👋 Happy August, friends. I do hope you are safe and able to enjoy your summers, despite the climate crisis raging all around us, the world over. Thoughts and prayers to our Washington state friends, and anyone else dealing with devastating wildfires right now.

🗓️ You may or may not have noticed that, like an iceberg that has broken off its glacier and is now drifting slowly off to sea, I have been drifting off the regular Sunday delivery schedule, and into the work week. I hope you don’t mind. I’m looking for a new non-weekend delivery day. I welcome your thoughts on the matter.

📤 Next, a logistical announcement. I will be moving this newsletter over to Substack at the end of the month. There is nothing you need to do, as this is more of a backend upgrade for me. You will continue to receive this newsletter weekly as always. The reason I’m making the move is because Substack is just better. It’s much easier for me to use (no more coding and annoying formatting!), also free, and it’s got an entire infrastructure dedicated specifically to newsletter writing. Plus there are community features in case we want to test those waters and comment to each other. If you do NOT wish to follow us over, simply unsubscribe to this email and that’s that.

Culture & Nature

🎥 I saw “The Odyssey” last week, and it’s the movie we need right now. Of course, precisely because it is the movie we need right now, it has attracted the attention of lowly hateful people and their efforts to try and devalue it by criticizing creative choices and fanning the flames of pointless culture wars. These characters in our real world are mirrors of warnings in “The Odyssey”. I won’t Odyssey-splain, but the moral message is as old as human time. Our greatest burden is our “evolved” human brain and its ability to lead us into destructive decision making patterns. It is a much harder life to live to ignore these constant siren songs, but to successfully ignore them is to lead a good life of righteousness and integrity. #goals. Our individual and therefore our collective propensity to think and act on what is right or wrong for the good of our entire planet is at the core of the climate crisis. And so, for reasons including how humanity and modern civilization have lost their way, this is why everyone should see “The Odyssey” this summer. It’s a reminder of our collective need to further evolve past our cursed tendencies.

🛝 This is a cool story about making good use of abandoned fossil power plants. As we transition to clean energy, there will be hundreds of abandoned plants around the country. And just like with the thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells, we cannot expect the fossil companies or anyone else who profited from the pollution they caused to clean up these sites from their toxic footprints (not even The Pentagon, see story below). But here’s a good alternate ending: in Connecticut, a successful tech guy is using his fortune to transform a decommissioned power plant and its surrounding land into a beautiful public park and community center. His efforts include the major investment in a massive cleanup effort, and then turning the area into a public space with trails, a pool, and a performance art center. He’s keeping the original plant’s infrastructure intact to repurpose it and to let it represent a piece of history. It’s a really positive read. Also, this is how the uber wealthy could act if they wanted to.

Philanthropy At Work

🦜 One Earth Conservation shares a pdf of a recent article in The Nation about their work to save scarlet macaws in Honduras, work that centers around Indigenous people as the guardians of this at-risk species, gravely threatened by poachers.

🌞 The Honnold Foundation is releasing a film this fall about one of their grantee projects, Coalfield Development, which is building solar-powered economic development for West Virginians impacted by the dwindling coal industry. The organization creates local jobs and provides training and personal development, plus offers help for those suffering from substance abuse. I’ll share more info about the film when it is available, but you can read a bit more about the Coalfield project here.

Environmental News

🚒 This Guardian article about the current wildfire plus extreme heat situation in Europe features firsthand commentary from a veteran climate scientist faced with fires on his recent surfing trip in France. He’s studied how human activity would dangerously warm our planet since the 1980s, just like how Big Oil knew since before then. It’s somewhat moving to hear the personal perspective of someone like him, a person who has worked on this heartbreaking issue for four decades and who continues to wonder “is this what will make the world wake up?” We must all keep that hope alive.

🇨🇳 It is expected that at some point in Q3 this year, solar will overtake coal in China as the leading power capacity source. That’s huge, and it speaks to how fast they’ve installed solar infrastructure across their enormous country. Also in China news, based on their language and ambitions laid out in their recently released “15th 5-year plan”, it appears they are ready to officially lead the world to a clean energy future. When Trump began his second term and immediately pulled us out of the Paris Agreement, the climate world hoped that China would step in as the global leader. But they didn’t. Looks like they were just taking their time. This is a passing of the torch moment of global power. The future is climate-friendly, and the way our country is acting, we will be stuck in time like a museum full of archaic relics that everybody else can’t believe were ever representative of the way things were done.

🚯 Could pollution finally be getting its moment? The Times reported that PFAS cleanup at military bases is a bipartisan issue that’s heating up. The Pentagon continues to delay its decades overdue cleanup efforts at hundreds of sites, and representatives on both sides of the aisle have had enough. Maybe they could throw in non-military sites and drinking water cleanup to their list of PFAS pollution gripes? Then in Ohio, it’s been brought to light that the state is a dumping ground for fracking wastewater, which is injected underground across 240 wells across the state, the most of any state. Supposedly this toxic, radioactive waste is meant to remain thousands of feet underground. Except that it’s not. This dangerous fracking waste is bubbling up to the surface and threatening communities’s drinking water. Fracking wastewater dumping…one more major addition to the endless con list of fossil fuel energy production.

📢 Also in Ohio, the city of Cincinnati may be one of the very few municipalities in our entire country that is thinking ahead. The city released a Climate Migration Readiness Plan, which aims to prepare the city by 2050 to welcome American climate migrants, or people fleeing their climate-ravaged homes for safer areas that are less impacted by the inevitable catastrophes of sea level rise, wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes. Cincinnati plans to build denser housing, add more solar-powered energy, expand public transit, and ensure equitable access among both current and new residents to social services like schools, hospitals, and economic opportunities. Bravo, Cincy!

⚡️ It’s no secret or surprise that our nation’s electric grids are outdated and ill-equipped to handle extreme weather impacts, let alone the ever increasing demand caused by heatwaves and the electrification of things. Then there’s the unnecessary additional load of AI data centers. Most valid data center opposition talking points are centered around price increases to electric bills, pollution caused by powering them with dirty energy, water use, land use, noise pollution…there really is nothing positive about them. But we should also be talking loudly about how our grids need to be able to handle the additional climate-related stresses that are happening now and will worsen in our future, over the desires of Big Tech. The first priority of our grids should be to ensure citizens can keep their homes cool during increasingly dangerous high heat days, for one. In effect, if resources are being diverted to support data centers rather than fortifying and updating electric grids for citizens, people will die from heat-related illness, and their blood will be on the hands of Big Tech and their political AI allies. Axios lightly explores these competing interests.

🌋 This article in The Atlantic is about the less talked about Earthly impacts of climate change, like increased volcanic activity, landslides, tsunamis from glacial collapse, mountains crumbling, more earthquakes, rockhard surfaces melting into bogs, craters formed from permafrost melt and surface-level methane explosions…crazy, major stuff relating to Earth’s crust reacting to shifting pressures below and above, triggered by us. It’s an interesting read about the realities of our planet’s geology.

Corporate Accountability Two Ways

530

Number of US local laws passed that restrict or block new data center construction
(Heatmap)

$36B

California’s carbon cap-and-invest program has generated this much for the state’s clean energy and affordability projects since it began in 2013
(California Air Resources Board)

Summer, Summer, Summertime

A Montauk, NY sunset

Thanks for reading,

Kristen

Founder, Generation Environment

Culture & Nature

⛲️ The Times rounds up seven of the country’s urban botanical gardens. It’s a reminder to add this lovely itinerary item to your next city adventure. I’d personally love to visit Phoenix’s Desert Botanic Garden and Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin.

🦝 You’ve likely seen him by now, but Seattle’s favorite resident racoon, “Jimothy” (funny name to go with his unique composure) is something to look at. A tweak of nature, shall we say?

😢 This article in The Guardian asks why our culture doesn’t acknowledge the grief felt over ecological loss. Perhaps if we held ceremonies, funerals, rituals, whatever to publicly and openly grieve the loss of species, of glaciers, of segments of coastlines and patches of forests, and even individual trees and wildlife, then we’d awaken our connection to nature in our core and start treating it with the respect it deserves.

Environmental News

🚨 Scientists are saying that it’s becoming more and more likely that we will see our planet’s global average temperature cross the threshold of 2°C warming above pre-industrial times within the next year for the first time in modern human history. 2°C is the upper limit of what the world agreed to in the Paris Agreement. That we’ve already managed to normalize and shrug off the fact that we’ve crossed 1.5°C for an entire year (Feb 2023-Jan 2024) should be more disturbing than most news these days. Now, it’s the current El Niño that will push us to 2°C. This won’t mean we will have forever breached this dangerous limit; we would need 20 years of this level of warming to declare it official, by cautious scientific standards. But the fact that we are already wading into these warmer waters is the opposite of what we want to see. So let this be yet another warning that we are firmly in the climate crisis era, and the longer we drag our feet, the worse everything will be for generations.

🇫🇮 Finland is home to the world’s largest sand battery, which doesn’t require any rare earth materials, can store energy for weeks, and provide an astonishing amount of energy for times when the sun and wind need an assist. These babies should be in every town in the world.

👩‍⚖️ The Trump administration admitted in court that it canceled Biden-era clean energy project funding specifically in states that voted for Kamala in 2024. We all knew it, but now they’ve officially admitted it. Ok, so now what? This sounds like discrimination, which shouldn’t be legal, right??

📢 A new report details how the oil and gas industry knew since at least the 1960’s that their operations were leaking much more methane than they were reporting. They also knew how detrimental methane was to our planet’s climate system. Methane is essentially a warming accelerator, since it traps heat in our atmosphere 80 times more than carbon dioxide’s heat-trapping powers (which is saying a lot), though for shorter timeframes vs carbon (20 years vs hundreds to thousands of years). The gas industry also acknowledged as far back as the ‘60’s that gas (as in gas stoves) is an indoor pollutant, something most people today still don’t think about. Isn’t hiding information about the harm of consumer products illegal? How many more stories like this do we need to expose to actually stop these demons?

🔥 In her newsletter, ”Heated”, Emily Atkins highlights a recent poll regarding the wildfires in Canada that asked Americans if they think climate change makes wildfires worse (it does). Surprisingly, Republicans were split down the middle. Meaning half of them admit that climate change is making conditions on Earth worse! But Emily points out that this is not the case in Congress, where Republicans are unanimous in their climate denial. She then lists several Republican congresspeople and how much money they’ve received from the oil and gas industry, which is the main reason Republicans have a unifying front of climate denial – they are paid for by Big Oil to keep the lie going.

🦎 Another week, another assault on endangered species in order to clear the way for extractive industry. You see, it is always about those fossils, folks. Trump got a Texas judge to remove the endangered Dunes Sagebrush Lizard from the endangered species list. Coincidentally, this species’ only habitat lies within the Permian Basin, our country’s largest oil-producing/polluting areas. Protecting this living being means protecting its limited habitat, which also limits oil and gas executives from drilling anywhere they damn please. Naturally, Trump cleared the way, and now this cute little lizard faces elimination.

🌳 Did you know that American elm trees are an endangered species? I didn’t, and it’s due to a foreign disease called Dutch elm disease, which came from Asia. I don’t think trees or plants get the same attention as endangered animals, but then again, I doubt most people could list even a few animals on our country’s endangered species list. Our poor non-human friends do not get the attention they deserve. But I digress. This story is about a decades-long effort to determine, nurture, and clone disease-resistant elms in order to replant these iconic trees that are superb shade providers and a crucial defense in flood-prone areas. It could also be a story about slowing down. Imagine if your main work project’s timeline aligned with that of a tree’s journey from sapling to maturity?

Energy For What?

20%

US data centers are estimated to consume this much of our country’s power by 2035
(BloombergNEF)

5.9%

How much power data centers use in our country today
(BloombergNEF)

Praise The Tree Canopy

Looking up in Brooklyn

Thanks for reading,

Kristen

What would you do if it weren’t up to you? 
If the powers you have were stripped and removed
Would you reel and fume, fester in hate
Would you vow on your life to retaliate? 

If the powers were shifted from you to we
Would it scare you to have all that time now free?
If we took away all your loopholes and tech
Would you self-combust without any captive minds left to wreck?

Or might you sit back – and relax
Marinate on these actual facts
We don’t need what you’re selling
It never was all that compelling

For far too long, we’ve all played along
It’s indisputable that things have gone terribly wrong

This game is game over
It’s time to reboot
If you’re lucky, we might give you a parachute.

Culture & Nature

🤿 The Times has a delightful story about the Cape Cod area’s Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage. The group’s name alone inspires hope. Determined women over the age of 65, who must pass swimming and free diving tests, go around cleaning sunken garbage out of the area’s ponds. Love.

Environmental News

🧑‍🚒 We are experiencing compounding events on the east coast (and elsewhere) with wildfire smoke, heatwaves, and flash flooding. It is a real life teaser for what’s to come regularly, especially in summer for us here in the USA. Human-caused climate change has already created hotter, drier conditions for forests, making it easier for them to ignite and burn, which is what is happening now in Canada. Hotter air temps also help smoke linger, which prolongs unhealthy air quality conditions caused by fires, but also from combustion engines and coal plants (priorities of this administration), all of which create particulate matter that gets into our bodies and bloodstreams, causing serious health implications and death. For anyone who is disgusted and feels violated when exposed to secondhand smoke from cigarettes, this is the ultimate inescapable act of nonconsensual secondhand smoke, courtesy of Big Oil. What can we do? Continue to pressure politicians and corporations to stop burning fossil fuels.

🪓 The Endangered Species Act has long protected animals’ habitats, because to survive, you need the physical space that provides the food and natural features required to breed and dwell. Not on Trump’s watch. His administration has just issued a rule that makes habitat destruction legal, in effect opening up land that is critical for wildlife to developers and extracting industries. Habitat loss is the leading cause of animal extinction, and this is one more nail in the coffin for our wild friends.

✒️ Trump signed executive orders last week that shrink down two national monuments in Utah, Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, by 90-frickin-percent. He did this in his first term, and it was reversed by Biden. Trump is removing these protections to open this sacred land up to drilling and mining companies.

💻 Earlier this month, the Department of Energy deleted 1,600 pages from its website about energy-efficient home improvements that helped citizens lower bills and conserve energy.

🧭 A few years ago, when AI was really breaking through, one of my initial gripes about it was how it was creating an unnecessary distraction among funders from climate investments to the shiny new thing: any startup that slapped an “AI” on their name. Our planet is in crisis, investors know this, but were already giving up on climate tech. Well, the pain of this truth continues. Bloomberg has a story about how corporations from Burberry to JBS (the world’s largest cattle slaughterer) are dropping their climate goals. To be exact, 62% of the S&P 500 that had set carbon reduction goals have increased their emissions in the past 5 years. The popular reason given is that internal funding is shifting further away from sustainability initiatives and towards internal AI and digital investment. It is a complete denial about the state of our real world, and again, it’s why companies require regulation to do what is not only right, but necessary. The Times also details out the backtracking and outright abandonment of climate goals from several corporations. A common theme is the companies blaming a lack of innovation that would allow them to reduce emissions or meet recycling targets. This is a cop out. These multi-billion dollar companies could invest in the solutions (most of which already do exist, some need capital to scale) if they wanted to, and they could lighten their environmental impacts easily if they’d only shift their priorities to the real issues that matter, like a healthy planet, from the man-made concept of profits.

🦹 There is a dark side of climate work that is not often reported, partially because these types of stories are still mostly unknown or under investigation. It involves the hacking and even killing of climate activists and others trying to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the planetary damages they’ve caused or to stop fossil fuel projects. I think more and more of these stories will be exposed in mainstream media down the road when the stalling debates about climate change have stopped and everyone will rightly be blaming the OG culprits of Big Oil (and their allies). Until then, here’s one story of an ongoing case involving a hacking-for-hire ‘company’ in India that hacked people and their acquaintances involved in an effort to expose Exxon for covering up the truth about their products causing climate change. Exxon and one of their lobbying companies are presumed to have ordered this illegal activity in order to be steps ahead of the opposition. This ongoing coverup by our own government, oil companies, and others is an egregious admission of guilt happening in real time and in plain daylight.

Net Zero, Eh?

58%

Amazon’s emissions have increased this much since 2021
(Bloomberg)

140%

Google’s electricity consumption rose this much between 2021 and 2025
(Axios)

Stay Cool

That's a mist spritzer for cooling off (picked this one for all you World Cup fans)

Thanks for reading,

Kristen

If the wildfires had relented
If the birds had continued their song
If the truth were no longer misrepresented
It’d be because we had fought strong

If the fossils were spared their burning
If the four seasons ceased to misbehave
If the oceans stabilized their churning
It’d mean we decided it was all worthy to save

If the glacial melt had stopped
If New Orleans had stayed dry
If the heat index had dropped
Because of us, countless didn’t die

If the coral reefs kept their color
If Rice’s whale could share their story
If we had listened to one another
Would we be celebrating this planetary glory?

If what we did had mattered
If all our efforts did succeed
If island nations went unbattered
Then life on Earth may proceed

In the future where nothing happened
Would it ever cross your mind
That behind the scenes all along
We’ve been winning this entire time

Climate change
Call it by its name
Nothin' be the same
There’ll be pain on pain
CAT bonds makin' rain
This is not a game
Do you feel the shame? 

You made us wait
Kept pushin' out the date
For what to abate
Needless false debate
You procrastinate
And that sealed our fate
Now it’s all too late

You never listened
We told you for decades
The heat comin’ in spades
Your bed it has been made
Blood all over your hands
Mostly came from man’s
Girls it’s on you too
Yeah talking to all you 
Ones sayin' “Greta who?”
This is all on you

Climate change
Call it by its name
Nothin' be the same
There’ll be pain on pain
CAT bonds makin' rain
This is not a game
Do you feel the shame? 

Now your grandkids are fucked
‘less you go by Zuck
Built your sub-ground bunk
Rest of us been punked
Conspiracies debunked
Scientists off bein' monks
Y'all who fed on hate
Proceed to your gate

You went your way
Now there’s hell to pay
Not for us though
Just for you bro
Who refused to grow
Killed that Green-Deal flow
Blocked renewables
That was dumb yo
We, the bright, know
That where we go
Love will follow
And we’ll be safe
In that high place
Knowing we did
What was needed
What life heeded
Not distracted
But conceded
Only one way 
Get through each day
Do more than pray
Get out our way
Keep you at bay

Climate change
Call it by its name
Nothin' be the same
There’ll be pain on pain
CAT bonds makin' rain
This is not a game
Do you feel the shame? 

Do you see now?
That we knew how
Off an' take your bow
Let us go plow
It’s Our turn now
Salvage what’s left
Before sunset
Epoch of regret
No, not just yet
Yeah you should fret
It’s our last bet

Climate change
Call it by its name
Nothin' is the same
There is pain on pain
Di$a$ter market gains
CAT bonds made it rain
This was not a game
Yet you still complain
You should be ashamed. 

🎤

Perhaps the most objectively intriguing thing about the climate crisis is the variability in subjective human reactions to it. It’s a spectrum that we all fall into. No matter who you are, where you live, or what your capacity for truth is, everyone must mentally reckon with the planetary phenomena of human-caused climate change. There is no other topic so universal, generational, and individual at once as climate change. It is already making its mark on our global temperatures and weather patterns, and there is now sufficient physical and observable evidence proving that conditions on our planet have changed. Anyone paying any attention to weather (and don’t we all?) across their own lifetime knows this at the very least at a suppressed subconscious level, if not at a heightened omnipresent level. And for those who are not actively engaged in noticing the real, physical world around them, there has been enough chatter (though far too little) about climate change for long enough for those remaining humans to have formed an opinion, educated or not.

The mental spectrum of climate change could be condensed down and likened to the five stages of grief, fittingly. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Just like with grief, the journey between and among each stage is nonlinear. The realization of what scientists have been warning about for fifty years has mostly been perceptible in fits and bursts until recently, so it is reasonable to understand how one could choose to deny it, if they have not felt major climate impacts themselves, are not paying attention, and if they do not educate themselves on the subject and rather listen to misinformation. There are also those who outwardly deny for malicious self-interest. Anger should be obvious, and it goes in both directions, though only the direction of victim to perpetrator is valid. It is also reasonable to understand how one might try to avoid thinking about climate change. This falls into the bargaining stage, a spectrum within itself of both self bargaining and external (“maybe I’ll get involved after I’ve established my career”). I’d say bargaining is the stage humanity collectively is in now, as we seem stuck in a give and take, progress and retreat, do a little now and pledge much more later phase that pretty much maintains the destructive status quo.

While many of us can see and feel the comparatively minor changes in temperature over time and the more noticeable shifts to the four seasons, not all of us have yet experienced the kind of climate-fueled extreme weather disasters or glacial retreats or recurring home-wrecking floods and wildfires that’ll make a believer out of anyone. Instead, we may hear things and feel things and see things, but if we are in the bargaining phase, then just one “normal” season will have us forgetting prior extremes, at least until the next abnormality. That can be part of coping, and to stay mentally healthy, we absolutely must enjoy the good times, the old normal weather times.

Then there are the emotions. The climate crisis is not only about the physical changes to our planet and livelihoods. It is just as much about the mental load of it all. It is depressing stuff, and realistically, I’m not so sure we will ever be able to fully escape falling back into this grief stage from time to time. We will continue to see worsening damage and loss across our lifetimes. We know this for sure. Even if the entire human population manages to come together and do what needs to be done to stop the cause of this problem and to adapt to the changes that are here and still coming, the atmospheric pollution that has already been released is locked in for decades, if not generations, depending on our propensity to safely suck it back down.

It would be mentally difficult to not feel into the depths of sadness, anger, and despair that human-caused climate change brings. And that would be normal. There is a burgeoning need to develop the mental economy appropriate for this new world that we’ve shaped in our worst image, and we will need to hold enormous grace and compassion for ourselves as we allow ourselves to process these climate-fueled emotions. On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, I must say that the dream of our world coming together, stopping everything else, and fixing this existential crisis would be the most joyous, renewing feeling imaginable. Perhaps that is the antidote to our sadness. It is surely the antidote to our fear and demise.

To avert any level of demise, acceptance is where all of us need to be. As mentioned, we’ll swing back and forth and all over the place in our feelings and energy and capacity to deal with climate change, sometimes from one moment to the next. But our baseline must be acceptance. Acceptance means we’re done with the distractions and the denials.

Anger can be useful if managed as fuel in the right direction and not as a detour or worse, but it must aid the acceptance. Acceptance means accepting what humankind has done, how we got here, and how we must change. We accept the path forward, which is largely to stop burning fossil fuels and to transition to exclusively clean energy, and we do what it takes to get us over that finish line as quickly as possible. That’s the oversimplified version, but that’s all we need for baseline acceptance. From there, we go full steam ahead deploying all the solutions we already have and innovating the rest to transition our entire global economy to clean up its act and reverse its path of destruction. There is much to do, but we know exactly how to do nearly all of it.

So what is it that deep down, truly holds our species back from accepting the reality of human-caused climate change? The answer is simple. It’s fear. We are all afraid. We share a species-wide fear of facing the consequences of what our kind has done. If we face it, it means it’s real. And we fear change. Change is in the name, after all.

We fear the changes we must make to redirect our civilization. There is fear of what will be lost. Fear of the unknowns. Fear of being left behind. Fear of not being enough to help. Fear of not belonging in the new future. Fear to let go of that which we know. Fear of looking within and seeing who we really are. Fear of being sad. Fear of starting over. Fear of being uncomfortable or less comfortable. Fear of fear itself. This list could go on forever in specifics, and we all have our own portfolio of fears. Most are misguided and easily eradicated with truth (truths: you can face this, you are enough, you do belong, we need you). It’s toxic to carry these fears around. It depletes our energy when we keep feeding them. And leaving our fears to fester does no good for anyone or anything on this planet.

Psychologists widely accept that to overcome fear, we must face it. Don’t avoid it. Twice Nobel Prize winning physicist Marie Curie once said “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” Perfectly applicable to our current climate crisis. Yes, fear less. Sign everyone up for that. And thanks to brilliant minds past and present, we already have a thorough understanding laid out for us as to how we got here and how we move forward in fixing it. All we have to do is listen to these experts and read their work. These are humans just like us who faced their climate fears and invested their skills and time in the study of climate science, physics, and engineering, etc, in order to build a fear-crushing toolbox of facts and solutions that our world can use to get us through this mess to the other side. We are halfway there, and none of us are alone in our climate fear.

I am not immune. I am afraid of the catastrophic future that lies ahead should we not meet this moment. I am afraid of what it means for humankind if we continue to allow the worst of us to dictate our imprint in time. I am angry and sad about the suffering of all living things, caused consciously by members of the human species. I am angry at the evil that has infected our culture and captured the minds of so many lost souls. I am angry at the ones who knowingly caused this crisis (and other crises), who continue to perpetuate their ills, and who harm and silence the truthsayers and doers who get in their way.

But I use all of this as fuel. I will not lay down silently and watch this thing go up in flames. I will not let the evildoers win.

I don’t think like them. I see more and I feel more. I envision an amazing future of health, abundance, and happiness that is possible if we make it so. I see us all choosing an enlightened intelligence that allows us to live in harmony with the natural world and with each other. I see us innovating and creating with love and joy. I see us all doing exactly what makes us happy. I see us taking care of each other, ensuring health and prosperity for our communities as much as we can. There is no need for harm or suffering or comparison or judgement or control. There is only harmonious alignment with ourselves, with our purpose, and with our world. That future is ours if we choose love over fear.

It’s not easy. Despite us knowing what we know, knowing how to move forward, knowing the only way forward is through, there are still unknowns. We don’t fully know how our climate system will respond to the breaching of tipping points, the acceleration of negative feedback loops, and the crossing of planetary boundaries. This is scientific-speak for our Earth’s stress points, red flags, and distress signals. And they are flashing red now. The unknowns will continue to pile up the longer we wait and avoid facing our collective and personal fears. Staying stuck in any stage other than acceptance only prevents us from doing the ONE THING we must do above any other thing. The one thing we were all put here to do at this moment in human history. We are meant to conquer our fears, together, and pull off the greatest achievement known to humankind: the reversal of human-caused climate change, and alongside it, the replacement of our culture of fear with a culture of love. All we have to do is accept it.

When a word or concept elicits a strong emotional reaction, it means there are unresolved feelings, experiences, traumas, and processing waiting to be dealt with. Climate change is one of those topics that triggers people in a spectrum of ways, bringing up complex feelings not easily resolved. This unresolved complexity permeates into our entire existence across mind, body, soul, and environment.

The current phase of climate change began by manmade actions in our species’ past; actions that illogically continue in our present. Our reaction and inaction towards it now and with each passing day will determine our future across all facets of our being. So it is no wonder that even the idea of talking about climate change can be polarizing, paralyzing, and galvanizing.

A multitude of dimensions of fear is largely behind the resistance to facing, let alone talking about, climate change. But we must. To face our collective fear about climate change and then to take appropriate action to correct our past mistakes that caused it, while also adapting to the changes that are now unavoidable, requires a species-level reckoning about our place and purpose on this great planet.

Humanity’s current shared calling is to address the all-encompassing existential planetary crisis that is human-caused climate change. We are failing, to the point where even among the believers and action takers, there has been a retreat in climate communication, where many are afraid to even call it by its name. But any avoidance to call Earth’s changing climate exactly what it is is to actively delay the inevitable macrosocietal transformation required, should we wish to preserve a habitable planet and prosperous future for our species and all life here.

We are at a communications tipping point that should not be underestimated in its significance in how we meet this moment, our defining moment. The only way forward is to call this moment by its name, and to never relent until every human has conquered their fear of facing this reality. We begin by understanding it.

EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE AND CLIMATE SYSTEM

Earth’s climate system changes naturally over tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. But the changes we are observing now, today, in this pinpoint moment in Earth’s 4.5 billion year timeline, are human-caused. That’s why we call this currently developing change, forged by human hands over the past century, “human-caused climate change” to differentiate between the natural and the human-caused changes to our climate. It’s an important distinction, because the human-caused change can also be human-solved, though that window of opportunity is closing fast.

The way our climate system works is actually fairly simple at its fundamental level. Earth’s atmosphere is composed of different gases, the majority of which are nitrogen and oxygen. These two gases are pretty neutral in that they allow both the sun’s energy that’s coming in and Earth’s heat that’s heading back out to space to pass through them without interaction. A very small fraction of our atmosphere is composed of gases that do interact with Earth’s heat. These gases redirect the heat emanating up from Earth’s surface back down again, rather than allowing it to escape into space, as the oxygen and nitrogen do. These interactive gases are known as greenhouse gases for their heat-trapping warming effect, and they include water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane. This is fine and dandy, necessary even, when they are present in the very low numbers of the pre-industrial era, because they provide us with just the right amount of trapped heat, creating very comfortable living conditions for us here on Earth’s surface.

What is happening now is that the human activities of burning fossil fuels and burning forests at scale are rearranging the natural placement of billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane every year. Stores of these gases have been safely locked away underground and within living plants and animals, but by hands of humans, these massive quantities of heat-trapping gases are being relentlessly unleashed into our planet’s temperature-regulating atmosphere. Their growing numbers up above us alter the ideal composition of gases in our atmosphere by greatly increasing the presence of the heat-trapping kind. With a larger quantity of heat-trapping gases, more heat is retained between Earth’s atmosphere and its surface. That excess heat makes it hotter in our air, on our land, and in our water, hence the term “global warming.”

Global warming has impacts beyond just making it feel hotter outside or in our bodies of water. This new composition of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere causes global climate change, where beyond and triggered by the increased heat, we experience changes in precipitation patterns, in ocean currents, and we experience more frequent and extreme weather-related disasters. All of these factors physically and fundamentally change living conditions on Earth, causing a snowball effect of even more changes, like sea level rise, extinctions from lack of food, water, or habitat, a breakdown of ecosystems, and even more greenhouse gases released from safe storage as nature itself loses its ability to contain them (ie permafrost thaw that releases massive ancient stores of methane and carbon, tucked away in long-frozen land).

The impact of these climate changes will vary around the globe. In these new world conditions that humans are shaping, survival will be a luxury of the most mobile and proactive because it is happening faster than nature can adapt.

THE HUMAN ELEMENT

Unfortunately, being proactive is not one of our species’s strong suits. For decades now, with mounting evidence, we have known the consequences of our actions and inactions. Yet somehow the message is still not getting through to drive the species-wide response required. Instead, we are in a state of fight rather than flight. We are fighting amongst ourselves, allowing the wrong ones to hold us back rather than taking coordinated flight out of this mess into the known direction of solutions. Remaining in the fight delays appropriate action, with each day’s additional emissions locking in even worse future warming. We are so caught up in the fight created by the bad-acting minority casting false doubt on the existence and urgency of global warming and climate change, that the rest and best of us are even fighting amongst ourselves about whether to even call this crisis by its name.

Why do we do this? Out of fear. Fear of change, fear of loss, fear of the unknown. The topic of climate change is more than its parts of science and physics and weather and energy. It is a topic about our humanity, our willpower, our inner strength, and our compassion. It asks us to reckon with our past choices and to reflect inwards to ask ourselves who we want to be and will we answer that call. Are we brave enough to step up and face this crisis head-on? Are we strong enough to move forward together to fix it?

This is no small ask. It is the ask of our existence because it requires us to do the heaviest lifting of our lifetimes. This is society-building work, the deep, all-encompassing work done by handfuls of generations before us, at points in time when civilizations churned and technologies overtook. In the timeline of our species, this is once again one of those moments. We are facing a convergence of forcing factors, including climate change and the aggressive push of artificial intelligence upon our society and planetary limits. But instead of allowing the wrong few to dictate the direction our world goes, the majority of us must answer the call to intervene and to rewrite the rules. This time, we get to rewrite them in a way that empowers our best qualities and disables our worst.

THE MAJORITY WANTS ACTION

To be clear, it is the majority of us who know these truths of climate change and planetary destruction to be self-evident, and we want them addressed. In a large global survey in 2024 from scientific journal Nature, it found that 89% of people on Earth demand that their government do more to fight global warming. 86% support pro-climate social norms, such as contributing 1% of their income to help fight climate change. This should be heartening to hear because it reveals the good in our humanity. We will need to collaborate and cooperate on an unprecedented global scale in order to address the crisis of climate change. That the majority of us know this and are willing to do it should be enough to finally move past this period of hesitance and delay.

However, a state of delay is where we are. There exists a climate perception gap, or a “false social reality”, which many studies prove. Most people greatly underestimate other people’s concern for climate change. In the US, a study in the journal Nature Communications found that 80-90% of Americans underestimate their fellow citizen’s support for climate policy, where ”supporters of climate policies outnumber opponents two to one, while Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true.” If people don’t think that other people are concerned, largely because they don’t hear people talking about it, this prevents them from talking about it themselves out of fear of expressing an unpopular opinion. This cycle perpetuates, resulting in what is called the spiral of silence, which is very dangerous when dealing with impending planetary demise.

It also highlights the serious communication problem we have around climate, where people are afraid to talk about it. Unfortunately, this provides fertile breeding ground for those who are obstructing climate action. This wrong minority, those against taking action, then have the space to be the loudest. And the perception gap works in the opposite direction, too, where the loudest voices making constant noise can more easily convince people of their position. Some of the world’s most powerful people and entities use this tactic regularly to prevent climate action. This includes oil and gas companies, petrostates, and their supporting cast of pro-fossil fuel allies in government and business.

But many pro-climate action people with power and influence are further delaying action, by not talking and educating about climate change enough, not enacting lasting change, and not sticking to their guns in times of adversity. This largely includes politicians, but also the media and business leaders. In the media, we can see one driver of that spiral of silence at work, where global news coverage of climate change has dropped by 38% since 2021. In the US, only 17% of people report hearing about climate change in the news in a given week, and since Trump took office last year, the already anemic climate coverage has declined further by 35%. To pour salt on the wound, climate desks at major broadcasters have been shrinking and disappearing altogether this year. For many people, if they aren’t hearing about it, they aren’t thinking about it, and this has serious world-shaping repercussions all the way up to policy decisions.

In the United States, you might be surprised that it is the majority of us who support climate action. Several polls by various institutions are taken year after year asking Americans about their opinions on climate change. The polls phrase and frame the questions differently, further strengthening the fact that no matter how you slice it, the majority is concerned. A Gallup poll from March of this year found that 66% of Americans worry a great deal to a fair amount about climate change, with another 12% worrying a little. That’s 78% of our country’s population that is worrying any amount about climate change. To me, that says most of us are aware of the problem and some are better able to compartmentalize it than others.

THE REAL VOTER PREFERENCES IN AMERICA

Said another way, the long-running twice yearly poll from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication entitled “Climate Change In The American Mind”, specifically focuses on voters and asks a variety of questions about climate policy. Their recent Spring 2026 report found that the majority of all voters, 58%, prefer to vote for a candidate who supports action on global warming, while only 14% prefer to vote for a candidate who opposes action. Right now, our government is being run by the preference of the 14%. But let’s dig into this Yale survey further to really understand how deep the desire for climate action goes when brought to light and asked directly, aka when called by name and said out loud. We’ll contrast it with the actual actions being taken by the current administration.

By repealing the endangerment finding, which is a rule in the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources and transportation, the Trump administration is acting against the 77% of voters who support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Where the Department of the Interior, Department of Defense, and other agencies are blocking wind and solar projects from getting built on our public land and water, they are dismissing the wishes of 72% of our population who support generating renewable energy on public land.

By denying research grants, firing scientists, canceling climate-related reports and studies, shutting down entire climate-affiliated departments, and removing mentions of and data about climate change from federal websites, the Trump administration is actively choosing to ignore 77% of voters who oppose ordering all federal agencies (such as NASA, NOAA, and the EPA) to stop doing research on global warming, and the 77% of voters who oppose ordering all federal agencies to stop providing information about global warming to the public. This indicates that voters acknowledge climate change is happening and they want our government to be researching it, at the least.

It’s not just climate change that the majority of Americans want to see addressed. It’s other environmental issues, too.

Just this month, Climate Power, an advocacy group, did a poll about pollution and public health. They found that 72% of voters are concerned with pollution’s effect on the health of their communities, and 62% are most concerned with “corporations polluting our air and spilling chemicals into our water, making Americans sick, all in the name of profit.”

The Trump administration has touted its parade of deregulation within the Environmental Protection Agency, with too many examples to list here, but resulting in polluting industries, like oil, gas coal, and chemical companies winning the freedom to continue polluting at the expense of public and environmental health. And despite these actions happening out in broad daylight, with at least some media coverage, half of the population has heard nothing at all about these deregulations by the Trump administration regarding the health of our air and water, according to the Climate Power poll. And the majority of voters support stronger regulation on companies to keep our air and water clean.

These are significant numbers. Most people who vote in our country do not agree with the current administration’s attacks on our own government’s ability to research climate change, to regulate planet-warming emissions, regulate corporate polluters, and to allow renewable energy to grow. If Republicans are the party carrying out these highly unpopular actions, then Democrats must balance these actions by being the party to right these wrongs and appeal to the wishes of the majority. So why on Earth aren’t they? Why aren’t Democrats relentlessly talking about and campaigning on the popular topics of climate action and environmental health?

DEMOCRATS RETREATING

One reason is that Democrats seem to suffer from tunnel vision in that they are laser focused on one think tank report telling them to never say “climate change”, and a voter ranking exercise that, in aggregate, never lists climate change as one of the top few issues that voters prioritize. At face value, and to the uninsightful and unanalytical mind, one might think that any issue in the bottom half of a list is simply not important to voters. But that’s short-sighted and simply untrue. Voters, people, care about many things, and those things shift in priority in relation to their current life circumstances. The thing about climate change is that its consequences impact nearly every other issue imaginable. So it would be wise for Democrats to leverage the wide support for addressing climate change and use it to show voters how climate action and building clean energy will directly address their immediate priorities, like how building abundant clean energy will lower their bills.

One of the few politicians who understands this is Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. He is unwavering in his commitment to communicate about climate change, and he has been consistently vocal about the cowardice and stupidity in his own party to miss this prime opportunity, especially those succumbing to the damaging trend of “climate hushing”. “Climate hushing” refers to the phenomena of people in government, business, and media decidedly avoiding mention of climate change by its name because they think it hurts their power and influence (see think tank report above). It’s a nuance in the spiral of silence and in the climate perception gap. Most Democrats are now avoiding the topic entirely as we approach the midterm elections, which plays perfectly into Republican hands, allowing the wrong ones to own the narrative and own our future.

Trump deeply understands the art and impact of communication. It’s one of his trademark characteristics, to conjure up a derogatory alternate phrase for a person, concept, or thing, and use it relentlessly until it becomes one with the original. He’s done this for many climate words, and I don’t wish to repeat them. But as he works to replace the real with the derogatory, he’s also focused on erasing mentions of “climate change” from the federal vernacular by ordering his administration to scrub the phrase “climate change” and all its derivations from federal agency websites, national park signage, and even approved vocabulary that government employees are allowed to use. I think he’s losing his own battle. His obsession with eradicating the concept of climate change from human existence is picking up the slack and keeping the subject in the conversation while Democrats are busy “climate hushing.” Granted, Trump and Republicans are spewing lies and misinformation about climate, but if there’s any truth to the adage “all press is good press”, then the GOP is keeping the climate movement alive.

To further boggle the mind as to the Democrat’s climate abandonment, we are witnessing a number of them take significant strides to the right by actively diminishing hard fought climate laws already won. This is fear at its finest, and confounding to the majority of us who want climate policy enacted. A recent example is New York State Governor Kathy Hochul using the state budget bill to severely weaken what was a nation-leading climate law, the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. The people of New York voted that law into existence. They did not ask for it to be reversed.

Sadly, she is not alone. Governors in blue states are contemplating weakening their own climate laws. Their motivation is driven by the topic of “affordability”, which the party is clinging to so tightly now at the expense of so much else. And while affordability is important to address, and is a top priority for voters, the Democratic party’s fixation on it is triggering a dangerous case of that tunnel vision. Their clinging behavior to the topic of affordability is perhaps out of PTSD from their losses in the 2024 Presidential election, which many attribute to the “cost of eggs” rather than a few mentions of climate change, as the climate hushers would have you believe.

Yet the Democratic party has made climate change their scapegoat. Do you recall Democratic candidates in any of the 2024 races talking about climate change? Probably not, because as always, it was not talked about. Not in debates, not on flyers, not in speeches, not in attack ads. Yet somehow, one of the least talked about issues is being blamed for the Democratic party’s enduringly weak messaging and inability to boldly connect with voters where they’re at.

Take for example, what I believe was the biggest missed opportunity for Democrats leading up to the 2024 election: they didn’t talk about the biggest achievement of Biden’s term, which was the passing of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), aka the climate bill, that was already benefiting communities and catalyzing investment across sectors, with the purpose of building a homegrown clean energy economy. They could have campaigned relentlessly about how it was benefiting the economy, would lower bills and safeguard our communities from extreme weather. They could have educated Americans about how the IRA plus the Infrastructure Act would address voters’ top concerns. But they didn’t.

In fact, the majority of Americans had never even heard of or didn’t know much about the IRA at all. In an interview with Yale’s YPCCC Director Anthony Leiserowitz discussing polling before the 2024 election, he said “Less than half of Americans have even heard of the Inflation Reduction Act and that includes liberal Democrats. But when you give them a description of what’s in the act, most Americans support it—around 70%. But there are a lot of issues at stake in this election and that makes it harder for the climate message to cut through.” It is the job of politicians to control the narrative and ensure that a good message does cut through. Democrats had all the ingredients laid out on a silver platter to address top voter concerns and make the connection to climate action and the IRA. They didn’t, and we are all paying the price for their inadequacies and worsening climate abandonment.

THE RIGHT PATH FORWARD

It should be crystal clear where we go from here. In our current fractured and failed state of climate action, the practice of ignoring and being silent about climate change has proven to be a losing strategy on all fronts. We know that the majority of humans alive right now want climate action from their governments, businesses, and fellow citizens.

To honor the wise wishes of our collective population, we get to talk about climate change, we get to educate about the consequences from inaction, and we get to share about the many benefits to our personal lives, our health, and our finances from taking action. We get to connect it to top voting issues, and we get to hammer home the unpopular, polluting, and dangerous decisions and actions by the Trump administration.

There is so much room for creative communication and action that points to a beautiful future if we commit to meeting this moment, overcoming our fears about it, and getting to work. We can decide to make the “change” in “climate change” stand for good. But we can only get there by facing it head on, starting with the simple act of calling it by its name: climate change.

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Image Credit: NASA

Perspective is everything. It’s both the vision and the roadmap. It is our view on the past, present, and future. It guides us forward or keeps us stuck. It’s a mix of feelings, thoughts, and choices, both conscious and not, about what to allow in and what to dismiss. Perspective is nuanced and unique to each individual, based on their specific inner narratives and experiences. When pondering shared perspectives across 8.3 billion human beings, it’s a miracle we can agree on anything. Perspective shapes our world, and often it is not the perspective of the many who shape it, but the perspective of a relative few.

What is your perspective on the future of our planet in the face of our climate crisis? On either end of the thought spectrum, we can generalize two opposing perspectives with very different outcomes for our special little planet and the fate of life upon it. We are either headed for ultimate doom on a hellscape version of Earth due to runaway warming and its cascading effects (yes, even if worst-case scenario RCP8.5 is now “implausible”. Worst-case is itself a matter of perspective). Or we’re headed in a corrective direction, starting with a successful energy transition from the old and dirty to the renewable and clean, allowing us to cut and drawdown enough atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, just in time.

Done right, this new power system promises to then lead us towards a happier, healthier, and better existence, so the vision goes. The details of this better future also depend on perspective, and for every fraction of a degree’s difference in coordinates for how we choose to move forward with the energy transition, it could result in significantly varied implications for the reshaping of our societies in this new world order (will it be fair and just or rife with inequality and exploitation like today?). Having the right perspective towards how we rebuild our clean, green future matters greatly, and there remains much to overcome when dealing with the complicated human psyche, especially as it relates to remaking societies.

On NASA’s recently completed Artemis II lunar mission, the perspective of Earth and our moon from space was reportedly one of awe and joy. “Moon joy”, to be exact, as it was labeled during an endearingly authentic moment of human communication between mission control and crew. After all, the beloved astronauts were literally flying over the moon on their aptly named vessel, Integrity. Upon returning back to Earth, the crew of four astronauts expressed their deep feelings about what could be called “Earth joy”, during their moving press briefing back in Houston. I dare you not to cry while watching them speak, as they emanate with love for each other and for our planet. It’s beautiful. Earth joy, a perspective of deep love for our planet and all its lifeforms, is one we must all embody if we are to make it through these existential planetary crises, and come out better.

It’s too soon to tell if the Artemis missions will have an impact on our culture anywhere close to that of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, which gifted humanity with the iconic Earthrise photo. That photo was one of a handful of seismic moments during “the long sixties” that catapulted the environmental movement from a grassroots smattering of insightful individuals and campaigns into a mainstream mass protest that engaged 20 million people to participate in the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. That showing of civic care pressured our government to pass several of our country’s bedrock environmental laws. Laws that are now being dismantled and ignored by the current terrible Trump administration.

For the Artemis/Moon/Earth joy effect to play out in modern times, we may have to wait for the inspired kids of today to grow into adults, in hopes they retain their newfound perspectives. Because while the recent mission did produce powerful new images of Earth from space, I fear these incredible tokens of human achievement were not nearly enough to cut through the polluting smog that has settled over the collective human psyche of 2026. The concept, let alone the actualization, of humans traveling further into outer space than ever before is no longer enough to break open the hearts of humanity en masse.

What then will it take to wake up the collective us from a slumber of apathy and ignite the movement of all movements to confront the climate crisis with the species-level behavioral reset required? From the climate science perspective, the forewarned projections are playing out in real time, but these facts have yet to shift enough people’s perspective to one of urgency and action. Breaching 1.5°C after globally agreeing we wouldn’t didn’t change minds. Planet-warming emissions continue to rise year after year. That the last 11 years were the hottest ever recorded didn’t do it, even as these hotter temperatures cause more people to die from heat, and more severe drought robs us from basic staples of hydration and food. The stat that 7 million people die each year from fossil-fueled air pollution doesn’t seem to rally the troops. The ongoing mass coral bleaching that began in 2023 affecting 84% of our ocean’s corals hasn’t generated extinction-level urgency. And the alarming new research from scientists warning about the increased likelihood and earlier arrival of an Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) weakening or, worst case, collapse that would fundamentally alter climate and weather patterns across continents this century (in one lifetime!), doesn’t appear to be making waves.

It’s clear that no single, isolated event, no matter how devastating, will make the difference to stop the world in its tracks and change course like it should. It was perhaps naive to ever think the human population could wake up and collaborate in unison to phase out fossil fuels as we must, but damn if I’ll ever stop hoping. But this isn’t a story about inaction. It’s one of perspective, where if we look around for what’s going right in the clean energy transition, we can see that the majority of humans want climate action, renewable energy capacity is growing, and electrification (which signals decarbonization) is spreading.

It is true the energy transition is not happening fast enough by a long shot; fossil fuels still power over 80% of global energy needs. But it is happening. Last year marked the first time ever that renewables (wind, solar, and hydro) generated the largest share of global electricity (33.8%), beating out the incumbent top source, coal (33%), just barely. And clean energy exclusively met all new electricity demand in 2025.

We are in the beginning of what some call the “mid-transition”, where pockets of change happen in fits, starts, and u-turns across dispersed populations in response to locally recurring climate-fueled disasters combined with global and societal shifts that for various reasons become intolerable. Different countries have their different tipping points to action. But the action is there and current unlikely events are accelerating it. The perspective is: it’s about time.

Australia is a prime example. In 2019-20 Australia suffered a historically devastating wildfire season, known as “Black Summer”, supercharged by anthropogenic factors. They’ve also had a front row seat to the devastating abovementioned mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. Australia is a coal country. They’re a producer and burner of the stuff, and the industry has successfully managed to prevent climate action – until recently. Since 2020, the amount of electricity Australia gets from solar has doubled, now representing 20% of their electricity mix. Solar adoption, especially rooftop solar, is growing fast, and they have such an abundance of it that states now offer citizens three free hours of electricity every afternoon. What pushed them to this turnaround? Did that historic fire, piled on top of all the other tangible impacts on their soil and seas push enough Australians over the edge to finally embrace the change from dirty to clean energy? Perhaps the evidence is in the ballot box. In 2022, Australians voted-in a pro-climate action government in what was called their “climate election”. “Environment” was the most mentioned election issue on social media that year (Americans, can you imagine?!). Australia still has a long way to go before it burns its last lump of coal, but it sure seems as though they’ve had their key moment of a population-wide climate awakening.

A similar story is being written in Pakistan, where solar has ballooned to provide 28% of the country’s electricity generation, up from just 5% four years ago. It’s touted as one of the fastest solar adoption stories ever. What did it? A prolonged shock to their energy system, against a backdrop of recurring annual climate disasters. Deadly floods and heat waves, fueled by climate change, rock Pakistan year after year. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 seemed to be their tipping point for change, as gas prices spiked and developing countries, like Pakistan, couldn’t afford the fuel, causing mass blackouts. Luckily for them, China was ready with cheap and abundant solar panels, which Pakistanis quickly snapped up and installed on rooftops, making them the largest importer of solar panels by 2024. That smart move has helped insulate citizens from the current oil shock caused by the Iran war, as Pakistan is much less dependent on foreign fuel this time around.

Wars are catalytic events, and the current two major ones have largely been about access, denial, reliance, and independence from fossil fuels. The attacks on Ukraine by Russia in 2022 and on Iran by the US and Israel this year may not have started by being about fossil fuels, but the embers of war and disruption continue burning because of it. As a reminder, it is because of the human activity of burning fossil fuels that we have pushed our climate system into unprecedented territory and are facing this planetary crisis. Though these wars were not directly about climate change, they are catalytic climate events nonetheless, ironically pushing the world towards an embrace of renewable energy, if not in the name of saving the planet, then for the sake of country-level energy security and independence. Nobody can stop the flow of sun and wind (though try as the startup-bitten geoengineers might), nor can anyone spike the price of what is free, which is precisely why fossil fuel companies and their ally governments have made it their mission to obstruct renewable energy adoption.

There is no shortage of examples that the Iran war is progressing the clean transition, especially across Europe, Africa, and Asia. EV sales are ticking up all over the world from South Korea and Japan, France and Scandinavia, Australia, and yes, even the US, as drivers seek to decouple their transportation expenditures from geopolitics. On the solar front, Nigeria, Kenya, Malaysia, and Ethiopia are just a few of the 50 countries that recorded record imports of solar panels from China in March. And in the EU, they are doubling down on their quest for energy independence with a new proposal to speed the shift towards homegrown clean energy, while aiding decarbonization across various industries.

It should be noted that the war-drawn line to global clean energy adoption is not linear. As oil and gas is restricted, and renewable infrastructure is still in its infancy in many places, some countries, particularly in Asia, are regressing back to burning coal for their energy needs. As the most polluting fossil fuel, coal consumption is a serious impediment to global emissions reductions, and all the more reason that advanced economy countries must help coal-burning nations quickly build out their clean energy systems.

But the reason this continual flurry of positive clean energy data is happening now is largely due to one major X factor: China and their spot-on foresight (ahem, future perspective) about the inevitability of the clean energy transition. Due to their brilliant and disciplined long-term planning, capacity building, technological advancements, and cost efficiencies, China effectively now acts as the global Walmart dominating clean energy supply chains, manufacturing, and end-product sales for everything from electric vehicles to storage batteries to solar and wind components. All with a low price guarantee.

The fact that it’s China controlling the future has the rest of the world feeling sore. They don’t like that China dominates the global solar market with an 80% share, or that it controls 90% of the production and refinement of the rare earth minerals required for renewable energy components. The EU, the US, and others attempt to punish China’s correct perspective with tariffs and trade restrictions. But China won this game fair and square. They made the right bets, while everyone else made the wrong ones. Deal with it.

It’s thanks to China’s fully stocked shelves that countries now struggling with the volatility of oil prices can quickly pivot to building homegrown alternatives that are resistant to foreign ownership and exploitation. It’s becoming more obvious to more populations that the fossil jig is up. With its geographic concentrations, single-use-burn nature, and never-opt-out subscription model, the activity of burning dead Earthly beings for energy is simply not a smart product for a country to be reliant on. Sun and wind on the other hand are free, abundant, and locally harvested. Cheap battery storage can now largely fill the gaps, providing 24/7 power. It’s not yet a perfect system, but surely human ingenuity will solve the remaining challenges once we are freed from the death grip of Big Oil.

Back in the US, the current pro-pollution, climate denying administration would never let the war’s renewables and electrification effect take hold here. Not that it could, as we are the world’s largest exporter of oil and gas, and largely insulated from oil shocks elsewhere. No, war won’t be our reason to accelerate our own clean energy transition. The undeniable economics of it will. This year, 93% of new energy capacity set to come online in the US will be from solar, battery storage, and wind. Renewables, for additional energy needs, are winning because they are the cheapest and fastest energy sources to build, even while enduring their own war from Trump’s vendetta to kill the renewables market, using every trick in his AI-generated audio book.

But that’s not all. Something else is taking shape in the US that, like the wars, is not directly about emissions and the energy transition, but can help the climate fight all the same. And that is the data center revolt. Data centers and the power-hungry AI computing that they life-support represent a major resource distraction (in capital and brain power) from addressing the climate crisis, and a climate pledge backpedaling from the Big Tech companies who once led the way on corporate climate action. The artificially constructed race to win profits and supposed world dominance generated by artificial intelligence is obstructing the all-in urgency needed to address the very real, physics-based war that human-caused climate change is waging on all of us. Tech companies are keen to power their massive energy needs by any fuel necessary, and we are seeing that gas plants have a starring role in their roadmaps. Not only that, but data centers create environmental harm beyond incremental air pollution and planet-warming emissions. They divert and deplete our fresh water, pave over our local lands, and strain our outdated electric grids with excess demand, threatening heightened electric bills. And we haven’t even touched on the societal and mental damage that unregulated, rampant AI will cause to our people, culture, and livelihoods.

The anti-AI data center movement underpins these issues and more, and is much more powerful than a mere sentiment, though according to a recent poll, that sentiment is strong: 7 in 10 Americans oppose AI data centers in their local area. But it’s more than just NIMBY-ism. In another recent poll, 46% of American voters have negative views on AI, and only 26% view the technology positively. A third poll finds that 80% of Americans are somewhat concerned to very concerned about AI. The idea that this widespread concern is a general concern speaks to the magnitude of topics at risk of being negatively impacted by AI.

The fact that we are seeing real grassroots action spring up and result in successful denials and bans of new data center construction, born from a collective distaste and revolt for a technology being forced down our throats and into our communities, is incredibly encouraging to see. Not only that, but this community-led movement began organically in isolated towns and cities all over the country without any coordination among them. That’s starting to change, as successful organizers and savvy nonprofit groups have taken notice and are working to grow this momentum into something much bigger in order to galvanize support for serious climate action beyond just the data center.

And it is much bigger than just about the data center. It is the new resistance in America. Resistance to resource extraction. Resistance to AI. Resistance to Big Tech. Resistance to billionaire tech bro and ‘girl boss’ culture. Resistance to Trump cronyism and the free pass given to tech companies to dominate our lives, steal our jobs, pollute our minds, and degrade our natural environment with their shiny, dangerous new toy, which literally has the power to alter and even destroy life on this planet. We, the people, don’t want this. And we’ve identified a choke point. A way to cut the figurative dick off these immature bros. Their power source. Their data centers.

Will it work? It’s a tall order on its own. These behemoths are popping up around the world faster than a digital native can cycle through their phone apps in one round of checks-ins. But this strategy’s got legs. Data center moratoriums are being proposed at the city, state, and federal levels. Some have passed. These could help stall or even kill a portion of these environmental demons from erecting. As for the power deals brokered to serve dirty gas power at these AI buffets, we have supply chain constraints on our side, as the wait for new gas turbines is 5 years long, and building new fossil infrastructure is itself a multi-year feat, whereas building new solar farms takes a fraction of that time. At the least, we can try to limit the damage by powering it with clean energy.

Where does all of this leave us in the global quest to save our planet? One perspective might be that among the rubble of war, control, degradation, and breakdown, a new world order has already taken form. It is there for all of us to allow in and open our eyes to see. If more of us can shift our perspective to one of acceptance about our shared climate crisis, and choose to move forward with love for each other and our planet, then we can do this right and create the better future we all deserve. We must let what hasn’t worked burn down and fossilize into a geological time capsule teaching future generations how not to live. Then from the ashes we rebuild a brighter, happier, healthier, harmonious future for all living beings. The clean energy era is here. We must accelerate it to rise up for Earth and take back our home. That’s Earth joy. Copy?

Photo by IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis

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A very important event happened last week. The inaugural Conference for Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels welcomed representatives from 57 countries, plus 400 scientists and academics to support in science-based decision-making, all of whom presumably pledge allegiance to a healthy and just version of Earth that runs on renewable, emissions-free energy. It’s purely coincidental that this meeting of clean-minded minds happened amidst the backdrop of a war that could very well be a pivotal timestamp in the energy transition. The timing of this conference could not have been more cosmically aligned with a global spotlight on the compounding negative externalities of global fossil fuel reliance. Planned and raised from the ashes of yet another failed United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) discussing global climate action last November in Brazil, this new conference is a sign that bold leadership committed to properly addressing the climate crisis is alive and well, and most notably, will not be silenced.

One simple reason this group had to come together now is because the resulting document produced from COP30 last year failed to even mention the phase out of fossil fuels. The human activity of burning fossil fuels is the largest driver of climate change. To not be able to call the problem or solution by its name after 30 years of convening is worse than failure, it’s defeat. And so here we are with a smaller, yet not insignificant group of countries, who are committed to moving this blue ball forward on the one single action item that must happen if we are to salvage life on this planet: stop burning fossil fuels.

The Conference for Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels convened April 24-29 in Santa Marta, Colombia, and was cohosted by Colombia and the Netherlands. They only allowed attendees who identify as the “coalition of the willing”, or people who know the climate emergency is upon us and who are done litigating this fact. Climate deniers and their allies were not invited, nor were they welcome, as they currently are at the COPs. This criteria alone demonstrates the beacon of hope this conference represents in the global arena. Obstructionists have no place in the quest for progress, and progress is the bedrock of climate action. We can only make progress and move forward by cultivating a space for unencumbered climate action.

And so at this next-gen climate conference, those in attendance were the rational, the logical, the realistic. They are the path-forgers, the new world expeditioners, the species-advancing innovators, all fighting against the resistance. They are the ones in positions of political power, of country-shaping influence. The ones choosing to take the politically risky, albeit only path forward, for all of us. Those making up this “coalition of the willing” are our representatives, ministers, leaders, and envoys who have chosen to not only hold the line, but crucially, to move it forward, no longer waiting for unanimous permission from the global disorder.

These founding 57 countries represent one third of the global economy. They will phase fossil fuels down and out. Most news articles reporting on the conference pointed out that it did not include the world’s top fossil emitters and exporters, such as the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and India, as if this were a defeatist detail. It’s not. Of course these parties would not be invited to a serious meeting to plan the actual transition away from coal, oil, and gas. They represent most of the very parties responsible for obstructing the current COP process, where decisions are taken by consensus and fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber most countries’ delegations, resulting in outcomes that align only with the wishes of the world’s lowest uncommon denominators. Dirty fuel keeps burning and global temperatures keep rising.

This isn’t to say that the UNFCCC has been a bust. Far from it. Humanity’s ground-breaking and significant attempt at global climate collaboration deserves immense credit. Getting 198 countries to ratify a treaty which aims to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system is no small feat. It presumes we all agree that humans can and are interfering with our planet’s climate system. In 1995, The Kyoto Protocol set greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets for developed nations, pushing them to do something about the problem. And the 2015 adoption of the Paris Agreement gave our world the 1.5 north star dream and a hard number to rally around, that being the scientific recommendation to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, with an upper limit of 2°C, in order to theoretically avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

But just eleven years later, we have failed. Many scientists believe we have crossed the threshold for 1.5°C, and we are on track to overshoot the devastating impacts of 2°C by 2100, which is now just one human lifetime away.

Still, without these previous achievements, things would likely be much worse. Since the Paris Agreement, there has been a mainstreamed push for countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, leading to a shift in global energy investment, where clean energy funding now outpaces that of fossil fuel, with the latest numbers in 2025 showing investments of $2.2T and $1.1T, respectively. Additionally, we continue to see renewable energy records broken. Last year, all new electricity demand was met with clean power sources, and for the first time ever, renewable energy managed to just barely beat out coal as the top source of global electricity, according to global energy think tank Ember. This is due in large part to the drastic drop in solar costs over the past decade, now the world’s cheapest source of energy.

But these efforts have not directly addressed the source of the problem. The burning of fossil fuel not only persists, but continues to grow. The proof is in the numbers: we continue to break annual records for global emissions dumped into our atmosphere, which now holds CO2 concentrations of ~427 ppm, 50% above preindustrial levels. In 2025, CO2 emissions reached a record high 38.4 billion tons. Emissions have been increasing steadily since 1900, and even though developed nations have managed to flatten or even decline their trajectories in recent years, 2025 saw advanced economy countries grow emissions faster than developing and emerging markets for the first time in 30 years.

We are not listening to the science. We are not appropriately reacting to the reality of our warming planet. Yes, we need to continue building out renewable capacity at a much faster clip, but most importantly, we must retire the fossil system. To cease fossil fuel burning operations at a global scale or even at the regional level will require the most complex and detail-oriented multidisciplinary multi-decade effort that humanity has ever undertaken. Not many people are talking about this critical next phase. Presumably that is what the Conference for Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels aims to do. Finally, we can get down to the nitty gritty of how The Great Transition gets done, followed immediately by getting it done. (One person working on exactly this topic is Emily Grubert who is doing extremely important work researching the details of what this mid-transition phase we are in could look like.)

In order to succeed, we must rethink our rules of engagement with each other, or else risk the end of a habitable Earth. In analyzing the many constructs of modern society (i.e. capitalism, the electoral college, the existence of lobbyists), over time it becomes painfully obvious to critical minds that previously written rules must be updated to reflect the circumstances of today. Humans evolve over time, priorities change, resources deplete, technologies advance. We cannot expect a system created generations ago to uphold within the physical, financial, and psychological parameters of today.

In the case of international collaboration to address the climate crisis, the Conference for Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels looks like an enlightened and actionary evolution of the UN COPs. Per Carbon’s Brief’s detailed account of the conference, “ministers and envoys from across the world sat side-by-side in small meeting rooms to have open and frank conversations about the barriers they face in transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy.” “The new format was described as ‘refreshing’, ‘highly successful’ and ‘groundbreaking’ by countries attending the talks”.

What this indicates to me is that the humanity was brought back into climate proceedings. The format of sitting in small circles for casual discussions about our world’s biggest challenges invites the human element of emotion and connection into the space. Human activity is what has gotten us into this mess, but it is actually due to activity that has been stripped of the human element of love. If love were involved, we would not bulldoze forests, mass murder species, and poison our communities. Those who carry out these horrific acts of pillage and pollution have shock-therapied themselves into living a life in lack of love. But love is the strongest, highest, most powerful force we possess as human beings. Love for our planet, our future, and each other, I would guess, was present in the Conference for Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels.

My one critique of this conference and outcome is that none of the plans are mandatory. It’s all voluntary, just as in the UNFCCC. The question of how to enforce and make mandatory international agreements is a topic for a non-existent governing body in its own right. But so far the voluntary route hasn’t gotten us to where we need to be. Voluntary coalitions and treaties and agreements of any kind are built on shaky ground, and in this current era of world disorder, words are no longer good as gold. Even with this coalition of the willing, there is much reason to expect broken promises, not because of the individuals who attended the conference, but because of the fickle governments, entities, and citizens they represent. Until we see the “coalition of the transitioned”, we must remain extra vigilant in our efforts to push real action forward relentlessly, and at a much faster pace and greater cadence than once-yearly checkins.

Next year, the second Conference to Transition Away from Fossil Fuels will be held in Tuvalu, co-hosted by the island nation and Ireland. Tuvalu is already experiencing an accelerated version of climate impact, with rising seas encroaching upon their homeland. Outside of this intergovernmental arena for climate action, the rest of us have a job to do. We must stoke the flame for the human emotional connection that binds us. Our sisters and brothers of Tuvalu and all island nations floating in the vastness of our planet’s oceans are facing some of the nearest term risks. Their livelihoods, their cultures, their mere existence is endangered by sea-level rise caused by the conscious human decision to continue burning coal, oil, and gas for energy. To knowingly continue with the status quo that created this horrific circumstance would be heartless, murderous, and suicidal all at once. Is that our legacy? We have much more evolved options ready and waiting, and we have the ability of our intelligent brains to innovate the rest, should we choose to use this gift of human intellect. The choice is ours.

The recent announcement from the Trump administration to “reorganize” our country’s U.S. Forest Service seems to be breaking through the polluted airways and hitting a national nerve. Good. People love trees, and thank goodness for that shared sentiment. This love appears to be allowing many of us to see through the Department of Agriculture’s guise of a Forest Service reorg for what it is: a dismantling for business interests, not for the benefit of taxpayers. The public response has been so strong that the USDA felt the need to issue a rebuttal on their website. We’re not falling for it.

Our nation’s Forest Service has been around since 1905. Housed under the Department of Agriculture, it is responsible for 193M acres of forest and grassland, representing 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The original intention of the Forest Service was to maintain a lasting ecosystem for the enjoyment and responsible benefit of humans and wildlife alike. Though a “sustainable timber” practice was always part of the vision, the USFS has always been subject to the whims of the strain of politician who only sees dollar signs and the opportunity to dominate and deplete our country’s natural resources. Timbering, fossil fuel extraction, mining, and the construction of roads that go along with all those extractive activities are the everlooming dark forces rabid to raze what is left of our pristine public lands. Our Forest Service must manage these business interests and the shifting political mandates alongside the duty of maintaining the overall health and longevity of our forested lands.

Unfortunately, we have the most rabid of destroyers in the seat of the presidency, whose administration is working right now to revoke the 2001 Roadless Rule, which protects 58M acres, or 30%, of our country’s remaining wilderness from any human development. Our wilderness is truly our last frontier. Last year, when Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced intent to revoke the Roadless Rule, over half a million citizens contributed public comments voicing their opposition, as did an array of interest groups from hunters to wildfire fighters to outdoor adventurers. Is anything sacred, we collectively ask?

Also early last year, this administration issued an executive order to mandate a 25% increase in timber production on federal land, followed by a USDA “emergency declaration” that the Forest Service allow fast-tracked logging within our protected forests, a determination that allows businesses to avoid the usual protocols for their plundering, including skirting environmental reviews.

These examples of bulldozing roads into existence and clear-cutting forests have long-term, negative effects, not only on the local ecosystems of wildlife in terms of disrupting their migration routes, habitats, and food sources, but also on the millions of Americans who rely on our intact forests for drinking water filtration and the sorely undervalued right to enjoy untouched nature.

As for the U.S. Forest Service “reorg”, many believe this is a clearcutting of obstacles (ie employees, scientists, research capabilities) in the way of extractive industry, and will allow these industries to more easily invade and pillage our public lands. The changes include relocating the USFS headquarters from D.C. to development-friendly Utah, shuttering all 9 regional offices, and eliminating 57 of 77 research facilities across the country.

These offices represent a forest ecosystem of their own. Each location houses place-specific experts in forestry whose life’s work is to study and understand the nuances of forests and their ecosystems all across our diverse terrain. Scientists in forestry and ecology study how to prevent and manage wildfire, how forests and species populations can recover after devastation from fire, drought, and pests; they do water quality studies, trail management, and study how climate change is impacting all of it. All hugely important topics that require decades of study.

The impact of this Forest Service reorg remains to be seen. But if it follows in the footsteps of recent DOGE tactics (5,860 forest service jobs were lost last year) and previous federal office relocations and closures (87% of BLM employees left after the agency moved its HQ to another state during the last Trump term), it’s likely that many employees will leave, taking with them the knowledge, experience, and care our forests deserve.

Our public lands should be safe from extractive industries and self-interested politicians. So many people from our country’s history fought for years, even lifetimes, to secure the preservation and legally responsible management of our national treasures. They did it for us. We must continue the legacy of environmentalism. It is our right, our privilege, and our responsibility.

Currently, I’m reading a book that is inspiring me to my core. “Silent Spring Revolution” by Douglas Brinkley is a historic account of environmentalism throughout the “Long Sixties” and it’s like a firehose of introductions to environmental heroes across all walks of life, all over the country, of various professions, with each person focusing on one or multiple aspects of the environment that they care deeply about. History through the lens of environmentalism is a revelation.

And boy does history repeat. Same as back then, we have Big Industry decimating and bulldozing nature, wildlife, and our health. Only now it’s with more precision and better technology, their fangs locked deeper into our political system than ever before. Greenhouse gases continue to be dumped into our air to the point of confirmed existential crisis. PFAS chemicals flow freely in our fresh water and poison our blood. Plastic and trash litter every inch of our world. The next, and perhaps last, frontier to be violated is our deep ocean floor, as the sea miners idle in waiting to begin their exploitation. Even our consciousness is polluted by digital infiltrators on our own screens or worse when it’s second-hand from nearby addicts getting their fix. We are bombarded at every turn by unavoidable advertisements for hyperconsumerism and drugs in the form of a pill, a wager, or a prompt.

Just like back in the Long Sixties, with its eerily similar and significant mix of movements and aggressions, we have the backdrop of an unpopular war abroad. (Might this be the tipping point? So many times I have wished those words to be true.) The cultural war at home is a fire that will not extinguish, incessantly stoked and kept burning by one of the most vile human beings to ever exist; a man who holds the highest seat in our country and rules by hatred. But still…history shows us, too, that tides change. Movements rise and converge.

The ‘No Kings’ movement may not have a direct outcome now, but it represents an enormous wave of hope which shows that even in these modern times hijacked by apathy, distraction, and cognitive decline, the full story of what we want as a society has not been fully seen or accurately exposed. The quiet majority is growing louder and finding its cohesive voice. Behaviorally, humans are influenced greatly by others around us, and yesterday was a demonstration of people everywhere from small towns to big cities to entirely separate countries across the world caring out loud, choosing to show others what they stand for. This matters. This is how we grow the numbers. And numbers speak louder than posts.

By the magnitude that I am enthralled reading about the unsung environmental heroes of past decades, I am encouraged by the ‘No Kings’ turnout. As we head into April, Earth Month as it’s known in the environmental realm (and I wish beyond), we must keep this momentum of caring out loud continuing with vengeance. There is no shortage of topics, environmental and other, to be fed up about. Stay with that. Rage drives action. An undying belief in change for the betterment of humanity, society, and our planet charges and recharges our batteries. We have the chance to write the history of future books and reset the example. We must be the inspiration for future generations to rise up, defeat evil and hatred, and ensure that what is good and right prevails. Let's show them it can be done.

Imagine you are a whale of the Rice’s whale species. Your year-round home is one very special pocket of ocean, known to humans as the Gulf of Mexico. You are different from other whale species in this way, because you chose to stay put rather than migrate across the globe. As part of the greater whale species, you are intelligent, and you communicate in ways humans don’t yet fully understand. You sing and you ‘talk’, and you use your critical senses of sound and hearing to pass down ancestral knowledge. On a daily basis, you use these survival skills to help your pod find food and avoid danger.

For millions of years, your home was a peaceful place to exist, a perfectly balanced ecosystem, abundant with marine life and wide open space, as nature intended. This specific ocean territory is the one for which you are uniquely adapted. You specifically evolved to exist here, and it is not in your DNA to just up and move, just as it’s not in a human’s DNA to suddenly go from living for generations near the equator to migrating to the Arctic. Adaptation and evolution is a process over long periods of time.

Over the last hundred years, a blip in your species’ timeline, foreign sounds and dangerous objects began to infiltrate your ocean home. It became loud and dangerous. The serene underwater soundscape was abruptly disrupted by engines, drills, seismic guns, and horns. Thousands of massive metal structures punctured the sea floor and obstructed the surface. Enormous, fast moving ships and tankers plowed continuously and recklessly above. You spend much of your time at the surface, both to breathe and to rest. Now, spending time there is a looping brush with death.

Human-built and operated ships are a major cause of death and serious injury to the entire whale species. So is entanglement in commercial fishing nets. And the ingestion of marine debris, like plastic waste. And noise pollution. Oh the incessant, torturous noise that fills your once-quiet home. Not dissimilar to the human practice of psychological warfare through ‘torture music’ used on other humans in captivity. All sea life must suffer from these mechanical ocean horrors. But the noise pollution goes beyond physical harm. It reduces your capacity to communicate. Your voices are drowned out by the loud, ongoing, reverberating shouts and screams from the infiltrators. You can no longer rely on your voice to warn your clan of dangers ahead. You can no longer find food as easily, for we believe those species, too, have been disrupted by the foreigners, and increasingly, by climate-fueled warming waters.

One by one, your species began to disappear. Struck by ships and killed instantly. Injured unnaturally by ship or rope and sentenced to live in intense pain for as long as it took to take you. Disoriented by human-made noise to the point of starvation and infertility. Your casualties of their war lay dead now on the ocean floor.

It got worse. The foreigners continued their conquest beyond shallower waters into the deep sea. Then in 2010, a catastrophic event. The Gulf of Mexico Massacre, at the human-hand of the deep sea rig, dubbed Deepwater Horizon. Black oil arose from a grave it was never meant to escape. It swallowed much of the life that once swam freely above it. In an instant, a further 22% of your species alone was exterminated. Now there are 51.

Fifty-one individuals of your kind remain alive on this Earth. It is sad and lonely now, knowing what the future holds: emptiness. For you and your kin, there is no future, there is only the time that remains in this moment of life on this version of Earth. It’s no longer a good life. Bringing newborn calves into this new world is a death sentence preceded by a life of danger and disruption. Life among the now ubiquitous, loud, uncomfortable, and unnatural sounds from the invasive species above is not a life any living creature should endure. Nor is a life where the risk of death is present every time you simply come up for air. The miracle that you and your species are, a present day miracle reflecting back millions of years on the very formation of complex life on Earth, is close to extinction.

And as we speak, plans are being made on dry, abused land specifically aiming to seal the fate of your critically endangered species, the majestic Rice’s whale. The “God Squad” of Americans, a corral of just 6 individuals from the Homo sapiens species, will decide whether to keep one of their destructive self-interested activities alive at the expense of you and other marine species. Will they choose to extinct a dying species as a statement-making declaration to extract what is equivalent to a drop in the bucket more from an over-exploited area of Earth’s ocean just to prop up an industry that itself must die if we are all to live? You, Rice’s whale do not need to die or suffer any more. Humans don’t need anything more from your home. They never did to begin with. If the rest of us could only make the few evil ones see through the thick smog of pollution choking their minds and souls, then maybe there is a chance for you. But if we fail you, please know the good of us will never stop fighting for all that remains.

As the darkness approaches and you swim, glide, twirl, dive, breach, and suspend in these waters which held all of your ancestors before you, you must wonder if all of it, someday, will get the chance to begin once again. See you in another world, dear friend.