese ones for our third (Canadian what?), and this last summer we put in a top of the line heat pump.......which is working 90% of the time this winter.
F*ck those old fossils........and their climate killing cruise adventures...we're investing where our family lives.
What do you think of this idea? Pass legislation that requires government officials to take an oath of truthfulness before they speak or communicate with the People in an official capacity. With penalties for lying or misleading.
Companies get penalties for breaking the law all the time and they still break it because they have money and to them, the cost of the fine is often worth the profit, especially when that profit can hire a crooked high-priced lawyer.
Sorry, but you can't legislate honesty. It has to be built in as a cultural norm, and our entire capitalistic and decadent society is very far from any sort of norm like that.
How would it be enforced? By other politicians who also lie.
Thank you for pointing out that while Americans tend to either pretend to believe Trump's lies or just ignore them, European leaders didn't. Here was the American president, the leader of the free world, talking nonsense.
You never give up Bill. Thank you for sharing the good news stories. Onward and upward.
Louise Penny’s latest book, “The Black Wolf” is a novel that has an uncannily current environmental/political plot involving the US government and Canada. The library straddling the Canadian and Vermont border appears in it.
It’s very prescient and scary in these times.
Always nice to hear some good news from Bill - we all need it👍
I've heard its a good read....maybe I'll give it a try. Just finishing Hannah Arendt's massive tome on Totalitarianism now.......and have learned a few things I wish we'd been taught in High School History.
THE RISE OF TOTALITARIANISM...the third section in particular...is uncanny in how Trump's personality and actions fit onto the template of the totalitarian ruler. We might be glad he's as stupid as he is...and pray that the American people will stand up against his hunger for total domination..........or is that total dummination????
You're the best, Bill!
My rantish essay largely culminates in deliberate lies, projection used as a tactic. It is largely based on the ICE killings of Good and Pretti, but also includes warring for oil, attacks on clean energy and EVs, and our roles in writing this generation's history. If anyone reads it, comments can be left there: https://www.earthlyreligion.com/good/
Thanks to you for your lifelong work, and to the commenters here and elsewhere also trying to help.
Trump's Guinness World Record in LYING
Two and a half false statements Per Minute
--------------
162 lies and distortions in a news conference.
NPR fact-checks former President Trump
"A glaring example is his helicopter emergency landing story, which has not stood up to scrutiny.
But there was so much more. A team of NPR reporters and editors reviewed the transcript of his news conference and found at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes. That’s more than two a minute. It’s a stunning number for anyone – and even more problematic for a person running to lead the free world."
NPR
Yes, I'm old enough to remember when Lyndon Johnson's lies were called the "credibility gap." Who knew that we'd start to miss hypocrisy? which is said to be the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
not really a comment, link to a fascinating article about a soil fungus that sequesters carbon, when it isn't disturbed by some types of human development. https://thebulletin.org/2026/01/the-underground-network-prehistoric-fungi-feed-the-worlds-plants-and-resist-climate-change-but-face-an-uncertain-future/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Nuclear%20deterrence%20is%20dying%20%20And%20hardly%20anyone%20notices&utm_campaign=20260202%20Monday%20Newsletter&vgo_ee=9YJz18BmbYzu9lyHRox4cx2Haoi1605kItUHqwR2q2vPkZiGUA%3D%3D%3AhS486b9pSdilSRNzOfLl3LZ9ug%2BHBHPw .
Thanks for all the articles. Amid so many lies the truth helps.
Saddens me to know, that our leaders(mainly the GOP) when it comes to protecting climate, nature, the current generation and their future, one then has to ask, what future is that exactly, where for the sake of oil 🛢️profits and the like, they will willfully turn a blind eye to the truth as to what their doing, it boils down, time and again, to money and voters, you get what you vote for and to many still, are in the dark as to how they are voting for the wrong side and ultimately against their own best interests and or of their children