Old Man Yells At Escalator

PRESENTED BY IMPERFECTION IN HARMONY

I’ve returned to the Swamp after a few days in Gotham for Climate Week NYC. Beka Economopoulos is working on the evolution of the Natural History Museum’s We Refuse to Die project, which involves artists and activists at the frontlines of the Anthropocene. Andrew Boyd has launched Trillionaires for Trump, the natural successor to Billionaires for Bush. Sadie Frank is creating N4EA, a climate-disaster global-supply-chain analytics engine. Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson believes the fossil-fuel giants are destined to lose. Hawaii State Sen. Chris Lee has helped build one of the most successful political coalitions for climate in the country. Ben Beachy reminds us that everything bagels taste good (true). I was lucky enough to receive Bill McKibben’s Sun Day solar gospel.

But the real story of Climate Week was that I only caught a tiny glimpse of the action—there were hundreds of events with thousands of people from around the world, each in their imperfection striving to work in harmony, unbowed by the brutal, nihilistic logic of extractive greed exemplified this week by a pathetic but dangerous man ranting about escalators, mahogany walls, and immigrants.

Speaking of which: the Climate Action Tracker has downgraded the U.S. climate plan to its worst category, Critically Insufficient. “This is the most aggressive, comprehensive, and consequential climate policy rollback that the Climate Action Tracker has ever analyzed.”

At an event organized by the Make Polluters Pay campaign at the NRDC headquarters, Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) fully agreed:

At that same event, California state legislators expressed sincere anger about the politically effective attacks organized by polluting industry in the name of “affordability” against the climate agenda—especially the organizing by the building trades of working-class communities afraid of the economic costs of ensuring a healthier planet. California politics have been upended by tech billionaires flipping from green liberalism to extractive authoritarianism; the same dirty cash problem is polluting national Democratic politics as well (whaddup, Abundance bros).

Funny thing—I subscribe to the print edition of The New York Times, but in the last few weeks have just stopped bothering to pick up the copy at my door each morning. There are still regularly great front-page investigative pieces, and a strong climate reporting team, but the slimy influence of owner A.G. Sulzberger and his sexy carpet boy, executive editor Joe Kahn, casts a pall on the entire endeavor. And that was even before “Worse Than” Ezra Klein went apologist for the politics of white supremacy.

For a moment, I forgot why I felt I needed to share this, but then I remembered—today I picked up and read the NYT Magazine’s Climate Issue. The throughline is very much that the US is a state in decline, becoming politically and economically irrelevant in comparison to China. The pieces are well worth reading, and I’m being churlish in noting their lacunae. Nevertheless, let’s get churlish!

Christina Cauterucci has a lovely profile of McKibben’s Sun Day campaign that is unfortunately framed as a broad analysis of the U.S. climate movement, which makes its failures to mention any of the organizing built in response to Katrina, Sandy, Maria, Helene, the Paradise and Palisades fires (among the many, many other billion-dollar disasters), or Deepwater Horizon or East Palestine, or the Permian Basin and Cancer Alley organizing just kinda weird.

David Wallace-Wells has a strong look at the collapse of the Paris Agreement framework, but failed to mention that climate policy interviewees like Columbia’s Jason Bordoff and Princeton’s Jesse Jenkins have long ties to fossil-fuel industry. Princeton is finally cutting ties this year, but Columbia has no such plans.

On the New York Times stage, the usually sharp David Gelles got steamrolled by the fracker Secretary of Energy Chris Wright’s fast-talking climate-denial conspiracy theories and slanderous attacks on climate scientists.

Back in DC, the government funding clock is tick-tick-ticking.

No Labels is running the Congressional Democratic strategy for dealing with Trump’s shutdown threats. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) is hoping Democrats cave in return for a pinky promise from Republicans to do better. Democrats instead should be standing with the federal workers who “urge Congress to pass nothing less than a continuing resolution (CR) that reasserts Congress's constitutional powers, upholds our democracy and protects the American people.”

The American Federation of Government Employees, which in March called for Congress to stand up against the ongoing Trump-Musk shutdown, has folded, and is now in Trump’s corner. As is Elon.

Speaking of Elon, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is fully on team Universal Paperclips.

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.

P.S. Cass Sunstein would prefer questions about his dogs, please and thank you.