Tag Archives: Climate action

Bill McKibben: “An odd silence…at the end of humanity’s hottest year (yet)”

[BenIndy Contributor Kathy Kerridge: An essay about the biggest story of the year…]

From The Crucial Years, a Substack by Bill McKibben, December 28, 2023

Bill McKibben, Author, educator, and environmental activist; a founder of 350.org and Third Act.

The world—its politics, its economy, and its journalism—has trouble coping with the scale of the climate crisis. We can’t quite wrap our collective head around it, which has never been clearer to me than in these waning days of 2023.

Because the most important thing that happened this year was the heat. By far. It was hotter than it has been in at least 125,000 years on this planet. Every month since May was the hottest ever recorded. Ocean temperatures set a new all-time mark, over 100 degrees. Canada burned, filling the air above our cities with smoke.

And yet you really wouldn’t know it from reading the wrap-ups of the year’s news now appearing on one website after another.

Earlier today, for instance, the Times published an essay by investment banker and Obama consigliere Steven Rattner on “ten charts that mattered in 2023.” That’s the most establishment voice imaginable, in the most establishment spot. And the global temperature curve did make the list—at #10, well behind graphs about the fall in inflation, the president’s approval levels, the number of Trump indictments, the surge in immigrants, and the speed with with the GOP defenestrated Kevin McCarthy.

Indeed, yesterday the Times and the Post both published fine stories about 2023’s record temperatures, but they were odd: in each case, they centered on whether the year was enough to show that the climate crisis was “accelerating.” It’s an interesting question, drawing mainly on a powerful new paper by James Hansen (one that readers of this newsletter found out about last winter), but the premise of the reporting, if you take a step back, is kind of wild. Because the climate crisis is already crashing down on us. It doesn’t require “acceleration” to be the biggest—by orders of magnitude—dilemma facing our species.

In a sense, though, that’s the problem. Those stories in the Times and Post were a way to search for a new angle to a story that doesn’t change quite fast enough to count as news. (In geological terms, we’re warming at hellish pace; but that’s not how the 24/7 news cycle works.) It’s been record-global-hot every day for months now: the first few of those days got some coverage, but at a certain point editors, and then readers, begin to tune out. We’re programmed—by evolution, doubtless, and in the case of journalism by counting clicks—to look for novelty and for conflict. Climate change seems inexorable, which is the opposite of how we think about news.

The war in Gaza, by contrast, fits our defintions perfectly. It is an extraordinary tragedy, it changes day by day, and it is the definition of conflict. And perhaps there’s something we can do about it (which is why many of us have been trying to build support for a ceasefire). So, rightly, it commands our attention. But in a sense, it is the very familiarity of the war that makes it easy for us to focus on it; “mideast conflict,” like “inflation” or “presidential elections,” is an easily-accessed template in our minds. The images of the horror make us, as they should, feel uncomfortable—but it’s a familiar discomfort. The despair, and the resolve, we feel are familiar too; even the subparts of the story fit into familiar grooves (a New York Times reader would be forgiven for thinking the main front of the war is being played out in Harvard Yard, between free speech advocates and cancel culture warriors). Next year seems likely to be another orgy of familiarity: Joe Biden and Donald Trump, yet again.

Climate change has its own familiar grooves—above all the fight with the fossil fuel industry, which played out again at COP 28 in Dubai. But so much of the story is actually brand new: as this year showed, we’re literally in uncharted territory, dealing with temperatures no human society has ever dealt with before. And to head off the worst, we are going to require an industrial transition on a scale we’ve never seen before: there were signs this year that that transition has begun (by midsummer we were installing a gigawatt worth of solar panels a day) but it will have to go much much faster.

These changes—the physical ones, and the political and economic ones—are almost inconceivable to us. That’s my point; they don’t fit our easy templates.

And the point of this newsletter, now and in the years to come, is to try and explain the speed of our crisis, and explain what it dictates about the speed of our response. It’s a story I’ve been trying to put into perspective for 35 years now (the End of Nature was published in 1989, the first book about this crisis) and I’ll keep looking for new ways in. As the climate scientist Andrew Dessler put it in one year-end account, “The only really important question is, ‘How many more years like this we have to have before the reality of how bad climate change is breaks into the public’s consciousness?'”

Thank you for being part of this ongoing effort to break into that consciouness, and—well, happy new year. It’s coming at us, we might as well make it count.

In other energy and climate news:

+The LNG export fight has finally broken through into the big papers. The Times assigned three reporters to the story, and they published a long-awaited account the day after Christmas, under the headline “A Natural Gas Project Is Biden’s Next Big Climate Test.”

The decision forces the Biden administration to confront a central contradiction within its energy policies: It wants nations to stop burning the fossil fuels that are dangerously heating the planet and has heralded a global agreement reached in Dubai earlier this month to transition away from fossil fuels. But at the same time, the United States is producing record amounts of crude oil, is the leading exporter of liquefied natural gas and may approve an additional 17 export facilities, including CP2.

Since early September, activists have lit up TikTok and Instagram, delivered petitions to the Biden administration and met directly with senior White House climate officials to urge Mr. Biden to reject CP2. Jane Fonda recorded a video for Greenpeace calling on the public to work against the project.

“We have enough gas and export terminals to supply everything in the world right now,” said Naomi Yoder, a staff scientist at Healthy Gulf, one of many local groups working to stop the construction of new natural gas infrastructure in the area. “There is no need for additional facilities.”

+A favorite video to end the year. The New York City Labor Chorus, with Jeffrey Vogel doing much of the work, has redrafted the Hallelujah Chorus to be about our beautiful if troubled earth. Enjoy.


Subscribe to Bill McKibben’s Substack here. His newsletter is free, and, in his own words, “if you can’t afford the modest and voluntary subscription fee that underwrites it, then don’t worry. If it wouldn’t be a hardship—thank you!”

Shots fired: California sues oil companies

California goes on offense against Big Oil

The lawsuit makes California the largest economy to join the campaign against oil companies. | Ben Margot / AP Photo.

California is one of the country’s top oil and gas producers, and Chevron, one of the defendants, is headquartered in the state.

Politico, by Blanca Begert and Debra Kahn, September 16, 2023

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a lawsuit Saturday against five major oil companies and their subsidiaries, seeking compensation for damages caused by climate change.

The suit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court by Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta, accuses the companies of knowing about the link between fossil fuels and catastrophic climate change for decades but suppressing and spreading disinformation on the topic to delay climate action. The New York Times first reported the case Friday.

The suit also claims that Exxon, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP — as well as the American Petroleum Institute industry trade group — have continued their deception to today, promoting themselves as “green” with small investments in alternative fuels, while primarily investing in fossil fuel products.

It seeks to create a fund that oil companies would pay into to help the state recover from extreme weather events and prepare for further effects of climate change. It argues that California has already spent tens of billions of dollars on responding to climate change, with costs expected to rise significantly.

“The companies that have polluted our air, choked our skies with smoke, wreaked havoc on our water cycle, and contaminated our lands must be made to mitigate the harms they have brought upon the State,” the suit says.

Shell and API said the question of how to address climate change should be dealt with in the policy arena.

“We do not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address climate change, but that smart policy from government and action from all sectors is the appropriate way to reach solutions and drive progress,” Shell spokesperson Anna Arata said in an email.

“This ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of California taxpayer resources,” API Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers said in a statement. “Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not the court system.”

California’s legal action joins dozens of similar lawsuits brought by seven other states and many municipalities seeking to hold major polluters accountable for allegedly lying about their role in causing climate change.

Eight California local governments filed some of the country’s first climate lawsuits in 2017 and 2018 that are now in state courts. At’s filing makes California the largest economy to join the campaign against oil companies. California is also one of the country’s top oil and gas producers, and Chevron, one of the defendants, is headquartered in the state.

A spokesperson for Newsom said the timing was motivated in part by the Supreme Court’s decision in April to allow existing suits from local governments to proceed in state court, rather than be moved to federal courts as oil companies wanted. State courts are seen as friendlier venues for plaintiffs seeking climate damages because they’re generally more receptive to considering state laws that deal with climate change.

“All these cases got tied up in years of procedural wrangling; oil companies doing everything they could to drag their feet,” said spokesperson Alex Stack. The “Supreme Court finally let these cases go forward this spring — the state as a whole is joining cities and counties.”

California officials have been contemplating legal action against oil companies for years, since at least the early 2010s, when former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown was serving as California attorney general. The state did sue coal companies and automakers before that, alleging public nuisance harms stemming from climate change, but the Supreme Court rejected the arguments.

The links between oil companies and efforts to downplay the effects of climate change have become clearer since then, a former top California legal official said.

“At that time there was less information about the ongoing and continuing efforts by oil companies to mislead and misrepresent on the record,” said Ken Alex, a former senior assistant attorney general under Brown who led the office’s environmental section. “I don’t think we had the same level of information that they have now about that conduct.”

The evidence has continued to pile up. A study published this year from Harvard University and the University of Potsdam in Germany found that Exxon’s climate models from 40 years ago were spot on.

California joining the legal parade against oil companies could prove significant.

“Having California participate is a big deal,” Alex said. “These are difficult cases. They have five defendants who have endless resources; it’s not simple to prove what they need to prove in terms of misrepresentation.”

Opinion: Three practical things Newsom can do to keep Big Oil in check

[BenIndy Contributor Kathy Kerridge – Californians like to think of themselves as climate forward, and Governor Gavin Newsom certainly projects that image. However, there is often a gap between rhetoric and action. Last year, as part of the governor’s climate proposals, the legislature enacted setbacks so oil drilling — with all its health risks — could not happen in your backyard, next to your child’s school or near health facilities. The oil industry then qualified an initiative to overturn that effort (often positioning their bill as “pro-setback” to the people who signed) and CalGEM has continued busily granting permits for drilling in within setback zones. So why doesn’t Newsom back up his rhetoric? This op-ed from the director of Sierra Club California, published by the LA Times, does a good job of explaining how Gov. Newsom might turn rhetoric into action. – K.K.] 

Opinion: If Gavin Newsom really wanted to go after Big Oil, here’s what he would do

An oil rig silhouetted by a golden sunset.
Director of Sierra Club CA Brendan Dawson: “If Newsom wants to live up to his reputation as a champion for the climate and an opponent of Big Oil, he must do more than just promise to protect our environment and health.”

By Brendan Dawson, first published in the LA Times on April 7, 2023.

California politicians promise to protect the environment a lot more than they actually do. For environmental advocates like me, reconciling a politician’s public statements on environmental issues with their actions doesn’t take much time: Simply put, there is no reconciling them.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stance on oil and gas is no exception. Late last year, the governor called for a special legislative session to hold oil and gas companies accountable for gouging California consumers when gasoline prices spiked last fall by imposing a penalty on excess profits. The bill that came out of the session in March fell short of the governor’s goals, settling for requiring more industry transparency.

Environmental groups, including Sierra Club California, nevertheless supported the measure as a step toward regulating an industry that was hurting the working class and overheating the planet at the same time. Newsom himself announced “a new sheriff in town” and claimed to have “brought Big Oil to their knees.”

And yet his administration continues to capitulate to the oil industry in other important ways. Newsom’s public determination to take on this industry differs significantly from what goes on behind closed doors.

For instance, after the fossil fuel industry used the state’s referendum process to stall a critical law banning new or reworked oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, parks and healthcare facilities, the governor decried the move. He said in a statement that he was proud to have signed the setback measure, Senate Bill 1137, “to stop new oil drilling in our neighborhoods and protect California families.”

Since Newsom’s statement, however, his administration’s oil agency, the California Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, has approved hundreds of permits to rework existing oil and gas wells and continue dangerous operations within setback zones. CalGEM has approved a total of 897 permits since the beginning of the year, 62% of which are within the zones that would be protected by SB 1137.

Reworking of existing wells is a significant source of pollution that puts communities at elevated risk of asthma, cancer and other illnesses. Environmental justice advocates fought for decades to secure setbacks from these operations, only to see CalGEM continue to rubber-stamp permits while the governor stood by.

Newsom is obviously aware of the fossil fuel industry’s repercussions for California communities and the environment. Other departments in his administration have taken steps to advance clean air, and Newsom publicly champions them. But CalGEM, the agency charged with “protecting public health, safety, and the environment in its oversight of the oil, natural gas, and geothermal industries,” clearly missed the memo.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in the recently released final part of its sixth assessment of the global climate, calls for cutting two-thirds of global carbon pollution by 2035 and ending reliance on oil and gas by 2040. In the report, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres says we must “massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.” For California to do our part to meet these demands, Newsom must align his administration’s actions with his public statements.

There are a few more concrete steps Newsom can take toward that end. First, he can direct CalGEM to stop issuing new and rework permits, prioritizing the rescinding of permits within the setback zone that would be established by SB 1137.

He should also organize a government-wide effort to plan California’s transition from oil and gas to clean, renewable energy. This transition must consider the needs of the communities that will be most affected by the transition, especially those that consist of predominantly low-income households and people of color.

Finally, he must hold the oil industry accountable for cleaning up abandoned oil wells. Thousands of wells across the state have been abandoned by the industry, and the often exorbitant cleanup costs are wrongly falling on California taxpayers. CalGEM recently spent more than $34 million in taxpayer money to clean up 171 oil wells in Santa Barbara’s Cat Canyon alone.

These steps are practical and immediately achievable. If Newsom wants to live up to his reputation as a champion for the climate and an opponent of Big Oil, he must do more than just promise to protect our environment and health.

Brandon Dawson is the director of Sierra Club California.

Newsom calls for more aggressive climate action

Oak Fire forecast for July 28 2022

CalMatters, by Emily Hoeven, July 25, 2022

As the largest wildfire of the year rages across California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is doubling down on an aggressive strategy to combat climate change — one that also appears to involve boosting his national profile.

Newsom on Saturday proclaimed a state of emergency in Mariposa County due to the Oak Fire near Yosemite National Park, which since igniting on Friday has burned through more than 15,600 acres of bone-dry fuel and was 0% contained as of Sunday night, according to Cal Fire.

California has secured federal support to help defray the costs of battling the blaze, which as of Sunday was being attacked by nearly 2,100 firefighters. More than 6,000 people were under evacuation orders, nearly 3,000 PG&E customers were facing power outages and 15 structures had been destroyed or damaged with thousands more threatened.

  • The Oak Fire marks the end of California’s relatively calm start to the fire season: Fewer than 34,000 acres burned statewide from Jan. 1 to July 19, the lowest total during that time period since 2009, according to a Mercury News analysis.
  • Isaac Sanchez, a Cal Fire battalion chief“People shouldn’t get complacent. If this was a baseball game, we are in the middle innings. There are still a lot of dry months to come.”

Newsom alluded to complacency at the national level in a Saturday letter to President Joe Biden, in which he slammed “uncooperative Republicans and a lone Democrat from a coal-producing state” (West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin) for holding “hostage” parts of Biden’s climate agenda.

  • Newsom added: “We want to reiterate our commitment to … finding new ways to work around those Senators who chose to keep their head in the sand instead of confronting the crisis we are all facing together. Partnering with California and other leading states and cities is now essential.”

As a proof point of what Newsom described as California’s world-leading action on climate, he cited a blueprint — released just the day before — to make the state’s ambitious climate plans even more aggressive. Continue reading Newsom calls for more aggressive climate action