I believe that I can confidently claim that one thing that Trump is not guilty of is smart long-term thinking.

I wonder what Big Oil is thinking these days.

War is Good (for Big Oil)

Among the consequences of the US/Israel-Iran War is the ongoing rise in oil prices. Another consequence of this war is the significant increase in the resources and money the US directly provides Big Oil, whether through the purchase of higher volumes of fossil fuels (at higher costs) to feed military actions or in the indirect expenses of insurance and military protection coverage of the significant chunk of the oil transport market that passes through the Strait of Hormuz. That’s right: the United States government is now getting into the business of insuring oil tankers, since Lloyds of London and the other main marine insurers aren’t interested in covering loss of shipping when their clients ply the waters adjacent to Iran. There are other geopolitical consequences, too, such as today’s “permission” by our government to allow India to buy Russian oil, where the higher prices for oil will bring in more revenue to Russia and thus help that country prosecute its war against Ukraine, but hey, that doesn’t seem to be a bug for Trump’s program, but rather a feature.

And then, of course, armed conflict causes a noticeable spike in greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s a Gemini AI summary to the search, “war and greenhouse gas emissions”:

Global military activity contributes approximately 5.5% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, a figure larger than the entire aviation industry. Wars, such as in Ukraine and Gaza, release immense CO₂ through fuel-heavy combat, infrastructure destruction, and future reconstruction needs, often operating outside mandatory international reporting standards. 

Key Aspects of War and GHG Emissions:

• • Massive Carbon Footprint: If the world’s militaries were a country, they would rank as the fourth largest emitter globally.
  • Major Conflicts: The first 15 months of the war in Gaza resulted in at least 32 MtCO₂e, comparable to Croatia’s annual emissions. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has generated an estimated 230 MtCO₂e in roughly two years.
  • Fuel Consumption: Militaries are intensive consumers of fossil fuels. The U.S. Department of Defense is considered the world’s largest institutional consumer of oil.
  • Infrastructure & Rebuilding: Beyond immediate combat, destroying cities and the subsequent carbon-intensive reconstruction efforts create significant, long-term environmental impacts.
  • Transparency Gaps: Military emissions are often exempted from international climate agreements like the Paris Agreement, making their true impact hard to track.

So now add to the above count the US-Israel-Iran War and the expansion of the conflict throughout the Middle East.

Big Oil—Happy, Sad, or Confused?

I’ll play an amateur psychologist for Big Oil and try to think through the emotive state of the industry. The good (i.e., happy) news for Big Oil is that the price per barrel has been quickly climbing due to the latest Mideast conflict, and that means profitability is up, and especially for the U.S. industry. Big Oil has been operating on a surplus basis price-wise, hovering not that far above profit margin make-or-break levels with per-barrel costs around the sixty-dollar mark. But today, Brent Crude is up $7.28 per barrel, or $92.69. Natural gas too is climbing. It is great for the U.S. fossil fuel corporations having Trump as their front man, considering that the supply of Mideast oil and gas is curtailed, so profits accrue more to the U.S. corporations. Headlines talk about oil hitting $150 per barrel in weeks.

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.

Big Oil’s applause—especially for the U.S. corporations—grows louder when you consider the anti-clean energy efforts of President Big Oil Stooge. The States are facing growing electricity demand with the much-ballyhooed AI data center predictions, but also for the welcome electrification of heating and cooling, transportation, and some electrification expansion in various segments of industry.

Dark Clouds in Reality Land

But this boon has the capacity to go bust. Not because AI and data centers aren’t a real thing, although there’s a bunch of questions about this, too. One big question centers on just how real the electricity growth load demand really is, but I’ll leave further discussion on this topic to another recent post, “Fossil Fuel Demand Growth Uber Alles.”

On the other hand, any price rise in fossil fuels makes clean energy that much more competitive and the issue of affordability is rising across the country. Even in Trumpland, there’s a growing chorus for solar power. From Solar Energy Industries Association,” published on February 19, 2026:

A recent poll from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, chief pollster for President Trump, found that a clear majority of Republicans support expanding solar power in the United States. In the survey, 68% of GOP voters agreed that “we need all forms of electricity generation, including utility solar, to be built to lower electricity costs,” while 70% said they support utility-scale solar deployment when projects use American-made materials. Another poll from Kellyanne Conway’s KA Consulting showed that three-quarters of Trump voters (75%) in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Texas believe that solar energy should be used in the U.S. to strengthen and increase our energy supply.

This story is not simply wishful thinking on the part of pro-solar outfits like the SEIA. This story is making headlines and getting coverage in the mainstream media.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects a record 86 GW of new utility-scale electric generating capacity will be added to the U.S. grid in 2026, driven by a 62% increase in renewable energy additions over 2025 levels. Solar (51%) and battery storage (28%) dominate the growth, with 93% of new capacity coming from renewables and storage, including 43.4 GW of solar and 24.3 GW of battery capacity.

If these projections hold, renewables (including small-scale solar) are expected to surpass natural gas in total capacity by the end of 2026. And these projections were done well before the US/Israel-Iran War. Consider, too, that the Trump’s administration is hostile to clean energy. Consider, too, that most other nations aren’t hostile to clean energy and with spikes in price of natural gas, I’m guessing other nations reliant on natural gas and other fossil fuel imports grow even less happy with such dependency.

It remains to be seen how long the price jump for fossil fuels will continue. The cost of running a gasoline-powered car or diesel-based transport continues to climb, and there are already signs of a resurgence of EVs in the U.S., although there’s already been plenty of solid growth of EVs in the majority of the world.

So, How Happy is Big Oil?

As much as I’m horrified by Trump’s stupid fantasy play with real world life-and-death ramifications, I find myself wondering if the foreign military entanglements might boost the move away from Trump and his madness. The 2026 midterms look better than ever for the shift in Congress toward the Democrats and with Trump’s gang of incompetents mucking up the economy and dealing out threats to democracy, 2028 looks good for a full ousting. Of course, if Democrats keep their fealty to corporations as a priority, my bet is off.

Dear Josephine, the second book of The Steep Climes Quartet, takes place in 2029. There’s a new, unnamed Democratic administration just in, and the Congress has moved toward progressive gains. Energy and climate policies are back in play, with the sort of 100-Day advances a guy can hope for, but politics still has its partisan problems and by no means are all Democrats clear about working for citizens instead of corporations. Campaign funding reform has not been accomplished, but the fight is on. Progress moves more slowly than many of us might like, but progress takes place. Big Oil’s efforts to maintain business continues, especially in the push to get more and more gas plants built. By 2035, which is the year Over Brooklyn Hills, the third book of The Steep Climes Quartet, takes place, Big Oil is on its back foot, but still has plenty of kick left, even as court cases against the industry and pro-energy transition legislation do well. The problem remains of too much money in the political system, although real progress to kill Citizens United and the absurd legal foundation for that awful decision is finally imminent. Everyday life continues: people struggle with bills and are exasperated or delighted in relationships, work, and circumstances beyond an individual’s control.

The carbon emission tide is turning, but slowly, like the proverbial change in direction of a large ship’s course. Plenty of damage has been done and shows up in climate change consequences. Tipping points are an ongoing concern. Greed, power, and selfishness are counterpoints to our better angels.

We Are All Sad, Really

As excited Big Oil may be about expanded sales and profits, they live in the same world as the rest of us, and that world is getting hotter because of Big Oil’s expanded sales and profits. From the AGU Journals collection, Advancing Earth and Space Sciences posted a Geophysical Research Letter titled “Global Warming Has Accelerated Significantly,” authored by G. Foster, S. Rahmstorf, and first published on March 6, 2026. Fortunately for us non-scientists, AGU offers a plain text summary, as follows:

The rise in global temperature has been widely considered to be quite steady for several decades since the 1970s. Recently, however, scientists have started to debate whether global warming has accelerated since then. It is difficult to be sure of that because of natural fluctuations in the warming rate, and so far no statistical significance (meaning 95% certainty) of an acceleration (increase in warming rate) has been demonstrated. In this study we subtract the estimated influence of El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and solar variations from the data, which makes the global temperature curve less variable, and it then shows a statistically significant acceleration of global warming since about the year 2015. Warming proceeding faster is not unexpected by climate models, but it is a cause of concern and shows how insufficient the efforts to slow and eventually stop global warming under the Paris Climate Accord have so far been.

If even this is too long to read, here are the key points:

Key Points

• • During the last decade, the rate at which Earth warmed increased substantially
  • After removing the influence of known natural variability factors, the increase of the warming rate is statistically significant
  • At the present rate, we will exceed the 1.5°C limit of the Paris Climate Accord by 2030

We no longer have the opportunity to keep global warming from occurring, but we do have the capacity to slow down carbon emissions and make it more likely that climate change consequences are less severe.

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.

The post Oil War and Counter-War on Oil first appeared on David Guenette.

What follows is an AI-generated report based on the following query to Gemini in the “Deep Research” mode:

Identify and summarize studies, investigations, and reports of well-funded state and local organizations and groups opposing solar and wind power projects that may have funding and other forms of assistance from national organizations, think tanks, and professional groups. Be as specific as possible in regard to names of organizations and principal participants and include these names, along with the budgets involved and the connections to state and local level solar and wind bans in table form as well as within the text report.

This report was generated and edited on February 9, 2026.

A Forensic Analysis of the Anti-Renewable Energy Countermovement

Executive Summary

The transition to renewable energy in the United States, specifically the deployment of utility-scale solar photovoltaics and offshore wind turbines, has encountered a formidable and increasingly sophisticated barrier: a coordinated, multi-layered opposition network that transcends traditional “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) sentiments. While local opposition to infrastructure projects is a historic constant in American land-use planning, the current wave of resistance against renewable energy differs fundamentally in its structure, funding, and strategic cohesion. What appears to be a fragmented archipelago of local grievances is, in reality, a unified “countermovement” orchestrated by a nexus of national think tanks, fossil fuel trade associations, and dark money conduits.

Drawing upon a comprehensive review of financial filings (IRS Forms 990), court dockets, legislative testimony, and investigative reports from academic institutions—including Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University—this analysis reveals the operational mechanics of this network. It identifies the “information subsidies” provided by national entities like the State Policy Network (SPN), the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), and the Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI) to local groups. These subsidies manifest as legal counsel, rhetorical scripts, expert testimony, and direct financial assistance, effectively weaponizing local zoning codes and environmental statutes to preserve the market dominance of incumbent fossil fuel industries.

The report is structured to provide a granular examination of this ecosystem. It begins by dissecting the national infrastructure of opposition, profiling the think tanks that function as the movement’s ideological and logistical command centers. It then traces the financial arteries that sustain these operations, identifying specific donors and funding vehicles. Subsequent sections provide deep regional analyses of the Midwest (specifically Ohio and Michigan) and the Atlantic Coast, illustrating how national strategies are operationalized in local battlegrounds. Finally, the report synthesizes these findings to demonstrate how legal and legislative frameworks are being systematically reshaped to obstruct the renewable energy transition.

Section I: The National Infrastructure of Opposition

The structural backbone of the anti-renewable energy movement is not located in the rural townships or coastal communities where projects are proposed, but in the offices of national policy institutes, free-market think tanks, and trade associations. These organizations function as the “wholesale” suppliers of obstructionist tactics, distributing them to “retail” local groups who then deploy them in zoning hearings and town halls. This section profiles the key national organizations that provide the intellectual, legal, and strategic scaffolding for the movement.

1.1 The State Policy Network (SPN): The Central Hub of Disinformation

The State Policy Network (SPN) serves as the primary nerve center for a confederation of conservative, market-oriented think tanks across the 50 states. While SPN describes its mission as promoting federalism and local control, its affiliates have been instrumental in orchestrating opposition to Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and specific energy projects. The network’s reach is vast, allowing for the rapid dissemination of anti-renewable talking points from national headquarters to state capitals and local county boards.¹

1.1.1 Strategic Pivot to Obstruction

In 2024, the SPN explicitly identified “blocking renewable energy” as a top legislative priority. This marked a significant strategic pivot from broad advocacy for deregulation to a targeted, adversarial stance against the physical deployment of wind and solar infrastructure. This shift acknowledges that the battle for energy dominance has moved from the abstract realm of federal policy to the concrete reality of land-use permitting.²

The SPN operates through a franchise model. It provides resources, training, and coordination to independent state-level think tanks, ensuring that local opposition groups have access to high-quality production value for their campaigns. For instance, an anti-wind report produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan can be rapidly repackaged and cited by the Buckeye Institute in Ohio or the Caesar Rodney Institute in Delaware, creating an echo chamber of “expert” opinion that reinforces local biases.²

1.1.2 The Energy Policy Working Group

The operational core of SPN’s anti-renewable strategy is its Energy Policy Working Group. This group was recently placed under the leadership of Amy Oliver Cooke, a political consultant with a long history of opposing renewable mandates. Cooke previously worked for the Independence Institute, an SPN affiliate in Colorado that has received funding from coal producers. Her appointment signaled a doubling down on aggressive rhetorical strategies.²

Under Cooke’s guidance, the Working Group has refined the narrative used to oppose renewables. Moving away from outright climate denial, which holds diminishing traction with the public, the group focuses on three key themes:

1. Reliability: Framing wind and solar as inherently unstable sources that threaten grid resilience (e.g., the “Texas Blackout” narrative, despite evidence to the contrary regarding natural gas failures).
2. Cost: Arguing that renewable subsidies constitute a wealth transfer from ratepayers to foreign corporations.
3. Property Rights: A paradoxical argument that champions the rights of neighbors to not have turbines near them over the rights of landowners to lease their land for energy development.²

1.1.3 Funding and Affiliates

The SPN’s operations are underwritten by major philanthropic entities aligned with fossil fuel interests. Publicly available tax documents and investigative reporting have identified the Stand Together Trust (part of the Koch network) and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) as significant donors. In 2022 alone, Stand Together contributed over $5 million to SPN-affiliated think tanks, fueling a war chest that allows these organizations to outspend and outmaneuver pro-renewable advocates.²

1.2 The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF): The Litigation Engine

If SPN is the logistical hub, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) represents the “heavy artillery” of the movement. Based in Austin, TPPF has grown into a financial behemoth with a 2023 revenue exceeding $28 million.⁵ It uses this immense resource base to provide high-level legal representation to local groups that would otherwise lack the funds to sue the federal government or multinational energy developers.

1.2.1 The “Life:Powered” Initiative

The TPPF’s anti-renewable crusade is centralized under its “Life:Powered” initiative. This project is explicitly dedicated to “raising the alarm” about the alleged dangers of the “green energy agenda.” It frames fossil fuels not just as economic commodities, but as moral imperatives necessary for human flourishing, thereby positioning renewable energy as anti-human.³

The initiative has been heavily funded by the Brigham Family Foundation, representing oil and gas wealth, and the broader Koch network. This funding allows Life:Powered to produce slick media campaigns, educational videos, and policy papers that circulate widely on social media, influencing public perception far beyond Texas borders.²

1.2.2 Federal Litigation Strategy

The TPPF has distinguished itself by its willingness to engage in direct federal litigation. It has effectively nationalized local land-use disputes by representing local plaintiffs in high-profile cases against offshore wind projects.

• Vineyard Wind Challenge: TPPF represents a coalition of Rhode Island and Massachusetts fishing interests (e.g., Seafreeze Shoreside Inc.) in federal court. The lawsuit challenges the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) approval of the Vineyard Wind project, alleging violations of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). By absorbing the legal costs for these plaintiffs—costs that can run into the millions—TPPF ensures that these legal challenges can proceed through the appellate system, delaying projects for years.¹
• The “Whale” Narrative: TPPF has been a primary propagator of the unsubstantiated theory that offshore wind survey work is responsible for the deaths of North Atlantic right whales. This narrative serves as a potent wedge issue, splitting the environmental coalition and rallying animal rights activists against wind energy.²

1.3 The Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI): The Offshore Command Center

While smaller in budget than TPPF or SPN, the Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI), based in Delaware, has emerged as the tactical command center for the anti-offshore wind movement along the Atlantic Seaboard. Its influence illustrates the asymmetric power of the network, where a small, focused organization can coordinate a multi-state obstruction campaign.

1.3.1 Incubating “Astroturf” Coalitions

CRI’s most significant contribution to the movement is its role as an incubator for “astroturf” groups—organizations that appear to be grassroots citizen coalitions but are, in fact, centrally coordinated projects.

• American Coalition for Ocean Protection (ACOP): Founded by CRI, ACOP acts as a clearinghouse for anti-wind strategies, specifically targeting beach communities. It connects local homeowners’ associations with legal experts and PR consultants. ACOP does not present itself as a think tank project but as a network of “beach lovers,” masking its ideological origins.¹
• Save Right Whales Coalition: CRI principal David Stevenson, a former DuPont executive, was instrumental in the formation of the “Save Right Whales” coalition. This group leverages the endangered status of the right whale to file lawsuits and generate negative press for wind developers. Despite NOAA consistently stating there is no evidence linking wind surveying to whale mortality, the coalition—under Stevenson’s guidance—has successfully mainstreamed this claim into conservative media ecosystems.⁶

1.3.2 Financial and Personnel Links

CRI’s operations are sustained by strategic grants from foundations with industry ties. In 2022, it received $162,500 from the Longwood Foundation, which has historical ties to the DuPont family. Additionally, CRI has received funding from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) and the American Energy Alliance, directly linking its anti-wind activities to the petroleum refining industry.²

1.4 The Heartland Institute and CFACT: The Ideological Vanguard

The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) occupy the ideological flank of the movement. Their role is to provide the “scientific” and moral justifications for opposing renewable energy, often relying on fringe science and aggressive polemics.

1.4.1 Heartland’s “Circuit Riders”

The Heartland Institute deploys policy advisors, such as Steve Goreham, to travel to rural townships across the Midwest and testify in zoning hearings. These advisors present themselves as independent experts, often citing Heartland-published reports that claim wind turbines cause catastrophic health issues (“wind turbine syndrome”), kill exorbitant numbers of birds, and destroy property values.³

• Methodology of Disruption: In places like Spotsylvania, Virginia, and Knox County, Ohio, Heartland’s intervention transformed routine zoning hearings into contentious political battlegrounds. Their testimony provides local officials—who may be ideologically predisposed against renewables—with a “credentialed” basis to deny permits, citing “health and safety” concerns.³

1.4.2 CFACT and Infrastructure Obstruction

CFACT works in tandem with organizations like ALEC to draft model legislation that creates unreasonable setback requirements for solar and wind farms. More recently, CFACT has expanded its operations to the West Coast. In 2024, CFACT representatives, alongside the local REACT Alliance, petitioned the U.S. Department of Transportation to cancel a $426 million grant for port infrastructure in Humboldt Bay, California. This move demonstrates a shift from opposing specific generation projects to attacking the enabling infrastructure (ports, transmission) necessary for the industry’s growth.¹⁰

1.5 The Institute for Energy Research (IER): The Intellectual Foundation

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) provides the intellectual underpinning for the movement. Led by Robert Bradley, a former Enron executive and a disciple of Charles Koch, IER produces the dense economic analyses and white papers that other groups cite.

• MasterResource Blog: Bradley’s blog, MasterResource, serves as a repository for anti-wind arguments and a gathering place for activists. It hosts the writings of key operatives like John Droz and Lisa Linowes, creating a shared lexicon and strategic doctrine for the movement.³
• The “Energy Poverty” Narrative: IER specializes in the argument that renewable energy mandates drive up electricity prices, disproportionately hurting the poor. This narrative allows the fossil fuel industry to frame its self-preservation as a crusade for social justice.³

Section II: The Financial Engine – Following the Money

The sophisticated operations of these national organizations require significant capital. While much of this funding is obscured through “dark money” channels, forensic analysis of tax filings and bankruptcy disclosures reveals a clear pattern of fossil fuel industry support.

2.1 Dark Money Structures and “DonorsTrust”

A central mechanism for funding this countermovement is DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund often described as the “ATM of the conservative movement.” DonorsTrust allows wealthy individuals and corporations to funnel money to think tanks like SPN, Heartland, and CRI without their names appearing on the recipient’s IRS Form 990.

• The Mechanism of Anonymity: A donor (e.g., a coal executive) gives $1 million to DonorsTrust. DonorsTrust then gives $1 million to the Heartland Institute. The public sees only a donation from DonorsTrust, effectively severing the link between the fossil fuel interest and the anti-renewable advocacy. This structure shields corporations from consumer boycotts and shareholder activism while allowing them to direct policy outcomes.³

2.2 Case Study: The “Six Donors” of the Anti-Offshore Wind Network

A landmark 2023 report by Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab, titled “Against the Wind,” provided a rare glimpse into the funding of the East Coast anti-wind network. The report identified that $16,278,401 flowed from just six fossil fuel-interested donors to the network of think tanks and coalitions between 2017 and 2021.¹⁴

While the report anonymized some donors in its public summary, cross-referencing with other investigative datasets identifies the likely composition of this group:

1. Koch Industries / Stand Together Trust: A historical and primary funder of SPN, TPPF, and AFP. The network’s ideological commitment to deregulation aligns perfectly with the obstruction of government-subsidized renewables.²
2. DonorsTrust: The primary conduit for anonymized capital.¹³
3. The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM): A trade association representing oil refiners. AFPM has been explicitly linked to funding the Caesar Rodney Institute and SPN meetings.²
4. Ariel Corporation (The Wright/Rastin Family): As detailed below, this Ohio-based compressor manufacturer is a major donor to SPN and local anti-solar groups.¹⁵
5. Cordelia Scaife May / Colcom Foundation: Historically a major funder of anti-immigration groups, this foundation also funds “conservation” groups that oppose population growth and infrastructure development, aligning with the “industrialization of nature” narrative used against wind farms.
6. Dominion Energy / Utility Interests: While utilities often invest in renewables, they also fund groups that oppose independent power producers (IPPs) or distributed generation (rooftop solar) to protect their monopoly status.¹⁶

2.3 Case Study: Ariel Corporation and The Empowerment Alliance

Perhaps the most direct link between industrial fossil fuel interests and local opposition is found in Ohio. Ariel Corporation, a major manufacturer of natural gas compressors based in Mount Vernon, Ohio, is owned by the Wright/Rastin family.

• Karen Buchwald Wright: The Chair of Ariel Corporation, she contributed $700,000 to the State Policy Network in 2019 alone, making her one of its largest individual donors.³
• The Empowerment Alliance (TEA): Wright and her husband, Tom Rastin, founded and funded TEA, a 501(c)(4) dark money group. TEA promotes the narrative that “Natural Gas is Green” while aggressively attacking solar projects.
• Direct Intervention: Unlike passive donors, Rastin has been personally involved. Testimony and emails reveal he directed funds and strategy to Knox Smart Development, a local group fighting the Frasier Solar project. This effectively weaponized a local zoning dispute into a proxy war for the natural gas industry, utilizing the family’s wealth to overwhelm local pro-solar farmers.¹⁷

2.4 Case Study: Murray Energy

Bankruptcy filings from Murray Energy, the now-defunct coal giant, inadvertently revealed the extent of its funding for the opposition. The filings showed direct payments to:

• The Heartland Institute: $130,000 to support climate denial and anti-wind advocacy.
• Legal Counsel: Payments to law firms representing “citizen” plaintiffs in Ohio wind siting cases. This confirmed that what appeared to be grassroots litigation was actually being underwritten by a coal corporation desperate to block competition.³

Table 1: Major Financial Flows to Anti-Renewable Groups

Section III: Regional Battleground I – The Midwest (Ohio & Michigan)

The Midwest has become the primary theater for land-based renewable energy conflict in the United States. The region’s vast agricultural lands are prime territory for utility-scale wind and solar, making them the target of intense obstruction campaigns. Here, the opposition is highly organized, integrating local zoning boards with state legislative strategies to create a regulatory blockade.

3.1 Ohio: The Laboratory of Solar Bans

Ohio serves as the clearest example of “legislative capture” by the anti-renewable network. The state has seen a proliferation of solar bans, facilitated by Senate Bill 52 (SB52), passed in 2021. This legislation fundamentally altered the regulatory landscape by empowering county commissioners to designate “exclusion zones” where utility-scale renewables are prohibited—a power they do not possess for fossil fuel infrastructure.²⁰

3.1.1 The Mechanism of Senate Bill 52

Prior to SB52, the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) had final authority over energy projects, ensuring a standardized state-level review. SB52 devolved this authority to local boards, making projects vulnerable to hyper-local political pressure campaigns. The bill was heavily lobbied for by organizations linked to the fossil fuel industry, including the Buckeye Institute (an SPN affiliate) and The Empowerment Alliance.²¹

• Impact: Since the passage of SB52, at least 10 counties have enacted bans or severe restrictions on solar development, effectively freezing the industry in large swathes of the state.²⁰

3.1.2 The Empowerment Alliance (TEA) in Action

As detailed in the financial section, The Empowerment Alliance (TEA) is the critical operational node in Ohio. It has spent millions on ad campaigns and direct mailers framing solar energy as a threat to farmland (“Farmland not Solar Wasteland”) and a beneficiary of Chinese manufacturing.

• Knox Smart Development: This group presents itself as a grassroots coalition of neighbors in Knox County opposing the Frasier Solar project. However, OPSB hearings revealed the extent of astroturfing involved. Jared Yost, the group’s founder, admitted under oath that the group received significant funding and strategic direction from Tom Rastin. Rastin’s involvement included reviewing Yost’s testimony and coordinating the group’s messaging to align with TEA’s pro-gas agenda.¹⁸
• Outcome: Despite the manufactured “unanimous” opposition from local townships (fueled by TEA’s campaign), the OPSB initially approved the Frasier project, noting the external influence. However, the political pressure continues to threaten the project’s viability.

3.2 Michigan: The Fight for Siting Authority

Michigan represents a counter-narrative where the state government, recognizing the obstructionist tactics at the local level, attempted to reclaim siting authority. This move sparked a fierce backlash funded and organized by the same fossil fuel-aligned network.

3.2.1 Citizens for Local Choice / Our Home Our Voice

In 2023, Michigan passed a law streamlining renewable energy siting, moving final authority to the Michigan Public Service Commission. In response, Citizens for Local Choice was formed to push a ballot initiative repealing the law and restoring local veto power.

• Kevon Martis: The central figure in this effort is Kevon Martis. Martis is a veteran anti-wind activist who has transitioned from a local agitator in Lenawee County to a regional strategist. He holds a Senior Policy Fellowship at E&E Legal (historically funded by Arch Coal) and is a frequent contributor to the MasterResource Martis acts as a “circuit rider,” traveling to townships across the Midwest to advise local boards on how to draft exclusionary zoning ordinances that can withstand legal scrutiny.³
• Dark Money Controversy: A campaign finance complaint filed in 2024 alleged that Our Home Our Voice, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit led by Martis, acted as an unregistered ballot committee. The complaint detailed how the group funneled over $53,000 to Citizens for Local Choice while hiding the original donors. This “pass-through” structure effectively shielded the ultimate funders—likely agricultural lobbies and fossil fuel interests—from public disclosure requirements.²³
• Interstate Funding: Despite the campaign being focused on “Michigan local control,” Tom Rastin (of Ariel Corp in Ohio) contributed $10,000 to the Michigan effort. This cross-border funding demonstrates the national coordination of the opposition, where donors in one state will fund obstruction in another to protect regional markets for natural gas.²⁵

Table 2: Ohio Counties with Solar/Wind Bans (Selected)

Section IV: Regional Battleground II – The Atlantic Coast Offshore Wind War

The opposition to offshore wind along the East Coast is arguably the most sophisticated component of the network. It leverages complex environmental law (NEPA, ESA) and highly emotive marine conservation rhetoric to stall projects. Unlike the land-use battles in the Midwest, this fight takes place in federal courts and the court of public opinion, targeting the “social license” of the offshore wind industry.

4.1 The “Whale” Narrative and Coalition Building

The central narrative of the Atlantic opposition is the claim that offshore wind development is killing North Atlantic right whales. This argument is particularly potent because it weaponizes the environmental movement’s own values against it.

• The Save Right Whales Coalition: This umbrella group unites various local anti-wind organizations. It was incubated by Environmental Progress (founded by Michael Shellenberger) and the Caesar Rodney Institute. The coalition’s strategy is to create a “wedge issue” that splits the environmental vote. By framing wind turbines as the “industrialization of the ocean,” they attract support from conservation-minded citizens who might otherwise support climate action.⁶
• Scientific Consensus vs. Disinformation: NOAA and marine scientists have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence linking wind survey work to whale strandings (which are largely caused by ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement). However, the coalition—funded by industry groups—persists in this narrative, using it as the basis for federal lawsuits.²⁷

4.2 Green Oceans (Rhode Island)

Based in Little Compton, Rhode Island, Green Oceans has emerged as a prominent opponent of the Revolution Wind project.

• Leadership: The group is led by Lisa Quattrocki Knight (President) and Elizabeth Knight.
• Strategy: Green Oceans mimics the output of a professional think tank. They produce detailed “white papers” claiming that offshore wind farms threaten national security (via radar interference) and will cause irreversible damage to marine ecosystems. These papers rarely cite peer-reviewed marine science; instead, they rely on reports from national anti-wind think tanks and unverified data. This “information subsidy” allows them to present a veneer of scientific rigor to local media and town councils.²⁸
• Network Ties: Green Oceans is a member of the National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance (NOOA), a coalition founded to nationalize the fight. The group has also received legal and strategic support consistent with the patterns identified in the Brown University “Against the Wind” report.³⁰

4.3 ACK for Whales (Nantucket)

Formerly known as “Nantucket Residents Against Turbines,” ACK for Whales has been the most litigious group in the region, focusing its fire on the Vineyard Wind project.

• Principal Participants: The board includes Val Oliver (Founding Director), Amy DiSibio, and Veronica Bonnet.
• Legal Lawfare: ACK for Whales has filed multiple lawsuits against BOEM and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Their lawsuits allege that the federal agencies failed to adequately consider the cumulative impact of wind turbines on the right whale population, a violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The legal arguments used in these filings frequently mirror those crafted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation in parallel cases, suggesting a shared legal strategy or counsel.³¹
• Funding: While ACK for Whales positions itself as a grassroots group of concerned islanders, the scale of their legal operations—federal lawsuits require hundreds of thousands of dollars—suggests significant external backing. They are listed as an affiliate of the Save Right Whales Coalition, linking them to the fossil fuel funding streams of the Caesar Rodney Institute.³³

4.4 The National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance (NOOA)

Recognizing that local groups were fighting isolated battles, Mandy Davis of the California-based REACT Alliance founded NOOA to coordinate opposition on a national scale.

• Mission: NOOA aims to create a unified front, sharing legal strategies and PR resources between East Coast and West Coast groups.
• Strategic shift: This marks the evolution of the movement from disparate NIMBY clusters into a cohesive national lobby. NOOA’s formation allows for the pooling of resources and the standardization of messaging (e.g., the “whale” narrative is now being adapted for Pacific marine life).¹¹

Table 3: Key Coastal Opposition Groups and Legal Challenges

Section V: The Mechanisms of Obstruction

The effectiveness of this network lies not just in its funding but in its methods. The opposition employs a toolkit of obstruction that is standardized, replicable, and scalable.

5.1 “Information Subsidies”

The concept of “information subsidies,” detailed in the Brown University report, explains how national groups influence local outcomes without necessarily providing direct cash transfers.

• The Mechanism: Local activists often lack the time, expertise, and resources to analyze complex Environmental Impact Statements or draft zoning bylaws. National groups like TPPF and CRI fill this gap by providing “subsidies” in the form of pre-written talking points, model legislation, and expert witnesses.
• Impact: This dramatically lowers the “cost” of participation for local opposition. A local homeowner doesn’t need to understand grid physics to argue against a solar farm; they simply need to read the script provided by the Caesar Rodney Institute about “grid instability.” This ensures that the arguments heard in a town hall in Michigan are identical to those heard in a county commission in Ohio.¹

5.2 Legal Lawfare: The War of Attrition

The goal of the network’s litigation strategy is often not to win a final judgment on the merits, but to inflict delay.

• The logic of delay: Energy projects rely on complex financing models with tight timelines. By forcing federal agencies to redo environmental reviews or tying projects up in appellate courts, opponents can push projects past their financing deadlines or into periods of higher interest rates/inflation, rendering them uneconomic.
• Weaponizing NEPA: The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to assess environmental impacts. Opponents routinely sue alleging that the assessment was “insufficient,” a procedural argument that can halt construction even if the environmental harm is negligible.

5.3 Zoning as a Weapon

The shift from fighting state mandates to fighting local zoning is a calculated strategic move.

• Home Rule: By framing renewable energy bans as a matter of “local control” or “home rule,” the network taps into deep-seated conservative values. ALEC’s model legislation is designed to strip state siting boards of their power and devolve it to the most local level possible (townships/counties), where projects are easiest to kill through small-scale political mobilization.

Section VI: Conclusion

The opposition to solar and wind power in the United States is frequently characterized by media and policymakers as a “grassroots” phenomenon—a spontaneous uprising of rural and coastal citizens concerned about viewsheds and property values. However, a forensic analysis of the financial, legal, and organizational ties underpinning this resistance reveals a different reality. The local sentiment, while often genuine, is systematically cultivated, funded, and weaponized by a sophisticated national network of fossil fuel interests.

Organizations like the State Policy Network, Texas Public Policy Foundation, and Caesar Rodney Institute act as force multipliers. They transform isolated zoning disputes into a cohesive national strategy of obstruction. They provide the capital that allows local groups to hire high-end legal counsel; they provide the “experts” who testify with authority on debunked science; and they provide the rhetorical frameworks that turn neighbors against energy development.

The involvement of specific industrial actors—such as the Wright/Rastin family (Ariel Corp) in Ohio and Murray Energy in legal funding—reveals the direct financial stake that fossil fuel incumbents have in these battles. Whether through dark money conduits like The Empowerment Alliance or through ballot initiatives like Citizens for Local Choice, the objective remains consistent: to use the mechanisms of local democracy to delay the energy transition, preserving the dominance of coal, oil, and natural gas for as long as possible.

The data shows that this is not a series of skirmishes but a war of attrition. By freezing development through local bans (like Ohio’s SB52) and federal litigation (like the whale lawsuits), the network aims to run out the clock on the energy transition. Understanding this architecture is essential for policymakers, as addressing the opposition requires looking beyond the local town hall to the national structures that empower it.

List of Abbreviations

• ACOP: American Coalition for Ocean Protection
• AFPM: American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers
• ALEC: American Legislative Exchange Council
• BOEM: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
• CFACT: Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
• CRI: Caesar Rodney Institute
• E&E Legal: Energy & Environment Legal Institute
• ESA: Endangered Species Act
• IER: Institute for Energy Research
• NEPA: National Environmental Policy Act
• NMFS: National Marine Fisheries Service
• NOOA: National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance
• OPSB: Ohio Power Siting Board
• SPN: State Policy Network
• TEA: The Empowerment Alliance
• TPPF: Texas Public Policy Foundation

Works cited

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Addendum

Here’s an addendum that the report provided when “Robert Bryce” was specifically queried in the context of the report, and the text below is numbered for inclusion in the report (but otherwise not added into it. In the context of the “Architecture of Obstruction,” Bryce functions as a key supplier of the narrative framework used by both national think tanks and local activists to delay or block projects.

1.5.2 Robert Bryce and the Manhattan Institute

Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute (an SPN affiliate), plays a critical role in shaping the movement’s narrative. The Manhattan Institute has historically received funding from ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. Bryce produces high-profile content arguing that wind turbines pose severe dangers to birds and public health, and he frequently characterizes renewable energy as “land-hungry” and ecologically destructive. His work is often cited by local groups to give their opposition the veneer of economic and environmental legitimacy.

That addition query returned the following additional material on Robert Bryce:

Yes, Robert Bryce appears frequently in the research material as a central figure providing intellectual and media support to the anti-renewable network. His work serves as a primary source of the “information subsidies” (reports, talking points, and media content) that local groups use to justify opposition.

He is directly associated with several of the national and local entities detailed in the report:

• • Center of the American Experiment: This Minnesota-based State Policy Network (SPN) affiliate published Bryce’s 2021 report, “Not in Our Backyard.” The report, which catalogs local government bans on renewables, was published the same year the Center received $20,000 from the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and $250,000 from the Stand Together Trust.
  • Manhattan Institute: Bryce has served as a senior fellow for this think tank, which is also an SPN affiliate. The institute has historically received funding from ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. In this capacity, Bryce has produced content arguing that wind turbines pose severe dangers to birds and public health, narratives that are frequently cited by local opposition groups.
  • Green Oceans: The research identifies a direct link between Bryce and this Rhode Island-based anti-offshore wind group. Green Oceans hosted Bryce as a featured speaker, illustrating how national figures are deployed to lend credibility to local “grassroots” organizations.
  • Ohio Senate Bill 52 Context: Bryce actively tracks and promotes data regarding the rejection of wind and solar projects in Ohio. He has publically championed Senate Bill 52 (the legislation allowing local counties to ban solar/wind), framing the resulting bans as proof that “the public” opposes renewable energy, rather than the result of coordinated legislative capture.

Note: I’ve followed Robert Bryce’s Medium and Substack posts for quite a while. I’ve previously researched his fossil fuel affiliations in several of my posts. It’s been an education and from the looks of this list, maybe something of a fixation. What can I say? Those lying about and misrepresenting solutions to the climate change threat to human society is something that seems morally questionable to me.

1. I’m Rubber, You’re Glue: Robert Bryce, Fossil Fuel Shill, is just one of the many attacking Bill McKibben and his latest book, Here Comes the Sun

2. New Atlantis is a Fossil Fuel Shill Factory

3. Bryce and His Snow Job: Apparently, Climate Change Action is the Work of Anti-Math Nincompoops and Elite Conspiracists

4. Robert Bryce’s Anti-Environmental Pro-Renewable Energy Transition NGOs Argument is a No Go Argument

5. Bryce Hyped Focus

6. WOW. I Never Meta-Hypocrisy I Didn’t Like, or, Who is Robert Bryce and Why Does He Write Such S***?

7. Who is Lying? Those Who Say Fossil Fuel Companies Engage in Misinformation and Influence Campaigns against Renewable Energy, or Those Who Say Renewable Energy Advocates Have Pants on Fire?

The post The Architecture of Obstruction first appeared on David Guenette.

In some climate fiction the recreation of mankind is the necessary solution to the climate crisis, while climate action progress such as significant carbon emission reductions is not sufficient. Examples of these stories of reformed humans include degrowth or return to nature, including stories taking the lead from indigenous cultures. Other examples might focus on the West turning elsewhere for archetype substitutions or some other significant alternative cultural shift. Alongside these themes, hopeful climate fiction frequently relies on radical social restructuring. These stories often pivot toward non-normative gender dynamics, BIPOC perspectives, or spiritual awakenings as the primary drivers of change. Yet other types of climate fiction include some shift in economic model or political makeover, predominantly in the abandonment of capitalism.

Unfortunately, when it comes to helping people understand how one can approach the problem of climate change and push for solutions, many stories have a fundamental gap between today’s world and the depicted later world. The telling point is that such stories are not grounded in the present and presuppose a major cultural break. It may be that such stories can show us a world that may truly be helpful and compelling at some point. For us presently caught up in the crisis of climate change, however, these stories do not reflect today’s world, since manifesting new worlds, good or not, require time passing because cultural transformation is typically a slow process.

The challenge, however, is that the pressing nature of the climate crisis means that we do not have the time to wait for a new world to appear, if climate change storytelling wants to be efficacious in contributing to solutions today.

No Gain in Degrowth Stories

Degrowth is an absurd expectation and climate fiction that posits degrowth as a solution to our current climate crisis is absurd, at least in any way other than as a parable. Certainly, shifting away from conspicuous consumption is a healthier way to live in the world. It is also true that our still-raging engine of consumer culture broadcasts the extractive economic model down to the level of the individual. Nonetheless, stories showing the pressure on the world planetary boundaries reduced by reducing human population is simply an apocalyptic tale cleaned up, corpses hidden from the scenes. There are already far too many stories portraying degrowth scenarios, as any reader of zombie plagues novels knows, or some other catastrophic pandemic, perhaps. There is the old stand-by of post-nuclear holocaust stories and the updated version of EMP tales. Then there are the ‘fast collapse’ storylines: asteroids, inexplicably fast-rising seas, or the cracking of the Earth. These narratives rely on widespread disaster to bring about a precipitous decline in mall visits and Amazon deliveries.

We have policies designed for accounting the price of carbon in consumer, business, and industrial goods, such as carbon taxes or fees. Creating a world that has fewer humans in it to ease the carbon burden the Anthropocene has produced is unnecessary. You want plastic straws? Then pay for them at a more realistic price, not an artificially low price that results from ignoring externalities of fossil fuel use. This applies across many domains. EVs versus ICVs is just one example, and god help us, great public transportation is also a part of the same domain. We also have a clear understanding of how changes in zoning can lead to smarter density and smaller carbon costs. We know that we can manage huge amounts of unused electrical capacity instead of building more gas plants, and we have companies already providing the technologies and services. We have laws and the means to make laws that hold fossil fuel corporations accountable for harm. We have elections that rid the governing structures of undue influence that disproportionally favors the small number of ultrawealthy at all others’ expense.

But a movement exists within climate fiction that seeks similarly radical world-building—fortunately, often with a lower body count. Even with the emergence of the “Thrutopia” concept of climate fiction, which purports to shift climate storytelling into a teachable methodology and the promotion of solution-focused narratives, there remains a reluctance to present worlds that doesn’t require a fundamental transformation of reality.

Wait, What Do You Mean by “Efficacy of Climate Change Storytelling”?

The result from a Google search on “efficacy of climate fiction” turns up a lot:

Climate fiction (cli-fi) serves as a potent, though mixed, tool for environmental engagement, capable of increasing short-term concern, empathy, and emotional connection to climate issues. While it can drive, in some studies, increased political efficacy and specific climate actions (e.g., increased donations, higher likelihood of seeking information), it often triggers negative emotions, such as anxiety or despair, which may lead to disempowerment rather than action. 

There are views that climate fiction can transform scientific data into relatable narratives, and in so doing expand the reader’s understanding of climate issues even while encouraging emotional or empathetic responses. One concern, of course, is that these emotional reactions can be negative, such as anxiety or despair that result in inaction.

Can beliefs about climate change and action about it be encouraged through climate fiction? The jury is still out, with conflicting studies making the case yea or nay. For some reason that is beyond me there is the view that climate fiction may be “particularly effective in developing climate literacy among children and encouraging them to think critically about environmental issues.” Whether such consequences are long-term or ephemeral—whether with children or the rest of us—remains unproven.

And what’s up with YA and MG climate fiction books? I understand that children and youngsters are anxious and quite possibly likely to come to help address climate change, but the need for action is now. We are already past the point of any climate resolution back to normal. If we count on children growing up in order to start in on the problem, there will likely be a whole different level of problem, and besides, isn’t it incumbent for the grownups to act?

The question of the efficacy of climate fiction to help more people consider the problem of climate change or learn more about it or raise the level of action is an interesting one. But why should we expect this from climate fiction if most stories jump to some far future, displaying worlds we can’t recognize as our own? I’ve got no problem with good writing of any sort, whether for kids or adults. How can climate fiction claim ‘efficacy’ when it ignores the practical steps we actually can to take today?

I used “efficacy of climate fiction” as my search string. The following AI Summary I found to be of special interest to me because it so spookily well-summarizes my own efforts with The Steep Climes Quartet:

Common Themes and Techniques:

• • Hope vs. Fear: The most effective stories often blend both, balancing the grim realities with possibilities for action.
  • Relatability: By placing characters in familiar settings facing climate-induced changes, it helps readers to better understand the potential impacts on their lives.
  • Future Imaging: It allows readers to imagine potential solutions and scenarios, encouraging a more proactive mindset. 

Feel free to do your own reading. Here’s just a sample of page 1 of search result links on the topic (I skipped around and page 20 in the search results was still going strong!):

• • The Influence of Climate Fiction | Environmental Humanities, by M Schneider-Mayerson, 2018
  • On the False Promise of Climate Fiction, Emma Pattee, 2023
  • The Curious Case of Climate Change Fiction – C21 Literature, by H Bolze, 2026
  • Climate fiction is a vital tool for producing better planetary …, by I Malpas, 2021
  • “Beyond Dystopia: The effect of reading hopeful climate fiction …, by B McWilliams, 2024
  • Fiction builds political efficacy and climate action, by L Page, 2022
  • Can Fiction Really Change the World?, by T Lash, 2023
  • “The Influence of Climate Fiction: An Empirical Survey …, by M Schneider-Mayerson, 2018
  • Why I Don’t Like Climate Fiction, Substack · Climate Fiction Writers League, by D.A. Baden, 2025
  • Approaching Climate Change Through Fiction? The Effects …, by JR Winkler,·2025

The Climate Fiction Writers League and Thrutopia

You shouldn’t be surprised that The Climate Fiction Writers League, which was founded in 2020 by Wren James and has a Substack by the same name, talks about climate fiction. In December of 2025, I wrote “Climate Fiction, Optimism, and Realism,” that largely focused on an article on Literary Hub, that explored the concepts raised in a just-published anthology called Climate Imagination: Dispatches from Hopeful Futures, and this essay was written by Joey Eschrich, who is the co-editor of the anthology. I liked what I read and set out to read the anthology itself.

The two editors have more recently published an article on Climate Fiction Writers League Substack. The essay is titled “Imagining a Writer’s Toolkit for Hopeful Climate Futures.” I did buy and read the anthology. It is a curious mix of academic essays and short stories. The academic aspect isn’t surprising, considering that both Joey Eschrich and Ed Finn both work at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University; Ed is the center’s founding director and Joey is the managing editor.

Something else that surprised me is that the stories contained therein tended toward worlds not all that recognizable as the present one, including one novelette that was post-Niger fictional civil war that included magical realism elements. On the other hand, the short story “City of Choice,” by Gu Shi, caught my eye because it served a reasonable extrapolation of the use of AI in city planning for dealing with chronic flooding problems, but that story was technologically a bit far afield.

So, what’s my complaint? I’ll refer back to one of the search results listed earlier, Why I Don’t Like Climate Fiction, Substack · Climate Fiction Writers League, by D.A. Baden, which helped spark another recent post of mine, this one titled “Let’s Talk About Climate Optimism and Hope That We Can Write About Doing Something About Climate Change.” There’s another one or two CFWL posts by other writers that I referenced in the post, too, including one on the concept of “Thrutopium” climate fiction titled “Thrutopian Writing – a new genre for a new world,” by Manda Scott, published in May 2024, which starts this way:

Ursula le Guin spun us a challenge, and we’re doing all we can to foment resistance and change: ‘we’ who are writers, podcasters, poets, scriptwriters, bloggers of regenerative farming; those who are engaged in alternative politics, community food projects or land banks; co-housing groups experimenting with sociocracy, co-operative architecture practices, zero-carbon cities, or bio-regional banks experimenting with ideas that could yield a whole new global reserve currency….

My complaint? ‘Thrutopia’ has expanded to cover books that stray far from practical solutions. It seems to count ‘remaking the human species’ as a viable climate strategy—an idea that does little to address the crisis as it manifests in the real world today. I mean, yeah, better humans, better economic models, better moral perspectives can reshape the world but is this really going to happen before the continuing carbon emissions remakes the world, and certainly not for the better?

I believe that reconnecting with nature—whether through indigenous wisdom or simple exposure—is valuable. But frankly, turning down the planet’s thermostat is the more pressing goal. Whether it depicts a utopia or an apocalypse, fiction that ignores the near-term work makes it less likely we will ever reach that happy future—or avoid our worst nightmares.

I was listening to The 7am Novelist and its January 6, 2026 “Roundtable: Can Climate Fiction Move the Needle?” The Substack is by Michelle Hoover, and this particular roundtable had four authors participating. Here’s a bit more background, from the transcript:

…Ash Davidson. She’s the author of Damnation Spring. Wren James, creator of the Climate Conscious Writers Handbook and founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League. Emma Petit [sic], a climate journalist, author of the novel Tilt and the person who coined the term Climate Shadow. Tim Weed, author of The Afterlife Project, a finalist for the Prison Climate Literature Award. And Kate Woodworth, author of Little Great Island and creator of the Grassroots Climate Change Initiative, Be the Butterfly.

At one point, Wren James says:

We don’t really have that collective vision right now of what we want the future to be or what we want governments to spend money on doing, whether that’s free public transport and train lines and all those kinds of things. We kind of have vague ideas that we need to go to green energy.

But the specifics, we don’t know what a city would look like if it was a green city. Sci-fi writers and futuristic writers have the job of creating those stories to create this vision of the future that we then know what we want to push our governments to make.

I beg to disagree. There’s plenty of work being done on greening cities and expanding and improving public transportation and what we want the government to spend money on. There’s been all kinds of tremendous work undertaken, from solar/wind/batteries all the way to cultured meat. The Electrotech Revolution is here. If climate fiction authors don’t know about those efforts, then those efforts don’t get incorporated into their fiction and thus the “promotion of solution-focused narratives” falls short. As people better understand the world of the humanly possible, then their political support is encouraged and made that much more effective. One thing I know is that the right political action taken sooner rather than later makes the future world of reduced global warming consequences the best story.

That’s how climate fiction gets through.

The post Is Climate Hope Fiction Hopeless? first appeared on David Guenette.

I’ve been saying that AI’s projected electricity demand is celebrated by fossil fuel companies because this growth in electricity demand provides an anchor for Big Oil to keep selling natural gas for decades to come.

What me worry?

Sure I worry. A much clearer and devasting understanding about the “carbon budget” mankind faces has recently been recalculated and the general gist is that we have a smaller amount of carbon we can dump into the atmosphere before we push beyond 1.5C.

Or, as AI Summary puts it:

The 2025 Global Carbon Budget reports that the remaining budget to limit global warming to 1.5°C is “virtually exhausted”. Fossil fuel emissions continue to rise, projected to reach a record 38.1 billion tonnes in 2025, driven by, for example, high demand. While emissions from land-use change have declined, total global emissions remain at record highs. 

Key Findings on Recent Carbon Budget Changes 

• • 5°C Budget Exhaustion: Scientists warn that at the current rate of emissions, the budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C could be exhausted in approximately three years, with only about 130 billion tonnes of CO2 left to emit.
  • Rising Emissions (2024-2025): Fossil fuel emissions have continued to grow, with 2024 seeing a 0.8% increase. The 2025 projection is a 1.1% increase in fossil fuel CO2 emissions.
  • Total Emissions Flat: Despite rising fossil fuel emissions, the total CO2 emissions (including land-use changes) for 2025 are projected to remain relatively flat compared to 2024, due to a decrease in emissions from deforestation.
  • Weakened Sinks: The Global Carbon Project (GCP) notes that climate change has weakened natural land and ocean sinks, accounting for 8% of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1960.
  • The “Carbon Clock”: The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research continues to track the rapid shrinking of the remaining carbon budget for both 1.5°C and 2°C, highlighting the urgency of the situation.

The 2025 Global Carbon Budget, often highlighted by sources like Carbon Brief and Euronews, indicates that while some nations are transitioning to cleaner energy, the overall global trajectory is not yet declining fast enough to meet international climate targets. 

Want to worry more? Many scientists are now projecting that we are already on the path to or actually at 1.5C, with higher temperature increases in the average global temperature moving faster than previously considered.

“US leads record global surge in gas-fired power driven by AI demands, with big costs for the climate,” written by Oliver Milman and published in The Guardian on January 29, 2026, puts the issue of overspending our carbon budget squarely on gas generation and the new and planned gas generation planned to address the electricity-hungry AI data centers. The main projected culprit for the voracious spending down of said carbon budget largely rests with the U.S.

The article reports that “Much of this new capacity will be devoted to the vast electricity needs of AI, with a third of the 252 gigawatts of gas power in development set to be situated on site at datacenters.” I wrote about this back in September of last year, in a post titled “New Gas Generator Plants and the Plan to Flood the (Electricity Demand Growth) Zone.” In this post there’s a link to an AI analysis I did in a report called “The Future of U.S. Natural Gas Power Generation: Projections, Accuracy, and the Confluence of Limiting Factors to 2030.” Here’s that report’s Executive Summary:

Executive Summary

1.1 Overview of Projections and Core Findings

An analysis of U.S. energy market trends and projections indicates a notable ambition for future natural gas power generation. A key projection from the firm Enverus suggests the United States is on a trajectory to construct 80 new natural gas power plants by 2030, which would add an estimated 46 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity. This figure is a focal point for assessing the future of the nation’s energy infrastructure. However, a comprehensive review of the current market and regulatory landscape reveals that this aggressive projection is highly speculative. It is a needs-based assessment rather than a realistic forecast of what can be built, as its feasibility is called into question by a complex and multi-faceted set of constraints.

Looks like Big Oil has been busy selling the idea of new gas generation for AI and other growing electricity demand. Forty-six GW has blossomed to 252 GW, although the first number is U.S. back in 2025, and the second number is worldwide in 2026.

You have to admire the ambition of the fossil fuel industry. The amount of additional carbon emissions these new plants will spew is staggering… and staggeringly dangerous. Here’s a quote from The Guardian article:

The gas projects in development in the US will, if all completed, cause 12.1bn tonnes in carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetimes, which is double the current annual emissions coming from all sources in the US. Worldwide, the planned gas boom will cause 53.2bn tonnes of emissions over projects’ lifetimes if fulfilled, pushing the planet towards even worse heatwaves, droughts, floods and other climate impacts.

Of course, as I discovered in my analysis, the desire to build new gas plants is tempered by ability, especially in terms of supply chains, where turbines from the two main manufacturers of gas generators—GE Vernova and Siemens Energy—are mightily backlogged. Building out manufacturing capacity for such complex machines is no fast undertaking. Unfortunately, a recent development has entered the market, as described in the AI Summary of the search prompt “Using jet turbines for new gas generator plants and capacity”:

Using jet turbines, specifically “aeroderivative” gas turbines derived from aircraft engines, has emerged as a critical, fast-deployable solution for new, high-demand gas generator plants, particularly for data centers and AI-driven power needs. Companies like ProEnergy are retrofitting used military and commercial jet engines (e.g., GE CF6-80C2) into 48-megawatt power generators to provide rapid, “behind-the-meter” electricity. 

This approach addresses severe bottlenecks in securing new, large-scale utility turbines, which often face 3- to 7-year wait times. 

There’s a lot more to find with this prompt, but nothing to keep you calm if you worry about carbon emissions.

Here’s what it all means: All efforts to restrict and reduce carbon emissions will be more than offset by all these goddam new gas generators if they come to be. Offset and then some.

A Brief Interruption About My AI Overlords

I use AI as an effective productivity tool. My purview for climate change is a wide one. I write climate fiction that seeks to be based on realistic and accurate information about the causes and consequences of climate change, which means I’ve been hard at work understanding the science (enough to tell the difference between truth and bullshit). I give talks about climate change, and I have little interest in providing information that is wrong, so I make an ongoing effort to get things right and up to date. I find myself researching climate policy, political realities, and economic benefits of the clean energy transition. I’m active within the climate fiction world, reading widely in the genre and critiquing the various approaches to it. I’ve been at all of this for many years.

The world of climate change is extremely wide and multi-faceted. Keeping up on the latest findings of science and technology and policy proposals and economic and political realities is gained by triangulated a diverse and wide range of information resources. I’ve found that AI can be useful as a research agent, where, in response to a thoughtful prompt, AI ranges far and wide across the Web to collect and then collate and then analyze the relevant sources and then synthesize these findings into well-produced reports.

I have high confidence in these reports, and I haven’t found hallucinations to be a problem, but that’s because I know the subject well enough and broadly enough to cast a critical eye on sources and am able to review AI’s findings. What I can’t so easily do—although, of course, I’ve done this all too often and with all too much effort—is to search the Web high and low for the information, explanation, and opinion I seek.

For me, AI is a useful tool. It is not my buddy, nor do I spend much time generating funny images. For me, AI’s current capabilities are impressive.

This is not to say that the present hysteria about AI—the very hysteria that supports Big Oil’s play to flood the world with greenhouse gas-generating electricity—is sensible. My take is that there is wild financing being accumulated mainly in the hope of the debt accumulators being first to market. I believe that AI’s market will actually take a long time to develop as a deeply useful and pervasive embedded tool—evolving human culture is still a slow undertaking. I believe that there’s likely to be something on the order of a crash or bubble because of the disconnect between all that money and all that non-market.

I also believe that the rush for adding huge amounts of electricity generation is hysterical, albeit not in a funny way. I believe that whatever additional capacity may be required can be more cost-effective and more quickly produced with clean energy and by bringing digital management to the grids that already contain huge amounts of spare capacity that currently cannot be managed well.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Big Oil is the Enemy

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the fossil fuel industry doesn’t care about carbon emissions. If Big Oil did care, Big Oil would have a lot to care about.

There’s no rational explanation for the fossil fuel industry not knowing that carbon emissions must come down, not go up. Denial doesn’t cut it, not with the now long-held and clear scientific consensus on global warming and all the resulting data collection. Denial doesn’t cut it, not with the growing evidence in the form of extreme weather and not with the majority of individuals’ personal experiences. It is as if a competent adult would argue that he didn’t know that someone could be killed if he pointed a loaded gun at that person and pulled the trigger. The “Go figure” argument is as absurd for Big Oil as it is for our proverbial idiot.

Speaking of idiots, in America, Trump is the gaslighter-in-chief in regard to climate and the contributory role of fossil fuels, just as he is on so many other topics, including, of late, the ridiculous and entirely and patently demonstrable falsehoods around the ICE/CBP killings and related inciting behaviors. That’s why the connection between fighting for the American democracy and the climate fight are one in the same. The old order of Big Oil, along with a rogue’s collection of other “Bigs,” has placed its bet on a rising fascist state, damn the consequences.

I’m placing a different bet.

The post AI is Giving Me Gas first appeared on David Guenette.

When it comes to Trump, it’s definitely a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that Trump—and all the top political appointees riding along with him in the clown car—are ignorant, stupid, and incompetent. The bad news? Trump and his gang of kleptocrats, would-be fascists, and white nationalists hold enormous power, and all seem happy enough to ignore the Constitution.

So, yeah, bad news.

“Trump taking ‘drill, baby, drill’ plan to Venezuela ‘terrible’ for climate, experts warn,” says The Guardian’s Dharna Noor and Oliver Milman, on January 6, 2026, running the sub-title “‘Everybody loses’ if production supercharged in country with largest known oil reserves, critics say.” The article begins:

Donald Trump, by dramatically seizing Nicolás Maduro and claiming dominion over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, has taken his “drill, baby, drill” mantra global. Achieving the president’s dream of supercharging the country’s oil production would be financially challenging – and if fulfilled, would be “terrible for the climate”, experts say.

In his eagerness to serve his oligarchical masters, Trump has delivered much of what Big Oil dreams of and the latest oil-slick dream is Venezuela. But even here, Big Oil may be less pleased about this imperial gift, with talk flying about regarding risks and costs that give the fossil fuel titans pause, just like we’ve been seeing in Big Oil’s reactions to much of the expanded lease offers, including the long-marveled Alaskan options.

“Nobody knows exactly how much it will cost to rebuild Venezuela’s broken-down oilfields, but everyone agrees it’s a lot—and there’s no guarantee that U.S. companies will be chomping at the bit,” writes Ben Geman in January 6, 2026’s Axios Future of Energy, in an article titled “Sizing up the cost of Trump’s Venezuelan vision.”

It all might make you wonder about there being a conspiracy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, There is a Conspiracy

Let me start by saying “Thank god for Emily Atkin.” It’s not just her, of course. There is a growing number of climate writers willing to call a spade a spade, and this particular spade is that Big Oil is a monster that is willing to devour the world for a few dollars more. There’s more about her and others and what they’re saying below, but it’s important to define just what kind of mind-fuckery we all being exposed to these days.

According to Wikipedia, “In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly or subconsciously hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions.” In When Prophecy Fails (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world.

No one likes cognitive dissonance.

For example, you may hold true to the belief that America is an exceptional country because of its dream of democracy, where people’s rights are protected and made equal under law, all drawn from the Constitution. Sure, we’re aware that we fall short, and that racism, sexism, and selfishness that unfairly puts ourselves ahead of others are wrong, but we know, too, that the project that is America is always striving for perfection, even if we’ll never quite arrive.

But for citizens of the United States today, in this era of Trump and his wholesale ignoring of the Constitution, we’re all confronted by situations that create dissonance. There are several ways to reduce this dissonance, whether by changing a belief (e.g., MAGA), by explaining something away (e.g. Republicans in Congress), or by taking actions that reduce the perceived inconsistency. The only way America survives the ongoing attempt to impose fascism is to double down on the American dream and act to reject the great inconsistency that is Trump.

One important action for progress is to name things for what they are. In the climate action world, this has been a hard lesson to learn. Yes, we can reference science and point to negative consequences of ever-growing greenhouse gas emission. We sign petitions, donate to climate groups, change our own carbon behavior, and try to electrify everything we can, including voting for politicians who hold similar values. But too many of us, to admit there are concerted forces that have effectively arranged themselves against addressing climate change, we fear being handed a tin foil hat.

We’re too timid, too polite, to point out the monsters in the room.

As I write The Steep Climes Quartet, I sometimes doubt my portrayal of Big Oil. There are operatives clandestinely working for fossil fuel-supported think tanks, machinations and trickery in legislative work, dark money spent lavishly, and lies and deceptions that are cynically pressed into service to keep profits up for Big Oil as well as to protect their assets.

I’ve spent far too many hours online checking the track record of Big Oil and how big a choice is, say, murder for corporations and businesses. I’ve read a lot about dark money and am a fanboy of Senator Whitehouse and his speeches about the money/Big Oil interests capturing the Supreme Court, and there is Dark Money, by Jane Meyer and other such investigations. I’ve written posts like “Writing Villains on Both Sides in Climate Fiction” and “Murder, Oil, and Blood Money: Is the climate fiction plot line of fossil fuel interests murdering someone far-fetched?”  I follow court cases against Big Oil, both because this is an important topic in and of itself, but also because over the course of the four books of The Steep Climes Quartet, court cases become a bigger and bigger part of the story of constraining the power of Big Oil, and to the point, by the last book (which takes place in 2047), there are a number of International Criminal Court cases that have been decided and there are executives of fossil fuel corporations serving time.

Over the years it has become increasingly clear to me that Big Oil acts criminally. One of my more recent posts is “How Do I (Big Oil) Love Thee (Big Oil)? Let Me Count the Money, Despite the Costs.” I’ve looked at related issues in other posts, including “Putting the Bite of Law on Fossil Fuel Corruption,”  “Democracy, Climate Action, Climate Fiction… and Criminality,” and “Big Oil in the Dock: Can Suing Fossil Fuel Corporations Answer Climate Change?”

By the way, Big Oil has a long and bitter history of malfeasance, in case I wasn’t being clear.

So, back to Emily Atkin, and her January 7 Substack, “It’s time to embrace climate conspiracy: Trump’s Venezuela oil play exposes what climate reporting has documented for decades—if we’re willing to say it out loud.” Here’s how this begins:

I hate conspiracy theories. I always have. As a journalist, they’re usually the thing I’m pushing back against.

And yet, for a few years now, I’ve found myself saying something slightly heretical on panels and in conversations with other reporters: we need to start engaging in more overtly conspiratorial language. Because the actual story of climate change—the one we’ve reported exhaustively—is one about coordinated power, deliberate deception, and a bought-off government that repeatedly acts to promote an industry that is poisoning humans and the environment for profit. It just so happens to be a real conspiracy.

Her post is well worth the read—beautifully written, well documented, and on target. And, hey, Andy Revkin re-posted this one, so there you go.

ExxonKnews, a Substack by Emily Sanders, posted “On Venezuela and ‘the greatest lie the oil industry ever told us’,” on January 9, 2026, running the deck “Author and investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz, an expert in wars fought over oil, weighs in on U.S. oil companies’ efforts to distance themselves from Trump’s raid in Venezuela’.” ExxonKnews describes itself this way: “ExxonKnews shines a light on the fossil fuel industry’s role in driving the climate crisis — and the growing movement for accountability.” This Substack is a top-notch resource for the Big Oil-criminal curious.

Speaking of top notch, One Earth Now, a website by Dana Drugmand, also covers a lot of what ExxonKnews covers, but One Earth Now has a broader purview. She also puts out another website called Climate in the Courts, which describes itself this way:

The unfolding climate emergency is the biggest story on the planet, affecting all dimensions of our society from human health to national security to business and financial markets. One important aspect to this story is the fight for justice and accountability being waged in the courts. Through law and litigation, efforts are underway to hold powerful actors – typically governments and corporations – accountable for actions contributing to climate change and for harms resulting from it. Climate accountability litigation is a burgeoning battleground in the larger fight for a healthier, more sustainable and just planet, and courts are the arena where these battles are playing out. 

On January 8, 2026, Drugmand posted “The Unraveling: U.S. Attacks Venezuela and Turns Its Back on the World: The international legal system is collapsing, experts warn, and so too is the climate system.”

Here’s how this post starts:

Where do we go from here? Honestly my head is spinning with the news cycle developments over the last few days – from President Trump’s illegal military intervention in Venezuela and kidnapping of its president and his claims that his administration will be “running” the Latin American country, to Trump and his energy secretary’s brazen assertions that the U.S. and its big oil companies will be taking control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and selling this oil “indefinitely,” to Trump’s latest directive withdrawing the U.S. from dozens (66 in total) of international organizations, treaties and conventions, many of which we had been part of for decades like the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Worst Case: A Broken Dream… and Planet

You don’t have to read all that widely anymore to get the clear picture that Big Oil is neck-deep in the move toward American oligarchy or, for that matter, that they’d be just fine with fascism here in the U.S.A.

This is another sin to be added to Big Oil’s metaphysical ledger. Not only does the fossil fuel industry have a history of lying and pushing back against what it has long known about the climate change consequences of its products, but the American fossil fuel corporations open to Trump’s entreaties relative to Venezuela really should be telling him that he’s acted illegally and that they will have nothing to do with him. But that’s not expected, since they went through all that trouble buying him already.

The news reports that today CEOs from Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Continental, Halliburton, HKN, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Trafigura, Vitol Americas, Repsol, Eni, Aspect Holdings, Tallgrass, Raisa Energy, and Hilcorp will be at the White House for the meeting with Trump, President Big Oil Stooge himself, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The topic is about “investment opportunities that will restore Venezuelan oil infrastructure,” according to White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers.

Let’s get this straight: American oil companies are in conversation with a president who is acting post-constitutionally—that is, illegally—when it comes to Venezuela, which is the topic on the table. And then, of course, this administration is acting illegally in many other ways, too, including violating the Emolument Clause, rejecting and ignoring court orders, turning a blind eye to the Impoundment Act, considering the Hatch Act irrelevant, weaponizing the Department of Justice and other agencies for partisan aims, and so much more, like dispatching ICE and CBP as an astonishingly well-funded secret police to terrorize large parts of the nation.

Do these sound like corporations that value American democracy? But shareholders before country and liberty and rule of law, I guess. Of course, what more might we expect from companies that knowingly continue to poison the world and expand their businesses even while playing dirty with clean energy that outcompetes fossil fuels in speed and cost of deployment and with lower cost for electricity customers.

Or as Dana Drugmand concludes in her post mentioned earlier:

That may not matter much to a president that seems intent on disregarding norms and the law, both domestic and international. But it should matter to the rest of us who care about trying to preserve the rule of law and some semblance of a habitable planet – a planet that our children and future generations are inheriting and that is rapidly becoming less safe and less stable.

The fight for a better climate future, at least here in America, is now the fight for democracy. At least in a democracy, there’s some chance of laws being written and applied toward cleaner energy and lower damages.

Here’s the last word, from Emily Atkin’s HEATED:

So no, you don’t need to worry about chemtrails. You need to worry about who controls energy—and what they’re willing to do to keep it that way.

Let’s conspire to kick these S.O.B.s out, and let’s aim at prison cells for their landing pads.

The post American Oil Marches On first appeared on David Guenette.

 This post is about “Extinctions and Optimism: What a recent study says and doesn’t say about extinctions,” by Jason Anthony. I’ll admit that I was concerned this Substack post of his would be another apology for cautious thinking about what we should do today.

But really, this is a delightful post. Anthony is looking at geological timeframes and presents, early in, a graph of “Big Five Mass Extinctions in Earth’s History,” which he got from Our World in Data. I love me a good graph and this one is a terrifically rich infographic that shows the five mass extinctions throughout geological history, but it also presents spikes of 16 lesser extinction events. Now there’s a phrase I’d never imagined writing: “lesser extinction events.”

By the way, I came across this post through Andy Revkin’s cross-posting on Sustain What. A tip of the cap, sir.

Later in the post Anthony reports that species extinctions have been declining for the last hundred years, contradicting the typical cry about vast biodiversity losses. He quotes Peter Brannen’s book, The Ends of the World. Here’s an interesting Brennen quote:

Though we’ve proven to be a destructive species, we have not produced anything even close to the levels of wanton destruction and carnage seen in previous planetary cataclysms.

Of course, considering that one such “planetary cataclysm“ was the super high speed collision of Earth with a really large asteroid, I’m not sure there’s much comfort to be taken in Brannen’s quote.

Anthony goes on to examine the geological record and argues that “the common wisdom about biodiversity in the Anthropocene is that it is in steep decline and that the losses are piling up.” He suggests that we’re possibly past “peak extinction,” but he also argues that past extinctions turn out not to be good predictors of future extinctions. If I understand this right, that’s because we’re talking about complex Earth systems of different sorts and characteristics. It turns out that one mass extinction is not like any other. Makes sense.

Anthony also writes: “A warming climate over the last two centuries was found, surprisingly, not to have increased extinctions. Not yet, anyway.”

“Not yet, anyway.” Sobering words.

While we can’t extrapolate from the earlier extinctions to understand the threats to biodiversity now, we do know that the disruption of the carbon cycle is a constant factor in mass extinctions. Global warming is disrupting the carbon cycle in our time, and that’s troubling. He writes:

Homo sapiens are a recent Pleistocene/Holocene blip in terms of our time on Earth, but in a geological nanosecond our population and culture have metasticized into something like a CO2-spewing supervolcano. Looked at another way, the impacts of our species have not arrived as quickly as those from the End-Cretaceous Manhattan-sized asteroid, but they’re certainly occurring faster than the millennia of volcanic purges that led to other mass extinctions. We’re neither asteroid nor supervolcano, of course, but we are consciously exhibiting symptoms of both.

And that, friends, is a clear statement about dangers from runaway carbon emissions, a.k.a., climate change. Apparently, those people who may feel offense in Anthony’s counter-intuitive report that biodiversity is doing okay at present really only have to wait a while longer to be proved right, unfortunately.

Anthony’s post is an interesting mixture of hope—we’re protecting biodiversity to the point where extinctions have been slowing—and distress—the oceans are turning acidic, major ocean systems like AMOC are slowing down, oxygen is being reduced under the waves. “The extinction rate is not what we thought it was, but the future remains unclear.” Indeed.

He ends with some grounds for aspiration, meditating on an old fossil he describes as his talisman; “…we live in relationship with deep time, and that even in our mayfly-like little lives, we get to decide what that relationship will be.”

Part of this relationship with today has to be the rejection of fossil fuel corporations as anything other than an enemy to our future and as a threat continuing to mess with the Earth’s carbon cycle in negative ways. Just because specie extinctions aren’t as bad as they could be today doesn’t mean we’re unlikely to avoid all sorts of ecological collapses if we don’t get greenhouse gas emissions moving toward net zero. But don’t look to me for that answer. Look at geological history.

And then get to work on the clean energy transition.

Here’s a nifty infographic Anthony includes in his recent Substack post. I love a good infographic.

The post Extinctions are Interesting in Relation to Climate Change first appeared on David Guenette.

Andy Rivkin writes Sustain What on Substack, and a post of his has been languishing in my starred email folder since the summer, my wanting to comment on the post titled “Human Progress versus Climate Evangelism.” Except that this post isn’t Rivkin’s but rather a “cross post” in the nomenclature of Substack, since the actual author is Roger Pielke Jr. on his own Substack called The Honest Broker.

Rivkin writes (and includes a bit of Pielke’s quotes, so here, basically, is a quote quoting someone else):

Hi all, I want to be sure you catch Roger Pielke Jr.’s exploration of 2025 worldwide stats for human peril when the climate system throws its worst at us. As he writes:

[A]t no point in human history have humans had less risk of death related to extreme weather and climate. Understanding why that is so is central to keeping that trend moving forward into the future.
Smart energy and climate policies, as I’ve long argued, make good sense. Climate evangelism centered on scaring people about the weather does not make sense — in politics, policy, or science.”

Even after 38 years of reporting on human-driven global warming, I concur.

The above quote that quotes another is not my taking joy in being meta. The cross-posted “The Last Gasp of the Climate Thought Police,” runs the subtitle “Climate cancelling had a good run — but my Cornell lecture showed its finally over.”

I may have been triggered because Pielke’s argument carries similarities to Bill Gates’ recent sermon on climate change that’s caused quite a tizzy down Belem way. (I posted on the Gates’ dictum recently on Substact, “Bill Gates–the long and the sort of it,” and in fuller detail on my website, in a post titled “The Headlines are Full of Bill Gates’ Latest Wisdom—It’s Hysterical!” I couldn’t resist diving into this recent brouhaha.

Apparently I can’t resist critiquing the Pielke post, either.

Before I proceed to scold Rivkin and Pielke, let me acknowledge that both writers have contributed mightily to the climate debate. Rivkin was among the first to cover climate change and spent a long time at The New York Times doing so, and he continues to do so these days with Sustain What, alongside the occasional playing on songs. Aside from the songs (hey, taste being quite variable among us humans), I’ve gotten a lot from Rivkin. I have noticed that he’s been beating a similar drum to Pielke for a while, and that drum is a running critique of the hysteria and mis-thinking that plagues some climate change writers and activists. I acknowledge that this aspect of the climate movement can be irritating, but this is a far smaller problem than that of climate change, I’m pretty sure.

Pielke’s main beat is about what we don’t know about climate change, and he isn’t a climate denier, but rather is focused on the practice of good science and scientific processes and, no surprise, he’s found plenty of fault in the world of climate change science, to which I’m tempted to say, “Duh.” Science, like every other human endeavor (with the possible exception to my making clams and linguini) is bound to faults and failures. Prejudices reign, whether intentionally or unconsciously, and errors get made, both in measurement and in the interpretation of what the measurement may mean. The undercurrent for both Rivkin and Pielke is that some climate folk exaggerate, and even some climate scientists, and, gosh, doesn’t that hurt the debate on how to progress with positive climate action? Sure, probably, but according to Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the 89 Percent Project, most people already have an understanding that progress on climate change is desired, some incorrect climate data interpretation not withstanding.

So why all this attention pointed at finding fault here and there in the work of some climate scientists and journalists? Beats me. It feels like a blood sport of some sort. Maybe Pielke hasn’t really left academia. A recent public battle of the “Red Team” experts critiquing Trump’s DOE Climate Report–some 85 climate experts, with Andrew Dressler of The Climate Brink one of the more noticeable public faces–had Pielke on the attack. Maybe he has some valid points, but boy did his attack on the attack against Trump’s DOE report bring joy to the anti-climate progress gang. And for what? It seems as much or more a matter of intra-department struggling over gets to teach the Whit Waltman seminar next semester. Now boys, play nice. We don’t want fighting while there’s a climate crisis, right?

A larger battle for Pielke is the climate attribution arena. I understand his frustration that too many journalists present connections to climate change causation for any specific extreme weather event, and this is beyond today’s science. Not because there is no causation, but because we can’t confidently prove it yet. This can be extremely important policy-wise and in the courts. It also makes the work of climate reporting simpler and headlines easier to think up. But really, how much does this matter for most of us?

Just because climate change attribution science can’t confidently prove a confident link to any one extreme weather event as yet doesn’t nix-nay the understanding that of course there’s a relation between climbing temperatures and the force and frequency of extreme weather. Sure, we’ve had fierce hurricanes in the past, and unusual floods, hot spells, and droughts, and any one of those may or may not be anything more than a tough bit of luck for those people and places devastated by the event, but there’s science and there’s practical sense, and the combination of the two—the understanding of basic principles such as warmer air holds more moisture and that temperature of the Earth is rising, along with a bit of common sense—convincingly argues that we should do something about treating the ongoing rise in greenhouse gases.

I know that neither Rivkin or Pielke dismiss climate change, but I can’t see the value of pointing out publicly on the front pages (instead of in technical journals and working groups of the IPCC) some pretty arcane scientific arguments that are happily hoovered up by any and all sides seeking any rhetorical advantage.  It is like talking to the morons out there running around telling everyone that the sky is falling today. The sky—to murder this metaphor—is falling at some point, and pieces of the sky have already tumbled down, but, sure, the end of life on the planet isn’t part of this precipitation any time soon. But do you know what is soon? Soon, like twenty years ago already? The need to take action to stop the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, as in this is already a big fucking deal and there’s little point in dilly-dallying. I’m sure Rivkin and Pielke and Gates agree that the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, but the next best time is now. So why, for goodness sake, undermine the urgency of climate change, however much that may not be the intention?

For Pielke, the title, “The Last Gasp of the Climate Thought Police,” shows his pique. Sure, nobody like thought police, but if there are “climate thought police,” how much does this matter? If you’re involved in academia—as Pielke has been until sometime in 2024, thought police are a professional hazard and something of a blood sport. You might not like it, but you can always just ignore it, as my mother used to say.

According to a quick Google AI search return, “Roger Pielke Jr. has transitioned from his long-term college teaching position at the University of Colorado Boulder to a new role as a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute [emphasis mine]. While at CU Boulder, he was a professor in the Environmental Studies Program, where he taught about science, innovation, and policy, and directed the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research.”

The plot thickens. You’ve likely heard about the American Enterprise Institute, but another quick look at Google AI has this to say about AEI:

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has received funding from fossil fuel corporations such as ExxonMobil and from foundations associated with the owners of fossil fuel conglomerates, such as the Charles Koch Foundation. 

Specific affiliations and support elements include:

• • ExxonMobil: Over the years, ExxonMobil has contributed significantly to AEI, with reports indicating contributions exceeding $4 million.
  • Koch-Affiliated Foundations: Foundations linked to the Koch brothers, involved in the petroleum industry through Koch Industries, have been major donors to AEI. Since 1997, contributions from these foundations have totaled over $2 million.
  • Other Fossil Fuel-Supported Think Tanks and Funding Sources: AEI has also received substantial funding from other conservative foundations that support organizations known for challenging climate science. These include Donors Trust & Donors Capital Fund, the Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust. 

AEI describes itself as an independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) educational organization that relies on private donations and does not take institutional stances on issues. However, its financial connections to the fossil fuel industry have drawn scrutiny, particularly given its past work that has been characterized as questioning climate science. 

At least some of the problems the climate movement has with AEI darkens Pielke’s critique of some climate science. To my English Major’s mind, Pielke raises good points about scientific practice and he calls out—justifiably or not— examples of what he describes as sloppy science about climate change. The problem is that Pielke’s critiques are enthusiastically pointed to by interests that wish climate change to be ignored or under-attended, and Pielke has become something of a go-to guy for those who wish to counter climate change action. After all, this looks good: he’s a scientist, or sounds like one, anyway, although he is actually a political scientist. By the way, I don’t think that should be a strike against him, and in fact, some of my favorite ex-in-laws are political scientists I greatly admire.

But his recent Substact’s first several paragraphs start with his complaining about the pushback he got from his recent talk at Cornell University, and specifically the Cornell Atkinson Institute for Sustainability. Apparently a Cornell professor who is a “well-known climate activist,” according to Pielke, wanted the director of the Cornell institute fired for inviting him, and he mentions some social media digs from others, including a NASA scientist and the “ever-present “Michael E. Mann” and some supposedly hysterical guy from Hong Kong. It looks like he’s left academia but academia hasn’t left him.

Yeah, I get it. Nobody likes Negative Nancies. Unfortunately, Pielke only links to his Cornell talk in his Substack and doesn’t reprise it or even summarize a thesis or two he suspects may have upset some academics. The talk was titled “What Climate Science Says About Extreme Weather” and I’ve read Pielke on this specific topic a number of times. I’ve sometimes referenced him in talks and posts on the problems of climate change attribution to specific extreme weather events. I understand that the science for this sort of specific and exact attribution is not established. I get it that there is a long history of extreme weather events that long pre-date climate change or fossil fuels.

Big deal, I say. No kidding, I say. The issue of attribution is a second-order issue. What is well-established is that the increase in greenhouse gases within our atmosphere from man’s two-century long use of fossil fuels is affecting the weather and the climate, and climate change and its predictable negative consequences is a clear first-order issue. Considering the effect of climate change already experienced and sensibly forecast to worsen as greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb and considering the long period of time that CO2 persists in the atmosphere, maybe one should be extra careful to point out that one’s critiques of how science is sometimes being applied to climate change is VERY MUCH NOT dismissing climate change. Unfortunately, there’s not one line to this effect in Pielke’s post.

Keep in mind that Pielke’s Substack carries over a quarter-million subscribers, and as Peter Parker says, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

There’s anger, vindictiveness, and (fortunately) some humor in Pielke’s post, but the danger of “climate thought police” is definitely a First-World Problem, and a second-order one at that.

By the way, I’m sure that when it comes to climate change, the American Enterprise Institute has been a Negative Nancy about climate change far longer than the other side’s “climate thought police,” but there you go. What’s that expression? “You lay down with the dogs, you rise with the fleas.”?

Let’s keep scratching away at building the clean energy transition and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. We’ll all have time for our favorite hobby horses later.

The post Let’s Not Worry So Much About “Climate Thought Police” first appeared on David Guenette.

I admire Climate Defiance and believe that in this age of corporate media and the algorithmic manipulation of what gets in front of those pursuing the news, actions such as those of Climate Defiance make sense. Any action that lays bare the stark moral issue central to the energy transition—which is that anything other than a full out effort to replace fossil fuels as quickly as possible is wrong—and public shame is an underused tool when it comes to countering the atrocious behaviors of business and political leaders of today.

You can make the argument that Climate Defiance act like hooligans, but if so, they are holy hooligans in service to bringing moral clarity to violations of fundamental rights, such as the right to a decent biosphere. There are other fully fraught issues, too, and it is no surprise that the genocide in Palestine has entered into the scope of Climate Defiance. The Israeli government’s wanton destruction of civilians and the property and services upon which such people depend for survival is so absurdly disproportional to the horrific Hamas attacks and, admittedly, Hamas’ own absurd and insane hatred.

Even climate activists too often fail to see the crimes of the fossil fuel industry. Here’s a brief and extremely incomplete list:

1. Buying the favor of the Office of the President;
2. Buying the compliance of Republicans and far too many Democrats alike;
3. Lying about the industry’s knowledge of global warming, and lying from all the way to long ago, even while an outcome of climate denialism and delayism presents an existential threat to human civilization;
4. Pushing to grow the fossil fuel industry even in the face of the scientific consensus that exists about the dangers of climate change caused by man’s use of fossil fuels;
5. Pushing to grow the fossil fuel industry even in the face of economically competitive clean energy options.

These days the playbook of the fossil fuel industry is amplifying panic about electrical demand load growth because of data centers and AI, and, no surprise, allowing only that building more natural gas plants can keep the lights on. If there is demand growth, solar and wind and batteries and digitally intelligent grids for VPP and DER and demand response management are the fastest, cheapest, and less climate damaging solutions now available. We know how to do it, we’ve done it, and we can do much more of it.

There are pundits who suggest that climate change is a poor electoral issue, while economic issues such as affordability are the right ones. They’re right, kind of, but where these pundits go wrong is not seeing that the clean energy transition and affordability are the same thing in any and every practical perspective.

You want more expensive electricity? Use fossil fuels for power generation and while you’re at it, built a whole lot more fossil fuel use that gets baked in through the 2050s and beyond. Not that utilities can actually build that many gas plants, at least through 2030, despite the panic of insufficient generation spread by these self-centered, profit-focused ass—es. Check out “New Gas Generator Plants and the Plan to Flood the Electricity Demand Growth Zone.”

Guess what? I’m not someone who demands that no further drops of oil be pulled out of wells or that natural gas not sigh another cubic foot or, even, that any and all coal electricity production stop today. Clearly, a clean energy transition is a big and complex process that will take some years to complete. The real issue is how fast we can build out this transition. The idea of shutting the fossil fuel spigot too soon is catastrophic. But Big Oil—here in the States, anyway—has paid up to have clean energy buildout policies kneecapped so that Big Oil can keep exploring, extracting, and selling well beyond any reasonable climate threat sell by date.

That’s shameful.

I’m not suggesting there are only simple answers, but here’s a question I’d love to see explored in more detail, and which I’ve put to AI Deep Research:

Is there adequate fossil fuel production to support the economy and the build out the clean energy transition through 2040 (mine materials, manufacture solar, wind, and battery storage, install solar, wind, and battery storage, expand the capacity as needed for the electric grid, and make and install the hardware and software for VPP and DER and demand response grid capability) without extensive new fossil fuel exploration, well development, and other related infrastructure? Answer this focused on the United States and again worldwide.

Looking at the results of this query it seems like if we—the entire world in this case—weren’t kneecapping the clean energy transition, we could see a significant drop in fossil fuel demand:

IEA Net Zero Emissions (NZE) Scenario: This pathway describes a scenario consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C. It is predicated on unprecedented policy intervention and swift technological deployment. In the NZE, demand destruction is the defining feature: oil demand is projected to fall steeply from around 100 MMBbl/d in 2022 to 77 MMBbl/d by 2030, and natural gas demand drops from 4,150 billion cubic meters (bcm) to 3,400 bcm over the same period. The central strategic finding of this scenario, reaffirmed by the IEA, is that no new oil and gas fields are approved for development, and no new coal mines or extensions are required beyond projects already committed as of 2021. This scenario achieves sufficiency because policy-driven decline fundamentally outpaces the natural geological decline of existing assets. 

Of course, there are other scenarios that are far more pessimistic about dropping fossil fuel demand and the reality of Trump World today makes those scenarios more likely.

I guess Big Oil got what it paid for.

That’s shameful.

I’ll be posting my view on the 15-page report mentioned above, along with the report itself in a few days. This isn’t light reading,  after all.

I’m also sending in my donation to Climate Defiance. If this the least I can do, I’m sharing in the shame.

The post Climate Defiance first appeared on David Guenette.

The headlines are full of Bill Gates touting some version of “Bill Gates Doesn’t Think Climate Change is Important.”

It is hysterical. The general reaction mainly proves that too many reporters either can’t read or are too busy writing to read.

In his recent “Three tough truths about climate,” published on October 28, 2025, and sub-titled “What I want everyone at COP 30 to know,” Uncle Bill sternly reproaches the world. This sermon appeared in GatesNotes. I guess he has an in there.

I suspect that Bill Gates, with all his money, probably doesn’t worry about what he pays for services. But with the publication of “Three tough truths about climate: What I want everyone at COP30 to know,” he should ask for his money back. At minimum, I’d suggest a title change. Maybe something along the lines of, “Like, Duh.”

Most news articles and opinion pieces about Gates’ recent pronouncements have rankled me. Me being rankled is no big thing, but there may be an important point being raised beyond simply how to annoy me. Of course, one sure-fire way is to state that Gates has declared that the climate change thingy is over, which is definitely not what he is saying. What he is saying is that the challenge of climate change is very important, but we might want to reframe this within the context of other pressing needs like severe poverty and threats to human health.

Like, duh.

Unfortunately, he’s missed a few studs in his reframing.

Climate Change Work is Poverty and Health Work

Of course, climate change has always contained human health and poverty issues within itself, and Gates’ pronouncements are oddly timed considering that renewables have emerged as the least expensive, faster, and most easily deployed widescale energy generation. Faster, cheaper, and wider isn’t the only strong argument, though. With renewables “build-once, generate always” systems don’t require constant re-fueling and the infrastructure for constant re-fueling demands. Renewables is the prime “give once, bless forever” counter to poverty. If you can get to a location by the sort of trucking that general contractors typical own or rent, with construction equipment general contractors use regularly, solar and batteries systems can be installed, and I’m talking anywhere there’s a road, but there’s dirigibles too, and boats and helicopters. Bringing power to people oppressed by poverty and illness has become a realistic option and a world-wide option at that.

I’m sure Bill Gates understands the connection between energy access and productivity and health, so doubling down on the spread of renewables seems like a large part of the answer to the other needs he’s identified. I’m not saying that there are no other mechanisms to address poverty and health across the world. I’m saying that getting energy into those areas that lack widely and equitably available energy—yes, a still shockingly high number—is a foundational element toward Uncle Bill’s non-climate change solutions. Sending in the gas tankers sure ain’t the solution, not unless the problem you are trying to solve is how to keep petrostates in power.

Of course, there are direct connections between renewable energy, climate change, and today’s and tomorrow’s climate threats that make poverty and illness that much more likely. Sure, wealthy countries have the means to more effectively adapt to the consequences of global warming, but for developing countries effective adaptation is weaker, and by far. The reason to keep climate change the priority is that it is a preventative, just like the variety of Gates’ global health initiatives: we can work toward a climate that kills and sickens fewer people in vulnerable parts of the world if we keep the rise in average global temperature more in check.

The fact is that climate change is a problem set of a different order than humans have faced, despite Uncle Bill’s efforts to reduce climate anxiety. If we don’t draw down greenhouse gas emissions, mankind is f—ed in a way our species hasn’t previously been f—ed, and by all current markers—including the fossil fuel industry’s in-place plans for long-term LNG expansion and their other well-funded wish list—we’ve already slipped beyond 1.5 C. Uncle Bill may be right when he points out that 2-point-something C sometime by 2100 is well within adaptation means for those from wealthy countries. He may call for that wealth to be shared equitably and therefore expand our capacity to adequately adapt to climate change more widely. But there is the very real danger that GHG is a runaway train, considering our slow pace to date in reducing these emissions and in the effort to quickly and widely transition to clean energy. We are already threatening planetary boundaries. There are tipping points that demand serious concern. The human world is under threat.

Yeah, not extinction level threats for us monkey boys, sure, but the potential for cataclysmic collapse of our vulnerably complex societies, that is already too real, and if not by 2100 but instead more likely later is not a comfort, no matter how many fusion reactors eventually get built. We don’t need magic solutions sometime in the future. We have the material understanding today to reverse GHG emissions and this understanding has become common knowledge. Just like the proverbial instruction for escaping from a hole in the ground, which is to first stop digging, we have to stop dumping GHG into our air. We already have the capacity to transition from fossil fuels for much of our energy needs, and the economic promise therein can be widely and fairly distributed.

Oh, Bill

It’s ironic that Gates’ arguments for focusing on alleviating human suffering rather than on the energy transition should arrive at the point of pushing nuclear and fusion down the road. It makes you suspect that he’s got some interest in data enters and AI.

He (or whoever was hired) writes:

In short, climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause. And we should use data to maximize the impact of every action we take.

To the first sentence above I reply, “So stipulated.” Yes, climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems.

To the second sentence above I reply, Wow! How does one exactly determine the “in proportion to the suffering” clause? Is this at any given moment, or can we consider the effects of actions today to suffering in the years ahead? If the politically minded take up the misinterpreted meaning of this recent Gates missive and deemphasize climate change, won’t suffering in the future climb as we miss 1.5 C and race to 2.0 C, or 3.0 C, or higher. Can’t we confidently conclude that the proportion of suffering due to climate change is the greatest?

What is telling is Gates’ confidence that the the average global temperature isn’t going to go up that much, which makes me wonder if he has others read the news for him and they haven’t recently provided updates. Or maybe he doesn’t want to offend the King of the Green New Scam bent. That seems to be one of those little peccadillos billionaires have been displaying, playing nice with President Big Oil Stooge and his happy mission to keep fossil fuels going well past their natural use-by date.

To the third and last sentence of the quote above, this seems like a suggestion we move toward singularity, if indeed singularity brings us omniscience, and, well, don’t you know, he’s got interests in AI. I’ll have to check my data on this just-typed sentence and see if I’ve maximized the impact of derision.

Bill Gates has spent a lot of money trying to make things better, that is indisputable, although I’d suggest that the existence of billionaires reflects a serious pathology in our society is also indisputable, but that’s another rant. For the purpose of today’s complaint about Gates’s recent edict, I‘ll suggest the overall piece is kinda inhuman and gives nerds a bad name.

We finally have reached the point of technological development for clean energy to be clearly economically competitive, but we should slow down? How the hell does that reduce suffering?

To Relieve Human Suffering, First Take the Patient’s Temperature

Early on he writes:

This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.

Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been. Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.

How is not raising the energy wealth for all not a solid prescription for reducing problems of poverty and disease? As for climate change not being the only or even the biggest threat to lives and welfare, what timescale should we consider? He’ll be dead by 2100, I’ll be dead by 2100. But slow work on addressing GHG emissions today makes 2100 pretty darn expensive, and unhealthy, and the cure is today for any hope of a better tomorrow. I’m pretty sure this is a physics-thingy.

He follows the quotes above with some proactive defense (“I know that some climate advocates will disagree with me…”), but his overall point is hardly radical, nor is it in any way “anti-climate.” However, the overall result, judging by how this jeremiad has been taken, is “anti-climate.”

He doesn’t make this any better with his Truth #1, which is, “Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization.”

Let’s define terms, please, since “end of civilization” is mighty broad. After all, humans aren’t likely to go extinct from climate change, as miserable many will be, and as dead many may be, because of climate change. And humans, short of extinction, will collect together and form civilizations. But Gates doesn’t spend much time looking at how civilization is defined. Here’s a general definition from a jewel of our current civilization, Wikipedia:

A civilization is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond signed or spoken languages (namely, writing systems).

A more realistic definition relevant to our day is “a system with great complexity and fragility that promotes hyper-consumption over sustainability, stressed by population growth and dangerous income disparity.”

Today’s Western society is incredibly intertwined with the rest of the world. This spans food production, energy, trade goods, raw materials… you know the drill. Western society is fragile, with major shocks capable of cascading into disasters, especially of the economic sort. Renewable energy got going back in the Oil Crisis of the 1970s, if you’ll recall. If anything, the supply chains are now more prone to disruptions, so failing to imagine what a series of major shocks might do to our society, that’s just tone-deaf on many levels.

I’m someone who thinks that a lot of climate fiction looks at apocalypse, collapse, and dystopia, and I think that’s too bad (hey, unless written snappily, I guess), and fighting over a can of beans in a desert wasteland or clinging to a floating fragment in a drowned world, well, that’s all she wrote, Katy bar the door. I think it is more useful to write climate fiction that looks at where we are and where we can be, and that makes the more interesting story, too. Nonetheless, there are better and worse scenarios regarding climate change and even the relatively good ones aren’t great and the worst ones are that much more terrifying. In terms of a complex society and all its various fragilities, ineffective and slow effort to address climate change is more than able to bring about a mightily high jump in mankind’s suffering.

Gates’ Truth #2 is that “Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate.” Yeah? So? Omniscience would be nice, but Truth #2 could have said, “Human and environmental outcomes are the best way to measure our progress on climate.” He goes on to say that quality of life is the better measure and even cites U.N. tools for making such assessments, but quality of life is an obvious metric. It isn’t that man’s greatest goal is to continuously read thermostats. The whole thing about fighting climate change is to improve the quality of life, like, literally. Um, so, again, so stipulated, but again, so what.

One of the most chilling pieces in Gates’ piece is his casual projection of 3.0 C by 2100. Oh, sorry, he said 2.9 C, so I guess that future world will be okay. A bit hot under the collar maybe, but…what? Is he kidding?

With Great Wealth Comes Great Energy

Bill Gates didn’t really get great value from the authors of this piece.

He makes a valid observation when he says, “From the standpoint of improving lives, using more energy is a good thing, because it’s so closely correlated with economic growth. This chart shows countries’ energy use and their income. More energy use is a key part of prosperity.”

I’m with ya, Bill!

Oh, wait. He then says, “Unfortunately, in this case, what’s good for prosperity is bad for the environment. Although wind and solar have gotten cheaper and better, we don’t yet have all the tools we need to meet the growing demand for energy without increasing carbon emissions.”

It’s disappointing to see that Bill Gates hasn’t been paying attention.

It would have been nice to say something like, “If the wealthy nations of the world build out their own economies to support renewable energy, and then share that with the poor countries, we’ll all have more energy and all be more wealthy and all without increasing carbon emissions. But he didn’t say that.

In fact, there’s far too little talk about shaping the world’s economies around renewable energy buildout and the positive consequences for improving international relations even while expanding geopolitical advantage. The cost savings from reducing war would be a boon in and off itself. Foreign aid—including renewable energy buildout in poor countries—would increase the overall wealth of the world, and thus decrease the spending on foreign aid. All of this has onlypositive upsides, unless, of course, you are wedded to the concept of zero-sum gaming. You know who loves zero-sum gaming? Really rich people. Power comes not from the actual sums of wealth but from the relative differential between the rich and the poor.

Uncle Bill is confusing. He goes on to claim a talking point of climate action:

But we will have the tools we need if we focus on innovation. With the right investments and policies in place, over the next ten years we will have new affordable zero-carbon technologies ready to roll out at scale. Add in the impact of the tools we already have, and by the middle of this century emissions will be lower and the gap between poor countries and rich countries will be greatly reduced.

Isn’t he aware that the renewable energy transition has what it needs, but the effect of cumulative emissions is already set in place. He argues energy innovations have already curbed emissions and the guy is right, but unfortunately, we’re still adding emissions, and emission draw down has not yet been enough to compensate for additions of GHG. Even if we’re closing in—which we are—this calls for continuing our focus on climate change, not confusing people about climate change. Hoping for innovations is not the same as implementing existing innovations at sufficient scale and within advantageous timelines. Existing innovations is better than hoped-for innovations, I’m pretty sure.

Build, Baby, Build is the order of the day, and when I say build, I mean renewable energy and electrification and not new gas plants and LNG terminals. Gates’ hope for nuclear remains beyond the timelines we should be scrambling to meet ASAP. If you want to reduce suffering and improve the world’s health, maybe there’s better ways to spend that money today, but unfortunately, this message is not the core message in this recent diatribe by Uncle Bill. I’m as much in favor as the next guy of innovation to decarbonize the hard to decarbonize sectors of the economy (e.g., industrial processes, agriculture, and more), but we have the tools today to replace emissions-generating energy with clean energy, and it is unconscionable to delay and dilly-dally.

Truth #3: This is a Really Bad Position Paper

“Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.” That’s Truth #3.

Sure, let’s expand the wealth of all nations, delivering prosperity widely. Sure, if you have a well-insulated building and air conditioning and reliable and affordable electricity to run it, you are more likely to survive climate change’s increasing heatwaves.

Here’s the Uncle Bill nugget of wisdom:

This finding [that people with protection from the consequences of climate change have higher survival rates] is exciting because it suggests a way forward. Since the economic growth that’s projected for poor countries will reduce climate deaths by half, it follows that faster and more expansive growth will reduce deaths by even more. And economic growth is closely tied to public health. So the faster people become prosperous and healthy, the more lives we can save.

Yeah, of course. But how do poor countries get the power and wealth they need to afford such protection? This has been covered above: provide energy cleanly and replace costly dirty energy. Using fossil fuels to provide that energy makes the climate conditions worse. Ergo, use clean energy to save more lives. Huge numbers of people across the globe are energy poor, lacking energy infrastructure, but clean energy can leapfrog more expensive—and dirty!—energy infrastructure.

The Two Priorities

The report, or sermon, or diatribe ends with Gates’ strongly suggested two priorities for COP 30:

1. Drive the green premium to zero;
2. Be vigorous about measuring impact.

Uncle Bill, we know this about green premiums, your term for equalizing the cost for clean energy solutions to non-clean energy solutions. Been there, done that for clean energy already, so the real question is how to drive innovation for the hard to carbonize sectors, and the real answer is to have fossil fuels account for their true cost that includes direct health problems and the consequences of climate change, both very high coasts and both resulting from the pollution inherent in burning shit to boil water.

We also know that there is wealth available to undertake expansive clean energy buildout. Tax billionaires and corporations, and, like a lot, and fairly. Cut the trillion-dollar annual U.S. military budget, and, like a lot, and intelligently. Make carbon emissions pay, whether through a Carbon Fee and Dividend program or some other means, but make sure to address economic hardship by paying in dividends to those in need. Annual revenues for fossil fuels world-wide is somewhere near $5 trillion, so let’s get to the point where we don’t give fossil fuel corporations and petrostates so much money. We have better things to spend on.

Speaking of spending, the whole “measuring impact” point is to direct spending. Here’s the intro paragraph for this priority:

I wish there were enough money to fund every good climate change idea. Unfortunately, there isn’t, and we have to make tradeoffs so we can deliver the most benefit with limited resources. In these circumstances, our choices should be guided by data-based analysis that identifies ways to deliver the highest return for human welfare.

This is weird from a billionaire, frankly, especially one who touts innovation and the promised return on investment. We have plenty of good climate change ideas that have already established economies of scale—yeah, renewable energy and batteries—and as we build more and more, the economies of scale improve even more. I’m not sure how much additional measurements are needed for this good climate change idea to have a full-out green light.

Why, Oh Why?

What is the point of Gates’ piece, Three tough truths about climate?

If I were cynical I’d suggest he is looking to sow doubt about climate change, but I’m not that cynical. Gates has put up a lot of money for climate change work he could have instead used to buy a yacht or to go on a ride into orbit. I’m happy enough to assume he means well, and I know that diseases and vaccines are important priorities of his.

I loved Bill McKibben’s Substack on the Gates report, called “Climate Gates,” published on October 31, 2025, on The Crucial Years. The sub-title of McKibben’s latest is wonderful: “Maybe we don’t need billionaire opinions on everything.”

McKibben starts this way:

I feel quite strongly that we should pay less attention to billionaires—indeed that’s rather the point of this small essay—so let me acknowledge at the outset that there is something odd about me therefore devoting an edition of this newsletter to replying to Bill Gates’ new missive about climate. But I fear I must, if only because it’s been treated as such important news by so many outlets—far more, say, than covered the UN Secretary General’s same-day appeal to international leaders that began with a forthright statement of the science.

Maybe I just should have waited for this issue of The Crucial Years, because Bill M and I seem very much in agreement about the Gates piece. I especially loved this line, “It was wrong of him to write it because if his high-priced PR team didn’t anticipate the reaction, they should be fired.”

Amen, brother.

The Path Forward is Here and it’s a Good Deal

There are economic sectors that are currently resistant to decarbonization, it’s true. One example is concrete, which some estimates suggest contributes 8% of greenhouse gases each year, and this manufacturing process is still waiting for technology to provide useful solutions (there are some likely developments in the pipeline, fortunately). But what hard-to-decarbonize sectors mainly tell us is to take on those other sectors in which we already have economically effective solutions, and these include transportation, electricity production, and building heating and cooling, and these add up to a good chunk of the carbon load.

Cost is often cited as a barrier to clean electrification, but this is a framing issue, not an indisputable block. The big challenge for solar/battery generation buildout is that it is mainly upfront costs, but this is based on the short-term financial considerations that are rife in our economy: next quarter’s stock price or profit. Guess what? The world is not a short-term economic entity. The geological and climatological timelines make a twenty-year span seem like a blink of the eye.

Here’s a longer-term view on natural gas electricity generation and costs:

Over a 20-year period, the estimated total amount spent to buy natural gas for an average-sized (around 400 MW) combined-cycle electricity generation plant can range from approximately $500 million to over $1.5 billion, depending heavily on natural gas prices, the plant’s capacity factor, and its efficiency.

Of course, the totals above are only for the natural gas consumed by the plant. Here’s the cost to build the natural gas plant in the first place:

As of 2025, the estimated cost to build a 440 MW natural gas electricity generation plant generally ranges from approximately $880 million to $1.1 billion for a combined-cycle plant, and potentially less for a simple-cycle combustion turbine plant.

How much money is spent to build a 440 MW solar and battery electricity generation plant in 2025? The low-to-high range comparison between solar/battery and natural gas electricity significantly favors solar/battery:

The estimated cost to build a 440 MW utility-scale solar farm with co-located battery storage in 2025 is approximately $523.6 million to $946 million. This estimate is based on the average capital costs for utility-scale solar and battery energy storage systems (BESS).

Sure, such estimates represented above can vary greatly in the real world and there are plenty of details and conditions to consider. But whatever details one might want to nitpick pales when you add to the comparisons the more or less equal cost for the natural gas you have to buy over the twenty year period, and so the score remains solar/battery 1, natural gas 0. And then there is the issue of total Cost of Operations (COS) that is mostly maintenance and repair, and this also significantly favors solar/battery.

While twenty-year finance planning is different than the short-termism of today’s stock price-obsessed boardrooms, twenty years or thirty or forty is well within the sort of planning we have for retirement and a variety of institutional investing. It’s a wonder that pension plan managers and other long-term investors aren’t wholesale shifting their portfolios to solar/battery given the clear advantages, and that’s not even considering the economic benefits of reducing the consequences of climate change. And, oh, did I forget to mention that clean electricity prices will be lower, too?

Go figure. Maybe it is a matter of pension management fees. Maybe long-term investment is also addicted to making a fast buck. Maybe we are so uncomfortable looking beyond the next month that we’re willing to risk burning down the world to avoid thinking things through.

But don’t look to me to figure this out. I’m not a businessman.

But how come Uncle Bill isn’t pointing this out, hmmm? Long-term investment in clean and cheaper energy for all goes a very long way to alleviating poverty and disease and goes into effect as soon as the solar/battery generation is online. So, Bill, maybe we can be asking that COP 30 make clear to the businessmen of the world that clean energy is a great long-term investment strategy with live-saving benefits.

Green Savings Bonds, anyone?

Maybe we should work on ways to discourage the epidemic of short-termism that’s killing our world.

Maybe that’s Truth #1.

The post The Headlines are Full of Bill Gates’ Latest Wisdom—It’s Hysterical! first appeared on David Guenette.

Of course, climate action and political action are not separate pursuits, but rather, in our threatening times, one and the same. The election of Donald Trump in 2024 opened the floodgates of corruption and illegal behavior. Given that the would-be dictator of America can be honestly called “President Big Oil Stooge,” much of this corruption stems from Big Oil’s rearguard actions as the fossil fuel corporations realize that their source of wealth is challenged as renewable energy technologies of solar, wind, and batteries emerge. Big Oil has declared itself a reactionary force against world progress, but then again, the fossil fuel industry has long been at this game and at gaming the system. Bill McKibben’s latest Substack, “Hey Grok, What’s a Waste of Energy?” says, “…one way to look at AI is that it’s main use is as a vehicle to give the fossil fuel industry one last reason to expand.”

Sure, McKibben knows that this sounds conspiratorial, but then he reports that Open AI has just hired John McCarrick to “find energy sources for ChatGPT.” And who is McCarrick? Here’s who:

John McCarrick, the company’s new head of Global Energy Policy, was a senior energy policy advisor in the first Trump administration’s Bureau of Energy Resources in the Department of State while under former Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo.

As deputy assistant secretary for Energy Transformation and the special envoy for International Energy Affairs, McCarrick promoted exports of American liquefied natural gas to Europe in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and advocated for Asian countries to invest in natural gas.

The choice to hire McCarrick matches the intentions of OpenAI’s Trump-dominating CEO Sam Altman, who said in a U.S. Senate hearing in May that “in the short term, I think [the future of powering AI] probably looks like more natural gas.” The biggest problem for Big Oil is that these new less expensive and more quickly built electricity sources better meet the growing demand for electricity as the world moves toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The reason to go with renewables is now not just to reduce GHG emissions to help forestall worse outcomes of climate change and reduce massive pollution harm to human health and environment, but because renewables have become the most economical power generation options.

In may turn out to be that the push for AI and its required data centers backfires on Big Oil if the corporations use the anticipated electricity load growth to be met with new fossil fuel generators. The cost of electricity is likely to be an election issue even as early as 2026 and certainly in 2028, and especially if the Big Oil efforts to build a lot more natural gas generators plays out. In an article in Semafor, “As electricity bills rise, candidates in both parties blame data centers,” by David Weigel, Politics Reporter, and published on October 13, 2025, the reporting of a small-scale election in Gainesville, Virginia paints a common and growing question:

On Friday night, dueling candidates for a board of supervisors seat in this suburban county found a cause that united them: banning new data centers.

“I think we should, personally, block all future data centers,” said Patrick Harders, the Republican running for an open seat on the Prince William County board. George Stewart, his Democratic opponent, agreed that “the crushing and overwhelming weight of data centers” was a crisis, with massive companies “having us, as residents, pay for their energy.”

For America to lead the world in building a less expensive energy supply and more equitable economy, the cry should be “Build, Baby, Build,” and while the question of AI and data center electricity needs more analysis, it is renewable energy systems we should be building. The economies of scales that have already driven the costs of solar, wind, and batteries down and then further down, will continue to drive costs down again and again, and you can’t say that for natural gas generators, even if the turbine supply chain pipeline wasn’t empty until post-2030 or later. The shift in technology toward inherently more efficient and less expensive electrical power is called by many “The Electrotech Revolution,” and Big Oil is doing everything it can to keep this revolution away from energy consumers.

Of course, these days it looks like China is eating America’s lunch when it comes to developing, producing, and selling the electrotech revolution.

Ironies abound.

There’s now a war between Big Oil and the citizens of America, and while we may habitually think of this as the fight for climate action, the more fundamental conflict is against totalitarianism. The fossil fuel industry has managed to co-opt Federal power through both explicit and tacit support to the perverse and Constitutionally groundless “Unitary Executive” Administration, and in doing so, has managed to cancel, delay, or de-permit large numbers of renewable energy projects that are our most likely means of answering the growth in electricity demand. The hypocrisy is staggering (as so much of the current Administration’s actions are), but the call for “free markets,” once the rallying cry of Republicans and American corporations alike, has been drowned out by the expeditious drive to maintain and expand profits of the fossil fuel industry regardless the reality that fossil fuels are an ever-growing expense and risk to the economy of the nation.

Telling the truth is one part of climate action.

One of the great lies these days is the claim by Big Oil that they “are part of the solution.” Another part of McKibben’s latest Substack includes the following:

+If anyone ever tries to tell you that Big Oil is helping with the energy transition, hand them this new study that shows

An analysis of the energy assets of 250 of the largest oil and gas companies finds a marginal contribution to global renewable energy deployment and that renewable generation represents a tiny proportion of the total energy production of these companies. This study empirically legitimizes doubts about the commitment of the industry to transition to low-carbon energy production.

The study McKibben refers to is “Oil and gas industry’s marginal share of global renewable energy,” which also includes some other bon mots in the article summary:

Our results show that renewable energy remains a tiny part of the oil and gas industry portfolio. Indeed, they only contribute about 1.42% to the deployment of renewable power globally, while only 49 of the largest 250 oil and gas companies are found to own renewable energy projects in operation.

…

The discourse to be ‘part of the solution’ is one element of a strategy the oil and gas industry uses to salvage their social and political licenses to operate in the face of pressure to decarbonize the energy system.

Not that this comes as a surprise when talking about Big Oil and what it is doing to stay forever in business, but Liar, liar, pants on fire surely applies.

Telling the truth is one part of climate action.

Climate action is one thing, but climate fiction may be something else. It is easy to find climate fiction that presents future worlds—some near, some far—of post-climate collapse dystopia. But are such worlds effective in helping readers to think of their roles as citizens in today’s America? The answer here is mixed, since such books may serve to help readers with the object lesson of what can happen without timely climate action, but apocalyptic tales serve as allegory, or worse, simple entertainment. Unfortunately, when it comes to fighting for a better America, simple entertainment falls short.

Both our politics and our climate are at a point where actions today will choose our future. Both our politics and our climate are at inflection points when the right action, the right vote, can make the future we want come into being. Today, the big questions are:

1. Will citizens make the right choices?
2. Do citizens understand that the right choices need to be made right now?

There’s a need for truth through fiction. In the course of the four novels in The Steep Climes Quartet, readers see people like themselves across the span of 2026-2047 in lives with which they can identify. In the course of the four novels, readers can recognize the criminality the country faces today. In the span of The Steep Climes Quartet story, readers can consider right actions, right votes.

Of course, such thoughts, perspectives, and considerations are mixed with many other attentions that can be more pressing at any given moment. Few of us are front-line climate heroes or political actors. Most of us have jobs and bills to pay, kids to raise, friends to see. Nonetheless, for all of us, both politics and climate are central and crucial to our lives, whether or not we pay such concerns much attention.

We are living in a moment of our history where the forces of authoritarianism and reactionary economic forces push to make our country follow Big Oil’s self-serving vision of America. We need fiction that tells the tale of another world where less expensive electricity feeds a healthier environment and a robust economy across the globe. We need fiction to remind ourselves that life is complicated, but we have the capacity to act as agents of our own fate. We need fiction that shows how we cast off the shackles of fossil fuel and the political influence that Big Oil needs to tip the scales back in their favor.

We need fiction to remind us that we are citizens, not consumers, and that we are the stewards of this good green Earth. The fact that The Electrotech Revolution makes energy more abundant, affordable, and more widely shared can be the happy ending.

The post Democracy, Climate Action, Climate Fiction… and Criminality first appeared on David Guenette.