Time for some courage in the climate fight too

Big business, and its political enablers, have turned tail. They need to take a page from the resistance

A little peck for dear leader from Blackrock’s Larry Fink in Davos

Any resistance needs to celebrate its victories, and the weekend’s retreat by the administration is a big one: should the forces of decency ever regain the upper hand in DC, we need a monument to the people of Minneapolis on the National Mall, and busts of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in the capitol.

And it’s not just the Trump administration that those brave people faced down, it’s the pundit class too, who insisted over and over that progressives should avoid talking about immigration because it wasn’t politically popular. The other subject we’ve been told to sideline is “climate change,” for fear of offending voters more interested in “affordability.” (Former energy secretary Jennifer Granholm told an industry audience Monday that “on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, climate does not rise as much as how much I'm paying for my electricity bill,” which is one of those things that sounds clever until you meet someone who lost their home to a wildfire.)

I actually have no problem with the advice to focus on electric bills—as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I think affordability, especially of electricity, is an issue that helps both elect Democrats and reduce carbon emissions, since anyone interested in the cost of power is going to be building sun and wind. But I also don’t think that talking about global warming is a mistake—most Americans, polls show, understand the nature of the crisis, and want action to stem it. It isn’t the single most salient issue because all of us live in this particular moment (and in this particular moment the fact that federal agents are executing citizens who dare to take cellphone pictures of them is definitely the most salient issue) but it is nonetheless a net plus for politicians, especially in blue states.

As we were reminded this morning, when Drew Warshaw, a candidate for New York state comptroller with a long record of building clean energy in the private sector, released a true bombshell report. In it he called for the state to divest its vast pension funds from fossil fuels—and provided the data to show that the failure of the incumbent to do that over the last two decades had cost taxpayers fifteen billion dollars in foregone returns. Billion with a b. That’s $750 for every woman, man, and child in the Empire State, all because the longstanding (as in, way too long) state treasurer, Thomas DiNapoli, has ignored the counsel of one expert after another and kept the state invested in Big Oil. (Oh, and since cowardice often consorts with incompetence, another report also finds that DiNapoli has cost the state more than $50 billion by underperforming index funds and giving huge contracts to various advisors).

A bit of backstory here. Fifteen years ago, some of us launched a fossil fuel divestment campaign. At the beginning the argument was mostly moral: it was wrong to try and make a profit off the end of the world, and if we could convince institutions to sell that stock it would tarnish Big Fossil’s social license.

But it didn’t take long for another argument to emerge: the pension funds, college endowments and others who joined the movement reported that they were making money as a result, and for a very simple reason: anything that they put the money into was generating better returns than coal, gas, and oil. And that in turn was for an even simpler reason: fossil fuel is a faltering industry, because an alternative—the trinity of sun, wind, and batteries—now produces the same product, just cleaner and cheaper. That’s why 95 percent of new generating capacity around the world last year came from renewables; fossil fuel only has a good year any more if something goes very wrong (the invasion of Ukraine, say).

Anyway, this became the largest anti-corporate effort of its kind in history, with funds representing $41 trillion in investments joining in. Its had powerful effects—when Peabody Coal filed for bankruptcy, for instance, its legal documents listed divestment as a reason. But it also protected the fiscal integrity of the funds that did the right thing—they had more money to pay pensions, provide scholarships, or whatever else. That’s why pension funds in states and entire countries joined in.

Which brings us back to New York. Advocates have put in tens of thousands of person-hours explaining to DiNapoli that he should join pension funds in dozens of other places in divesting from fossil fuels, and he has dragged his feet at every turn, with half-measures, occasional strongly-worded letters, and the rest: he is the Chuck Schumer of finance. As Warshaw’s report puts it

When an investment, and in this case a whole sector of investments, fails to perform over a long period of time and show no realistic signs of turning around, investment managers need to act. Each market cycle over the last two decades has left in its wake less value for fossil fuel companies and less value for fossil fuel investors. This value erosion and strong headwind threats are at the heart of the divestment argument. Why continue to invest in an industry that is now only 2.8% of the market with no plausible strategy to turn things around and a corporate culture that simply that denies the problem even exists? Investment managers need to focus their time on maximizing risk-adjusted returns, not engaging in politically- driven wishful thinking for an industry in permanent decline.

DiNapoli is not alone in his cowardice, of course. For a brief moment—when they were scared by the emergence of Greta’s worldwide movement before the pandemic—lots of financial leaders said they were going to take steps to address climate change. Blackrock, for instance, the biggest investor in the world, which bas the power should it choose to use it, to make vast change fast. (Blackrock’s wealth is roughly twice the continent of Africa’s). Here’s what Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, said in 2020:

Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity – a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect. But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.

The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance. Research from a wide range of organizations – including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the BlackRock Investment Institute, and many others, including new studies from McKinsey on the socioeconomic implications of physical climate risk – is deepening our understanding of how climate risk will impact both our physical world and the global system that finances economic growth.

Will cities, for example, be able to afford their infrastructure needs as climate risk reshapes the market for municipal bonds? What will happen to the 30-year mortgage – a key building block of finance – if lenders can’t estimate the impact of climate risk over such a long timeline, and if there is no viable market for flood or fire insurance in impacted areas? What happens to inflation, and in turn interest rates, if the cost of food climbs from drought and flooding? How can we model economic growth if emerging markets see their productivity decline due to extreme heat and other climate impacts?

Investors are increasingly reckoning with these questions and recognizing that climate risk is investment risk

But then what happened? Big Oil pushed back, in the form of red state treasurers promising to pull their money from Blackrock. Suddenly Fink turned tail and ran. By now he’s part of Trump’s inner circle. As Pilita Clark explained in that radical journal the Financial Times over the weekend, DiNapoli and Fink’s failure of courage is endemic across too much of the American elite landscape.

This failure is not due to a shortage of scientific understanding or technological breakthroughs. It is because we lack the political changes needed to put financial systems and economies on to paths that avoid burning fossil fuels. Achieving those changes is inordinately difficult.

Public support from large businesses is important. Ultimately, staying quiet at a time like this is self-defeating. It undermines the global institutions needed to address a growing global climate problem that poses serious financial threats.

David Gelles, in the Times, has another sad account of this collective failure of nerve on Wall Street, and it’s well worth reading. As he writes,

Republican legislatures around the country introduced more than 100 bills to penalize financial companies that supported E.S.G. practices. Republican state treasurers around the country began pulling money out.

This is the company DiNapoli keeps, and the people he apparently listens to—again, he’s a lot more like Chuck Schumer than he should be. So it’s very good news that insurgent candidate Warshaw is talking about bringing New York State’s financial might to bear—in part because it amplifies the message being sent by Mark Levine, new comptroller of the city of New York. Levine’s predecessor Brad Lander, who already led the divestment from fossil fuel companies, late in his tenure called for the city to ditch Blackrock, and Levine seems to be interested in following through.

Together, the pension funds of New York City and New York state control far more resources than the funds of the various red states combined. If they manage to put effective pressure on the oil industry and the finance industry, it will have enormous impact—it will aid enormously in the climate fight and it will undercut Trump. And it will encourage other blue state leaders to do likewise: always remember, most of the nation’s economy is in places that voted against Trump. It’s a weapon that needs to be used.

And New York can do so without putting anyone’s pension at risk—under the Empire State’s laws, the comptroller has to pay pensions in full no matter what happens to his investment portfolio, so there’s no danger Warshaw will do anything except save taxpayers large sums of money. (And Warshaw is not alone; the other Dem in the primary, Raj Goyle, has called for divestment too, though not with the same depth of analysis). This is a no-brainer, except if you’re stuck in your ways.

I helped found an organization devoted to elder action on behalf of climate and democracy; obviously I don’t think age disqualifies one from office. But DiNapoli is 71 and he represents the greatest danger of long tenure in office: a stultification of ideas, an inability to see new facts, a stubborn attachment to old ideas. It’s time for him, finally, to get out of the way, or to be voted out.

The climate fight, even in this country, is very far from over. The basic premise of that battle—that we must move swiftly away from the moral and financial sinkhole of Big Oil—is still clear and powerful.

+Donald Trump, over and over again, has told European leaders they must stop building windpower. Not working so well. Ten European nations announced yesterday a plan to build a giant “clean energy reservoir” in the North Sea, with enough wind to power 143 million homes. Which is about two-thirds of all the homes in Europe.

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has said he wants the North Sea to become the “largest reservoir of clean energy worldwide”, as he announced plans to accelerate efforts to link up offshore wind power projects with Europe.

The UK and nine other European countries have agreed to accelerate the rollout of offshore windfarms in the 2030s and build a power grid in the North Sea, in a landmark pact to turn the ageing oil basin into a “clean energy reservoir”.

They will build windfarms at sea that directly connect to various countries through high-voltage subsea cables, under plans that are expected to provide 100 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind power, or enough electricity capacity to power 143m homes.

+The UK joined those other European nations, but it also emerged today that the Keir Starmer government suppressed a report from their scientific authorities about the dangers of climate change.

When the government was forced to release the report after a freedom of information request, it published an abridged version that outlined a “realistic possibility” that the decline of forests and glacier-fed rivers would lead to “global competition for food” beginning in the 2030s.

But a full, internal version of the report, seen by The Times, goes further, suggesting that the degradation of rainforests in the Congo and the drying up of rivers fed by the Himalayas could drive people to flee to Europe, leading to “more polarised and populist politics in the UK” and putting “additional pressure on already strained national infrastructure”.

The internal version also warned that collapsing ecosystems could motivate acts of eco-terrorism in Britain, as well as drawing Nato into conflicts over remaining breadbaskets in Russia and Ukraine.

Described as a “reasonable worst-case scenario”, the report said that many ecosystems around the world were so stressed that they could soon pass a tipping point, after which they would inexorably degrade no matter what humans did to protect them. Forests in Canada and Russia might pass a tipping point by 2030, as might glaciers in the Himalayas that fed rivers on which two billion people depended, the report suggested.

+Meanwhile, a new study in Nature adds to the sense of danger. It argues that we’ve underestimated the rate of permafrost thaw and wildfire, and that we’ve got even less margin than we imagined to hold temperatures in check. To be specific, 25 percent less margin.

Here, we expand a compact Earth system model (OSCAR v3.0) enabling initial estimates of the impacts of abrupt thaw and wildfire, together with gradual thaw, on remaining carbon budgets consistent with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Our model suggests that including permafrost thaw and fire-related carbon emissions reduces the remaining allowable carbon budgets from 2025 onward by 25 % ± 12 % for avoiding 1.5 °C and 17 % ± 7 % for avoiding 2.0 °C, relative to simulations without these processes. Accounting for these additional emissions is critical for setting emissions reduction targets aligned with the Paris Agreement.

+A new study finds that indigenous-owned energy is heavily concentrated in the renewable sector. Mitchell Beer has the story:

Calgary-based Indigenous Energy Monitor (IEM) identified [pdf] 523 projects with some degree of Indigenous ownership across five categories: oil and gas, carbon capture and storage, power and utilities, mining and critical minerals, and chemicals and fuels. Some 452 of the projects were in power and utilities, and 75% of those were renewable energy developments, with energy storage accounting for another 11% and transmission lines 6.6%.

Out of that total, 189 were in operation in 2025, 32 were under construction, 173 were in development, and 58 had been shelved or cancelled. IEM said most of them were half- to majority-owned by Indigenous partners.

The oil and gas sector reported 18 projects in operation, three under construction, seven in development, and five cancelled or shelved. The majority of the projects were pipelines, and most of them featured only minority Indigenous ownership. While the 33 fossil projects involved 89 unique owners, the 452 power and utility projects had 363, suggesting both a wider ownership base for renewables and greater opportunity for successful project developers to branch out and scale.

“Indigenous equity ownership growth is being driven by how projects are conceived, procured, financed, and risk-assessed,” the preliminary report states, with procurement requirements, rising energy demand, Indigenous leadership, and better access to funding among the factors behind the trend. Continuing obstacles include access to capital, capacity constraints, lack of market transparency, and ownership risks.

+Here’s a shocker. According to newly released emails, the “scientific panel” that the Department of Energy convened to cast doubt on climate science was entirely a political hatchet job—oh, and it ignored all the requirements for open meetings. God this is a pitiful administration.

+A new paper in Nature argues for replacing temperature targets like 1.5 C with clean energy targets

We argue that the main focus of climate action in 2026 and beyond should be on accelerating the clean-energy revolution. And the rate at which clean energy displaces fossil fuels in the global economy should become the key measure of climate progress. Here we describe how such progress can be tracked and incentivized using a metric we call the clean-energy shift. Unlike chasing intangible temperature targets, cleaning up the energy sector is a more-focused battle that the world can win.

To fulfil this mandate, the world needs one clear number with which to measure climate progress during a transition that ends the use of fossil fuels. We think the most promising metric is one we term the ‘clean-energy shift’. Building on a concept initially proposed by Bloomberg New Energy Finance founder Michael Liebreich (see go.nature.com/3zr5y1), we define it as the growth rate in clean-energy generation minus the growth rate in total energy demand for a given time interval.

This metric emphasizes that clean-energy supply must expand faster than overall energy demand for decarbonization. When the percentage growth of clean-energy supply exceeds the growth in total energy use, fossil fuels get squeezed out of the system. By contrast, simply measuring clean energy share is insufficient, because fossil fuels might also rise overall to meet extra demand.

But if we’re going to have temperature targets, another new paper argues that they need to be more rigorous, not less. As Inside Climate news explains

Scientists studying climate tipping points say the world should aim to limit warming to about 1 degree Celsius, warning that the 1.5-degree target enshrined in international climate agreements won’t protect coral reefs, polar ice sheets and other vital Earth systems from irreversible change.

“We have absolute justification to push for a lower number, because one degree is a temperature that is safe,” said Melanie McField, director of the nonprofit Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative.

In the last 12,000 years, the time in which human civilizations developed, the global temperature “very rarely, if ever, crossed plus or minus one degree,” she said Monday during a webinar focusing on governance strategies for achieving global climate targets. For coral reefs, the current warming of 1.2 degrees Celsius is already in the red zone, she added.

+Keep building batteries, because a new study finds that power outages do more damage than statistics usually show. As Leslie Kaufman writes,

The report finds that current insurance metrics focus too narrowly on physical property damage while ignoring the “non-linear compounding losses” that occur when the grid stays down, such as food and medicine spoilage, as well as transportation disruptions that can extend well beyond the outage area. Traditional estimating tools like the Value of Lost Load (VoLL) fail to capture the reality of a multi-hour blackout beyond a given time window or narrow geography, the authors say.

This gap may be massive: In the aftermath of Hurricanes Sandy and Harvey, one study found that business interruption losses were 800% to 900% higher than actual property damages. Even if business interruptions added just 30% to 50% to direct totals, the RMI authors noted, it would imply at least an additional $35 billion per year that are not captured in US disaster-loss calculations.

+Africans may actually have installed two and a half times as much solar as official documents show. Patrick Jowett reports:

In the report, AFSIA CEO, John van Zuylen, wrote that the latest data collected changes prior perceptions that Africa was one of the least attractive solar regions and highlights that the continent has a much bigger market share than once thought.

“Africa now appears to be experiencing one of the fastest growths on the globe and therefore becoming a key market to tap into for all types of industry stakeholders,” van Zuylen wrote. “The next few years will show if this growth is only temporary or is based on strong foundations that make solar the unavoidable way forward to electrify the African continent.”

+Chinese long-haul truckers seem to have definitively decided electric is the way to go. As Jo Borrás reports:

In December alone, ~45,300 new [electric trucks] were registered, capturing 54% of the entire new heavy-duty truck market for the month and showing a 198% year-over-year increase YoY and a 62% month-over-month jump from November.

The charging infrastructure to support this scale of electrification is also advancing, with both high-speed charging and battery swap station networks for heavy trucks coming online to address downtime concerns.

China also introduced this week the world’s largest compressed-air energy storage system

The plant, with 2,400 megawatt hours of capacity, can generate 600 megawatts of power and meet the annual demand of 600,000 households, according to a statement from Harbin Electric Corp., which participated in construction of the project.

Such facilities represent the most cost‑effective, long-duration solution to storing energy, according to BloombergNEF. They work by pumping compressed air into underground caverns at night, for release during the day to spin turbines and produce electricity.

China’s energy storage sector has seen explosive growth, driven by the country’s rapid deployment of renewable energy. The government has set a target of over 180 gigawatts of new capacity by 2027, fostering a boom in battery storage and alternative technologies such as compressed air.

Meanwhile, in Europe, new data shows that EV sales have overtaken petrol cars for the first time. Here’s Holly Lempriere:

ACEA figures show Volkswagen continued to claim the largest market share in the EU, accounting for 26.7% of new registrations in December, up from 25.6% a year earlier.

It was followed by Stellantis, Renault, Hyundai, Toyota and BMW.

EV giant Tesla saw its market share drop from 3.5% in December 2024 to 2.2% in December 2025. Over the course of 2025, the brand saw its market share in the EU fall 37.9% from 2024, following controversy around its owner, Elon Musk.

Meanwhile, Chinese EV brand BYD tripled its market share from 0.7% in December 2024 to 1.9% in December 2025.

+Well, here’s a sweet-smelling note on which to end: a new battery technology is emerging that relies on…lavender. As Aman Tripathi reports:

While lavender is globally prized for its fragrance, its agricultural residue—totaling approximately 1,000–1,500 tons annually—has long been an underutilized byproduct.

Scientists have now successfully converted this flower waste into hard carbon (HC) for use as a high-performance battery anode.

The natural microstructures of the plant tissues are preserved during the conversion process, which significantly enhances electrolyte penetration by allowing for faster movement of ions and increases sodium diffusivity to improve the overall speed and efficiency of the battery.