Today in Second Trump: Iran war, USAID cuts, climate, concentration camps, anti-trans agenda

Andrea Pitzer writes today:

"At this point, we’re over eighteen months into the second Trump administration. Officials have unleashed countless crises in health, science, medicine, government services, military affairs, foreign affairs, and several other arenas. On top of it all, we’re trapped in a totally unnecessary and unbelievably dangerous war that’s following the plot of Groundhog Day.

In addition to the war, there are, to my mind, three particularly significant horror shows unfolding right now—ones that may be easier for most Americans to ignore or fail to notice than the war. The first, which I try to mention almost every week, is the ongoing death toll of the cuts to USAID. We are on track for millions of deaths to take place before the end of the first Trump administration. The second, which is also easy to miss, despite current conditions, is climate change. The third — which is the focus of this post and the one I write most about on here — is the war on immigrants and the concentration camp system that Trump and Stephen Miller have prioritized expanding exponentially while they are still able to.

* * *

...the same tactics and dynamics that radicalized a significant minority of Americans against immigrants are now in play against trans people. We’re just witnessing an earlier stage of the demonization. A story out this week about U.S. Army Captain Kai Proce traces the Department of Defense’s systematic removal of trans people from service through shameful hearings in which the outcome has been decided by top brass before each session even begins."

War helps no one:

Added Fuel Costs Of Trump's War In Iran Hit Estimated $100 Billion For U.S. Families Higher prices for gasoline and diesel fuel have soured Americans on the war and helped drive Trump’s approval rating into the toilet. Dave Jamieson, HuffPost, Sep 8, 2026

Excuse me, which party waged war against Iran?

JD Vance: "The message is don't give power to the crazy people who started these problems in the first place. If you're frustrated about high prices, you have every reason to be."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 21, 2026 at 8:19 PM

Previously

Stoking ‘Trans Panic’?! We Have to Create Other Political Narratives: Andrea Pitzer’s video on ‘Ending Trans Panic’ (my 5-min read on Medium, Apr 2, 2026)

Trump's absurd climate speech

NOAA Makes it Official: Extreme Weather Due to Climate Change: Congress, candidates and electorate take note: The extreme weather the U.S. has been experiencing is due to climate change and is expected to become more extreme in the future. Janet Ritz, The Environmentalist Magazine, published in HuffPost, Jun 28, 2008

On September 23, 2025, Trump gave an absurd speech, supposedly on climate, to the United Nations.

Here are some miscellaneous reports on that and also on Trump's war on science more generally.

Check out: Trump delivers dumbest climate speech of all time: The president's easily-debunked 10-minute climate tirade at the U.N. was so stupid and unoriginal, it was actually kind of funny. Emily Atkin, HEATED, Sep 24, 2025

Harrison Ford says Trump’s assault on climate policy ‘scares the shit out of me’ Indiana Jones star calls US president one of history’s greatest criminals for attacks on science and boosting of fossil fuels, Oliver Milman, The Guardian, 31 Oct 2025

And just to be complete, in case you need verified NOAA data, yes, as of October, 2025, it's official, a new record was set for the 36-month mean rate of atmospheric CO2 growth: Feb., 2019: 7.826 ppm per 36 months. Oct., 2025: 7.874 ppm per 36 months. Winning!

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— Prof. Eliot Jacobson (@climatecasino.net) November 13, 2025 at 8:20 PM

Your daily reminder that the fossil fuel industry is propped up by billions of dollars in U.S. government subsidies and a multimillion dollar campaign to spread climate disinformation. 💵

— Center for Climate Integrity (@climateintegrity.org) November 17, 2025 at 11:52 AM

Sabine the doomer? "And I guess that’s the thing that’s so frustrating about this. That it’s all so obvious. We were obviously never going to do anything about this until it’s way too late." www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Gh...

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— Prof. Eliot Jacobson (@climatecasino.net) November 18, 2025 at 2:03 PM

We found so many examples of missing federal government data that we couldn’t put them all in this story. “The status quo was, the federal government is going to collect and disseminate data. That is no longer a reasonable assumption.”

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— Anna Kramer (@annackramer.bsky.social) February 2, 2026 at 8:52 AM

US Youth, Climate Coalition Sue to Stop Trump EPA ‘From Torching Our Kids’ Future’ “This shameful and dangerous action,” said one expert, “is rooted in falsehoods, not facts, and is at complete odds with the public interest and the best available science.” Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, Feb 18, 2026

"Kate Marvel spent more than a decade at NASA studying the future of life on Earth. Then the Trump administration made that job feel impossible.

“Instead of saying, we value your science and here’s how we’re going to protect it, we were being told things like, ‘Make sure you take your pronouns out of your email signature,’” she told HEATED. “That was the highest priority.”

Marvel, a prominent climate scientist, resigned from NASA in March amid the Trump administration’s sweeping attacks on federal science. Since Trump’s second term started, more than 10,000 federal employees with STEM Ph.D.s have left the government—mostly through layoffs, firings and buyouts—and more than 7,800 research grants were terminated or frozen. It’s, in other words, a nerd purge."

— Why Kate Marvel left NASA: The prominent climate scientist explains how pronouns have become more important than the planet at the nation's space agency. Emily Atkin, HEATED, May 28, 2026

We have very unfortunate news to share today... 😢 I've been an author for this report since 2020, and we just celebrated our 20th anniversary edition last year.

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— Zack Labe (@zacklabe.com) August 10, 2026 at 3:04 PM

"All of this analysis, the stats, the records is here to show one thing. We are having a profound climate impact on billions of people right now. Not five, ten, fifteen years from now. But right now." ➡️ Check out our latest state of the climate webinar: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrXC...

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— Zack Labe (@zacklabe.com) September 18, 2026 at 6:27 PM

Podcast episode: How can we hold the culture to higher standards of truth?

Rob Cooper, host of the Climate Unf*cked Podcast, writes on "3 lessons I learned from interviewing Mike Berners-Lee", about a philosophical problem: "To create the world we need, what’s the depth of the change we have to make? Is it changing where we get our energy from, or deeper? Mike argues that the fundamental problem is a lack of truth. In media, business, politics and the world." We need to "hold the businesses we’re in, media we consume and politicians that represent us to higher standards of truth. In the episode, I asked how we break that down into manageable pieces."

His answer is on the podcast:

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Bill Gates on climate change

In the Guardian on November 8, George Monbiot tells us about Bill Gates' essay on climate, which doesn't mention Donald Trump or Trump's efforts to stop the green energy transition:

Perhaps this is a symptom of “billionaire brain”: a profound incapacity to see the world from other people’s point of view. While the ultra-rich are notoriously hard to study, extrapolating from research into how gaining wealth and status affects cognition could suggest that acquiring huge amounts of money is like taking a blow to the head. Wealth seems to scramble certain cognitive functions, particularly those related to empathy and perspective.

But perhaps there’s also calculation here: his essay reads like nothing so much as a peace offering to Donald Trump. Trump certainly took it that way: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!”

Gates, says Monbiot,

has consistently lagged behind the curve, reciting fossil fuel claims (green technologies could reduce global CO2 emissions only at a “beyond astronomical” cost) long after they’ve been discredited. He has spread confusion and misinformation, such as the groundless assertion in his new essay that the purpose of Sri Lanka’s disastrous ban on synthetic fertilisers was “to cut emissions”.

Gates calls his essay Three Tough Truths About Climate. So here’s another tough truth he studiously ignores. If, as now seems likely, crucial Earth systems cross tipping points and suddenly collapse, the effects on human life, let alone the survival of other life forms (a topic he fails, as usual, to mention), would destroy the smooth and steady progress he foresees. Because environmental change is likely to proceed not in gradual and linear ways, but through sudden changes of state, the possible impacts on human wellbeing are extremely hard to predict. His argument that we should align all funding to current “data-based analysis” of improvements in human welfare, while it might sound rational, introduces in the face of systemic change a profound irrationality, prompting us to ignore the greatest threats.

Related

My article for FT @sustainableviews.bsky.social on the risk of a complete unravelling of EU climate policy if the Commission doesn't protect the upcoming carbon border levy from US pressure: www.sustainableviews.com/the-us-wants...

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— Dave Keating (@davekeating.substack.com) December 1, 2025 at 5:34 AM

U.S.-Owned Oil Sands Giants Send Profits Out of Canada Despite Public Support for Resource Sovereignty, The Energy Mix, November 26, 2025

"For too many years, we bent the knee to the climate. We let it be hot in some places and cold in other places. We went around meekly putting up umbrellas and donning thick parkas and sleeping next to blocks of ice, because we (fools that we were) thought that we could do nothing to change it. We were forced to get out of the ocean and walk on the dry land and build cities on the dry land. Now see what we have done! Soon there will be water where there was land, and we will have gotten vengeance on the ice for the horrors it inflicted on our most titanic boat (the Titanic). The climate bows before us. We are not under the weather any longer. Now we soar above it in our magnificent jet airplanes, trailing carbon behind! The atmosphere will have carbon in it until we say otherwise, and the atmosphere will thank us."
Alexandra Petri. Nothing is Wrong and Here is Why. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2020. Introduction, p. xvi.

See: Can a billionaire fix California? Tom Steyer argues he's not a regular billionaire. He's a cool billionaire. Emily Atkin, HEATED, Mar 12, 2026

And this follow-up

Tracy:
“I’ve made no secret over the years of my deep skepticism of the billionaire class. So it would be weird if I didn’t ask you something that a lot of my listeners are probably thinking, but nobody has said to your face yet. Do you think it’s ethical that you exist?”
Emily:
So you call me immediately — you look at it and you call me — and you’re like, “You can’t start with that question.”
Tracy:
First of all, you know that meme of the cat where it’s frantically typing? I read that and I was like: Emily.
And this is where we tell everyone: I am yin and you are yang. I am A and you are B.
But I was so impressed. I was really impressed, because you were right. You said if he can’t answer this, he shouldn’t be governor. And he did not flinch when you asked it. In fact, he sat there cool as a cucumber. And to your point, he’s clearly been very well prepped. I take it all back — you were right.
Emily:
That was my thought. I was like: if he’s not prepared to answer the question, should you exist as a billionaire, when agreeing to be interviewed by me, then he’s not prepared to lead a garbage can. If you search my name and the word billionaire, you don’t get anything positive.
And I still do — even after that interview — have some skepticism. ...

— Our reaction to the Steyer interview Just some immediate, off-the-cuff thoughts. Emily Atkin Mar 12, 2026

ALL of today's climate change is human-caused?

Volcanic CO2 was, even at the time of this 2009 article, not even 1% of human-caused CO2. As the article further explains, SO2's role is complex and its net effect may be cooling rather than warming.

"Are Volcanoes or Humans Harder on the Atmosphere?": Does one major volcanic eruption generate more climate-altering gas than that produced by humans in their entire history?, Scientific American, February 11, 2009

So, given ‘Off-the-charts records’: has humanity finally broken the climate? Damian Carrington, Nina Lakhani, Oliver Milman, Adam Morton, Ajit Niranjan and Jonathan Watts, in The Guardian, 28 Aug 2023

Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans | @hausfath.bsky.social #CBarchive Read here: bit.ly/3g1vEtL

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— Carbon Brief (@carbonbrief.org) October 28, 2025 at 11:42 AM

Trump Abandonment of Global Treaties, Including Landmark Climate Deal, ‘Threatens All Life on Earth’ “Trump cutting ties with the world’s oldest climate treaty is another despicable effort to let corporate fossil fuel interests run our government.” Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Jan 08, 2026

No deal on maritime carbon emissions

Six months ago: All Authors Working on Flagship U.S. Climate Report Are Dismissed: The Trump administration told researchers it was “releasing” them from their roles. It puts the future of the assessment, which is required by Congress, in doubt. (New York Times, April 28):

"On Monday, researchers around the country who had begun work on the sixth national climate assessment, planned for early 2028, received an email informing them that the scope of the report “is currently being re-evaluated” and that all contributors were being dismissed."

Essentially, that cancels the assessment going forward.

Today, the Financial Times wrote this editorial: "Trump’s victory for fossil fuels in shipping: US pressure has derailed a landmark deal to curb maritime carbon emissions":

"Since Donald Trump came to office in January, he has fought a remorseless battle against any move to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Some of his efforts have hit home in the US, where large solar projects have been pointlessly cancelled and important weather and data services gutted. Cuts to US foreign aid have hurt climate programmes in developing countries.

But last week’s regrettable derailment of a landmark global deal to cut shipping emissions is one of Trump’s most successful attempts yet to force all countries, rich and poor, to back his push to prolong the era of fossil fuels.

The decision to defer adoption of the deal for a year is likely to have immediate effects on an industry that has long escaped internationally co-ordinated climate measures even though it accounts for around 3 per cent of global emissions, roughly the same as Japan. That share is forecast to rise sharply without action."

Climate change damage compensation in Australia

Fossil fuel companies created an environmental disaster, and the Aus and WA governments are paying them to clean it up with taxpayer money. Almost HALF the royalties collected from Barrow Island will be paid back to clean up the environmental degradation it’s created, at least $500 million! #auspol

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— The Australia Institute (@australiainstitute.org.au) July 22, 2025 at 9:10 PM

Great write up from Peter Milne: www.boilingcold.com.au/governments-...

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— The Australia Institute (@australiainstitute.org.au) July 22, 2025 at 9:10 PM

“Chevron has transformed Barrow Island from a pristine Class A nature reserve to a contamination site. They are trashing Australia’s environment, and taxpayers are footing the bill.” - Mark Ogge Read our media release: australiainstitute.org.au/post/oil-and...

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— The Australia Institute (@australiainstitute.org.au) July 22, 2025 at 9:10 PM

A climate damage compensation levy on fossil fuel (coal and gas) exports from Australia could raise billions of dollars every year to pay the costs of climate change, without raising prices in Australia. ✍️ Add your name to the call: nb.australiainstitute.org.au/climatedisas...

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— The Australia Institute (@australiainstitute.org.au) July 22, 2025 at 9:10 PM

Read: 38 Former World Leaders Have a Message: Tax Fossil Giants to Fight Climate Crisis “Pressure is mounting on today’s politicians to hold those most responsible for the climate crisis to account,” said one Greenpeace campaigner. Jon Queally, Common Dreams, Sep 24, 2025

2025: Climate denialists are trying to discredit the IPCC author.

March 2025 — climate news

“Why is nobody looking?”

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— Jaap Burger (@jaapburger.eu) March 24, 2025 at 7:10 AM

Even 'safe' #climate scenarios may overshoot 2°C warming: New PIK study shows feedback loops like #permafrost thaw could amplify global heating throughout this millennium. Paris agreement only possible with very low emissions + low climate sensitivity. www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/late...

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— PIK_climate (@pik-potsdam.bsky.social) March 24, 2025 at 4:20 AM

Paris residents vote in favour of making 500 more streets pedestrian, Reuters, March 23, 2025

New unclassified Annual Threat Assessment from the Director of National Intelligence *does not* mention climate or environmental security -- the first not to do so in over a decade. During the first Trump term, climate was included regularly. www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/d...

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— Erin Sikorsky (@erinsikorsky.bsky.social) March 25, 2025 at 10:46 AM

It only took Trump 52 days to destroy years of climate action, says @markgongloff.bsky.social. Just take a look at the full timeline: bloom.bg/43njfLn

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— Bloomberg Opinion (@opinion.bloomberg.com) March 26, 2025 at 3:05 PM

"Ain't Nobody Got Time for That" was my first reaction to the upcoming heatwave. The first 90 day in Tampa used to arrive in late May (100 years ago) But more recently the average is the 3rd week of April... about 35 days sooner. This spring we are likely to see it in a few days!

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— Jeff Berardelli (@weatherprof.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 8:43 PM

SEC votes to stop defending climate disclosure rule, Rachel Frazin, The Hill, 03/28/25

New Trump EO Would Punish States for Combating Climate Change. The order directs the government to “expeditiously” take action to “stop the enforcement of State laws” designed to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions. Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Mother Jones, April 9, 2025

"Indeed, when it comes to children, the true intent of Trump’s climate policies is clear. He’s not trying to prevent kids from becoming climate-anxious. He’s trying to prevent kids from becoming climate activists." Emily Atkin, "Climate science isn't giving your kid anxiety," HEATED, April 16, 2025

This story requires a great deal more attention. The Trump administration is doing everything it can to get Russian gas back into Europe. This is Washington and Moscow now in full strategic alignment via a shared vision of a fossil fuel future.

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— Dave Vetter (@davidrvetter.bsky.social) May 10, 2025 at 12:46 AM

Recommended read: An editorial in @the-breakdown.bsky.social , a new publication focusing on the “political economy of climate and ecological crisis”, dissects “this moment in climate politics”.

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— Carbon Brief (@carbonbrief.org) May 11, 2025 at 5:32 AM

Heavy monsoon rains have led to more than 300 deaths in Pakistan since late June. Climate change increased the downpours by about 15% 📈 Our latest study, focusing on the hardest-hit north of the country, was published this morning 🧵

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— World Weather Attribution (@wwattribution.bsky.social) August 7, 2025 at 9:06 AM

Record leap in CO2 fuels fears of accelerating global heating - CO2 in the air hit new high last year, with scientists concerned natural land and ocean carbon sinks are weakening @wmo-global.bsky.social #climatecrisis Story by me www.theguardian.com/environment/...

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— Damian Carrington (@dpcarrington.bsky.social) October 15, 2025 at 6:50 AM

Climate art... www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/10/14/t...

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— skippyoz (@skippyoz.bsky.social) October 14, 2025 at 7:11 PM

“Portugal still handles land-use planning thinking about the 19th century or the first half of the 20th century climate. We have to understand what the climate is like now and what it will be like in the future. Otherwise, we’re going to have a problem”—Pedro Soares

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— Peter du Toit (@peterdutoit.com) February 15, 2026 at 9:49 PM

🌊🔥🔋📈 The Equatorial Pacific heat battery is almost fully charged and about to break temperature records and disrupt weather patterns around the world!

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— Leon Simons (@leonsimons.com) April 15, 2026 at 10:02 AM

Permafrost is thawing deeper and it’s happening worldwide. A new study of 156 monitoring sites found that the active layer, the soil that thaws each summer, increased significantly at many sites from 2000–2024. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

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— Prof Ian Hall (@ianhall.bsky.social) August 30, 2026 at 11:07 AM

We're in the hottest years on record

“That’s never happened before.”

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— Harvey J. Miller (@mobileharv.bsky.social) March 19, 2025 at 4:11 AM

More climate trivia -- here is a graph showing the single hottest day of each year, 1940 - 2024. The only two years breaking 17.0°C are 2023 and 2024, with 2024 the hottest of them all. There appears to be a trend.

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— Prof. Eliot Jacobson (@climatecasino.net) November 22, 2024 at 9:12 AM

2023 Was One Of The Coldest Years Of The Rest Of Your Life Three global assessments confirm last year was by far the hottest in recorded history. “We’re frankly astonished,” one scientist said of the findings. Chris D'Angelo, HuffPost, Jan 12, 2024

The planet just saw its hottest day on record. Angela Fritz, CNN, July 23, 2024

This week’s record-breaking global temperatures are likely highest in ‘at least 100,000 years’, Angela Fritz and Laura Paddison, CNN, July 7, 2023

‘Exceptional’ warming: January temperatures 2.2 degrees higher than average in Europe, Laura Paddison, CNN, February 10, 2023

Last month was the hottest September ever, breaking last year’s record, Rob Picheta, CNN, October 7, 2020

"Climate change is here. We are seeing event classes [today] that were forecast in #climate models for the 2050s, 2060s, and 2070s.” - @oceanterra.org #FasterThanExpected #ClimateEmergency

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— Dr. Aaron Thierry (@thierryaaron.bsky.social) January 18, 2026 at 1:51 AM

This weird winter was one of the warmest — and coldest — on record. It’s a glimpse of our future Andrew Freeman, CNN, March 7, 2026

US: Deleting data on gender & climate

They delete data on trans people:

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer process transgender identity data in order to comply with President Trump’s executive order, agency representative Melissa Dibble told STAT on Tuesday [February 25, 2025].

Sexual orientation data is unaffected and “will be processed per usual protocols,” Dibble added.

The decision will likely affect a number of federal health surveillance systems, including the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Among Transgender Women and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. There is a major dearth of data on trans and nonbinary people in the U.S., so these survey systems that include them serve as critical resources for researchers.

The shift already has implications for the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a singular source of behavioral health data that’s collected from high schoolers every other year. Researchers depend on it to track health behaviors including sexual behavior, substance use, mental health, and more. State and local governments can use the data to develop youth initiatives and policies. It’s the only nationally representative data on trans youth."

— Theresa Gaffney, CDC will no longer process transgender data: The decision will likely affect a number of federal health surveillance systems. Stat News, Feb. 25, 2025

Simultaneously, they delete climate and agriculture data:

"Last week, one of New York’s largest organic farming organizations sued the USDA, claiming the Trump administration is illegally putting their operations at risk at the critical beginning of the growing season.

The lawsuit stems from an incident that occurred 10 days after Trump’s inauguration. On January 30, USDA digital communications director Peter Rhee ordered staff to “identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change,” and complete the task within one business day.

The order resulted in a widespread, unprecedented information purge from USDA’s websites—not just of general climate change information, but of interactive data tools and funding resources related to soil conservation, sustainable agricultural practices, and extreme weather resilience, the lawsuit claimed.

It’s unclear exactly how many USDA sites and resources were affected by the purge, but according to the lawsuit, one of the most consequential erasures has been of information regarding federal loans and technical assistance for “climate-smart agriculture.” These “climate-smart” loans and assistance programs cover heaps of different sustainable practices: things like cover cropping, reduced tilling, establishing pollinator habitats, mulching to improve soil health, and restoring native plants."

— Emily Atkin, Organic farmers expose RFK Jr.'s delusion: Turns out you can't "Make America Healthy Again" when the fossil fuel industry calls the shots., HEATED, Mar 04, 2025

This was known well before the election.

I wrote:

Project 2025 Won't Listen to Climate Scientists: Non-scientists: Read beneath the surface, Medium, Aug 12, 2024

And:

If you worry about sex development, please look at environmental inputs, on this blog, November 27, 2023

And:

I’m Trans, and I Did Not Consent for This to Be Done to My Body: Why is it happening? How can we make it stop? Medium, Aug 17, 2022

Absolute bloodbath at FDA, very bad

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— Shawn Connery (@shawnconnery.bsky.social) June 23, 2025 at 11:16 AM

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

— tomate 🍅 (@jascha.ohai.social.ap.brid.gy) March 3, 2026 at 7:10 AM

U.S. states can continue to follow Paris Agreement goals

In 2020, I saved this headline:

Joe Biden’s climate plan could put Paris Agreement targets ‘within striking distance,’ experts say. Helen Regan, CNN, November 9, 2020

We lost 1.5 C.

Also, we lost the federal government.

However, U.S. states can continue to commit to the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Los Angeles fires: Incarcerated people are fighting the flames

As we witness these heartbreaking scenes from the fires in LA, an important reminder that incarcerated people make up over 30% of California’s forest firefighters.

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— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) January 8, 2025 at 1:41 AM

The recent LA fires shed light on a troubling practice in California: the use of incarcerated individuals to fight wildfires. This system, which utilizes an exception in the 13th Amendment, raises serious human rights concerns. 🧵⤵️

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— Human Rights Watch (@hrw.org) January 9, 2025 at 2:10 PM

The slavery exception in the 13th Amendment allows for forced labor in prisons “as punishment for a crime,” and this loophole perpetuates a cycle of inequity. Prison labor should help incarcerated individuals prepare for a return to society and never be punitive.

— Human Rights Watch (@hrw.org) January 9, 2025 at 2:10 PM

There are 395 incarcerated firefighters helping combat the wildfires in LA right now. They earn up to $26.90 over a 24-hour shift.

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— Julia Carrie Wong (@joolia.bsky.social) January 9, 2025 at 10:55 AM

Los Angeles fires: Black neighborhoods impacted

Climate justice. Racial justice.

so far, seems like the first few victims are black folks who've lived in altadena for several generations and were trying so hard to hold onto their homes that they were willing to fight off the flames by themselves. man, they are so familiar to me. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/u...

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— Joel D. Anderson (@joelanderson.bsky.social) January 10, 2025 at 4:13 AM

Altadena Residents Know Their Community Is Worth Rebuilding. Can They Protect Its Legacy?: Three months after the Eaton fire started, leaving scorched ruins across much of the Southern California region, many locals are voicing concerns about rebuilding. Taiyler S. Mitchell, HuffPost, Apr 6, 2025

Fundraiser to help Black community members displaced by the Eaton fire. Please donate if you're able and/or share widely. #EatonFire #LosAngeles www.gofundme.com/f/la-fires-t...

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— Jenét Morrow (@jenetallday.bsky.social) January 9, 2025 at 5:17 PM

There are families who will never be able to come back from this devastation, and many of them were in generational homes, passed down from people who bought homes in the 1970sand 80's in Altadena. All of the fires are a tragedy, but especially for those who don't have the resources to rebuild.

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— Anthea Butler (@antheabutler.bsky.social) January 9, 2025 at 4:42 PM

Two new climate books

"Isn’t it healthy to be concerned, as long as it is not debilitating? Isn’t it part of a process towards seeking change?" — Jonathan Watts, Would abandoning false hope help us to tackle the climate crisis?, The Guardian, Oct 24, 2024

Recommendations:

"Many congratulations to Bryan Alexander, whose book “Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis” won the Frederic W. Ness Book Award from the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

Another notable new book comes from attorney Jared Sullivan; it covers the legal drama that ensued when a giant coal ash dam let loose in Tennessee, unleashing a toxic fifty-foot high tsunami."

— Bill McKibben, Notes from the doors: Our democracy lurches toward a moment unlike any other, The Crucial Years, Oct 24, 2024

In 2026, the organization 350.org is advertising its Climate Impacts Resource Hub.

Bonus, here's a third book:

Excited to read the newest add to my summer reading list: The Carbon Wave, about 3 of my fave topics: democracy, parenthood and saving the planet! Thanks @leahstokes.bsky.social

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— Annie M Leonard (@anniemleonard.bsky.social) July 19, 2026 at 1:30 PM

The transition to renewable energy is hanging on Harris being elected

From HEATED:

"Here’s the good(-ish) news: as long as Trump doesn’t touch tax credits for wind, solar, and battery storage, the analysis says his presidency should only have a “limited” negative impact on the energy transition: 25 gigawatts (GW) fewer renewables than under a business-as-usual scenario by 2040.

But here’s the bad news: if Trump does repeal those tax credits—as both he and Project 2025 have proposed—the analysis says a “significant slowdown in the pace of the energy transition” would occur.

Specifically, a Trump presidency could hinder solar, wind, and battery deployment by 212 GW by 2040 if tax credits are ended next year, according to the report.

212 GW is, for context, a huge amount of renewable energy development to lose out on. It is enough to power 159 million homes—more than all the homes in the U.S."

— Emily Atkin and Arielle Samuelson, How bad could Trump be for renewables? A previously unreported study predicts a massive decrease in solar, wind, and battery development if Trump adopts just one proposal in Project 2025., HEATED, Oct 24, 2024

Read my article: Project 2025 won't listen to climate scientists, August 12, 2024 - 8 min read on Medium

Project 2025 Annotation: A Summary. "EDGI’s Environmental Historians Action Collaborative working group annotated select sections of Project 2025, placing its environmental messages and proposals within their larger political and historical contexts."

The climate stakes of the Harris-Trump election From public health to public lands, here are 15 ways the next president could affect the climate and your life, Grist Staff, October 26, 2024

We've got a polycrisis in the Permian. Air pollution, climate pollution and water pollution. All directly related to oil production. We were assured this would never happen. "In theory, injection wells fill confined formations, and their contents never escape." The theories aren't holding up.

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— Oilfield Witness (@oilfieldwitness.bsky.social) October 29, 2024 at 8:15 AM

The same robust science that tells us that +CO₂ is a growing risk & that stratospheric aerosols *might* reduce some of those risks in the near future, also shows that you can’t simply keep increasing CO₂ for ever and cancel it out. GHGs reduction must still be fast and total.

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— Dan Visioni (@danvisioni.bsky.social) November 3, 2024 at 10:54 AM

OMG, what! [reads first paragraphs] Oooooooohhhhhhhhh www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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— Ketan Joshi (@ketanjoshi.co) November 3, 2024 at 5:25 PM

🚨 New SHIFT KEY alert 🚨 @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social and @jessejenkins.bsky.social sit down with Secretary Jennifer Granholm to reflect on her years heading up the Department of Energy, and forecast our clean energy future. Listen to the full episode below.

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— Heatmap News (@heatmap.news) December 18, 2024 at 10:20 AM

FFS. We have lost our collective minds. -- "focus on AI data centers that consume at least one gigawatt of electricity, roughly the amount used by a city of 1 million residents" -- "allow construction of dedicated power plants fueled by natural gas at the same sites..." (1/2) wapo.st/4gqvudA

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— Climate Disconnect (@climate-disconnect.bsky.social) December 20, 2024 at 8:18 AM

More reasons to be anti-AI

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— Harper 🔜 HHN '25 🦇 (@2manystripes.bsky.social) September 7, 2025 at 12:29 AM

The world’s most powerful supercomputer outside of the US is built to find more oil and gas. Full steam ahead for fossil fuels - thanks, AI!

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— Hannah Daly (@hannahdaly.ie) December 26, 2024 at 6:32 AM

The expansion of AI data centers and a rush to export fracked gas is rapidly reshaping the energy landscape.

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— Truthout (@truthout.org) December 27, 2024 at 3:49 PM

dear journalists - want to follow up my reporting on the movement in Oklahoma to ban all renewable energy? here’s a full video of the rally for the ban at the state capitol yesterday youtu.be/DYQxBaUhSwU

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— jael holzman 🤍 (@jael.bsky.social) January 8, 2025 at 2:46 PM

scoop: will oklahoma be the first state to ban renewable energy? its becoming increasingly likely. as investments from the inflation reduction act flow into red states, we're seeing backlash. republicans are disliking renewables *more* than before. cc @heatmap.news heatmap.news/plus/the-fig...

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— jael holzman 🤍 (@jael.bsky.social) January 8, 2025 at 1:32 PM

Data centers create "heat islands." (March 2026)

What will the future of the warming stripes be? 2024 could be the start of a stabilisation of global temperatures, or it might appear to be a cool year. Which one of these stories becomes reality depends on our choices today, and every day until then. We are likely to regret not acting sooner.

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— Ed Hawkins (@edhawkins.org) January 10, 2025 at 6:13 AM

Project 2025 mentioned the National Science Foundation as having too much to do with "an all-encompassing technology transition," and now:

I’m an NSF panel reviewer that was scheduled to meet today. Just got notice that all NSF panels were canceled today. I reviewed some innovative proposals in support of students. Devastating if these scholars don’t get to do this work. For the love of science & students I hope this is just a delay.💔

— Christina Areizaga Barbieri, Ph.D. (@cabarbieri.bsky.social) January 27, 2025 at 9:45 AM

The Next Front of Trump’s Renewables War Is Contract Law: And that’s on top of the constitutional questions. Robinson Meyer, Heatmap, February 12, 2025

My main takeaway from the new IEA report: Clean energy is accelerating like crazy, but it's still not enough to actually reduce climate pollution. Emissions are still rising as energy demand rises, including for coal, oil, and gas. It's not enough to add clean. We also have to subtract dirty.

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— Kevin J. Kircher (@kevinjkircher.com) March 24, 2025 at 6:44 AM

May 20, 2025: Trump's energy bill may raise costs 7% (HEATED)

‘Throwing us off a cliff': Megabill could derail hundreds of planned clean energy projects www.politico.com/news/2025/06... POLITICO analysis: 794 planned clean electricity generation facilities — 3/4 in GOP districts — that could lose subsidies under the House bill. The Senate is debating changes.

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— Jesse D. Jenkins (@jessedjenkins.com) June 19, 2025 at 1:31 PM

How renewables save Texans enormous amounts of money. The buildout of solar in TX reduced the wholesale price of energy by 50%. #energysky open.substack.com/pub/theclima...

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— Andrew Dessler (@andrewdessler.com) June 24, 2025 at 10:46 AM

Too late?

“We should have awards and whenever someone achieves $100 million, which is already obscene, we give them a bronze statue of a dick, and when you get $1 billion, we could give them an even bigger dick.” …why is nobody quoting this part of the interview? www.ipolitics.ca/2025/07/02/i...

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— Arno Kopecky (@arnokopecky.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 9:45 AM

Solar power is now California's largest source of electricity. ☀️🔌💡

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— Dustin Mulvaney (@dustinmulvaney.bsky.social) July 12, 2025 at 9:21 AM

How the renewable energy industry lost a massive lobbying fight over Trump’s agenda bill, Ella Nilsen and Annie Grayer, CNN, July 17, 2025

Why your energy bills are going up, NYT, October 9, 2025

Extraordinary that the government is going to go into the next election having spent tens of billions of pounds on an ID card system that will be unpopular *and* produce no noticeable improvements to everyday life instead of renationalising the water industry. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

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— Martin Calladine (@uglygame.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 3:47 AM

Did you know a former White House climate advisor flipped a GOP stronghold in Virginia by running entirely on putting a stop to more AI data centers? For @heatmap.news I profiled John McAuliff and a campaign that will be a roadmap for all future anti-AI politicians moving forward.

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— jael holzman (@jael.bsky.social) November 7, 2025 at 10:35 AM

"Musk pledged two years ago to build a state-of-the-art water recycling plant in Memphis to guarantee that his xAI servers wouldn’t deplete the city’s groundwater" "Now that Musk’s first data center is up and running, construction on the recycling facility has come to an abrupt halt"

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— Ketan Joshi (@ketanjoshi.co) May 8, 2026 at 8:38 AM

Sept 2025: Trump doesn't want the energy transition (the Guardian)

In 2024, renewable energy accounted for over 90% of global power capacity expansion. That is because it makes economic sense. IRENA_DAT_RE_Capacity_Highlights_2025-1.pdf

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— Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf (@rahmstorf.bsky.social) November 16, 2025 at 6:22 AM

Today on Volts: Aliya Haq has been in the US climate movement for 20yrs, most recently running Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy initiative. Now she's started a new group, the Clean Economy Project, geared toward supporting clean energy rather than fighting fossil fuels. We dig into the distinction.

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— David Roberts (@volts.wtf) December 12, 2025 at 2:27 PM

Just a few things I'd like to say about this @hausfath.bsky.social piece. The first is that every 10th of a degree of heating over 2C raises risks for multiple irreversible catastrophes MORE than every 10th of a degree of heating under 2C. That's why the 2C target exists. It's not random. 🧵

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— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) (@doctorvive.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 2:56 PM

A deeply underreported story. I know so many people struggling to pay their electric bills

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— Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd.bsky.social) March 3, 2026 at 4:05 PM

the president has no idea what he has set in motion. none. www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

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— Rachel Maddow (@maddow.bsky.social) March 8, 2026 at 7:23 PM

I wrote a very similar article in 2019 where I said: "Natural gas seems poised to join coal as another fuel that just couldn’t compete with renewables." And now we are there.

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— Justin Mikulka (@justinmikulka.bsky.social) May 20, 2026 at 6:21 AM

Did not expect to see this at oilprice.com but the economics are very clear at this point. "But where do renewables fit in? They are doing to gas what gas did to coal: they provide the same product (electricity) at a much cheaper price (and obviously in a more environmentally benign fashion)."

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— Justin Mikulka (@justinmikulka.bsky.social) May 20, 2026 at 6:21 AM

U.S. Solar Power Outpaces Coal For First Time As Trump Tries To Turn Back The Clock In May, more of the nation's electricity was supplied by solar power than coal for the first time. Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press, HuffPost, Jun 10, 2026

Trump: The Embodiment of American and Planetary Decline: Give him another two and a half years and who knows what this president will be able to do—but the odds are that, by at least a 6-3 margin, he might indeed be able to take the Earth down with him. Tom Engelhardt, Common Dreams, Jul 11, 2026

Critics Say Trump Is 'Sundowning' After Bonkers Rant About Wind Energy: “You know, they were saying wind was so wonderful. So wonderful. Except you couldn’t watch your television,” Trump said. Anthony Orrico, HuffPost, Jul 23, 2026

Trump Administration Admits It Canceled Grants To Blue States That Didn't Vote For Trump, HuffPost, Sebastian Murdock, July 24, 2026

I wrote about the renewable energy industry starting to punch back in the political arena for @rollingstone.com. (featuriing @leahstokes.bsky.social)

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— Thor Benson (@thorbenson.bsky.social) August 24, 2026 at 11:55 AM

Massachusetts farm installs 832 solar panels above berry fields, and the berries grown underneath turned out sweeter and juicier and could change the future of American farming - The Economic Times share.google/GDGqQBgisqhG...

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— Dr Earhart Sampson PhD 🌎 🇨🇦 🇺🇲 🇲🇽 🇩🇰 🇺🇦 (@earhart.bsky.social) August 2, 2026 at 5:16 PM