'You're not the boss of me'

America's current conspiratorial politics offers some possibilities for action

Anti-fluoride protesters at a New York City reservoir in 1965

Since so much that is bizarre is currently being normalized (Matt Gaetz, in an effort to get out of Congress before it could publish its report on his sex scandals, is taking a new job as…attorney general) let me just say that the strangest thing of all remains in plain view. The incoming president of the richest country on earth believes climate change—the deepest challenge that our species has faced—is a hoax.

This obviously has endless policy implications, which we’ll spend the next four years working through—but the simple fact is what’s so amazing. Every single one of the structures we’ve built over the centuries to help us understand the world, from the National Academy of Science to the land-grant universities with their huge labs, to NASA with its satellites keeping an eye on planet earth, have told us the same thing: fairly simple physics means that burning fossil fuel is warming the earth, a warming now painfully confirmed in rainfall totals, melting ice, rising sea level, and deadly heat waves. The entire world is plunging into an inferno.

And yet the person at the putative head of that entire pyramid of reason and evidence, the person with instant access to any scientist on earth, and the person with the power to do the most to prevent it, simply rejects it. Jaded as we are, that should stun us.

It’s not news, of course. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords last time around, and he will soon do so again. He’s busy finding allies—the first foreign leader to visit Mar-a-Lago post election was Argentina’s Javier Milei, a libertarian beloved by far-right leaders around the world, who joined Trump in doing the YMCA dance (the picture of authoritarian leaders bouncing to a gay anthem is one of the few saving graces of the moment). Milei announced that he too thought climate change was a “socialist lie” and hinted that Argentina too would soon be leaving the Paris pact. Even the host of the current global climate talks, Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev (named as “Corruption’s Person of the Year” in 2012 by a global NGO) used his opening address last week to explain that fossil fuels were “a gift from the god.” (Climate activists, an unpopular species in Azerbaijan, were prevented from chanting at the global talks, so they hummed)

Obviously the underlying motive for all of this is the wealth and power associated with fossil fuel. (The country of Fossil Fuel Lobbyists sent more representatives to the climate talks than almost any other). Trump on Friday appointed a fracking executive, Christopher Wright, as his new energy secretary, surprising absolutely no one. Wright of course rejects the idea that there is a climate crisis, that we need an energy transition, or that there is any such thing as clean energy.

But he goes further, and in a way that I think helps illuminate how the right gets away with its denial. He tweeted recently that following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the “left” needed a new “north star.”

Enter climate change. The solution to top-down control’s existential challenge came in the form of problem. The climate ‘problem’ fit the bill perfectly. It was global and centered on the two core industries of society, energy and agriculture. It was crowned ‘existential’ by alarmist activists and left-of-center politicians fell in line.

And here, for me, is the key part. Wright says that the core view of the left is that

“those uneducated rubes (the citizenry) surely can’t be left free to exercise their own preferences through purchasing and employment decisions.”

I have no idea how Argentine politics works, and I imagine that Azerbaijani politics mainly involves staying on the right side of Mr. Corruption, but I get American politics well enough to recognize the power of Wright’s worldview. There’s always been in our character a strain of “You’re Not the Boss of Me.” (Indeed, I spent my boyhood giving tours of Lexington Green where this attitude had its first real expression). But for much of my life it was a fairly fringe part of our discourse: long before RFK Jr, for instance, there were oddball rightwing opponents of fluoride in our water supply, or of making motorcyclists wear helmets.

But most of us aren’t motorcyclists interested in traumatic brain injury, nor conspiracy theorists eager to increase our dental bills. So things like that stayed on the fringe—the changes demanded by, say, seatbelts were so small and so obviously beneficial that we just got used to them, and there was no real cost to any industry big enough to matter.

Climate change was a different matter. Taking it seriously would require enormous change from one group of people—those who made fortunes in coal and oil and gas. (Wright’s aptly-named Liberty Energy fracks one-fifth of the onshore wells in America). So the mere fact that science has demonstrated we’re wrecking the earth with fossil fuel couldn’t be allowed to dictate policy—something that became more likely as the alternatives became cheaper and easier.

The easiest way to marshal opposition was to lean on this tired trope: someone who thought you were a ‘rube’ was trying to tell you what to do. Trump, of course, goes on repeated diatribes about people being forced to use windpower and then being unable to watch tv because the breeze has dropped, or forced to buy an electric car that only runs when the sun has shining. Though no one has ever proposed banning gas stoves, the mere fact that scientists were pointing out its dangers to the lungs of children was enough to turn on the machine. The Texas representative Ronny Jackson tweeted, with his usual restraint:

"I'll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!"

and his Senate colleague Ted Cruz chimed in

“The Biden administration is waging a multifaceted attack on popular appliances.”

This kind of ‘thinking’ was supercharged by COVID—instead of appreciating the difficulties posed by a novel virus (or remembering the piles of dead bodies in the early months), lots of Americans pouted. Someone was telling them not to do something (eat in a crowded restaurant) or to do something (cover their mouths). So they rebelled; absent that anger, I doubt a January 6 could have happened.

I think this strain in our national character is wrongheaded—the danger of authoritarianism in America has always come from the right, not the left, and never more so than now. I devoutly wish that affection for one’s neighbors and a love of the generations that will come after us would persuade us to make the not-very-hard changes required of us. But I don’t think those reasons will be sufficient—they’re not strong enough to override the constant chatter about “mandates” pressed by the fossil fuel industry and its media and political harem.

So we have to broaden the appeal of the things that could save us. In the next few years the main task of the environmental movement in America (because so many other options are foreclosed) is going to involve pushing for a rapid transition to clean and renewable energy. We’re going to have to persuade people that solar and wind energy, and the devices that go with it, are what we want. And it won’t do sufficient good to argue on environmental grounds—’you’re not the boss of me’ is a teenager’s argument, and teenagers are focused on themselves. So we better be too.

Here’s some of the arguments, then, that we can spend more time on. (And this is not theoretical—we’ll be rolling out the plans to make these arguments scale, as movements adjust to the new political reality).

Solar power is cheaper. (and those who oppose it know so, and are conspiring to make sure you keep paying them for energy when the sun provides it for free)

It’s more reliable. (and you can plug your EV to your house after a hurricane and run everything for a week).

It’s the ultimate liberty to have your own powerplant on your roof.

It’s far better to have a wind farm in your county than to rely on Saudi Arabia (or Chris Wright).

An electric car goes zero to sixty far faster than your antiquated gas model and it costs half as much to run. (Rich guys in their Teslas are laughing at you)

Because it has fewer moving parts, you don’t have to visit your mechanic nearly as often. You can drive right by the gas station.

Oil companies are a scam, pushing antiquated technology to keep you hooked. They don’t care if you breathe dirty air as long as it makes them money.

Their shareholders are getting rich while you pay for repairing roads and bridges everytime there’s a new climate disaster.

We’ve already reached the percentage of the population that cares deeply about carbon emissions, and we obviously need more. We need to understand the darker sides of the American brain as well as the lighter ones, and we need to play to them.

So remember: If you have some solar panels and a heat pump and an EV, you’re the boss of you. Pass it on.

+A few happy things because God knows we need them

—Guinness’s main brewery is replacing fossil fuel with heat pumps!

Scotland’s Cairngorm Brewery recently adopted a hybrid system that includes solar panels and heat pumps, as did Melbourne’s oldest independent brewer.

Heineken’s Manchester brewery is in the process of swapping out gas-fired steam boilers for a heat pump network that captures and reuses heat from the beer-making process.

—Unintimidated by NIMBY protest, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is going ahead with a massive new solar farm in thes tate’s Tri-Cities region

—Speaking of massive solar farms, China has approved its largest yet, enough to power two million households, in the Ordos area of the Gobi desert. As it happens, I’ve been to this part of the world, which has been ravaged by coal-mining. Ordos is one of China’s ‘empty cities’ with vast blocks of unfilled apartments. Finally some sensible development! Oh, and China also just inaugurated the largest open-ocean floating solar farm in the world

Once completed, this offshore solar farm is expected to generate 1.78 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually – enough to power around 2.67 million urban homes. It could also help save about 503,800 tons of standard coal and cut down carbon dioxide emissions by roughly 1.34 million tons annually.

—Saul Griffiths, the polymath behind much of the effort to electrify the world, has taken time out from his usual work to help produce a solar-powered scooter. Not battery powered, but directly run by the sun.

—One more nice thing: check out the world’s longestpurpose-built bike tunnel, in Bergen Norway

Fyllingsdalen tunnel is about as photogenic as an urban bike path can get. Inside, it offers art installations and creative lighting; at its exit, there are stunning mountain views. CNN and Smithsonian have lavished it with international attention, and visiting cycling advocates like the Netherlands-based authors Melissa and Chris Bruntlett have swooned.

+Wen Stephenson has an important interview in the Nation with Tom Athanasiou, who I’ve written about often, and who is the lead author of the Civil Society Equity Report released in Baku on Friday. The report documents the amounts owed by the global north to the global south for the climate transition, and decries the “organized obstructionism of the fossil fuel industry and the parasitism of the global rich.” As Athanasiou explains to Stephenson

I want to make a really big point of the fact that we have the technology, the science, and the money to save ourselves. It’s not a technology problem; it’s a political problem. I always say, we only need two things to save humanity and civilization: The first one is a thoroughgoing green technology revolution—and we have it. The second is a high-cooperation world. And the problem is, you cannot have a high-cooperation world at this level of global inequality.

That, for me, is the core not only of climate realism but of social-ecological realism. In order to be able to cooperate effectively—and this is now well established by all the inequality work that has happened over the last 20 years—we need to be able to redistribute wealth. To me, that’s the basic precept of climate realism.

Sadly, this grant-making is the opposite of the way the current climate talks seem to be going—countries seem mostly to be “pledging” other people’s money, in the form of loans from investors. Though perhaps there are some early signs of China picking up more global climate leadership, as the G-20 meeting in Brazil seems to be sending a message about climate finance to the talks in Baku. (“Developing” countries like China have always resisted taking on any obligations for climate finance; now they may be volunteering to play a role, which would be significant).

+Athanasiou says the global south needs about a trillion dollars annually in grants to make the energy transition work. Here’s another trillion-with-a-T story, this one in Grist about the amounts banks are spending on fossil fuel expansion

Since May 2021, global banks that have committed to net-zero have poured almost $1 trillion into companies pursuing expansion of oil and gas projects that would push the world beyond its survivable limits. Taken together, these projects would produce almost seven times the annual emissions of the U.S., according to an analysis by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, or TBIJ.

+On the list of bad ideas, there’s always large-scale moon mining. As Natasha Boyd reports

Austere as it is, the lunar environment is not indestructible. The Moon’s thin atmosphere will most likely be damaged by mining and rocket operations; the ancient, familiar light reflected by the lunar surface could very possibly be permanently altered by commercial development. The face that Earth’s inhabitants have gazed upon from time immemorial is in danger of some of the most extreme forms of corruption that land can sustain.

+Those of us who live in the humid American east are not used to wildfires, but as a big drought in the New York area reminds us, we better be. Prospect Park in Brooklyn was on fire last week. As it happens, I’ve fought small wildfires in the Adirondack Mountains, and this is almost impossible terrain—the fire gets down into the duff and roots and just smolders forever—until the snow comes in some cases. If the snow comes…A new report from Nature finds an almost 8 % decline in persistent snow cover over the last four decades.

+Two of the country’s most important climate researchers—Gavin Schmidt and Zeke Hausfather—argue in a NY Times oped that we need better, and quicker, climate data to get a handle on why the steady increase in global temperatures has spiked the last two years.

Climate science research is more used to working on approximately seven-year cycles to produce reports that summarize the evolving science about the long-term changes in climate. The data that went into the latest round of climate model simulations are based on observations that only run through 2014, and so they don’t reflect recent changes such as newer pollution controls, volcanic eruptions or even the effects of Covid. Similarly, the forecasts are stuck with scenarios that were common in the early 2000s. Business (and everything else) has changed sharply since then.

+The famous, and useful, blue-to-red warming stripes that track climatae change over the decades need a new color pallette because it’s heating up too fast

Earlier in 2024, the climate stripes were updated with an extra colour at both ends – a darker blue and a darker red. The reason was that 2023 was so hot that the team behind the stripes at the University of Reading, in the UK, decided to change the scale.

But it is already looking likely that temperatures will outstrip the scale again if the current trend continues. The boreal summer for 2024 (June to August) was the warmest on record globally. It has raised concerns that average surface air temperatures for 2024 will surpass those seen in 2023 to become the hottest year since records began.

If this happens, then the stripe for 2024 will be the darkest red on the updated scale

+Tell New York governor Kathy Hochul to build more renewable power via this link.

Maybe it will even work. The climate-clueless Hochul, under intense pressure for her shameful springtime decision to block congestion pricing for lower Manhattan, last week said she’d try to use the last weeks of the Biden administration to win federal approval for a reduced scheme. A vote comes today from the MTA board and is now expected to pass.

+A fascinating story from Mongabay’s Mike Digirilamo and Rachel Donald about a commercial pilot who quit flying to try and make aviation more sustainable.

Todd Smith didn’t intend to quit his career as a commercial pilot, but a visit to the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru, which has been receding by about 60 meters, or 200 feet, per year, prompted a frank personal examination of the airline industry’s impacts on the planet. During a subsequent medical leave, he decided to quit his dream job and leave the industry, for good.

Today, Smith is co-founder of the organization Safe Landing, which advocates for an aviation industry transition that adapts to the realities of climate change, adheres to carbon budgets, and ensures long-term employment for those who work in it.

+For those of you following the debates over ‘de-growth,’ a useful new essay from Tim Smedley

+This is important: California governor Gavin Newsom has been systematically deemphasizing rooftop solar—even on schools—in favor of bit utility-scale power, when most environmental analyses say we need both. (For Newsom, it’s a way to please both utilities and unions, who helped him survive a recall election, but it’s led to massive layoffs of solar installers, and a real speed-bump in the state’s conversion to renewables). His argument has been that rooftop solar ‘cost-shifts’ utility rates to those who can’t afford to install panels, but a new study says he’s simply…wrong.

For years, the utilities and some state agencies have falsely blamed rooftop solar consumers for California’s high electricity rates. In August 2024, the Public Advocates Office (PAO) of the CA Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) doubled down with a report claiming that rooftop solar consumers shifted $8.5 billion of grid costs to non-solar users. The report was the latest in a string of false claims about rooftop solar made by both the utilities and some state agencies. 

However, an analysis by energy economist Dr. Richard McCann found that the PAO’s report used incorrect background numbers and omissions to make their claim. When those issues were corrected, Dr. McCann found that rooftop solar actually saved all ratepayers $2.3 billion in 2024.

The PAO assumes that every ratepayer is obligated to pay the utility whether or not they need the electricity. Their math counted the solar energy consumed “behind the meter” as a cost to other ratepayers. This is like saying that people who grow their own vegetables are responsible for raising prices at the grocery story. Dr. McCann removed this “phantom cost shift” from the math and reduced the PAO’s claim by $3.989 billion alone.

The PAO didn’t account for the fact that rooftop solar displaced 15,000 megawatts of peak load and 23,000 gigawatt-hours of energy since 2006. In plainer language, this is the amount of electricity that the utilities didn’t have to make and deliver thanks to your solar. Including this further reduces the PAO claim by $2.165 billion, for a total net savings of $2.3 billion!

+In the UK they’ve set up a “Visit a Heat Pump” program, so that homeowners considering replacing their furnace can see how their neighbors are doing with the new technology. Lawrence, for instance, visited a heat pump in Kent

“His house was rather different to ours. His house was Victorian, but he’d done a lot of installations on it, underfloor heating and so on. Ours is a relatively new house that I designed myself. But the visit was still really useful. Money is an issue when getting a heat pump, but he pointed me toward the government grant that made a difference.