👋 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

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