Burning the Planet at the Stake

Unlike The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, this newsletter isn’t controlled by a craven billionaire who prevents his editorial board from making the obvious choice to endorse Kamala Harris for President. Unlike Politico and The New York Times, we don’t run greenwashing ads from ExxonMobil and the National Propane Council to support our climate coverage. Our only responsibility is to you, our subscribers.

As the editor and primary writer of Hill Heat I have committed to honest, consistent coverage of the profound stakes of our national politics, including the many climate champions running for office. I have exciting plans for the coming year, with deeper stories, interviews, and commentary. I need your support to make it happen.

Thank you,

Brad

PRESENTED BY SUBSCRIBERS LIKE YOU, NOT JEFF BEZOS

It’s now All Hallows Eve in the Year Of Our Lord Twenty Hundred and Four.

In September, felon Donald Trump called Democratic allies of Kamala Harris “absolute garbage,” building on his campaign of describing immigrants and Americans who oppose him as “vermin” and “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country.” At a rally in Las Vegas last week, Trump ramped up his virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric, calling America a “dumping ground” and “the garbage can for the rest of the world.” In Texas the next day, before a backdrop blaring “DEPORT ILLEGALS,” he repeated, “We’re like a garbage can.”¹ “We’re the garbage can for the world,” he repeated on October 26th in Novi, Mich. “We are. We’re a garbage can. We’re like a garbage can.” Later that same day: “We’ve become like a garbage can for the rest of the world,” Trump told the audience at State College, Pa. “They’re throwing all their garbage into our country.” 

The next day, at Trump’s massive Madison Square Garden rally of crude, bigoted invective—including rampant transphobia and a call-out to the Ku Klux Klan slogan “America for Americans”—the white-supremacist comic Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”²

Speaking of garbage, after President Joe Biden rightly said that calling fellow Americans garbage is itself “garbage,” our national press corps followed the Trump campaign’s lead in treating this as a full-blown crisis for Democrats, while an orange-painted Trump literally stumbled his way into a garbage truck before reiterating that Democrats “treat our whole country like garbage with open borders.”

What a fascistic fossil-fueled dumpster fire. But our nation can still douse these flames at the ballot box.

Off the political beat, record-shattering heat and worldwide carnage thanks to the fossil-fuel industry is giving us scene after scene out of a horror movie.

“Witch City” Salem, Massachusetts, is cast in a smoky gloom, with temperatures 25° above the pre-carbon normal, as eldritch wildfires burn the woodlands.

Typhoon “King” Kong-rey is wreaking destruction in Taiwan while Oklahoma is pummeled with hail and rain.

Gas-burning cars were tossed like toys by a hellish deluge in Valencia that drowned at least 150 people.

What more do journalists need on Halloween to be able to point out it would be a good idea to stop spewing greenhouse pollution into the air?

For some, apparently more.

Stories of the “crazy” “frightening” “spooky and steamy” “record temperatures” of the “spooky-warm air mass” feature chipper meteorologists praising the demonic heat, climate silence, or even straight-up climate deception, as in this Gothamist piece by Brittany Krigenstein: “Ciemnecki said it’s not an uncommon weather pattern for this time of year.” NBC’s Kathryn Prociv recognized “human-caused climate change” but counters that “the warm temperatures will prevent jackets from ruining costumes.”

Many climate scientists are trying to sound the alarm, with weak results.

“Burning fossil fuels causes climate change and climate change causes death and destruction,” climate scientist Friederike Otto told the AP’s Seth Borenstein, who chose to instead emphasize uncertainty (“isn’t fully sold,” “not fully embraced”).

Bloomberg’s Lauren Rosenthal and Kendra Pierre-Louis similarly equivocated on “a direct link between this specific weather pattern and human-caused climate change,” before mentioning that “global warming is boosting background temperatures.”

On the positive side of the ledger, Fast Company’s Sarah Bregel was clear on the “scary-warm weather”:

The most nightmarish example of journalistic climate malfeasance, however, belongs to the Washington Post’s Harry Stevens. He interviews notorious climate-science misinformers Chris Landsea and Roger Pielke Jr. to recapitulate the zombie argument that fossil-fueled climate change isn’t why billion-dollar disasters like Helene and Milton are on the rise.³

But let’s move away from the gruesome and on to the good!

The International Energy Agency’s Energy Technology Perspectives notes that a single container ship of solar panels can provide as much electricity as more than 50 large LNG tankers or 100 large coal ships. That deserves an infographic, don’t you think?

Looking past the election, the Double Exposure Documentary Fest hits DC November 7 to 10, with symposia including The Morning After (really, two mornings after) about the election results at 9:30 am at Johns Hopkins on Thursday, and Into the Deep Blue with Ian Urbina at 4 pm about the Outlaw Ocean Project on Thursday. Documentaries include Dust to Dust, about a Japanese haute couture designer advocating for sustainable fashion, Searching for Amani, on the effects of drought on Africa's rich conservancies, and American Grail: Search for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, chronicling one expert's quest for this elusive bird, amid the realities of climate change.

Wait! We can’t look past the election yet…

There’s already a massive advantage in the volunteer mobilization for Harris and other Democrats, but given the toxic flood of misinformation and racist vitriol on behalf of the right, there’s much more work to be done.

If you can canvass in a swing district or phonebank this weekend for climate champions, there are many opportunities to do so.

Climate Action Today:

Climate Voters for Harris-Walz is phonebanking tonight with Dr. Leah Stokes and climate activist Saad Amer from 6-7:30 pm EDT.

The Environmental Voter Project is phonebanking into Colorado tonight (5-6:30 pm EDT) with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson to turn out low propensity environmental voters.

Climate Action Through Election Day:

EVP has ongoing phonebanking and canvasses in Pennsylvania and Arizona from now until Election Day.

Third Act’s Gray PAC is supporting Swing Left trips from NYC to Pennsylvania and swing NY districts this weekend.

Food and Water Action’s local groups are canvassing for down-ballot candidates all over.

Jane Fonda Climate PAC is supporting local canvasses for its down-ballot candidates across the nation.

The Calls For Climate coalition is phonebanking on November 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th. The phonebank on Monday, November 4th features Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson!

Dayenu, the progressive Jewish climate action group, is phonebanking from November 3rd to 5th “to mobilize climate-concerned voters to get to the polls and ensure every policymaker has the chutzpah to deliver urgent action on climate.”

NRDC Action Fund has ongoing textbanking from now through Election Day.

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.

1  Trump was in Texas that day to record a podcast with Joe Rogan. I can’t recommend reading the transcript, but a primary theme of the discussion was their racist, xenophobic distortions of environmental policy, from wildfires and drought to air pollution, mining, and environmental permitting.

2  Hinchcliffe’s “joke” about Puerto Rico and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a perfect distillation of eco-fascism—simultaneously mocking environmental crises while dehumanizing minorities as trash. Trump’s rally speech emphasized the other face of eco-fascism: the fetishization of fossil-fueled industry. Trump praised oil and gas as “liquid gold,” complained that illegal immigrants were flying in “beautiful jet planes,” and fawned over Elon Musk’s fossil-fueled rocket as “pure, beautiful white when it left, but it’s burned from the fire and the flame.”

3  This travesty deserves its own post, but we’re running long and I’m not Joe Romm.