Russ Vernon-Jones

love, justice, and climate change … I know you can make a difference.

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The Only Path to Climate Success?

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Good news abounds on the climate front. More solar and wind power is being installed all over the world. The international financial industry is slowly but surely withdrawing support for fossil fuel projects. The President of the U.S. is aiming for net-zero carbon emissions from the electric grid by 2035 and is moving legislation forward to support climate action.

Yet the overall picture with our climate is still quite dire and getting worse.

Seven things you can do to make a difference.

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Is this the “better story” we need?

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The actions Donald Trump has taken to increase the burning of fossil fuels, eliminate the transition to renewable energy, and increase the wealth of fossil fuel CEO’s have been mind-boggling. Each of these will worsen the climate crisis, and all its disastrous effects, both in the U.S. and throughout the world. They are guaranteed to increase global death and disease — from catastrophic weather events, famine causing droughts, wildfires, and deadly air pollution.

Trump and his henchmen have shifted from climate denial (“It’s a hoax.”) to outright dismissal of the issue. For instance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tweeted, “The Department of Defense does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rolllins said, “We’re not doing climate change crud anymore.” Climate change denial has become even harder to justify as the scientific evidence and weather disasters have increased. “Dismissal, on the other hand, is a way of saying, ‘It’s beneath our contempt. We don’t even have to debate this—we’ll just call it crap,’” Texas A&M communications professor Jennifer Mercieca says.

All of this comes as a poll of nearly 130,000 people across 125 countries finds that 89% of people want their governments to do more to address the climate crisis.

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A Profound Choice

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You probably don’t need me to tell you that things are bad in the United States right now. I do want to affirm, however, that in my view, and in the views of others, the last few weeks have not just been more of the same. Instead, we have seen a shocking increase in the cruelty, the corruption, and the undermining of the rule of law of the Trump/MAGA regime.

From Trump accepting illegal gifts from foreign nations and crypto investors, to forbidding Harvard University to have students from other countries. From mass deportations of immigrants of color without due process to further expanding the unconstitutional weaponization of the Department of Justice to hound those Trump dislikes.

Worst of all, the MAGA Republicans in the House rushed ….

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We Must Resist Trump AND Advocate for Transformative Change

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Donald Trump and his minions are deliberately destroying our federal government and the economy, giving control to billionaires and far-right extremists, enriching themselves, waging war on workers, immigrants, and marginalized populations, worsening the climate crisis, stealing our private data, and eliminating government services that have protected our health, safety, and security.

This is not just an extreme version of our two-party politics. This is something we have never seen before in the U.S. It is a full-out fascist coup by MAGA forces that seek to end democracy and the rule of law in the U.S.

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Tax Justice – a necessary component of climate justice

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Trillions of dollars are now needed every year to meet humanity’s global needs for climate action and for a basic standard of living for all. Fortunately, there is enough money to meet all these needs. The problem is that a vast amount of the world’s wealth is currently held by a tiny number of ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations, and they are not spending it to meet humanity’s needs.

Tax justice is the answer. Tax justice will make the world’s wealth available to meet the world’s problems. Without tax justice (and debt cancellation) climate justice will be unattainable and humanity will not be able to successfully address the climate crisis. Action is needed in many nations and by the global community as a whole.

Tax justice includes: …

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To Progressives Who Are Not Supporting Kamala

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Millions of people in the U.S. are ready to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. They are pleased that we have an opportunity to elect a woman president. They see Kamala’s policies on climate, democracy, social policies as vastly preferable to Trump’s. They are very pleased that we have a viable alternative to the nightmare that would result from having Trump become president a second time. Many are working hard to get Kamala elected. They value Kamala’s commitment to bringing people together and the joy and caring she communicates.

Other voters, including a number of progressives, are having trouble getting behind Kamala. They are deeply upset by her support of President Biden’s policy of continuing to provide arms to Israel while the Israeli army is brutally killing Palestinians and now other Arabs. Some see it as unforgivable that she didn’t invite a Palestinian speaker to address the Democratic National Convention. Others feel betrayed by her withdrawing her previous support for banning fracking, and failure to prioritize climate action.

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It’s time to start ending all fossil fuel production

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Over the years I have written many posts about the climate crisis and about climate justice — good news, bad news, goals, new technologies, activists’ successes, and the depth of the crisis. Today I want to state explicitly what must happen if we are to keep much of our planet inhabitable for human beings and other species. We must end the extraction of oil, gas, and coal everywhere in the world.

Despite all of humanity’s successes in developing and deploying renewable energy, in conserving energy and increasing energy efficiency, and in making a majority of the global population aware that global warming is real and a major problem, fossil fuel production has continued to rise (as the chart above illustrates). While there are many aspects to the climate crisis, the burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming. It is emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that are causing deadly heat waves around the world, catastrophic storms and flooding, agriculture-destroying droughts, and rising sea levels.

If we are to resolve the climate crisis, we must remove from the face of the earth one of the biggest, most profitable industries of all time–the fossil fuel industry. This is no small task, of course. But I think we must be honest with ourselves that this is what must happen. Nothing else will suffice. As big a task as this is, I believe we can succeed.

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Carrots and Sticks

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There has been some discussion of carrots and sticks in our nation’s climate policy. Why? What’s at stake here and why does it matter?

The metaphor apparently goes back more than a century to a cartoon that portrayed a race between two donkey riders– one encouraging his steed forward by dangling a carrot in front of it, while the other whipped his animal on the flank with a stick. It general it refers to motivating human behavior by providing incentives and rewards (carrots), or by threats, punishment, or other negative consequences (sticks). A “carrot and stick” approach generally refers to applying both at the same time.

What does this have to do with climate policy? It’s relevant, for instance, if a state wants to get its electric utility companies to provide more electricity from clean, renewable sources and less generated by burning fossil fuels. The state might provide tax rebates, subsidies, or other financial incentives (carrots) for providing more clean energy, or it might impose a tax on fossil fuel use or pass laws requiring utilities to provide an increasing percentage of green electricity each year (sticks).

This is a key issue in how the federal government in the U.S. is trying to deal with the climate crisis. The original Build Back Better climate bill that the Biden Administration proposed in 2021 had a healthy mix of carrots and sticks.

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“The New Denialism” – What’s That?

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For many years one of the biggest obstacles to the United States taking meaningful climate action was widespread climate denial. PR campaigns, often funded by the fossil fuel industry, promoted the idea that climate change was not actually happening, and if it was, it was not caused by human activity. These campaigns were remarkably successful in creating widespread doubt about climate change. The Republican Party in the United States became the only major political party in the democratic world denying the legitimacy of climate science.

More recently, as the effects of climate change around the world and in the U.S. have become more extreme and obvious, outright denial of the existence of climate change has decreased. Polling of public beliefs in 2023 shows 72% of adults in the U.S. believe that climate change is happening. Polling shows 62% of the public in the U.S. thinks Congress should do more to address global warming.

In response, the advocates of climate denial have not gone silent, they have simply shifted their tactics to what is being termed, “New Denialism.” A recent report shows this new denialism is growing on social media and having an impact, especially on younger people.

The new tactics of the climate deniers focus in three major claims:

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Climate Activists and Small Nations Making a Difference in Their Nations and at COP28

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I’ve been excited to learn recently about three different powerful climate activist campaigns, two of which have led to actions at COP28. As I write this it’s too early to know what the COP itself will produce, but so far much of the news seems to indicate that we have not yet built a sufficiently powerful climate movement, either in the U.S. or globally, to derail the power of the fossil fuel industry and its accomplices.

Here’s some good news. A month ago I wrote to you about a vital campaign to stop the climate-destroying expansion of LNG export terminals along the Gulf Coast in the U.S. This campaign is growing. In late November activists delivered more than 200,000 petition signatures to the Department of Energy calling for the Biden Administration to halt any permit approvals for new LNG terminals. At the behest of Third Act, elders are writing thousands of hand-written letters. Young influencers are using TikTok and Instagram to spread the word.

The Biden Administration has made no announcements about any change in policy, but they’ve indicated privately that they are seriously studying their response to this uproar. If you haven’t signed the petition yet, please join in on what has become an international protest and sign the petition. It’s at www.bit.ly/NoNewLNG. Organizers are now seeking a million signatures. (Note: The count you will see on the signing website includes only a fraction of the signatures so far.)

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Stop New Methane Gas Exports Now – CP2 and 20 others

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Eight years ago in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the nations of the world set a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. They agreed that every nation, and especially the wealthiest ones, would contribute to reducing climate damaging emissions.

Since then many people, businesses, climate organizations, and governments around the world have worked to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, reduce the use of fossil fuels, preserve forests, and generally reduce our collective carbon footprint. In the United States we’ve had some modest success. Since 2005 our polluting emissions have fallen 20%. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is accelerating our progress with significant incentives for transitioning to renewable energy.

However, while we’ve been making progress on domestic emissions, something horrible has been happening in the U.S. that is having a huge global impact–worsening the climate crisis with deadly effects on people all over the world. Since 2015 the U.S. has gone from exporting no oil and virtually no LNG (liquefied “natural” methane gas) to becoming the largest driller and exporter of gas and oil in the world! The increased emissions from the gas and oil we export are so great that they exceed all the reductions we’ve achieved in our domestic greenhouse gas emissions since 2005.

One effect has been to ….

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