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climate week
Climate Week Showed What’s Possible; Now New York Has to Deliver
The conversations I had suggested very few participants left New York Climate Week with a clear sense of New York State’s potential to lead on climate—and the extent to which we’re failing to meet the moment.
Oct 28, 2025
During the last week of September, as Climate Week turned New York City into a hub of panel discussions, protests, and policy announcements, I felt both inspired and unsettled. It is always energizing to watch tens of thousands of people come together from around the world to discuss solutions, progress, and roadblocks at every level of climate action—from households to national governments—alongside the global leaders convening at the United Nations at the same time.
But as I review what we’re doing here at home, in New York State, to respond to climate change, I’m impatient that we haven’t made more progress—and I’m determined to press our state to step up faster.
While the name “New York Climate Week” suggests a focus on climate action in, around, and by New York State, the topic of what exactly New York is doing to respond to the federal government’s assault on climate programs didn’t come up nearly enough. “States are the frontlines for climate action” was repeated over and over by speakers throughout the week, but the conversations I had suggested very few participants left New York Climate Week with a clear sense of New York State’s potential to lead on climate—and the extent to which we’re failing to meet the moment.
Once upon a time, our state was an early climate leader. In 2019, the organization I now lead, Environmental Advocates NY, worked with a coalition of legislators, partner organizations, labor unions, businesses, and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to enact the nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), laying the groundwork for slashing greenhouse gas emissions, building renewable energy, and centering equity in the process. Even as climate denier Donald Trump sat in the White House during his first term, they made history.
Leadership is not measured by the speeches we give or even the laws we pass, but by how we follow through and the impact of our legislation.
A single state might feel small, but what New York does is important. New Yorkers power the world’s eighth-largest economy, if we were a nation. Our government purchases, priorities, and preferences move markets and change corporate behavior. Our energy policy sets an example for the nation, and under the CLCPA we’ve seen real clean energy progress. The Empire Wind project, if it goes forward, will generate 800 megawatts of renewable energy in the current phase and another 1.2 gigawatts in later phases. By last year, solar capacity had reached 6 GW, on the way to our 2030 10 GW solar target. Funding is flowing to climate-resilient infrastructure, green jobs, and innovation.
But we can, and must, do even better.
Overall, we’re only about a quarter of the way to our legally mandated 2030 emissions reduction goals, and our current path won’t get us over the line. We’re approaching 30% renewable energy, which is progress, but we won’t reach our 70% 2030 target. We failed to pass corporate reporting mandates this year, and the state’s top politicians have ground progress to a halt on Cap-and-Invest, the law’s primary revenue generation program.
Every day we delay sets us back. And what’s worse, fossil fuel projects we’ve already rejected are coming back from the dead: Just last month, the environmentally dangerous NESE underwater pipeline moved closer to approval.
New pipelines lock us into a future we can’t afford, and will mean decades more dependence on oil and gas, at the very moment we should be accelerating our clean energy transition. Every dollar we spend expanding fossil fuel infrastructure is one we’re not spending to advance clean power, climate resilience, and real energy independence.
Leadership is not measured by the speeches we give or even the laws we pass, but by how we follow through and the impact of our legislation, by what we choose to build or not build, by what we invest in and what we avoid, by how we make sure everyone benefits from our resilient future.
The good news: We know what we must do.
During Climate Week, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced further details about the historic $1 billion commitment she’s made to the newly created Sustainable Future Fund, which will fund energy efficiency upgrades for homes and schools, clean transportation, new renewable generation, and more.
But the state still hasn’t implemented the much larger (and legally required) Cap-and-Invest program to generate revenue for climate investment. That needs to happen now. We need to redouble our commitment to the clean energy transition, modernize our electrical grid, help the communities carrying the heaviest climate impact burden, and—most importantly—draw a clear line against fossil fuel expansion.
The thousands of climate leaders who filled New York’s streets and stages last month all know that transformation is possible. Our state’s lawmakers and governors have backed them up with rhetoric. The outstanding question: Will New York ramp up our commitment to follow through, and lead?
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Climate Week Is Here; Our Governors Are Still Siding with Polluters
Frontline communities are exposing blue state governors that sell themselves as climate leaders while favoring polluters.
Sep 23, 2025
I grew up in New Mexico, where oil rigs appear in every direction and wildfire smoke fills the summer air. For years, I’ve sat through state climate hearings and planning sessions, believing our leaders might finally act with courage. Instead, what I’ve seen is a machine built to protect industry and silence communities.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sells New Mexico as a climate leader, but her record tells another story. This year alone, her administration advanced industry schemes like the Strategic Water Supply Act, moving forward with rules to recycle toxic fracking waste.
This comes in addition to leaving basic protections like a drilling setback law off the table and welcoming Wall Street giant Blackstone to place a bid to take over PNM, our largest utility in New Mexico—handing over our energy future to corporate profiteers.
This isn’t climate leadership. It’s industry power dressed up as progress—at the expense of our health, water, and future.
So here is our challenge to Governors Lujan Grisham, Shapiro, and Newsom: If you truly oppose Trump’s fossil fuel agenda, prove it.
Pennsylvania and California tell a similar story.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro brands himself as a pragmatic moderate. In reality, he green-lit new gas plants, advanced fossil fuel-powered data centers, and supported liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals—projects that lock in fossil fuel expansion while exposing Pennsylvanians to deadly risks.
Worse, his administration is backing legislation like HB 502 and SB 939 that strip municipalities of the power to reject harmful facilities, in direct violation of Pennsylvania’s constitutional right to clean air and water. Families already sick from fracking are being sacrificed so Shapiro can keep industry happy and court national credibility. That isn’t pragmatism. It’s siding with polluters over people.
Gov. Gavin Newsom positions himself as a global climate champion. But in California, frontline communities experience a different reality. Basic health protections like the oil drilling setback law remain under attack, while projects like the Sable Pipeline continue to threaten communities and ecosystems.
Newsom touts his “climate leadership” on the world stage, yet at home he delays, waters down, or sidesteps measures that would phase out fossil fuels. Recently, Democratic lawmakers—backed by Newsom—passed a “climate” package that extends California’s cap-and-trade system for another 15 years while also permitting new drilling. It’s yet another regulatory giveaway to Big Oil. California is sold as a model of climate action, but the truth is clear: Fossil fuel power still dictates the terms.
The pattern is undeniable: governors who pose as climate leaders while protecting fossil fuel interests. Their playbook is the same—adopt the language; sign onto climate alliances; and then push carbon capture, cap-and-trade systems, produced water, hydrogen, and LNG as “solutions.” These are not solutions. They are lifelines for oil and gas, designed to extend extraction.
This is not accidental. It is a deliberate political strategy—a blue-state echo of US President Donald Trump’s fossil fuel agenda. Yet the result is the same: communities poisoned, democracy sidelined, industry shielded. The message to frontline communities is clear: Our lives are expendable if they threaten the profits of fossil fuel companies.
That’s why this Climate Week in New York City, frontline communities from New Mexico, California, and Pennsylvania are coming together to expose the truth. Behind the speeches and pledges, our governors are siding with polluters. They cannot continue to market themselves as climate champions while advancing the fossil fuel agenda at home.
We know what real climate leadership looks like. A just transition—led by communities and workers, not corporations—can phase out fossil fuels, create union jobs, and protect public health. It means rejecting false solutions. It means putting water, air, and people before industry. It means confronting the political power of fossil fuels head-on.
As the 2026 gubernatorial races approach, young people like me are paying attention. We don’t just want new leaders. We demand leadership that stands up to polluters and delivers a future worth living in.
So here is our challenge to Governors Lujan Grisham, Shapiro, and Newsom: If you truly oppose Trump’s fossil fuel agenda, prove it. Stop greenwashing. Stop silencing frontline communities. Stop pushing industry scams dressed up as climate policy.
Because climate action without justice isn’t action—it is betrayal. And frontline communities are not backing down until we win the future we deserve.
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Look Up: The Scariest Part When We See the Big, Big, Big Picture
As a new study once more makes clear, raising the temperature is by far the biggest thing humans have ever done; our effort to limit that rise must be just as large.
Oct 23, 2024
This is “Climate week” in New York City, and my inbox has been awash recently in the latest press releases about start-ups and noble initiatives and venal greenwashing. Much of it’s important, and I’ll get to some of it later, but there’s a big new study that came out last week in Science that sets our crucial moment in true perspective. Let’s step back for a moment.
This new study—a decade in the making and involving, in the words of veteran climate scientist Gavin Schmidt “biological proxies from extinct species, plate tectonic movement, disappearance in subduction zones of vast amounts of ocean sediment, and interpolating sparse data in space and time”—offers at its end the most detailed timeline yet of the earth’s climate history over the last half-billion years. That’s the period scientists call the Phanerozoic—the latest of the earth’s four geological eons (we’re still in it), and the one marked by the true profusion of plant and animal life. It’s a lovely piece of science, and it’s lovely too because it reminds us of all we’re heir to in this tiny brief moment that marks the human time on earth. So staggeringly much—strange and extreme and fecund—has come before us.
But it’s also scary as can be, for two big reasons.
The first is that it shows the earth has gotten very very warm in the past. As the Washington Post explained in an excellent analysis yesterday, “the study suggests that at its hottest the Earth’s average temperature reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius).” Our current average temperature—already elevated by global warming to the highest value ever recorded—is about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or 15 degrees Celsius. For most of the 500 million years the study covers, the earth has been in a hothouse state, with an average temperature of 71.6 Fahrenheit, or 22 Celsius, much higher than now. Only about an eighth of the time has the earth been in its current “coldhouse” state—but of course that includes all the time that humans have been around. It is the world we know and we’re adapted to.
In every era, it’s increases in carbon dioxide that drive the increases and decreases in temperature. “Carbon dioxide is really that master dial,” Jess Tierney, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona and co-author of the study, said. And so the study makes clear that the mercury could go very high indeed as humans pour carbon into the sky. We won’t burn enough coal and oil and gas to reach the very highest temperatures seen in the geological record—that required periods of incredible volcanism—but we may well double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and this study implies that the fast and slow feedbacks from that could eventually drive temperatures as much as eight degrees Celsius higher, which is more than most current estimates. Over shorter time frames the numbers are just as dramatic
Without rapid action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say, global temperatures could reach nearly 62.6 F (17 C) by the end of the century — a level not seen in the timeline since the Miocene epoch, more than 5 million years ago.
Now, you could look at those numbers and say: well, the earth has been hotter before, so life won’t be wiped out. And that’s true—there’s probably no way to wipe out life, though on a planet with huge numbers of nuclear weapons who knows. But these temperatures are much higher than anything humans have experienced, and they guarantee a world with radically different regimes of drought and deluge, radically different ocean levels and fire seasons. They imply a world fundamentally strange to us, with entirely different seasons and moods—and if that doesn’t challenge bare survival, it certainly challenges the survival of our civilizations. Unlike all the species that came before us, we have built a physical shell for that civilization, a geography of cities and ports and farms that we can’t easily move as the temperature rises. And of course the poorest people, who have done the least to cause the trouble, will suffer out of all proportion as that shift starts to happen.
But that’s not the really scary part. The really scary part is how fast it’s moving.
In fact, nowhere in that long record have the scientists been able to find a time when it’s warming as fast as it is right now. “We’re changing Earth’s temperature at a rate that exceeds anything we know about,” Tierney said.
Much much much faster than, say, during the worst extinction event we know about, at the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago, when the endless eruption of the so-called Siberian traps drove the temperature 10 Celsius higher and killed off 95 percent of the species on the planet. But that catastrophe took fifty thousand years—our three degree Celsius increase—driven by the collective volcano of our powerplants, factories, furnaces and Fords—will be measured in decades.
Our only hope of avoiding utter ruin—our only hope that our western world, in the blink of an eye, won’t produce catastrophe on this geologic scale—is to turn off those volcanoes immediately. And that, of course, requires replacing coal and gas and oil with something else. The only something else on offer right now, scalable in the few years we still have to work with, is the rays of the sun, and the wind that sun produces, and the batteries that can store its power for use at night.
Another new analysis this week, this one from the energy thinktank Ember, shows that 2024 is seeing another year of surging solar installations—when the year ends there will be 30% more solar power on this planet than when it began. Numbers like that, if we can keep that acceleration going for a few more years, give us a fighting chance.
That’s what all those seminars and cocktail parties and protests in New York over this week will ultimately be about—the desperate attempt to keep this rift in our geological history from getting any bigger than it must. As this new study once more makes clear, raising the temperature is by far the biggest thing humans have ever done; our effort to limit that rise must be just as large.
We need to stand in awe for a moment before the scope of earth’s long history. And then we need to get the hell to work.
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3 Climate Priorities World Leaders Must Champion at the UN and Beyond
Will politicians seize this narrowing window of opportunity to do what is both daunting and necessary for safeguarding the future of people around the world especially our children?
Sep 25, 2024
This week, New York City is hosting the United Nations General Assembly meetings and the annual Climate Week events. With the continued trend of extreme climate-fueled disasters around the world—including deadly and damaging heatwaves, floods, fires, and storms—the urgency of solutions for the climate crisis couldn’t be clearer.
What we hear from world leaders this week will give us an indication of their seriousness in helping to secure an ambitious outcome at the annual U.N. climate talks, COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan in November. Civil society groups will also be at Climate Week to demand action and remind world leaders of their responsibilities. And business leaders will have the opportunity to show whether they truly want to be part of the solution—or are just engaged in greenwashing while seeking short-term profits from carbon-intensive activities.
Here are three key international climate priorities that I will be paying close attention to this year.
1: Raising the Ambition of National Emissions Reduction Commitments, aka Nationally Determined Contributions
The latest data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the E.U.’s Copernicus climate service show that the 2024 January-August period is the hottest ever by far, putting this year well on track to be the warmest ever on record. Meanwhile, the global emissions trajectory is dangerously off track from where it needs to be to meet global climate goals, with heat-trapping emissions continuing to rise.
When countries signed on to the 2015 Paris agreement, they made initial voluntary commitments (the so-called Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs) to reduce their heat-trapping emissions, and agreed to revisit them every five years to reflect the “highest possible ambition.” (see Articles 4.2 and 4.3 of the Paris agreement). By February 2025, the next round of NDCs is due and it’s clear that all countries—especially richer nations like the United States—will need to step up significantly if we are to have any chance of meeting the goals of the Paris agreement.
In its last NDC, back in 2021, the U.S. committed to cutting its emissions 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030. A range of state and federal policies—including the Inflation Reduction Act—currently puts it on track to cut emissions about 32-43% below 2005 levels by 2030. That means we’ll need to quickly add additional clean energy policies and policies to phase out fossil fuels just to meet our 2030 goals.
To meet global climate goals, all nations must increase their emissions reduction commitments and enact the enabling policies to meet them—especially richer nations and major emitting countries.
For the next round of NDCs, the U.S. should commit to cutting its heat-trapping emissions at least 70% below 2005 levels by 2035, a level that UCS modeling shows is possible, but that will require political will and significant new policies to achieve. In this context, the potential increase in energy demand to meet the emerging needs of AI data centers is worrisome and threatens to erode progress unless proactive measures are taken to manage possible impacts on the energy system in line with the pace of the clean energy transition. The next U.S. NDC should also be explicit about commitments to phase out fossil fuels in a fast and fair way and set ambitious sectoral targets for a clean energy transition, while addressing the need to invest in climate resilience as well.
A comprehensive suite of policies is needed to deliver on our NDC goals. For the decade ahead and beyond, we’ve got to think boldly and deploy policies and investments that help cut overall energy demand and enable a thriving lower-carbon economy and healthier lifestyles—including through better land use planning and development; more public transit; and more livable, walkable neighborhoods.
To meet global climate goals, all nations must increase their emissions reduction commitments and enact the enabling policies to meet them—especially richer nations and major emitting countries. In addition to the U.S., that includes the E.U. countries, Canada, Australia, Japan, Russia, China, and India. But we’re not going to get anywhere if each nation tries to dodge its responsibilities and points at the inaction of others. Rather, fostering cooperation and a shared commitment to increased ambition are the needs of the hour as we confront this collective action problem.
2. Increasing International Climate Finance
This year, at COP29, nations will also have to agree on the quantum of international climate finance that richer nations will provide post-2025 to help lower-income nations cut their heat-trapping emissions and adapt to climate change. These outcomes are being determined through multi-year negotiations on the “New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on Climate Finance” leading up to COP29, which is being billed as the climate finance COP.
Climate action will require considerable resources that low-income nations are unlikely to be able to marshal on their own. Furthermore, countries that have contributed the least to climate-warming emissions are now facing a disproportionate brunt of climate impacts stemming from the failure of richer nations to cut their outsize emissions. Article 2.1(c) of the Paris agreement calls for “Making finance flows consistent with a pathway toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.” The latest IPCC report also underscores how crucial this finance is to meet climate goals.
Back in 2009, richer nations committed to a goal of providing $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020, a goal that was reaffirmed in Paris in 2015. That goal was finally met in 2022, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The U.S. and other richer nations should agree to collectively marshaling climate finance on the order of $1 trillion per year, starting in 2025.
The NCQG negotiations are aimed at delivering the next tranche of finance commitments. This time around, it’s clear that much more finance is necessary to meet the moment: funding to dramatically accelerate the clean energy transition and fossil fuel phaseout in lower-income nations, funding to help them adapt to the relentless impacts of climate change, and funding to help address extreme climate loss and damage. Failing to provide this finance not only risks the world’s ability to cut emissions sharply and quickly, it is also imposing an increasingly unjust toll on the least developed nations. A recent report from the World Meteorological Organization shows that, “On average, African countries are losing 2-5%of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and many are diverting up to 9% of their budgets responding to climate extremes.”
The U.S. and other richer nations should agree to collectively marshaling climate finance on the order of $1 trillion per year, starting in 2025. And additional countries in a position to do so should also step up to contribute funding on a voluntary basis. Most of this funding should be grant-based or grant-equivalent to avoid trapping low-income nations in a worsening spiral of indebtedness as is the case currently. Innovative sources of funding—such as pollution taxes and wealth taxes—should be part of the discussion. Reforming international multilateral lending architecture to be fairer and more aligned with climate and sustainable development objectives is also critical.
U.S. contributions to international climate finance have repeatedly fallen short of what’s necessary. Congress, too, must step up since it holds the power of the purse. The United States must also help lead the ongoing negotiations at the OECD to restrict export credit support for all unabated fossil fuel projects, as it committed to do at COP26 in Glasgow, and as we have called for in a recent joint letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen and U.S. Export-Import Bank Chair Lewis.
3. Defending Against Bad-Faith Actions From Fossil Fuel Interests
Fossil fuel interests are a perennial threat to climate progress, at home and abroad. Their presence at the annual climate talks has been increasing alarmingly. Unfortunately, at COP29 in Baku we are likely to see them out in full force again, trying to undermine and dilute global climate agreements. The crucial question is: Will policymakers stand up to that pressure from polluters and deliver what people need?
Last year at COP28, nations were finally able reach an agreement calling for a phase down of fossil fuels—the first time the root cause of climate change was addressed in a global climate agreement. The follow-through has been pretty mixed globally thus far. The U.S., for example, is still enabling surging levels of production of oil and gas. We need domestic policies that explicitly ensure that fossil fuels are being phased down, alongside ramping up renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Litigation efforts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for damage caused by their products and for deceiving consumers and investors are gaining ground in domestic and international courts. These additional avenues to secure climate progress are likely to increase in importance, especially if policymakers’ efforts to curtail heat-trapping emissions and stand up to the fossil fuel lobby continue to fall short.
What Does Climate Ambition Mean in 2024?
Around the world, wars and extreme disasters are exacting a punishing toll on people and require urgent action from political leaders to seek solutions that bring peace and safety. The climate crisis, too, requires urgent attention. These intersecting crises must be dealt with at the same time and should not be cynically traded off against each other in competing for political attention or funding.
This year has been extraordinarily volatile politically, with “change” elections around the world inserting uncertainty in the future direction of climate policy. One thing we cannot lose sight of is that the measure of climate ambition is not set by politics but by what science shows is necessary to help limit the worst impacts of climate change. Ambition should also encompass justice, to help ensure that the climate outcomes we strive to secure meet the needs of those with the fewest resources on the frontlines of a crisis that is not of their making. Equally, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels must be accompanied by just transition policies and investments for affected communities.
Here in the United States, regardless of the forthcoming election outcomes, we know the climate crisis is set to worsen and that without robust action, people and our economy will suffer as a result. That’s why we must push for policy solutions that increase the pace and magnitude of cuts in U.S. heat-trapping emissions, ramp up investments in climate resilience, and significantly increase our commitments toward international climate finance.
This will likely be the hottest year to date, and maybe one of the coolest in the years to come. Will politicians seize this narrowing window of opportunity to do what is both daunting and necessary for safeguarding the future of people around the world especially our children? Right now, the signs are not encouraging. We must demand much more of our leaders.
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100+ Global Lawmakers Urge Biden to Reject New LNG Exports
"Every dollar invested in unnecessary, harmful, and expensive LNG infrastructure costs us double—first, by our failure to invest instead in secure, abundant, and cheap renewable energies, and second, by locking in higher greenhouse gas emissions."
Sep 23, 2024
With Climate Week underway in New York City, 106 lawmakers from the United States and around the world on Monday urged the Biden administration to reject new liquefied natural gas export permits, stressing that they "are not in the U.S. public interest or necessary for the national or energy security of our allies."
Rejecting new permits, they wrote, "will help protect communities from the environmental harm that fossil gas causes; promote global energy security and encourage investment and trade in clean energy technologies; and help our nations satisfy both national and global climate commitments, including those made at the 2023 U.N. climate change conference COP28 in Dubai."
The letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was led by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Congresswoman Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), and Lisa Badum, a Greens member of Germany's Bundestag. Along with other American and German lawmakers, it's signed by members of the European Parliament and legislatures in over a dozen other countries.
"Curtailing U.S. LNG export activity will send a strong global signal in favor of new investments in renewable energy."
They explained that in January, the Biden administration paused new export authorizations for liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries that don't have free trade agreements with the United States, and although a recent federal court ruling blocked the policy, "that misguided decision does not force any immediate export project approvals, prevent the Department of Energy (DOE) from updating its environmental and economic analyses, or impact the factors that DOE already considers in its application review process."
"Far from being a clean 'bridge' fuel, LNG causes significant environmental harm," the lawmakers declared, highlighting the impacts of gas on not only the global climate but also the health of people exposed to nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations and infrastructure such as processing plants, import facilities, export terminals, and pipelines.
"In addition to the environmental and health benefits, limiting U.S. LNG exports will actually support global energy security, not jeopardize it," they wrote. "Curtailing U.S. LNG export activity will send a strong global signal in favor of new investments in renewable energy, discouraging overinvestment in a volatile and high-priced fossil fuel."
The letter notes that the United States is "the world's largest exporter of LNG" and warns that such exports "affect the world's regions in various ways, but uniformly, they are negative," with sections on Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.
"Every dollar invested in unnecessary, harmful, and expensive LNG infrastructure costs us double—first, by our failure to invest instead in secure, abundant, and cheap renewable energies, and second, by locking in higher greenhouse gas emissions, with attendant future climate damage," the letter emphasizes. "Continued reliance on LNG means more harm to frontline communities and the environment from extracting, transporting, and shipping fossil gas around the world."
The lawmakers' letter follows one that a coalition of more than 250 climate, environmental, and frontline groups sent to Biden and Granholm earlier this month—during the warmest summer on record and what is on track to be the hottest year on record.
"We are on the verge of seeing global average temperatures exceed 1.5°C warming above preindustrial temperatures, failing the internationally agreed upon goal of the Paris agreement and crossing the threshold upon which ever more catastrophic effects of climate change begin," the green groups wrote. "The only way world leaders can avoid this moral and political failure is to work together to end fossil fuel production."
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To Avoid Utter Ruin, We Must Turn Off the Fossil Fuel Volcano
As a new study once more makes clear, raising the temperature is by far the biggest thing humans have ever done; our effort to limit that rise must be just as large.
Sep 22, 2024
“Climate week” is about to start in New York City, and my inbox has been awash in the latest press releases about start-ups and noble initiatives and venal greenwashing. Much of it’s important, and I’ll get to some of it later in this newsletter. But there’s a big new study that came out Friday in Science that sets our crucial moment in true perspective. Let’s step back for a moment.
This new study—a decade in the making and involving, in the words of veteran climate scientist Gavin Schmidt “biological proxies from extinct species, plate tectonic movement, disappearance in subduction zones of vast amounts of ocean sediment, and interpolating sparse data in space and time”—offers at its end the most detailed timeline yet of the Earth’s climate history over the last half-billion years. That’s the period scientists call the Phanerozoic—the latest of the Earth’s four geological eons (we’re still in it), and the one marked by the true profusion of plant and animal life. It’s a lovely piece of science, and it’s lovely too because it reminds us of all we’re heir to in this tiny brief moment that marks the human time on Earth. So staggeringly much—strange and extreme and fecund—has come before us.
That’s what all those seminars and cocktail parties and protests in New York over the next week will ultimately be about—the desperate attempt to keep this rift in our geological history from getting any bigger than it must.
The first is that it shows the Earth has gotten very very warm in the past. As The Washington Post explained in an excellent analysis yesterday, “The study suggests that at its hottest the Earth’s average temperature reached 96.8°F (36°C).” Our current average temperature—already elevated by global warming to the highest value ever recorded—is about 60°F, or 15°C. For most of the 500 million years the study covers, the Earth has been in a hothouse state, with an average temperature of 71.6°F, or 22°C, much higher than now. Only about an eighth of the time has the Earth been in its current “coldhouse” state—but of course that includes all the time that humans have been around. It is the world we know and we’re adapted to.
In every era, it’s increases in carbon dioxide that drive the increases and decreases in temperature. “Carbon dioxide is really that master dial,” Jess Tierney, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona and co-author of the study, said. And so the study makes clear that the mercury could go very high indeed as humans pour carbon into the sky. We won’t burn enough coal and oil and gas to reach the very highest temperatures seen in the geological record—that required periods of incredible volcanism—but we may well double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and this study implies that the fast and slow feedbacks from that could eventually drive temperatures as much as 8°C higher, which is more than most current estimates. Over shorter time frames the numbers are just as dramatic
Without rapid action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say, global temperatures could reach nearly 62.6°C (17°C) by the end of the century—a level not seen in the timeline since the Miocene epoch, more than 5 million years ago.
Now, you could look at those numbers and say: Well, the Earth has been hotter before, so life won’t be wiped out. And that’s true—there’s probably no way to wipe out life, though on a planet with huge numbers of nuclear weapons who knows. But these temperatures are much higher than anything humans have experienced, and they guarantee a world with radically different regimes of drought and deluge, radically different ocean levels and fire seasons. They imply a world fundamentally strange to us, with entirely different seasons and moods—and if that doesn’t challenge bare survival, it certainly challenges the survival of our civilizations. Unlike all the species that came before us, we have built a physical shell for that civilization, a geography of cities and ports and farms that we can’t easily move as the temperature rises. And of course the poorest people, who have done the least to cause the trouble, will suffer out of all proportion as that shift starts to happen.
But that’s not the really scary part. The really scary part is how fast it’s moving.
In fact, nowhere in that long record have the scientists been able to find a time when it’s warming as fast as it is right now. “We’re changing Earth’s temperature at a rate that exceeds anything we know about,” Tierney said.
Much much much faster than, say, during the worst extinction event we know about, at the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago, when the endless eruption of the so-called Siberian traps drove the temperature 10°C higher and killed off 95% of the species on the planet. But that catastrophe took 50,000 years—our 3°C increase—driven by the collective volcano of our powerplants, factories, furnaces and Fords—will be measured in decades.
Our only hope of avoiding utter ruin—our only hope that our Western world, in the blink of an eye, won’t produce catastrophe on this geologic scale—is to turn off those volcanoes immediately. And that, of course, requires replacing coal and gas and oil with something else. The only something else on offer right now, scalable in the few years we still have to work with, is the rays of the sun, and the wind that sun produces, and the batteries that can store its power for use at night.
Another new analysis this week, this one from the energy think tank Ember, shows that 2024 is seeing another year of surging solar installations—when the year ends there will be 30% more solar power on this planet than when it began. Numbers like that, if we can keep that acceleration going for a few more years, give us a fighting chance.
That’s what all those seminars and cocktail parties and protests in New York over the next week will ultimately be about—the desperate attempt to keep this rift in our geological history from getting any bigger than it must. As this new study once more makes clear, raising the temperature is by far the biggest thing humans have ever done; our effort to limit that rise must be just as large.
We need to stand in awe for a moment before the scope of Earth’s long history. And then we need to get the hell to work.
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‘Almost a Miraculous Solution’: 25 Governors Vow to Quadruple Heat Pump Installations
The heat pump target is part of a broader push to decarbonize buildings—which currently contribute more than 30% of the U.S.' climate-heating emissions.
Sep 21, 2023
The U.S. Climate Alliance—a group of 25 governors leading states that make up 60% of the U.S. economy and 55% of its population—pledged Thursday to quadruple the number of heat pumps installed in their states by 2030.
Heat pumps work by either pumping hot air in during winter or hot air out during summer, The Associated Press explained. Because they don't have to first work to heat a coil or other device, they are more energy efficient than other heating methods. They also run on the electric grid, so they don't use extra fossil fuels like oil or gas furnaces.
They're "almost a miraculous solution," Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, one member of the alliance, told AP, adding that they solve the problems of "heating in the winter, cooling in the summer, and a reduction of carbon pollution."
"This coalition continues to prove that when we come together, we can make a greener future more equitable and accessible for all."
The alliance made their announcement at Climate Week NYC Thursday. The heat pump target is part of a broader push to decarbonize buildings—which currently contribute more than 30% of the U.S.' climate-heating emissions.
"We are in a climate emergency and the window to act is closing," Inslee said in a statement. "U.S. Climate Alliance states get that."
The heat pump commitment means that participating states will install 20 million heat pumps by the end of the decade, up from 4.8 million today, according to energy transition nonprofit RMI.
"Heat pumps and heat pump water heaters are core decarbonization technologies that allow buildings to switch from burning fossil fuels for heating and hot water to using electricity instead," the group wrote in response to the news. "Making this switch can reduce home heating emissions in every US state by 35–93% while saving lives through improved air quality and protecting residents from volatile gas commodity prices."
U.S. Climate Alliance members also pledged to ensure 40% of the benefits from the green-buildings mobilization go to marginalized communities.
"This coalition continues to prove that when we come together, we can make a greener future more equitable and accessible for all," New York Gov. and alliance member Kathy Hochul said in a statement.
Fellow alliance member and Maine Gov. Janet Mills spoke of her state's positive experience with heat pumps. Maine set a goal in 2019 of installing 100,000 by 2025 and ended up significantly overshooting that, installing 104,000 by the end of August, as The Cool Down reported at the time.
"Transitioning to heat pumps in Maine is creating good-paying jobs, curbing our carbon emissions, cutting costs for families, and making people more comfortable in their homes," Mills said Thursday, adding that her state would ramp up its target to 275,000 installations by 2027.
The alliance, which was first formed by Washington, New York, and California in response to former President Donald Trump's decision to pull the U.S. from the Paris agreement, is partnering with the Biden administration for their new endeavor.
Other goals include supporting the development of codes and standards for net-zero buildings, working to speed the process of retrofitting homes and businesses to electrify them and make them more efficient, and creating well-paying career-track green building jobs.
"Combined with President Biden's historic climate leadership, these bold commitments by governors to cut emissions from buildings will have a catalytic impact across America," White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaid said in a statement Thursday. "It will clean up the air our children breathe, save hardworking families money on their monthly energy bills, strengthen America's climate resilience, and create good-paying jobs in every corner of the country."
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114 Climate Defenders Arrested While Blocking Entry to NY Federal Reserve
The activist group Climate Defiance asked: "Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their 'civility' and their 'moderation'?"
Sep 18, 2023
A day after tens of thousands of climate activists marched through Manhattan's Upper East Side demanding an end to oil, gas, and coal production, thousands more demonstrators hit the streets of Lower Manhattan Monday, where more than 100 people were arrested while surrounding the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to protest fossil fuel financing.
Protesters chanted slogans like "No oil, no gas, fossil fuels can kiss my ass" and "We need clean air, not another billionaire" as they marched from Zuccotti Park—ground zero of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement—to pre-selected sites in the Financial District. Witnesses said many of the activists attempted to reach the New York Stock Exchange but were blocked by police.
"We're here to wake up the regulators who are asleep at the wheel as they continue to let Wall Street lead us into ANOTHER financial crash with their fossil fuel financing," the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition explained on social media.
Local and national media reported New York Police Department (NYPD) officers arrested 114 protesters and charged them with civil disobedience Monday after they blocked entrances to the Fed building. Most of those arrested were expected to be booked and released.
"I'm being arrested for exercising my First Amendment right to protest because Joe Manchin is putting a 300-mile-long pipeline through my home state of West Virginia and President [Joe] Biden allowed him to do it for nothing in return," explained Climate Defiance organizer Rylee Haught on social media, referring to the right-wing Democratic senator and the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
As she was led away by an NYPD officer, a tearful Haught said Biden "sold us out."
"He promised to end drilling on federal lands, and he's selling out Appalachia's future for profit," she added.
Responding to the "block-long" line of arrestees, Climate Defiance asked: "Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their 'civility' and their 'moderation'?"
Alicé Nascimento of New York Communities for Change told WABC that the protests—which are part of Climate Week and are timed to coincide with this week's United Nations Climate Ambition Summit—are "our last resort."
"We're bringing the crisis to their doorstep and this is what it looks like," said Nascimento.
As they have at similar demonstrations, protesters called on Biden to stop approving new fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. Some had a message for the president and his administration.
"We hold the power of the people, the power you need to win this election," 17-year-old Brooklynite Emma Buretta of the youth-led protest group Fridays for Future told WABC. "If you want to win in 2024, if you do not want the blood of my generation to be on your hands, end fossil fuels."
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Lawmakers and Groups Demand Biden Executive Order Creating Civilian Climate Corps
Such a program, the lawmakers wrote, would "fight climate change, build community resilience, support environmental justice, and develop career pathways to good-paying union jobs focused on... a clean economy."
Sep 18, 2023
Dozens of Democratic U.S. lawmakers joined more than 50 civil society groups who on Monday implored President Joe Biden to sign an executive order establishing a Civilian Climate Corps that would "put young Americans to work serving their communities" and tackling the planetary emergency.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety—and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) led at least 50 House and Senate Democrats plus independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a letter urging Biden to act in the face of the worsening climate crisis. They noted that the president's January 2021 executive order on tackling the emergency mandated a strategy for creating a Civilian Climate Corps within 90 days.
"With deadly heat, dangerous floods, rising seas, and devastating wildfires—including those that ravaged Maui last month—the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale," the lawmakers wrote. "Following up on your earlier commitments, existing legislation, and the demands from young people across the nation, we urge you to issue an executive order formally establishing a Civilian Climate Corps initiative to work on key conservation and climate priorities."
"By leveraging the historic climate funding secured during your administration, using existing authorities, and coordinating across AmeriCorps and other relevant federal agencies, your administration can create a federal Civilian Climate Corps that unites its members in an effort to fight climate change, build community resilience, support environmental justice, and develop career pathways to good-paying union jobs focused on climate resilience and a clean economy," the letter adds.
Inspired by the best aspects of the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps—which despite the nostalgia it often evokes among progressives, was for men only, racially segregated, and paid just $1 a day—the Civilian Climate Corps has long enjoyed the support of many congressional Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who wanted it included in previous legislation.
Climate, environmental, and social justice groups also support the proposal. On Monday, more than 50 of them sent their own letter to the White House urging Biden to "be as ambitious as possible in tackling the great crisis of our time," in part by establishing a Civilian Climate Corps "through existing authorities, with existing climate funding, that can coordinate across relevant federal agencies."
Hinting at the Civilian Conservation Corps' flagrant flaws, the letter insists that the new program "must prioritize equity in the communities it serves" and the members it trains, "must provide a pathway to long-term employment through good-paying union jobs," and "must center the needs and leadership of local communities in order to achieve its national mission."
"Young voters widely support this vision. Half of all voters under 45 say they would consider joining the Climate Corps if a job was available to them," the groups wrote. "In 2020, young people helped ensure your election to office. After high-profile approvals of fossil fuel projects, it's time to deliver for this critical constituency and show that you and your administration are serious about an all-out mobilization to confront the climate crisis."
Monday's letters come at the start of the annual Climate Week in New York City—which will host the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of people on Sunday took to the streets of Manhattan, demanding an end to the fossil fuel era and urging Biden to declare a climate emergency.
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'This Is Huge': Newsom to Sign Historic Climate Disclosure Bills for Big Corporations
"These two first-in-the-nation bills will provide unprecedented insight into corporate climate emissions and financial climate risk," said one advocate.
Sep 18, 2023
Climate advocates expressed hope Monday that California Gov. Gavin Newsom would help usher in a new era of accountability for corporate polluters nationwide after he confirmed plans to sign legislation forcing companies to publicly disclose their climate-related risks and more complete accounting of their total emissions.
At a Climate Week event in New York on Sunday, Newsom said he wants to maintain California's status as a state leading the way to confront the climate crisis and that signing Senate Bill 253 is part of that effort.
The bill would require companies operating in California and earning at least $1 billion per year to disclose the climate risks at every stage of their supply chains and disclose all greenhouse gas emissions, including investments, attributable to their business practices.
"Would I cede that leadership by having a response that is anything but, 'Of course I will sign that bill?'" the Democratic governor said to a reporter at a panel discussion. "No, I will not."
Newsom said he also plans to sign S.B. 261, which would require companies in California to submit climate-related risk reports, detailing costs for increased compliance and insurance.
The governor noted that his office plans to do "some cleanup on some little language" in the bills but did not say what changes would be made.
S.B. 253 would be the first measure in the U.S. to require companies to disclose their fossil fuel emissions in scopes 1, 2, and 3 in their supply chains.
Scope 1 emissions refer to those caused directly by a company as it runs machinery to make its products, while scope 2 emissions are those created by products or equipment that a company purchases, such as fossil fuel-generated energy for its facilities.
Advocates say scope 3 emissions, which are produced by customers who use the company's products, are often overlooked by big polluters when they make climate pledges, but make up the bulk of corporate emissions.
Requiring the accounting of all emissions in a company's supply chain, said California Environmental Voters, "is nothing short of historic."
Around 5,000 companies will be required to comply with the law, illustrating where the majority of emissions are coming from in their supply chains.
In contrast, federal rules proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission would apply only to publicly traded companies and wouldn't require them to disclose scope 3 emissions.
Mindy Lubber, president and CEO of sustainability advocacy group Ceres, expressed hope that California's new laws will "set another leading standard to increase corporate transparency and help to mitigate financial and climate risk."
"These two first-in-the-nation bills will provide unprecedented insight into corporate climate emissions and financial climate risk," said Lubber. "This is exactly the kind of policy framework that investors have long sought to better understand how companies are working to manage and mitigate the immense financial impacts of the climate crisis."
Lubber noted that the legislation has "support from dozens of leading businesses that recognize the massive opportunity of the shift to a low-carbon economy and deserve a standardized and consistent platform to showcase their efforts."
The Greenlining Institute, which is based in Oakland, California and advocates for communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by fossil fuel emissions, called Newsom's commitment to signing the bills "a huge win."
Last year, the Biden administration proposed strict limits on vehicle pollution based on standards set by California.
Lynn LoPucki, a law professor at the University of Florida, told Capital & Main last week that S.B. 253 "is really a national bill" that will force nearly every major company that does business in California to report its emissions.
"The idea is that companies will make a greater effort to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions once they're reporting them. They know investors care, and they also, I think, know that consumers and the public care," LoPucki told the outlet. "Virtually every company is doing corporate social responsibility reporting, or webpages in which they profess concern about corporate social responsibility. And today, that means reducing greenhouse gases."
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