Today, I’m writing about the group Climate Defiance. I’m also writing about climate defiance, lowercase, by which I mean the application of public shaming of executives of fossil fuel corporations, and for any and all main representatives of fossil fuel interests, be that think tanks or trade associations, or lobbyists, or politicians and policy professionals, or, of course, President Big Oil Stooge. Of course, President Big Oil Stooge is incapable of shame. Talking about the captains of fossil fuel industry and of Trump, “climate defiance” could easily apply to them in the negative mirrored sense, given that this group is defiantly morally misled, deluded, or simply avaricistic eaters-of-the-world, and all in the face of known facts and likely certainties. Now that’s defiance!

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.