This will be my first book signing event and I’d love to see my local readers—and would-be readers!—come on by for a chat. And a scribble. A scribble, because that ‘s what my signature looks like, but, hey, don’t judge.

There’s the signing event at Lakeville Books and Stationery, which happens to be my local(est) bookstore. Lakeville Books is at 63 State Street (also known as Route 7 next to the fire station) in Great Barrington, MA.

Saturday, September 12, 2026, from 1:00 pm -3 pm.

I’ve signed books before, but previously this might occur after one of my talks out of the dozen or so talks I’ve given. The topic of the talks? Well, this has evolved over time, but the catch is in the title: “The Future of Climate Change in the Berkshires.” The Steep Climes Quartet, the series I position as literary climate fiction, now has three out of the four books published, with Over Brooklyn Hills published this past June.

Kill Well takes place in 2026, Dear Josephine in 2029, and Over Brooklyn Hills in 2035. The final book, Farm to Me, takes place in 2047 and is on track to publish Spring 2027. The first three books will be available at Lakeville Books and, of course, at the signing.

The series is a near-future look at how regular people deal with climate change, with some nefarious plots on the national scene thrown in to reflect larger themes. When I say “regular people” I also mean Berkshire local, since the through characters of the series live and work in the Berkshires. If you’d like more information about The Steep Climes Quartet, you’ll find plenty on my website. Here’s a teaser description of Over Brooklyn Hills:

In 2035, a NYC heatwave drives some residents into the Hudson Valley and the Berkshires, but the resulting overcrowding brings climate migration to Great Barrington writ small, while events at the Mexican border paint the larger scale problem.

The post I’ll be at Lakeville Books, Signing Away first appeared on David Guenette.

The start of the review nails it: “Over Brooklyn Hills is a story of people and climate.”

I mean, this sounds simple, but the reason I love seeing this sentence start the review is that my literary climate fiction series isn’t about some post-climate apocalypse but about how people today and in the near future live with climate change, with the emphasis on how people live. Too often climate fiction turns fantastic, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. Our very real struggle with climate change is hard enough for people to identify with, which in turn makes taking meaningful action in our troubled Anthropocene that much harder for many of us to pursue. We must pursue effective change that will help moderate the severity of climate change consequences; this is essential if there’s much chance to keep our world safe… or safer, anyway.

The review continues this way:

It’s the third book in David Guenette’s future-based The Steep Climes Quartet. This installment centers around two different plot lines: the lives of some of the notable citizens of Great Barrington, a small town in the Berkshires; and the missions of an ecoterrorist. The overarching theme is the politics of climate change, and that theme receives detailed discussion. The weather is a character by itself, with a severe heat wave and a tornado driving some of the main action in Great Barrington.

In terms of the political overtones, Guenette has taken the events and legislation of the last half-decade and extrapolated them through to their plausible outcome by 2035. Likewise, current technological hardware and software have been advanced ten years. Political and tech nerds will be at home with all the plentiful details in those areas.

The post Reader Views says “Five Stars”! first appeared on David Guenette.

The Climate Historian Substack, in a post titled, “On Billionaires, Numbness, and the Futures We’re Allowed to Imagine,” with the subtitle “The problem is not only that billionaires have too much money. It is that we have started believing they have the right to decide what comes next.” It’s a good Substack, with good writing and thinking. Although, notwithstanding its qualities, I often end up skipping it, what with everything else on my feed list.

The Climate Historian is written by Athena Drakou, and she is “an independent researcher and  environmental scientist working at the intersection of environmental science, political history, and geopolitics.” She is “particularly interested in the history of climate change politics and how ideology and competing perspectives influence climate change policies.” On her About page, she answers the question of why she writes about climate change:

One day someone said to me that I write as if I am running out of time. He was right. I carry that sense of urgency with me every single day — a constant feeling that I am running out of time. I write because no matter how hard I try, it never feels like enough to make people truly care about this fragile planet we call home.

Her recent post’s title caught my attention. I’m a would-be professional imaginer, although this is also known as a writer. I am a fellow traveler with her on the issue of our current dilemma with billionaires. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, no doubt: the category of “billionaire” should not exist and the fact that there are billionaires is a pathology that illuminates our society’s ill health. As for “numbness,” this seems an accurate descriptor for how most of us feel in this time of polycrisis, at least those of us fortunate enough not to be desperately scrambling for basic  necessities of food and shelter. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people scrambling, and even here in the United States, although there are billions of others across the world caught up in a daily existential crisis. This makes the existence of billionaires look sick under such circumstances.

There are structural economic problems with billionaires, too. If you want a succinct definition of the main structural problem, I suggest you check out GarysEconomics on YouTube, Instagram, and other such platforms; there’s a memoir and a documentary, too. Gary Stevenson emerged from Britain’s working class to become a wildly successful financial trader at Citibank, then went to Oxford. He now has an significant online footprint that he uses to draw attention to how today’s economic situation advantages the wealthy over everyone else. His core concepts are straightforward, and summarized by Google Overview thusly:

• Passive Income: Billionaires make massive amounts of passive income from large portfolios of assets.
• Buying Assets: Because they cannot spend all this cash on daily consumption, they buy up property and investments.
• Falling Standards: This pushes up prices and locks ordinary people out of owning homes or building wealth, lowering living standards.

We are all aware these days that billionaires (and more modest multi-millionaires, too) consider politicians and the institution of The Supreme Court of the United States asset classes.

Radical Solutions?

There are many definitions of polycrisis, but The Climate Historian provides one as good as many other such efforts:

We are living in a world defined by climate change, nuclear risk that most of us have simply stopped thinking about, the arrival of AI, rising misogyny, expanding inequality, and above all this, a tiny club of ultra-wealthy individuals who are convinced that this planet and maybe a few nearby ones is their private VIP lounge. Given all of that, it seems to me that it’s only logical to fight for the future we actually want, rather than the one being sold to us.

Amen, I say. Where I disagree is when Drakou says the following:

There are no easy solutions, but I believe that we can solve our problems. They require systemic changes, and some of them may seem radical at first. But we are at a point that only radical changes can save us. Pretending otherwise is its own kind of denial.

Yes, required solutions are hard. But are the solutions radical?

Oh my gosh, it turns out that I’m the conservative. I want to conserve the Constitution. I want to conserve common sense and long-term beneficial projects for the country and the world. I want to conserve the planet as habitable for mankind. There’s nothing radical about it.

Of course, “radical” is one of those Swiss Army Knife definitions, including in mathematics, chemistry, and linguistics, but I’m sure “radical” as used in The Climate Historian post mentioned at the start is standing in for political/social reform that is rapid, sweeping, or extreme fundamental changes in laws, governments, or social structures. Some of the radical proposals for moving forward on addressing climate change include de-growth or ending capitalism. These are indeed radical choices. But a lot of what needs doing to address climate change, which in turn helps address other aspects of the polycrisis, are things we’ve done before.

Been There, Done That, Let’s Do It Again

The thing we should keep in mind and try to promote within the public discussion of the polycrisis is that we have the means to make changes and that many of these solutions are not radical, but rather part of our recent history. Heather Cox Richardson points to this when she notes that during the Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961) the upper income tax bracket was 91 percent, corporate taxes were much higher, the federal estate tax for estates over $10 million was 77 percent and in many of the states there were state estate taxes, too. Back then, working people could be a one-income family, buy a home, a car (or two), go on vacations, and send the kids to college. The post-war period that extended well into the 1970s is rightly described as an American economic golden age where most people shared in fast rising productivity gains.

Back then, the Republican administration was directed to maintain New Deal social programs, with a duty to provide a social safety net, regulate the economy, and invest in and protect infrastructure. Hell, there were proposals from the Republicans back then for health care programs, too. Most adults born before and during the Eisenhower administration have some idea of Eisenhower’s view about military spending; in his “Chance for Peace” speech, when he talked about the dangers of the Military/Industrial Complex, he warned that heavy spending on weapons and war was literally a theft from citizens who needed food, clothing, education, and health.

No, I’m not forgetting Jim Crow and other deep problems of the time. Still, the argument holds: What is a radical change is that most of what’s mentioned in the above paragraph is now out of reach for the vast majority of Americans.

It’s Even Good Business

If you want to dive in deeper as to why clean energy is good for business—and, of course, a good tool in the battle against climate change—check out a report I ran on Gemini, “Economic Imperatives of Clean Energy Transitions: Microeconomic Advantages, Fossil Fuel Stranding Risks, and Externalities Abatement.” Here’s the opening paragraph to the analysis:

The global energy economy is undergoing a structural reallocation of capital from fossil fuel extraction and thermal generation to clean energy technologies. This transition is propelled by fundamental market dynamics, capital efficiency, risk management, and microeconomic competitiveness¹. Clean energy technologies offer superior long-term economic structures characterized by zero-marginal-cost generation, rapidly declining levelized costs, and insulation from volatile global commodity markets¹. Conversely, continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure introduces mounting financial liabilities, including asset stranding, regulatory cost escalation, elevated capital costs, and exposure to severe external health and environmental damage costs².

Obviously, things can remain “business of usual,” although we need to understand that today’s “business as usual” is highly unusual to most of us living in America. The intense threat to America’s democracy itself is highly unusual. There have been plenty of periods in America’s history when business interests got too close to the halls of government (Heather Cox Richardson offers great perspective on this history) and like any human institution, our government of the people, by the people, for the people has varying degrees of corruption. Today’s corruption, unfortunately, seems the clear winner is that particular sweepstakes, and what’s more, the corruption rampant in the Trump Administration today is actively bad for business. Unless, that is, your business is to stuff as much money into your pockets in order to score high on the power scale even as your world grows more and more unlivable. I’m pretty sure the world growing more and more unlivable is generally bad for business.

Of course, there’s the failure by the government to capture the resources needed to undertake the sorts of programs, policies, and projects needed to speed up the transition to clean energy to more quickly reduce carbon and greenhouse gases, thus slowing down worsening climate change. That government failure comes about through a many decades-long crusade (cf. Louis Powell Memo) by money interests to alter tax law and related policies that in turn further enrich the wealthy, thus providing yet more influence upon the government. The ultra rich, by accumulating absurd levels of wealth, are starving much needed systemic changes such as the clean energy transition, along with many other programs (e.g., child care, housing, healthcare) that would make regular people more productive, never mind happier!

The fossil fuel industry is a strong governmental influence force, and, yes, there are plenty of other money interest groups, too. Even though the business model for fossil fuels is becoming more clearly understood as downright lousy, the influence of the fossil fuel industry keeps profits up by cheating. How does the industry cheat? Well, for instance, costs directly associated with the exploration, extraction, transportation, refinement, transportation, and use of their products are indirectly passed to the public, making the use of fossil fuels seem more economically competitive. Fortunately, there is a growing sense of the trickery underway. Unfortunately, the deceit of the fossil fuel industry—I’m looking at you, C-Suiters!—is pushing the world’s climate into a worsening crisis. Someday soon, we’ll find ourselves puzzled as to why these enemies of humanity haven’t already been arrested and imprisoned, their ill-gotten gains confiscated to settle a tsunami of lawsuits and criminal liability.

Don’t be confused: President Big Oil Stooge has been bought by Big Oil and is delivering to his masters. He’s suppressing wind farms. His executive orders disadvantaging clean energy generation interconnects puts fossil fuel generation well ahead in the interconnect queues. There’s an astoundingly large supply of clean energy—in various stages from planning through completion—that is made artificially unavailable to the grid, even while old and extremely expensive coal plants are ordered to stay online. In the United States, nearly 1,800 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy generation and battery storage projects sit in regional grid interconnection queues, representing roughly 85% of the 2,060 GW in total proposed capacity. This isn’t just a thumb being pressed to the scale; this is the whole Republicans’ elephant sitting on Big Oil’s side in the marketplace, without any sense of true balance.

Here are some highlights of the Trump Administration’s specifically anti-clean energy policies and orders:

• Offshore Wind Leasing Freezes and Lease Terminations
• Energy Emergency Directives and Fast-Tracking Thermal Power
• Asymmetric NEPA Reviews and Federal Siting Priorities
• Supply Chain Tariffs Triggering Restudies
• Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act and Market Rule Interventions

The fact of the matter is that Trump and Big Oil are the radical actors. Clean energy is sensible and fits quite soundly into rational processes of markets by replacing less efficient and costly products or processes with cheaper and better ones.

Oh my gosh, it turns out that I’m the conservative. I want to conserve the Constitution. I want to conserve common sense and long-term beneficial projects for the country and the world. I want to conserve the planet as habitable for mankind. There’s nothing radical about it.

The post Solving the Polycrisis Isn’t Radical first appeared on David Guenette.

The Microeconomic and Financial Business Case for Clean Energy

The financial mechanics of clean energy deployment differ fundamentally from traditional fossil fuel generation. Thermal power infrastructure depends on continuous, lifetime operational expenditure (OPEX) exposed to fuel price volatility². Clean energy assets—such as utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV), onshore wind, and battery storage—are predominantly capital-intensive upfront (CAPEX) with near-zero marginal operational fuel costs once commissioned¹. This structural distinction transforms clean energy into a predictable, risk-adjusted yield generator that stabilizes corporate cost structures over decadal time horizons¹.

Levelized Cost of Electricity Competitiveness

Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) benchmarking demonstrates that renewable generation maintains a decisive cost advantage over new-build thermal alternatives on an unsubsidized basis². Unsubsidized utility-scale solar PV achieves an average LCOE of $58 per megawatt-hour (MWh), with operational ranges spanning $38 to $78/MWh⁷. When combined with federal production or investment tax incentives, post-credit solar generation costs fall to $20–$45/MWh¹⁰. Onshore wind demonstrates similar competitiveness, with unsubsidized LCOE ranges of $37 to $86/MWh¹⁰.

By contrast, new-build natural gas combined-cycle power plants face elevated financial hurdles, with unsubsidized LCOE ranges spanning $39 to $109/MWh¹⁰, rising higher in volatile fuel environments⁴. Gas peaking units are substantially more expensive, ranging from $144 to $276/MWh⁴. Advanced nuclear and traditional coal generation remain economically uncompetitive for new capacity additions, exhibiting unsubsidized LCOE ranges of $141–$220/MWh and $71–$173/MWh, respectively⁴. Furthermore, gas technology supply chains face critical bottlenecks; gas turbine backlogs and supply shortages are projected to push turbine costs to $600 per kilowatt by 2027, representing a 195% cost expansion that further undermines thermal asset economics⁴.

Debt Cost Disparities and Capital Stack Optimization

Capital markets increasingly price climate transition risk directly into the cost of debt and equity¹. Because clean energy assets deliver stable, long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) and predictably structured cash flows, institutional lenders offer preferential financing terms¹. Specialized capital mechanisms—including Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE), green bonds, and sustainability-linked credit facilities—lower debt service costs and optimize corporate balance sheets¹³. C-PACE financing provides long amortization schedules aligned with operational equipment lifespans, non-recourse structures, and transferability upon property sale, allowing commercial real estate owners to execute deep retrofits without eroding liquid working capital¹³. Globally, green financial markets are expanding rapidly to absorb clean energy demand; green credit issuances in major financial markets reached CNY 30.08 trillion in 2023, growing 36.5% year-over-year¹⁴.

Brand Valuation and Commercial Performance

Corporate adoption of renewable energy directly drives brand equity, institutional investment allocation, and customer retention¹³. Approximately 68% of commercial consumers actively express purchase preferences for environmentally responsible enterprises, while 59% of major business organizations have integrated renewable energy procurement directly into core operational strategies¹⁶. Corporations participating in clean power coalitions such as RE100 achieve documented operational cost reductions of 20% to 50% while mitigating reputational, regulatory, and supply chain carbon exposure¹⁶.

Systemic Liabilities and Transition Risks of Fossil Fuel Dependency

Retaining structural exposure to fossil fuel value chains creates compounding macro-financial liabilities³. Companies reliant on coal, petroleum, and natural gas face severe transition risks driven by regulatory decarbonization mandates, technology substitution, shifting consumer demand, and physical climate disruption³.

The Mechanics of Asset Stranding

Assets become stranded when they experience premature write-downs, devaluations, or conversion to liabilities prior to the end of their anticipated economic design life³. To maintain a 50% statistical probability of limiting global average temperature increases to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, empirical climate modeling demonstrates that approximately 60% of existing global oil and natural gas reserves and 90% of proven coal reserves must remain unburned in the ground³.

The financial exposure associated with unextractable reserves and early decommissioning of industrial infrastructure is immense³. Global net present value losses attributable to untapped fossil fuel output are projected to reach between $1.0 trillion and $1.4 trillion in direct asset stranding³, with long-term unmined reserve asset losses estimated up to $21.5 trillion under comprehensive net-zero compliance scenarios⁶. Coal-fired power generation assets face the highest stranding vulnerability, requiring structural retirement 10 to 30 years earlier than historical operating baselines³. These asset write-downs pose systemic risks to financial institutions⁵. Commercial bank balance sheets hold an estimated $681 billion in direct exposure to stranded thermal assets, creating systemic financial instability akin to historical credit adjustments if write-downs occur abruptly rather than through managed phase-outs⁵.

Regulatory Headwinds and Trade Barriers

Fossil-fuel-dependent enterprises face escalating carbon pricing mechanisms and strict emissions performance mandates³. The implementation of international trade policy adjustments—such as the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)—imposes import tariffs on carbon-intensive industrial commodities including steel, aluminum, cement, and electricity²⁰. Exporters operating in jurisdictions without equivalent domestic carbon pricing face severe trade margin compression and loss of global market access if they fail to decarbonize industrial process heat and power inputs²⁰.

Primary Sectoral Transition Pathways

Transitioning to a decarbonized operational model varies in complexity across economic sectors. The three most immediate, cost-effective, and technically mature transition vectors are electrical generation, built environment heating and cooling, and light-duty fleet transportation⁸.

Electrical Generation Decarbonization

The power sector represents the fastest and most cost-effective primary transition vector due to mature technology, modular construction, and favorable levelized economics⁷. Utility-scale solar PV and onshore wind installations require deployment timelines of only 1 to 3 years, compared to 6 to 10 years for thermal gas facilities and 10 to 15 years for nuclear power plants⁸. Intermittency challenges are directly mitigated by the rapid deployment of standalone or co-located Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)⁷. The levelized cost of storage (LCOS) for utility-scale 2-hour BESS ranges from $0.081 to $0.174/kWh, while 4-hour BESS ranges from $0.145 to $0.319/kWh¹². Transitioning baseline power procurement to renewable PPAs provides immediate direct carbon reductions of 80% to 100% per MWh displaced, insulating businesses from fossil fuel price swings²⁵.

Built Environment Heating and Cooling Electrification

Space and water heating in commercial and residential structures historically rely on direct combustion of natural gas, fuel oil, or propane²⁷. Replacing combustion boilers and furnaces with high-efficiency electric heat pumps represents an immediately accessible decarbonization route²². Heat pumps achieve coefficient of performance (COP) ratings between 3.0 and 4.5, delivering three to four units of thermal energy for every unit of electrical energy consumed²⁸.

In key domestic markets, market adoption has crossed a major threshold; heat pumps outsold fossil fuel furnaces by 26% in 2025 (2.4 million units versus 1.9 million units), maintaining sales dominance since first surpassing furnace volume in 2022²². Total annual US heat pump shipments reached 4.1 million units, outperforming total deployment in Europe (2.3 million) and China (2.2 million)²². Financial payback periods for air-source heat pumps range from 3 to 12 years depending on regional climate, grid power pricing, natural gas tariffs, and available efficiency rebates³⁰. Given that space heating equipment exhibits an operational lifecycle of approximately 15 years, achieving 100% electric heat pump sales share by 2035 is required to ensure complete stock decarbonization by 2050²⁸. Water heaters operate on a 10-year replacement cycle, requiring a 100% heat pump sales share target by 2040²⁸.

On current average electrical grid mixes, heat pumps reduce direct operational greenhouse gas emissions by 60% to 70% compared to high-efficiency gas boilers²⁷. Even when operating on emissions-intensive, fossil-dominated grids, heat pumps deliver a minimum 20% net greenhouse gas reduction due to thermodynamic efficiency advantages³³. In parallel, compliance mandates under the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act enforce a 70% reduction in hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) supply by 2029 and an 85% phase-down by 2036²². The HVAC industry is rapidly transitioning toward lower Global Warming Potential (lower-GWP) A2L refrigerants (GWP < 700), with lower-GWP heat pump shipments expanding by 69% to achieve full market coverage²².

Light-Duty Transportation and Fleet Electrification

Commercial light-duty vehicle fleets (delivery vans, municipal service vehicles, passenger cars) represent an accessible sector for corporate clean energy transformation due to rapid payback under total cost of ownership (TCO) metrics²³. For commercial fleet applications featuring daily operational routes under 200 miles, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) achieve total cost of ownership parity with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles within 3 to 4 years of operation²⁴.

Fuel expenditure drops by approximately 90% when substituting electricity for gasoline or diesel; for example, municipal fleet evaluations demonstrate operational fuel cost reductions from $0.29 per mile for ICE models down to $0.03 per mile for BEVs²³. Additionally, BEV drivetrains eliminate complex mechanical subsystems—such as multi-speed transmissions, exhaust treatment systems, spark ignition setups, and internal engine oil circulation—yielding a direct 40% reduction in long-term maintenance costs and significantly reducing vehicle downtime²³. Electrifying corporate fleets eliminates 100% of direct tailpipe carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine particulate matter emissions, generating substantial localized health co-benefits³⁶.

Sectoral Clean Energy Transition Timeline Matrix

The following matrix outlines the implementation timeline ranges, financial payback windows, emissions reduction potentials, and strategic deployment drivers across key commercial and industrial sectors⁸.

Broader Externalities Abatement: Health, Social, and Economic Co-Benefits

The persistent combustion of fossil fuels incurs severe societal external costs—primarily through atmospheric emissions of fine particulate matter (pm 2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and ground-level ozone (O3)³⁶. These pollutants directly cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, premature mortality, and lost economic productivity⁴⁰. Transitioning away from fossil combustion yields immediate, highly localized public health and economic co-benefits that complement climate change mitigation goals³⁶.

Public Health Improvement and Reduced Premature Mortality

Fossil fuel combustion from thermal power plants, industrial boilers, build heating systems, and internal combustion vehicles is the primary driver of anthropogenic air pollution deaths³⁶. National scale atmospheric modeling indicates that executing coordinated federal and subnational clean energy actions in the United States will prevent 6,600 premature deaths annually by 2030, delivering air quality improvements across all regions³⁶.

As energy transition scenarios reach advanced stages toward mid-century, public health co-benefits scale dramatically⁴⁴. By 2050, the structural phase-out of fossil fuel combustion in power generation, transportation, and building systems is projected to prevent between 67,011 and 81,003 premature deaths per year in the United States alone⁴⁴. On a global scale, transitioning from fossil energy sources to clean wind, solar, and modern zero-emission alternatives is estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) to prevent between 4 million and 7 million premature deaths annually¹⁶.

Quantified Healthcare Cost Savings

Reductions in airborne pollutants directly reduce emergency room visits, hospital admissions for acute respiratory conditions, heart attacks, and lost workdays³⁷. In the United States, the monetized economic value of health co-benefits derived from avoided mortalities, hospitalizations, and lost workdays ranges from $785.8 billion to $949.9 billion per year by 2050⁴⁴. Public health evaluation framework models, such as the EPA’s COBRA tool, establish that for every $1 spent on reducing fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), society gains up to $77 in direct monetized health benefits⁴².

At the residential and municipal scale, fully electrifying household heating, water heating, and cooking appliances eliminates internal and localized ambient fossil fuel combustion, reducing outdoor PM 2.5 pollution by over 300,000 tons annually³⁷. Nationwide residential electrification alone prevents 3,400 premature deaths, 1,300 emergency room admissions, and 220,000 acute childhood asthma attacks annually, generating $40 billion per year in direct healthcare savings³⁷.

Social Equity and Environmental Justice

The health burdens of fossil fuel infrastructure are historically distributed unequally, impacting low-income communities, Black populations, and urban corridors situated adjacent to highway networks, industrial ports, and fossil-fired generating stations³⁶. Empirical health transition modeling shows that decarbonization policies deliver proportional health co-benefits to historically overburdened populations³⁶. Black, suburban, and lower-income demographic groups experience higher percentage reductions in baseline mortality under clean energy transition scenarios, demonstrating that clean technology deployment serves as a powerful mechanism for narrowing systemic environmental health disparities³⁶.

Strategic Synthesis and Corporate Policy Recommendations

The economic and operational evidence establishes that clean energy adoption is a core imperative for corporate capital allocation, risk management, and long-term value creation². Businesses that aggressively transition capital deployment toward renewable power, building electrification, and fleet transport capture tangible operational efficiencies while insulating balance sheets from catastrophic asset stranding and carbon border tax liabilities³.

To maximize competitive advantage during the energy transition, business executives and capital allocators should execute a phased strategy across four key operational areas:

1. Capital Stack Reallocation via Sustainable Finance: Leverage C-PACE, green bonds, and sustainability-linked credit facilities to fund upfront equipment CAPEX, preserving working capital while capturing 20% to 50% net utility operational savings¹³.
2. Accelerated Sectoral Transition Execution: Focus capital expenditure on high-return, short-payback transition vectors—specifically off-site and rooftop solar PPAs (immediate return), light-duty fleet electrification (3–4 year TCO parity), and space/water heat pump retrofits (3–12 year payback)⁸.
3. Fossil Liability De-Risking: Audit corporate real estate portfolios, supply chains, and industrial assets to identify stranded asset exposure, phasing out direct natural gas combustion and fossil-fueled equipment ahead of tightening AIM Act and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) regulatory thresholds³.
4. Quantification of Externalities Co-Benefits: Integrate public health savings, air quality co-benefits, and environmental justice indicators directly into corporate ESG underwriting and corporate governance frameworks to build durable equity value and stakeholder support¹³.

Works cited

1. The Cost of Capital in Clean Energy Transitions – Analysis – IEA, https://www.iea.org/articles/the-cost-of-capital-in-clean-energy-transitions
2. Bridging the clean energy investment gap: Cost of capital in … – OECD, https://one.oecd.org/document/ENV/WKP(2024)15/REV1/en/pdf
3. What are stranded assets? – Grantham Research Institute on climate, https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/explainers/what-are-stranded-assets/
4. Renewables remain cheapest, but their LCOE is rising: Lazard, https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-remain-cheapest-lcoe-rising-lazard/825443/
5. The research is clear on stranded assets, but how will the finance, https://www.camecon.com/insights/the-research-is-clear-on-stranded-assets-but-how-will-the-finance-sector-respond
6. Stranded assets could exact steep costs on fossil energy producers, https://news.mit.edu/2022/stranded-assets-could-exact-steep-costs-fossil-energy-producers-investors-0819
7. LEVELIZED COST OF ENERGY+ – Lazard, https://www.lazard.com/media/uounhon4/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2025.pdf
8. Levelized Cost of Energy+ (LCOE+) – Lazard, https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus-lcoeplus/
9. LEVELIZED COST OF ENERGY+ – Lazard, https://www.lazard.com/media/kcfconhf/lazards-lcoeplus_vf.pdf
10. Solar LCOE USA 2024: $60/MWh Empirical, $38–78 Lazard Range, https://www.solardataatlas.com/en/data-solar-lcoe-usa
11. Why Solar + Storage Beat Nuclear And Gas For U.S. Grid Growth In, https://www.solarpermitsolutions.com/blog/why-solar-storage-beat-nuclear-and-gas-for-us-grid-growth-in-2025
12. Despite low gas prices, solar, wind remain cheapest sources of, https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/06/17/despite-low-gas-prices-solar-wind-remain-cheapest-sources-of-power-in-us/
13. Sustainable finance incentives reshaping project economics, https://salasobrien.com/news/sustainable-finance-incentives-reshaping-project-economics/
14. The Impact of Green Finance on Energy Transition Under Climate, https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/15/7112
15. Green finance, renewable energy and capital formation in the global, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-science/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2026.1745134/full
16. The business case for renewable energy, https://instituteofsustainabilitystudies.com/insights/guides/the-business-case-for-renewable-energy/
17. Climate change and the financial risk of stranded assets, https://www.pembina.org/blog/climate-change-financial-risk-stranded-assets
18. Stranded assets and Transition risks – UNITesi, https://unitesi.unive.it/retrieve/9d8379d5-f400-4c64-b83d-154088b24aa0/896957-1294488.pdf
19. Stranded Assets: Assessing the Impact on US and European Utilities, https://info.loomissayles.com/stranded-assets-assessing-the-impact-on-us-and-european-utilities
20. EU Issues 10 Guides for CBAM Compliance in 2026 – ESG News, https://esgnews.com/eu-issues-10-guides-for-cbam-compliance-in-2026/
21. Building Electrification Explained: Costs, Mandates, and the 2026, https://www.environmentenergyleader.com/stories/explainers-building-electrification,131973
22. Momentum Q3 | 2025 – Building Decarbonization Coalition, https://buildingdecarb.org/momentum-q3-2025
23. Total Cost of Ownership for Public Fleets: How Cities are Saving, https://electrificationcoalition.org/resource/total-cost-of-ownership-for-public-fleets-how-cities-are-saving-money-by-going-electric/
24. EV Fleet Total Cost of Ownership: A TCO Guide for US Fleet Operators, https://pulseenergy.io/blog/ev-fleet-total-cost-of-ownership-a-tco-guide-for-us-fleet-operators
25. Executive summary – Net Zero Roadmap: A Global Pathway to … – IEA, https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-roadmap-a-global-pathway-to-keep-the-15-c-goal-in-reach/executive-summary
26. Lazard: renewables consistently lowest cost of new electric generation, https://thequadreport.com/lazard-renewables-consistently-lowest-cost-of-new-electric-generation/
27. Are the ambitious Heat Pump Goals achievable?, https://heatpumpswatch.org/are-the-ambitious-heat-pump-targets-achievable/
28. Pace of Progress | Rewiring America, https://www.rewiringamerica.org/research/pace-of-progress-home-electrification-transition
29. A Roadmap of Building Decarbonization Strategies to Reduce, https://restservice.epri.com/publicdownload/000000003002022156/0/Product
30. What Is the Payback Period for a Heat Pump?, https://www.greentechrenewables.co.uk/ashp/what-is-the-payback-period-for-a-heat-pump
31. The true pay back time for heat pumps – Custom Renewables, https://custom-renewables.com/the-true-pay-back-time-for-heat-pumps/
32. Study shows payback times for heat pumps could plunge by 2030, https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/03/03/study-shows-payback-time-for-heat-pumps-could-plunge-by-2030/
33. Executive Summary – The Future of Heat Pumps – Analysis – IEA, https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-heat-pumps/executive-summary
34. EV vs ICE Cost Comparison – Elinta Charge, https://elintacharge.com/glossary/ev-vs-ice-cost-comparison/
35. EV Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): What Savings Should You Expect?, https://smartrak.com/total-cost-of-ownership-tco-savings-with-evs-what-should-you-expect/
36. Princeton-led study highlights widespread health co-benefits from all, https://cpree.princeton.edu/news/2025/princeton-led-study-highlights-widespread-health-co-benefits-all-society-clean-energy
37. Breathe easy – Rewiring America, https://www.rewiringamerica.org/research/home-electrification-health-benefits
38. Special Report: Stranded Fossil Fuel Asset Risk – UKSIF, https://uksif.org/policy/stranding-report/
39. The Industrial Heat Pump Opportunity Goes Beyond Energy Savings, https://www.aceee.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/the_industrial_heat_pump_opportunity_goes_beyond_energy_savings_0.pdf
40. EPA will no longer consider health-related monetary benefits of, https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/epa-will-no-longer-consider-health-related-monetary-benefits-of-reducing-air-pollution/
41. Chapter: 3 Public Health Co-Benefits and Impacts of Decarbonization, https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/25931/chapter/6
42. EPA will stop calculating the money saved to health in air pollution, https://apnews.com/article/epa-air-pollution-health-benefits-trump-771218fb0059f4c1b07981755d3453a1
43. Health and air pollution co-benefits of climate change mitigation, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/B09460
44. Human Health Impacts of Energy Transitions across the United, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12288885/

The post Economic Imperatives of Clean Energy Transitions: Microeconomic Advantages, Fossil Fuel Stranding Risks, and Externalities Abatement first appeared on David Guenette.

“Climate Action Policies & Pragmatism’s Two Goals: Pricing Carbon Was Our Political Potemkin Village,” is a recent post by Jim Ball and his Substack Climate Hope Together. It is an interesting post recapping Ball’s years in the “DC climate/environment/clean energy scene.” In the post he argues that the price on carbon, which was the leading policy choice of the wayback time, was heralded by neoclassical economists and that the various carbon pricing policy proposals suffered from a lack of pragmatism.

Maybe so. Of course, no one having a time machine makes such second-guessing academic. Nonetheless, acknowledging the price of carbon—and it is high!—is an essential element of the clean energy transition, if for no other reason than the issue of affordability has become linked to energy policy.

Ball’s mea culpa over his own involvement in this early thinking on carbon pricing is sincere and based on his newer understanding that driving down the costs of clean energy would have been the far better choice. Of course, to some degree, this is what Biden’s IIJA and IRA were doing, but that came along about two decades later.

He puts it this way (emphasis his):

Well, I was wrong.

But there were a few folks who got it right back then who were part of a small, new DC think tank that wasn’t completely caught up in groupthink: ITIF, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

They were focused on the price part, but they flipped the script. Instead of making the bad stuff cost more, let’s make the good stuff cost less.

But of course. The weird thing is that the fossil fuel—“bad stuff”—does cost more and has been exacting a terrible price on the world. Don’t get me wrong—coal and oil and natural gas (a.k.a., methane) are great improvements over wood and the explosion of human population would not have been possible without the Industrial Revolution and fossil fuels. You can argue that the Earth would have been better off without an explosion in human population, considering that biodiversity loss and climate change have taken big hits from human population growth. I, for one, have no interest in figuring out which individuals made possible with the vastly expanded energy wealth that fossil fuels brought to the human race should be asked to leave the stage of human existence. That’s one of the problems with de-growth thinking, where humans are intrinsically thought of as some sort of planetary virus, whereas figuring out how humans can better steward the world in which they live seems the more interesting approach.

The fact is that until fairly recently fossil fuel has been a requirement to keep people alive, whether through expanded agricultural land use or energy to support science, medicine, shelter, and employment, along with so many other things. But it is now irrefutable that mankind’s use of fossil fuel has come at a cost. That cost is that we’ve managed to screw up the planetary systems through the burning of fossil fuels on a massive scale for now hundreds of years, and we’ve just started realizing there’s the bill coming due.

I’m arguing that realizing the real cost of fossil fuels isn’t us “making the bad stuff cost more.” The bad stuff has always cost more—much more—than we’ve been pretending and it’s time to stop pretending.

Pragmatism is a Two-Way Street

As an economy, not only have we ignored the real cost of fossil fuels, but we’ve also been pretending that fossil fuel is cheap, even while direct government subsidies and policies have artificially lowered the price of fossil fuel. We’re happy enough to celebrate every penny drop in the price at the gas pump, albeit with some of us feeling guilt. I recently posted on my website “Over-Complicating Climate Change Progress,” [ https://davidguenette.com/over-complicating-climate-change-progress/ ] and there’s a header in this post titled “Understanding the Progress Underway and that Doing Nothing Is the Far More Expensive Choice,” and here’s part of that section that addresses the real costs of gasoline at the fuel pump:

One thing I’d love to see is the correction of the biggest failure for climate progress, which is ignoring our bullshit pricing of oil. Fossil fuels should carry the costs and consequences of their production, protection, and use, or what are referred to as “externalities.” Thanks to sneaky indirect subsidies, fossil fuels escape accounting and paying for the damages their product causes, an exceptional condition among businesses that usually include the cost of their product in the market price.

So, let’s learn to talk about the real costs of fossil fuels. Let’s try to get this talk into the political discussion, especially at this time of affordability as an election issue.

Fossil fuels are actually very expensive. The price at the pump doesn’t cover the actual costs. Here is an AI Summary table that addresses actual cost of a gallon of gas at the pump. Before you jump on me for providing something generated from AI, please understand that I know the sources and the arguments and that the exact and precise numbers are too complex to pin down to anything other than a range. Still, the table is convincing:

Pricing Scenarios: Current vs. True Cost

The table below highlights how different economic frameworks alter what you would actually pay at the pump to clear these hidden debts.

First, please note that this analysis was run before the Iran war further spiked pump prices. Second, before someone accuses me of sloppy math, I’m happy to admit fixing the exact cost on any particular application of fossil fuels is herculean. Fortunately, there’s no need for exactitude, which is why the above table has ranges. Want to argue the cost ranges? Fine. Make your case or leave it up to bureaucrats and technicians to assess for better specificity. But what is beyond question is that the cost of fossil fuel production and use is high and getting more expensive by the hour.

Moral Power : People Power : Staying Power

Ball’s post ends up a call for the Climate Movement (capitalization his) to heed the “magic word: pragmatism… and when it comes to legislation, our value of pragmatism has two goals: what works, and what can pass.”

I suspect a carbon fee and dividend approach is one workable way to start pricing real costs into fossil fuels while alleviating the poor of the additional cost burden, but there are other options. For instance, the federal government has built big things: There’s the TVA, and rural electrification, the moonwalk, the Manhattan Project, the Interstate Highway System, and any number of big wars (well, two!). We have a history of undertaking big projects in America and admittedly figuring out how to assess and price carbon sounds like a big project. Other examples of big projects are Biden’s IIJA and IRA, which were good starts and which should be revived, although there’s lots more than just carrots to consider.

Let’s also keep in mind that while Big Oil is powerful, its access to money (while impressive, as we all know) pales compared to what the United States can bring to bear. When it comes to carbon pricing, a good start would be eliminating direct subsidies and accounting for externalities. If Big Oil isn’t up to it, they can face lawsuits that likely will (unless sandbagged by the current SCOTUS) cost them a whole lot more of their obscene profits than a rational and ordered program for accounting for fossil fuel costs. We’re paying a high price in numbers of deaths and an increasingly threatened world, so let’s insist on a goddamn accurate invoice.

Hell, there’s even nationalization to consider since it is clear that the fossil fuel industry needs to phase out over time, but today there’s little sign of that from the big corporations themselves. In fact, there are plenty of indications that Big Oil is happy to threaten the economy with a massive wave of stranded assets by building (or trying to build) more and more gas generators, no doubt hoping that their business of selling stinky molecules continues well past the planet’s sell-by date.

Basically, Big Oil is a big punk.

The climate movement—which today is also the democracy movement and the affordability/energy wealth movement—needs to start telling the truth about fossil fuel costs. There’s nothing easy about any of this, but the oppressive expense of using fossil fuels is part of the real story of the clean energy transition. Fortunately, we have established a better alternative to fossil fuels to build the world’s energy wealth and the advantages of clean energy are multiplying by the second: cheaper, safer, faster, smarter, and more likely to support a stable international order and fewer resource conflicts.

The rest of my advice on how to establish a perfect world?

Stay tuned, of course.

The post Price on Carbon is Pragmatic Because It Reflects Reality first appeared on David Guenette.

Here’s a quick post about my guest blog entry and long essay appearing in ClimateCultures, where I discuss what should define climate fiction. Big surprise: I also talk about The Steep Climes Quartet, my literary climate fiction series.

What is ClimateCultures?

“Creative Responses to Our Nature & Climate Predicaments”

ClimateCultures is an online space that Mark Goldthorpe launched in 2017 for creative minds to share responses to our ecological and climate predicaments .“We are a growing network of artists, researchers and curators across the UK and around the world working across many practices, disciplines and spaces,” is how he describes the effort.

Who’s involved? ClimateCultures casts widely, including within the community of novelists, short story writers, performers, poets, playwrights, painters, composers, illustrators, photographers, filmmakers, sculptors, designers, digital artists, multimedia artists, gallery owners, online curators, creative producers, cultural activists, historians, biologists, archaeologists, geographers, environmental technologists, and climate researchers. Designed as an online space for creative minds to share responses to our ecological and climate predicaments. ClimateCultures is an approach to building creative conversations between and beyond different appreciations of what these predicaments mean, and of what they offer us as ways forward. It’s also a continuation of some of Goldthorpe’s encounters when working with the charity TippingPoint a few years back, where he helped bring artists and scientists together for creative climate change events.

Here’s more about ClimateCultures and Goldthorpe’s motivation in creating the publication and group, taken from the site’s “Welcome” page:

I’d always been interested in artistic responses to the problems but this was my first deep exposure to such a number and range of perspectives, enquiries and works-in-progress. Those events left a strong impression — with me, and with the artists and scientists who took part. ClimateCultures builds on this legacy, exploring the power of an environmental imagination to help us develop a sense of agency in challenging times, as I discuss in a short article I wrote in February 2019.

The post I’m in ClimateCultures Talking about Climate Fiction first appeared on David Guenette.

“They wanted to hold Exxon accountable. Then they got hacked.” This is the headline of recent Grist story, one published in partnership with The Guardian.

Gosh darn it, but I couldn’t be more pleased.

I’m not happy about the malfeasance of the dirty rotten oil corporation—that the article suggests, with excellent circumstantial evidence, may be Exxon Mobil—which hired a PR firm, which hired a hack-forward middle man, who hired actual hackers to get into accounts of various climate activists and organizations attempting to sue Exxon Mobil, as the reporting says, to hold the companies “accountable for climate change.” The story continues:

A few months earlier, a set of explosive media reports had revealed that the company’s own scientists determined as early as 1982 that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels caused climate change — but Exxon went on to fund climate denial campaigns anyway.

That part of the story is by now well known, at least in climate activism circles, not that there’s been many legal victories over the last ten years. I’m certainly not happy about that.

Why I’m suppressing a grin is that this news hits as Over Brooklyn Hills, Book Three of The Steep Climes Quartet, is released into the wild. What’s wild for me is that one of the plot threads involves a huge hacking operation to destroy the electronic records of legal documents for about 150 different lawsuits against various fossil fuel corporations and associates, regulatory agency heads, and retired politicians. The substance of any of the lawsuits is not detailed in the book, but one of the through-characters of the series, Jimmy, now approaching middle age in 2035, is the IT lead at NoNolo, which is a legal document clearinghouse used by many of the legal teams involved in these court cases. This plotline is not central to the story, exactly, but one of several that present different aspects of the world fighting against climate change and the often banal evil that fossil fuel businesses cavalierly undertake.

My prediction reflected in this plot point is that the suits against the fossil fuel corporations—many underway already—will take a long time to wind through the legal system. That itself is not a prediction so much as a conclusion based on the historic record of civil lawsuits against big companies. The lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson, for talc and asbestos contamination of baby powder, started in 2009 and the reckoning continues to this day. (There are some very striking similarities between this case and the cases being brought—or attempted to be brought, anyway—against Big Oil.)

The third book’s prediction is that major and minor cases alike will finally get their proverbial day in court by the mid-2030s, with the Supreme Court largely rectified by a run of Democratic Party-dominated administrations and public sentiment having grown angry at fossil fuels and Big Oil’s efforts to keep their business not only relevant, but future-proof.

There are all kinds of nefarious deeds some corporations will undertake to protect their fortunes. Since realism is an important element in my fiction series, I’ve done research about corporations’ evil deeds. “Writing Villains on Both Sides in Climate Fiction” is an older post about portraying villains, although from any side of the aisle. “Murder, Oil, and Blood Money: Is the climate fiction plot line of fossil fuel interests murdering someone far-fetched?” looks at some research I undertook about what we know and suspect about businesses going bad, and what I found was unsettling, but at least my findings made the various villains in my series plausible. Fossil fuel corporations do have blood on their hands, although the vast majority of fossil fuel-related deaths come not from the barrel of a gun, but a barrel of oil.

The Odd and Twisty Road for the Series and Great Forecasts—or Not!

Dear Josephine, Book Two of The Steep Climes Quartet, was on track to publish in Fall 2024, and I’d assumed the Democrats wouldn’t lose to Trump, so, so much for my “Carnac the Magnificent” shtick (look it up). While the 2024 election was disastrous for climate progress in the U.S., it was bad for me because  I had to extensively revise the first book to reflect Trump’s ascendency. Since Dear Josephine is set in 2029, this book too needed revision, so a longer delay for publication since I first revised Kill Well, the first book published in 2023, but set in 2026.

Arrrgh.

Another weird set of coincidences in the second book’s storylines that would have seemed predictive if Dear Josephine had published on its original schedule, was that in Dear Josephine there was a massive hurricane, and in the real-world Hurricane Helene’s shocking damages came and went in 2024 as I revised the once-thought-finished manuscript. Dear Josephine also contained a character targeting Fortune 400 individuals with the hope of starting a movement grandiosely named Kill the Rich, so imagine my surprise when Brian Thompson, president of United Healthcare was shot, allegedly by Luigi Mangione.

My pique at Dear Josephine’s delayed publication until after these events is not my most admirable trait, nor my fantasies of being interviewed by the news because I had “anticipated” such events.

I would have loved the bump in book sales though.

No Predictions, Really

But really, I’m not clairvoyant nor have the gift of second sight, but rather I’ve just been following the zeitgeist. I’m not surprised to see such fictional stories come to life in the real world. We can expect stronger hurricanes to hit large population centers. We can expect the shame of wealth inequality to manifest in angry reactions. We can expect more and worse extreme weather, mounting economic stresses on households, growing incidents of chronic lung problems from wildfires and fossil fuel pollution, fiercer social discord from fraying public nerves and fears about the future, shocking food production problems from droughts, and mounting deaths from heatwaves. That’s not prediction, it is science and all too reasonable extrapolation.

I especially liked the Booklife reviewer’s comment below about Over Brooklyn Hills, because it captures what I’m trying to do with the series, which is to place climate change within the lives of characters who aren’t scientists or IPCC delegates, but regular people:

The cast, led by now-70-year-old artist/journalist Davin Caine, features a beleaguered town manager in a failing marriage; a freelance VR designer sleeping rough on Monument Mountain after Brooklyn becomes too hot; a climate activist building explosive devices for a domestic terror cell; and many more. Guenette… builds a plausible 2035 with a light hand—offshore sea walls, news outlets charging micro-payments, drone deliveries on the Appalachian Trail—and welcome focus on people’s lived experience. 

Too often, climate fiction fails to bridge planetary-scale crisis with human-scale everyday life. Climate fiction should focus on human stories that connect readers directly to our present challenges. Literary Titan’s review reveals this about Over Brooklyn Hills when it says:

I felt less like I was being shown a future world and more like I was being asked to notice the one already forming around us. That’s unsettling. It’s also the book’s strength.

Kirkus Review also noted this focus:

Guenette’s attention to the ways in which climate change may affect communities at the local level makes for a compelling read, and the writing is zippy and clean.

A reviewer on Goodreads may have put this best about how regular people experience climate change:

One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its realism. Rather than depicting climate change as a distant catastrophe, the story explores its gradual but relentless effects on daily life, public policy, migration, housing, infrastructure, and community relationships. This approach makes the future portrayed in the novel feel plausible and deeply relevant.

The post Predictions ‘R Me first appeared on David Guenette.

Understandably, there’s one hell of a lot of hand-wringing that goes on in much of what I read about our challenge to minimize the future damage of climate change already embedded in our human soiled atmosphere. Given the stakes, this is understandable from an emotional perspective, but what I find strange are all the proscriptions for how to climate care one’s feelings, whether from the angle of climate optimists or those who plea that we must all gird our loins and march to the barricades tout de suite. For example, Jim Ball’s Climate Hope Together Substack, in a post titled “Let’s Make Climate Hope Happen Together,” with the subtitle “Climate Movement: How to Get Our Intensity Back! Part Two” raises the issue of how to boost the intensity of the climate movement.

The post starts this way:

In my previous post I documented what those of us in The Climate Movement know in our gut: as a movement we’ve lost our intensity. We’re floundering. From whence will come the passion to ignite intensity’s potential?

Ball goes on to describe “Ten Climate Movement Values” and while every one of these values is good, I’m left wondering why we must need this basic guidance about being a good human. Am I an old curmudgeon fixated on some idea that adults living a self-examined life know all this and that refresher courses on being intelligent—both intellectually and emotionally—aren’t the leading priority of the climate movement? But to my chagrin, Ball is likely right.

I know that our culture today is described as materialistic, consumeristic, and distracted (i.e., not reading beyond an Instagram post, tweet, or AI email summary), and that many feel socially isolated one from another. Ball’s Substack’s subject—at least of late—is about the climate movement and how to grow it, how to reinvigorate it. His first post came about a year ago. He’s been prolific and the Substack has solid organizational structure. I’m actually a fan of his work and think he’s got a lot to contribute. But maybe we should allow there to be more practical steps than boosting our mojo.

Practical Steps ‘R Us

Ball’s latest post just came out at the time I’ve been pondering why there seems to be little acknowledgement of the triumphs of climate action, and to be fair, Ball, later in his post, presents such acknowledgements. (For a running report on positive developments, there may be no better source than Sam Matey-Coste’s Substack, The Weekly Anthropocene.)

There’s a section of Ball’s post with the heading “The Good Stuff: A Just & Prosperous Sustainability,” which starts this way:

We are on the precipice of the transformation we’re calling for. We’ve got the tech right now to do what’s needed. And more is on the way every day.

I’m suggesting that there is far too much focus on how we feel about climate change and far too little about the practical steps available to all of us to do something about climate change. I mean, sure, human-caused global warming and the fossil fuel industry’s resistance to correcting it is freakout-worthy. Fortunately, there are plenty of things we can do about it and plenty of things we’ve already done.

Maybe we will benefit from spending less time working on why we feel the way we do, and more time spent on action.

The Practice of Knowledgeable Voting

There are practical steps to help push climate progress forward. I believe political action is the biggest lever available to address climate change and I don’t get caught up in worrying whether political action is possible. Why am I not fixated on the question of whether there’s the possibility of political action on climate change? The answer is simple: Because there has been a lot of political action to address climate change. The Biden administration and the previous Congress accomplished miracles in the form of the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), to name the two biggest examples.

Yes, of course, then came Trump, but this time of Trump is less about climate change and more about the threat to America’s democracy experiment, now in its two-hundred-and-fiftieth year. The current absurdity of Trump’s drive toward fascism and self-dealing is a political problem with a political solution, and this threat’s solution is to vote the bums out. We need to get America back to a full democracy if we are to have any hope of getting back on track with climate progress legislation. Restrengthening democracy is America’s biggest climate action solution. Therefore, the first climate progress practical step is a political step: voting. If I hear one more person mopey about climate change but not voting, I may have to be physically restrained.

It would be helpful to have clearer resources about candidate positions on climate action, perhaps in the form of a one-stop clearinghouse, but there are plenty of relevant resources. Here’s a partial list, sourced from a simple Google query, but there are plenty more—just not any great fully-comprehensive lists for one-stop shopping:

1. Run on Climate https://runonclimate.org › candidate-resources
2. The climate movement needs to demand more of candidates than just platitudes.
3. Western Resource Advocates https://westernresourceadvocates.org › climate-question …This election year, we have the opportunity to vote for climate leaders all the way down the ballot. The candidates who are elected will make critical decisions …
4. League of Conservation Voters https://www.lcv.org › 2024-climate-candidate-guide
5. Want to vote for candidates who will protect people and the planet? Search here to find endorsed climate candidates in your local, state and national races.
6. Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund
7. Releases specific environmental scorecards for major state and federal races, grading politicians on key biodiversity and climate change platforms.
8. Climate Cabinet https://climatecabinet.org › candidates
9. We support pro-climate candidates in high-impact elections across the country. We back competitive local candidates in overlooked races. We help high-impact local leaders run, win, and legislate on climate change.

In my recently published Over Brooklyn Hills, the third book in my literary climate fiction series The Steep Climes Quartet, there’s Climate Covenant, a clearinghouse for comprehensive local, state, and federal candidate climate action ratings. By 2035, which is when the action of this book takes place, Climate Covenant has been playing an important role in elections for years. The practical step here would be to move this fictional service into the real world.

Any takers?

Understanding the Progress Underway and that Doing Nothing Is the Far More Expensive Choice

While people bemoan their climate-crisis-induced fragile emotional or psychological states, attending workshops on self-care or subscribing to the “Woe is Us” school of thought, what is often not considered is that the past decade has produced amazing progress in fighting climate change. I mean, sure, it would have been far better if we’d started this work when the consensus emerged about human-caused climate change three-and-a-half decades ago, but unless someone has a handy time machine, bemoaning the past isn’t all that helpful.

What might be helpful? One thing I’d love to see is the correction of the biggest failure for climate progress, which is ignoring our bullshit pricing of oil. Fossil fuels should carry the costs and consequences of their production, protection, and use, or what are referred to as “externalities.” Thanks to sneaky indirect subsidies, fossil fuels escape accounting for and paying the damages its product causes, an exceptional condition among businesses that usually include the cost of their product in the market price.

So, let’s learn to talk about the real costs of fossil fuels. Let’s try to get this talk into the political discussion, especially at this time of affordability as an election issue.

Fossil fuels are actually very expensive. The price at the pump doesn’t cover the actual costs. Here is an AI Summary table that addresses actual cost of a gallon of gas at the pump. Before you jump on me for providing something generated from AI, please understand that I know the sources and the arguments and that the exact and precise numbers are too complex to pin down to anything other than a range. Still, the table is convincing:

Pricing Scenarios: Current vs. True Cost

The table below highlights how different economic frameworks alter what you would actually pay at the pump to clear these hidden debts.

A Tax on Carbon Makes Sense, Socially

One way to bring out the true cost of fossil fuels is to put in place a tax on carbon, along with an accompanying dividend to offset the regressive hit for poor people. The tax on carbon has been long overdue but is especially appropriate now that we have real alternatives to fossil fuel use in transportation and the heating and cooling of our human spaces. The clean energy alternative is not only real, but economically competitive with fossil fuels, plus typically faster to build. If you want a good overview of where we are today and where we are heading, check out Ember and their annual slide deck, The Electrotech Revolution, from Kingsmill Bond and the Ember Futures team. Each year they unpack how electrotech “is rewriting the economics and geopolitics of energy.” Keep in mind that the current slide deck was published in September 2025, and it’s likely that the new one, no doubt in process, will present an even stronger picture of clean energy today and where it’s all heading. The clean energy transition is a viable and beneficial replacement of fossil fuels. We are on our way.

Of course, we can be on our way less or more fairly. Social justice is an important goal when it comes to climate change, but there are two important perspectives to keep in mind and these points are intertwined. Sacrificing climate action on the altar of social justice—the sort of “perfect being the enemy of good” condition—sometimes delays or blocks positive climate action. Often there’s a NIMBY element in opposition, where placement of, say, a community solar/BESS facility ends up in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood. It isn’t that the all-too-frequent complaint of such onerous project placements in poor areas is wrong, because this occurs absurdly too often. The counter to this, however, is that any project expanding the transition to clean energy should be supported, not blocked, because the clean energy transition provides significant benefits to all. Energy access and affordability is one such benefit, and there are location-specific health benefits in getting rid of polluting sources of fossil fuel electricity generation and road traffic. Any project that moves us away from fossil fuel generation is intrinsically a social justice victory.

This doesn’t mean there should be no consideration of other factors that may affect social justice, but rather that we all must balance such issues of fairness with the larger goal of supporting a world that supports life—it doesn’t get more basic than this issue. There’s a clock running, after all, and the Global South is already bearing an unfair share of the burden of climate change consequences, so any and all climate progress work is social justice work.

When Bill Gates published his absurd diatribe suggesting a problem with a singular focus on climate change progress priorities, he rightly got hammered. I joined in with “The Headlines are Full of Bill Gates’ Latest Wisdom—It’s Hysterical!” He was wrong to talk about disease eradication and economic uplift as competing priorities not because these are not important, but because fighting climate change itself answers these priorities. You want to eradicate disease? Maybe a good step is to reduce the causes of disease proliferation and the climate change-induced body stress conditions that weaken people. Want to lift more people out of poverty? Clean energy systems can leapfrog centralized grid barriers to provide electricity far more widely, cleaner, and quickly than anything based on fossil fuel-based electricity generation.

It isn’t that Gates is wrong about the need for better world health and shared wealth, but he is wrong to underplay climate actions reducing barriers to pervasive solutions for better world health and shared wealth. And, no, I’m not saying there is no place for public health aid, research, and services. I am saying that as climate change consequences damage our environment, all other types of aid, including those that seek to support improved health and economic justice, will be addressing far more overwhelming problems in the world that is not intensely pursuing climate progress.

Maybe the Clean Energy Transition is Simpler than We Think

There are lots of stories and data points showing the emergence of clean energy is not only real, but unstoppable.

I’d say that this represents a ton of mojo.

Big Oil’s days are numbered, although there’s plenty of hard work ahead to get the number of those days down, and fast. Climate change is already wreaking havoc, so the work here is to speed up the transition: the faster we stop greenhouse gas emissions from rising and the more quickly we bring these emissions down, the better.

We have the technologies and the economic arguments to accelerate the clean energy transition and those technologies and economic arguments keep improving. Maybe the transition we should be concerned with now is to shift our attention toward naming the enemies of the transition and supporting the friends of the transition. In other words, focus on the political changes needed to further encourage and support the transition and the legislators who can push the transition forward.

Sure, the person sitting in the Oval Office is a huuuge enemy to the clean energy transition, but fortunately, he and his cronies are so heavy-handed in their attempts to suppress clean energy that the hand they’re dealing is ever more obvious to the body politic. Fortunately, the issues of cost and affordability have become positive ones for clean energy. The politics—apart from the abuse by those bought by Big Oil—seems ever more interested, even eager, to pursue the clean energy transition. But, of course, the coffers of Big Oil are huuuge and the headwinds strong.

Still, there is a growing understanding that Big Oil is in trouble, with court cases around the world poking and prodding, trying to find a way in. By 2035, as I present in Over Brooklyn Hills, the days of legal reckoning of Big Oil are getting underway after decades of delay. In 2035, in the changed political environment of that time, Democrats are less corporate-inclined and more service-minded. The Supreme Court has been rectified and that purchased defense of Big Oil is evaporating. Hey, there’s a nice plotline about a widespread hacking job to disrupt the legal document management systems of dozens upon dozens of law firms and State Attorney Generals offices to further delay judgement, but you’ll have to read the novel for more on that.

There Are Plenty of Resources for the Climate Change Curious… and There Are Plenty of Climate Change Convinced

Although the mainstream media is failing, with the mass exodus of climate reporters just one symptom, some of the very best journalists covering climate science, technology, and policy are now found on the Web, and more specifically Substack. There are the stalwart, too, on Substack: David Roberts is one such example, where his podcast, Volts, provides current guidance on what good people are trying to do to push the energy transition forward. And then there’s the longtime climate warrior, Bill McKibben, still dispensing climate news round-ups of high utility, not to mention a moral perspective on the whole of climate change issues. If you follow these people—or, really, any of the excellent climate change and clean energy transition writers—you can’t remain too mopey.

Ball’s recent post reiterates a growing awareness that a hell of a lot more people are climate active than is commonly perceived. He points to the need to break what he calls “the Climate Talk Taboo” as being as important to the clean energy transition as direct work. For most of us, one of the last hurdles to overcome is to let our friends, family, colleagues, and other members of our community know that we are also interested in the work of the clean energy transition.

Pursuing climate progress is simple: we have the means to cut a big part of the GHG emissions and the means of doing this makes plenty of sense. We simply need to talk to each other about it, so turn that frown upside down and start talking to others about the clean energy transition.

OMG, am I a climate optimist, too?

The post Over-Complicating Climate Change Progress first appeared on David Guenette.

There’s been quite the hub-bub about AI as the author, but this post is about AI being used to scam authors. Since publishing Over Brooklyn Hills in June, I’ve been the recipient of many book marketing offers and the best I can figure, these emails are AI-generated.

Of course, these seem rather scamish, and what makes me think the emails are generated by AI are all the similarities among the nearly dozen emails from different people. I’ve spoken with other authors of recently published books and have learned that some authors receive several of these sorts of scam emails a day.

So much for my feeling special.

It is also clear that none of the email correspondents have read my book and that the sense of the book is drawn from reviews that I’ve gained and which are available online. It may be that many of these individuals use an AI marketing platform designed for purpose or, at the minimum, the same specific AI platform to generate the pitch email, considering the shared the language of the pitches. It may even be that some or all such emails come human-free, at least for the pitch generation. I assume that any cash sent in response to the pitches will eventually be deposited by humans.

Goodreads and Bookclubs

There’s a particular predominance of these emails tied to Goodreads, and these are the most likely to have real people behind them. The offered service, which is to put the book before qualified readers (definition unclear) on Goodreads, comes at a variety of rates, so if you want to spend less on being scammed, shop around.

By the way, Goodreads is not a book marketing platform, although having your book listed is important, according to the plethora of online ebook experts who have at least a six-month internship at a literary agency in their pocket. Unfortunately, the likely relevant Goodreads groups for my book, a literary climate fiction series, are few and several seem largely inactive, but that’s another story. Oh, and self-promotion is frowned upon for authors participating in Goodreads groups.

Since starting this post there’s been another dozen or more similar emails and there are many online stories about the sorts of emails I’ve been receiving being scams. Looking online at the senders, I was hard-pressed to find real people behind the names used in these emails, although some percentage has discoverable people and some seem more legitimate. One variety of these scams claims that my book is just right for their bookclub and offers the opportunity to participate in a club meeting discussing one’s book, and what author doesn’t want to do that? All one needs to do is send in $75, $150, or more, to help defray the costs of running the book club. There’s few signs of such book clubs online, but, hey, maybe they need the money to hire an SEO expert, right?

AI Scrapes Reviews in the Nicest Ways

The overall impression from the book promotion solicitations is that each pitch uses much of the same language. That’s because these descriptions come from reviews and jacket copy, likely compiled by AI.

This email is one example of the Goodreads scam variant, and then there’s an example of the bookclub scam that follows:

From: [Name and email redacted]
Subject: Thoughts Over Brooklyn Hills
Message Body: I hope you’re doing well. I recently came across *Over Brooklyn Hills*, and I was impressed by its compelling vision of a near-future world shaped by climate change, social upheaval, and the resilience of ordinary people. Through its richly developed characters and thought-provoking exploration of environmental, political, and personal challenges, the novel offers readers an engaging story that feels both timely and remarkably plausible.

I help organize a private Goodreads reading community where readers actively discover and discuss meaningful books across a wide range of genres. We’re currently preparing our next Goodreads Reading Challenge, and I believe *Over Brooklyn Hills* would be an excellent addition.

Our members enjoy literary fiction and speculative novels that spark meaningful conversations about society, the environment, and the human experience. I believe your book would resonate with readers who appreciate character-driven storytelling alongside thoughtful explorations of climate change, community, and the choices that shape our future. Many of our members also leave thoughtful reviews on Goodreads and Amazon after completing books they genuinely enjoy.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, I’d be happy to share the available promotional options and discuss what might work best for your goals and budget.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,

[Name redacted]

From: [Name and email redacted]
Subject: Over Brooklyn Hills, Book Three of The Steep Climes Quartet David Guenette
Message Body: Dear David Guenette

One of the most compelling aspects of Over Brooklyn Hills is its exploration of how individuals and communities respond to profound change while striving to preserve their humanity, purpose, and connection to one another. Through its richly imagined near-future world, the novel invites readers to reflect on resilience, leadership, adaptation, and the choices people make when confronted with uncertainty. These themes deeply resonated with our readers.

At [name of book club redacted], we intentionally curate books that inspire thoughtful reflection, meaningful dialogue, and a deeper understanding of the forces shaping both individuals and society. Your work stood out during our selection process because it skillfully blends compelling storytelling with timely questions about community, responsibility, innovation, and the human capacity to navigate challenging realities.

Our community of engaged readers and lifelong learners often gravitates toward books that examine the intersection of personal experience and broader societal transformation. Over Brooklyn Hills naturally creates space for conversations around resilience, journalism, governance, human connection, and the role individuals play in shaping a hopeful future amid complex circumstances.

We would be honored to spotlight your work within our reader community through an author conversation, reader Q&A, or virtual discussion centered on the ideas and inspirations behind the novel

If this opportunity resonates with you, I would love to explore next steps and discuss a format that best fits your schedule.

Warm regards

[Name redacted]

Well, of course Over Brooklyn Hills deserves the readership suggested in the pitch email below, as any proud author will think. I’ll admit to liking how AI reassembling of book information and review copy can make for snappy language, and don’t be surprised to see that I’ve cribbed lines for marketing copy. By the way, these emails came through my website contact form and the contact form has a word limit, so you’ll see at the close of this example [the rest of the email cut by the limit of the contact plug-in on my website]:

From: [Name and title redacted]
Subject: David, “Over Brooklyn Hills” Deserves a Readership Equal to Its Climate Prognostication, Slice of Life Scene Craft, and Process Oriented Thriller Heart
Message Body: Hi David, Let me start with this: Over Brooklyn Hills is exactly the kind of singular, clear eyed near future novel the climate fiction world needs right now.

In an era where readers are hungry for stories that show not disaster as spectacle but disaster as routine, where in 2035, addressing climate change remains a one step forward one step backward jig, with battles over climate policy and new legislation continuing alongside the march upward of average global temperatures, and in the courts finally some very real legal threats to the fossil fuel industry fighting for its future against the advancement of clean tech, is exactly the kind of prognostication meets process oriented thriller, governance and activism and technological shifts all in play premise that hooks readers who love deeply grounded climate fiction, where Davin Caine is at last on Medicare and getting a modest Social Security check each month but still works with Berkshire Interactive, busier in his studio with sculptures in galleries in the Berkshires and the Hudson Valley, his solar batteries and VPP membership keeping electricity bills down, his three house sharers helping with expenses as housing remains scarce, with Marsha queen of the big vegetable garden after nearly a decade with Housatonic House on the Hill, Charlie the nigh on perfect house sharer often away on business or holed up in his third floor bedroom working, and Be the newest house sharer, a ceramic artist who helps with the first floor Airbnb apartment and who has just claimed a corner of the studio and could easily claim his heart if he is not careful, is exactly the kind of rich characterization, slice of life scene craft, people trying to keep a home in a changing world tension that keeps readers turning pages, and where as summer approaches a stunning heatwave settles over New York City, west to Lake Erie, and south into parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, driving people to escape into the relatively cool hills of the Be

[the rest of the email cut by the limit of the contact plug-in on my website]

Here are some excerpts from other pitches. I like the first one, in that it acknowledges the Kirkus review. The second excerpt is a comforting reminder that readers are, indeed, waiting for my book. The third excerpt, like the previous one, use some identical language, i.e., I came across the description for Over Brooklyn Hills and something stopped me. The last excerpt (oh, but I could go on) declares being impressed by the admirable novel, but the conditional tense: for what appears to be a remarkably thoughtful and immersive contribution to climate fiction, kind of gives the game away.

From: [name and email redacted]
Subject: Building Momentum for the Steep Climes Quartet
Message Body: Hi David, What caught me about Over Brooklyn Hills is how ordinary the future feels. Kirkus specifically praised your attention to how climate change plays out at the local level, and details like offshore sea walls, micro-payment news outlets, and drone deliveries on the Appalachian Trail sound like a world reached through daily life rather than spectacle. Literary Titan put it well, saying it reads less like being shown a future and more like being asked to notice one already forming…

From: [Name and email redacted]
Subject: Your book Over Brooklyn Hills and the readers waiting for it
Message Body: David, I came across the description for Over Brooklyn Hills and something stopped me…

From: [Name and email redacted]
Subject: A climate fiction novel like Over Brooklyn Hills deserves a much larger stage in the literary fiction community
Message Body: Hello David, I came across Over Brooklyn Hills and something stopped me…

From: [Name and email redacted]
Subject: Impressed by the Scope and Relevance of Over Brooklyn Hills
Message Body: Dear David Guenette, I recently had the opportunity to read about Over Brooklyn Hills, and I wanted to express my admiration for what appears to be a remarkably thoughtful and immersive contribution to climate fiction…

Is This Post a Scam?

This post raises the question of how well AI can be applied to the task of flattering authors into forking over money.

What’s too bad is that any sincere appeal from a human to help promote or market a book—a valid service—gets lost among the storm of scams. I’d gotten obsessed with how such scams would play out, so I had some correspondence with some of the emailers, and uncovered a couple of people who actually addressed the specific challenges for Over Brooklyn Hills, and those challenges basically come down to choosing the best book categories and applying the type of keywords that put the book in front of people who aren’t expecting climate fiction to be a story of apocalypse, but rather want well-drawn characters and real world depiction far more than fast plotlines and action.

I’ve seen a bump in sales over the last couple of weeks after I improved the metadata about the book on my own, but sales remain modest. One reason for the modest sales is that Amazon’s KDP publishing platform, while offering good royalty rates (especially on the ebook side), is actually designed to take your royalty money and more back, because if you want searchers to actually find your book, you best use Amazon Ads and Amazon Ads can run up billing. The level of book description (categories and keywords) within KDP is weak, unfortunately for authors of any book short of hyper-genre novels, but wouldn’t you know, you can radically expand keywords—both of the regular sort and the very helpful “negative keywords” sort—through Amazon Ads, which is an ad bidding program. Talk about scams.

But if you’ve read this far into the post, at least I got to show you some very nice things said about Over Brooklyn Hills.

My god, did I just scam you?

The post Nice Things AI Has Said About Over Brooklyn Hills first appeared on David Guenette.

Climate Revolution Now’s recent post, “People Get Ready,” is entirely unignorable, not least because of the screen grab from one of the later Mad Max movies, with Tom Hardy’s character, mouth-guarded and grimacing, strapped at the front of one of those stupid vehicles.

Of course, the sub-title of this Substack post is equally alarming: “The end is nigh.”

Thomsen-Cheek breaks people into three categories when it comes to climate change, as follows:

(1) The people who don’t “believe” in climate change won’t act personally or politically because… nothing ain’t happen and what are you global-warming-panic-attack freaks all het up about? Fair enough.

(2) The folks who know that the climate is changing aren’t convinced it’s dire don’t revolt because they think the answer is a “transition” to a “new green economy” featuring “renewables.” And they are trusting the process.

(3) The people we call “doomers” won’t rise up because they’re convinced the danger is insurmountable and don’t see the point.

The first group she calls “What Me Worry?,” and I’ll always appreciate any literary allusion to Mad Magazine. The second group is “It Won’t Be That Bad.” Group number three is “Doomers.”

The second group is the group that interests me and is, obviously, the likeliest vector from which climate progress comes. Group 2 seem to be her peeps, but in her opinion, “Group 2 is too sanguine. I am not for a moment convinced that there is any meaningful ‘transition’ or that any currently serving politician has any intention of upsetting the apple cart enough to make real change to energy and infrastructural policy.”

Who’s Sanguine?

“Sanguine” is an interesting choice of adjective, since it means “to be cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident, especially in a difficult or uncertain situation. It is a slightly literary or advanced vocabulary word, often used to describe an upbeat, resilient outlook on life,” according to Gemini AI Summary.

I’m not sure how many of Group 2 are sanguine. There are those Climate Optimists, for example, but as best I can figure, such efforts are more along the line of self-care, except instead of applying skin care daily or taking enough time to stretch one’s hamstrings, it’s more an effort to keep centered or calm enough to avoid pulling off one’s head so that attention to climate change and the mechanisms to fight it can be continued.

Thomsen-Cheek agrees that we have time to prepare, although she seems awfully like the doomers in her belief that politically not much is going to happen to make climate progress a top agenda item. At least without a revolution or national strike or “…if one million people showed up on the National Mall this November we could stop Washington DC dead in its tracks. We could make demands. We could force change. We could call for accountability, and accept nothing less” in her hope that Groups 1 and 2 can rally, rise up.

Right on, sister, sincerely. I’ll meet you on The Mall, but I also think there’s plenty of other efforts to be made to fight climate change.

I’m a Member of Group 2a, the Semi-sanguines

What bothers me with Thomsen-Cheek’s piece is the dour tone of despair, short of total revolution, anyway. It is clear that there are forces of self-interest loose amongst the world and Big Oil is one such. Here in the United States a bunch of big money self-interests have decided to threaten American’s imperfect but glorious experiment in democracy and depending on the particular news cycle they look close to winning.

But pessimism isn’t likely the best framing and “revolution” sounds like a too-high bar. Furthermore, Thomsen-Cheek skews her reporting. Here’s an example:

Group 2 probably expected to see emissions go down because of all that green new economy jazz. It is demonstrably clear that that outcome did not happen. Emissions are rising. France and Spain are burning down. Group 2 should be easy to motivate to revolt now because they feel cheated, abandoned, and lied to. I know I feel that way.

The hyperlink reference is to a Guardian article about data centers leading to an emissions rise, mainly from new data centers, with Microsoft and Google loosening their already largely theoretical net-zero goals. Yeah, carbon emissions are still rising, and under Trump’s stewardship, America is producing more emissions. But let’s not forget that there are plenty of examples of an accelerated clean energy implementation even here in the U.S. And let’s not forget the tremendous achievements of the Biden Administration, with IIJA and IRA, creating the most ambitious climate action legislation in the known universe bar none. Yup, and then came Trump, but what’s coming next? The 2026 mid-terms and the 2028 election. Place your money and make your bets. These days the smart money is on clean energy, not least because it wins in the marketplace and” affordability,” at least when Trump et. al.’s thumbs aren’t on the scale.

China, the recent world champion of emission production, seems likely to have leveled off and the shockingly fast rate of clean energy infrastructure development will make for a downward emissions trend. Non-petrostates and countries of the Global South seem to understand more clearly by the second that clean energy is the way to bring life-supporting electricity to populations previously underserved or never served. The Pakistani miracle of massed individual efforts with solar to provide electricity apart from that country’s national grid infamous for poor reliability and high prices, has in two or so years time built clean energy capacity to rival the capacity of the old grid.

The Conflicting Climate Change-Human Perspectives

Climate change occurs on a different time scale than human lives. Perhaps the most shocking thing about climate change is how fast it is developing, considering there’s only been 200-plus years of ever-growing volume of fossil fuel use, but still, comprehending the large Earth systems at work in climate change presents a far-different scope than our day-to-day lives. Thomsen-Cheek is unfair in how she describes Group 2, and I believe that she is severely underestimating the level of understanding of what’s at stake with climate change and the determination of vast numbers of people to do something about it. The fact of the matter is that major economic systems need to change and it’s going to take all these people to gain any possibility of such system changes. Let me be less fanciful than “system changes,” since most needed changes are not rocket science: legislation to encourage the use of clean energy and legislation to discourage the use of fossil fuel energy. The arguments—economic and environmental—support such change and the growing record of people and countries making such changes is impressive.

It’s not the time to suggest it may be too late if we don’t join a national strike tomorrow (even if such a strike might help) or that erecting guillotines should be part of the climate action playbook. The biggest help of all today may be to acknowledge the progress being made and the second big help would be to present next steps and political actions clearly.

A central theme of The Steep Climes Quartet—Book Three, Over Brooklyn Hills, has recently published—is  the conflict between the need to address climate change and the human scale of the lives of those who must act. Even the most committed climate scientist or activist is going to worry and think about the next mortgage payment or how junior’s acting out in school or a dear friend’s recent diagnosis—that’s life. Climate action develops within each of our personal lives and in the many ways as different as we are from others. Politics is one of the major ways out personal lives interact with larger issues and critiquing one’s closest allies is hardly politic, especially as the knowledge about climate change spreads with every news story of extreme weather, and especially since we’ve seen—here in America—the most ambitious climate action legislation (and, no, not perfect) become law, only to be gutted through unlawful branches of government. It is easy enough to be pessimistic, and Trump—President Big Oil Stooge—makes this ever more likely.

It is also easy to despair when we look at how we build things today. In my neck of the woods there are far too many small bridges waiting for years for replacement construction that seems to take forever, but that’s not an intrinsic limitation. America has had large-scale infrastructure happen fast, with just one example being the rural electrification act that brought electric distribution out to millions; another is the TVA, or the huge dam projects like Hoover Dam, or, for that matter, the lightning-fast military industrialization in America during WWII.

The threat of a warming planet is ever more in front of our eyes and mobilization against it is the key.

Call to Action

In the end, it looks like Thomsen-Cheek is also a member of Group 2a, the Semi-sanguines. We know that we have damaged the Earth’s systems enough to have allowed ongoing climate change, but we also know that actions today and in the near term can make the difference between a world of 2 degrees Celsius or one of 3 or 4 degrees above what had been for centuries the global average temperature, so hardly full-throated happiness, but a call to action, certainly.

Let’s pay attention to 2026 and 2028 in such calls and not make fun of those who place their trust in “renoobles.” Jeff McFadden, who Thomsen-Cheek quotes, may be the source of the “renoobles” crack, but urging ourselves and others to pay attention to how the world works and nonetheless push for progress is another thing of man that is renewable.

Can the work of climate progress happen faster? Yes, that would be great. Put me in that group.

And vote, goddammit.

The post In Defense of Group 2 first appeared on David Guenette.