The planet is bonking — @therunnerearth, aka Kenny Moll, is activating the endurance community to respond in kind.

If you’re not already familiar, bonking is common parlance amongst endurance athletes synonymous with systems failure. It describes that ill-fated state when fuel stores are tapped and the body starts to shutdown. One’s legs start to shake, nausea sets in, and you can even black out if your blood sugar is critically deficient. While symptoms can vary depending on any number of variables, the breakdown persists all the same — not unlike climate breakdown.

The son of an Ironman athlete, Kenny Moll was born into an athletic family in the American Midwest. “I’d watch my Dad train and I just always wanted to join him.” Running was, and continues to be, a way for Moll to connect with friends and family. So much so that he admits he took it for granted. But Moll’s good fortune abruptly shifted when the COVID-19 pandemic unmoored what could have otherwise been a traditional college experience.

A dual-citizen, Moll took the opportunity to move abroad to Florence, Italy. Here, Moll became an organizer with Fridays for Future where the urgency of climate activism was compressed by the pressure cooker of a global pandemic. It didn’t take long before he started to conspire how to combine both his organizing efforts and the “time on feet” endurance training demands. Fortunately, the world of endurance athletes turned activist offers a rich legacy from which to draw inspiration.

During our conversation, Moll specifically mentioned the buzz at the time surrounding Australian ultrarunner, Erchana Murray-Bartlett, who had set out to run 150 marathons in as many days in an effort to raise awareness for the wildlife displaced by Australia’s rampant wildfires — setting the women’s Guinness World record for consecutive marathons in the process.

“What she did was insane. So I started to wonder could I even do a tenth of that?”

From the Ashes

Once back in their hometown of Chicago after returning stateside, Moll got to work answering that nagging question with the support of his partner, Jamilah “Milah” Maronde.

“We decided we could devote a week. Seven marathons in seven days. We called it ‘A Week for the World.’”

Blessed with eighteen, uninterrupted miles, Chicago’s Lakefront path made for the perfect route, allowing Milah to serve as a mobile aid station while riding a cargo bike in tow. North Avenue Beach became both a makeshift basecamp and finish line after first reaching the Lakefront path’s southernmost terminus. Then the miles started to stack up.

“It was really tough,” Moll said, describing the first few days. Having committed to the project by his own admission “kinda delusionally,” he couldn’t help but admit that he could have trained better. And that was before the concerns of friends started coming in.

“Hey bro, I really think you need to call it. The air is bad. This is getting dangerous.”

Just days into the weeklong challenge, as if on cue from a dystopian race director, Canadian wildfire smoke drifted south and blanketed Chicago. Air Quality Index (AQI) warnings recommended folks stay inside and strongly discouraged any unnecessary strenuous activity outside. The climate crisis had officially taken center stage. Moll had no choice but to postpone after only two days.

“I thought we were ruined,” he said, grappling in real-time with the reality that a changing climate meant many of his fondest pastimes would change with it. “But it actually galvanized our mission.”

The Global Endurance Collective would be born soon after.

The Slow Build

Another common phrase in endurance sports speak is, brick by brick. You simply can’t get to mile twenty-two without having run twenty-one. But clever training also means you can tune your body to prepare to reach distances further than anything you’ve done prior. Not unlike what is possible with strategic coalition-building — Mayor Mamdani’s recent electoral success offers one such example.

Moll drew similar parallels between his own training and the labor of building the Global Endurance Collective. “A lot of [this work] is unsexy,” Moll said. “It’s a slow build before we can reach big wins like a general strike.”

That’s just it. Coalition building means showing up, checking in with each other, and laying the robust groundwork that is capable of carrying a movement when things get tough. This is what it takes to build a movement that can endure.

Taking the idea of a movement quite literally, Moll teamed up with ten fellow runners in December of 2025 for a 275-mile ultra relay from NYC to D.C. to protest the Trump Administration. Runners of “The Anti-Authoritarian Ultra-Marathon,” as it came to be known, were keen to highlight the intersectionality of all oppression stemming from a host of issues: climate justice, racial justice, human & civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, and prison reform.

Moll and his sundry crew were eager to engage local communities as they chewed up miles between Central Park and the nation’s capital along a route that snaked through five states.

“It was kind of a shit show,” Moll admitted. “People got hurt. But it mirrored an honest reality and highlighted what is most important: how we respond if we come together.”

The raw grit that was a hallmark of the relay project — something more polished campaigns will often airbrush — remains at the heart of the Global Endurance Collective, aka GECo. And despite their early setbacks back in 2023, the original mission of A Week for the World is still alive and well, having now migrated from the Chicago Lakefront to NYC’s Central Park (stay tuned though, something tells me 2027 could see a revival of sorts along the Lakefront).

And when they aren’t putting up massive miles, GECo is actively building community across New York City hosting a bi-monthly run club — including “plogging” runs where participants collect litter along their route — as well as shakeout runs at this year’s Chicago and New York City marathons.

Although still in the early stages, to hear Moll speak about the group you can tell they’ve set their sights on some big goals along the horizon. But in order to effect change as high as the policy level, GECo will have to keep pace.

Zone 2 Activism

Anyone who trains for endurance sports is likely to have been told to find their conversational pace, aka Zone 2. Zone 2 training targets the often overlooked foundation on which true endurance is built: the easy run. But not only is Zone 2 of critical importance in order to go further on race day, it also offers an apt analogy to world of activism more broadly. Allow me to elaborate.

Zone 2 exists on a scale in which Zone 1 constitutes baseline levels of activity and Zone 5 represents max effort. The threshold between Zones 2 and 3 is where aerobic exercise, meaning oxygen-rich, becomes anaerobic, or oxygen-deprived. What follows is rather simple. Once you cross that anaerobic threshold waste products like lactic acid start to build up faster than the body can flush them and fatigue starts to set in. Push it too hard for too long and you bonk — sound familiar? But the more one trains at their aerobic threshold, the more efficient our body gets at restoring oxygen to our muscles.

If we imagine Earth as a body, the analogy holds well enough that the metabolic processes of material exchange between society and the natural world aren’t all that dissimilar from the energy exchange taking place within our own body as we demand it go further and faster. Sports science further supports the analogy.

A study that examined stress and quality of life amongst medical students found exercising in a group produced a statistically significant drop in stress and other quality of life indicators when compared alongside those who regularly exercise independently. Put another way, we’re literally stronger when we come together than if we go it alone. And in the realm of climate activism, a space already known for high burnout, it is paramount that we learn the lessons of building in community in order to maintain a steady effort for the long haul.

A Duty to Protect

Returning to my conversation with Kenny, I was struck yet again by his matter of fact vulnerability.

“Your ability to do the things you love will be interrupted, guaranteed. You can’t outrun climate change,” Moll said, with no apparent intention of providing such an illustrative pun. “The world as we know it is being taken from us. We have a duty as runners to protect access to green spaces and clean air for everyone.”

In the years to come, training blocks that once needed to accommodate cold mornings or afternoon storms will almost certainly come to be defined more by checking forecasts like the AQI. Races like the Chicago Marathon that once promised cool October temperatures well-suited for PRs are already starting to feature the humid heat of late-summer. And while these are far from the most tragic impacts of the climate crisis, these changes may very well be the subtle alarm those of us in the West must heed if we are to respond in time and address decades of complicity in destabilizing the global climate.

Moll’s right. We can’t outrun the crisis, but we can out organize the forces that continue to atomize society and exacerbate the ecological crisis in service of profit and power. The future is ours to endure.

I highly recommend checking out the Global Endurance Collective’s website. There you’ll find tons of great media from their endurance feats and find ways to get plugged into their ongoing activism.

During a press conference Monday, former military intelligence officer and current EPA Director, Lee Zeldin, announced the largest rollback to date of greenhouse gas emissions standards for power plants across the US.

US emissions standards have historically been woefully insufficient to reach the ambitious goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels set by the Paris Climate Agreement a decade ago. But they at least cleared the low bar of recognizing carbon dioxide and methane literally heat the planet no different than a glass-paned box.

So it’s particularly odd, then, to hear Zeldin and opponents of common sense climate action, like stricter emissions standards, refer to these emissions as “greenhouse” gases. A term that by its very definition acknowledges the threat they pose. Worse still, according to Zeldin, yesterday’s rollback is part of a broader EPA strategy to eliminate all emissions standards.

“We are also proposing to rescind all remaining greenhouse gas emissions standards on power plants. All of them.”

He claims this is is an opportunity to realize the full potential of American energy. But such a myopic and brutish vision of our energy future is little more than cheap political rhetoric masking the decades-long effort to further entrench the US government with the interests of the fossil fuel industry — an industry that continues to produce record profits while the Trump administration wages an illegal war with Iran, stokes tensions within a volatile European energy market, and advocates for the conquest of Venezuelan oil reserves. Currently, WTI and Brent crude oil are trading at $105 and $108/barrel, respectively.

The reality is the US is unlikely to lead the way towards an energy paradigm that challenges the economic hegemony propped up by a petrodollar that is traded in USD. Climate action will continue to be hamstrung until we confront this fact. And as anti-environment as Zeldin’s EPA is, proper guidance will never come from the top down. No matter who replaces the current lot. Rather, it is only through efforts to democratize the energy sector via models like public grid ownership that true energy sovereignty will be achieved.

This isn’t a pipe dream. Nor is it a question of someday figuring it out. Researchers have been demonstrating various methods by which we can design decentralized energy grids that produce incredibly promising figures. By some accounts, we could see GHG emissions reductions by as much as 72% while lowering associated costs by over 50% (EU comparisons).

Simply put, officials like Zeldin are lying. We can build a different world. We need to build a better world. But first we need to organize and demand it.

One of the hallmarks of ecological imperialism is a wanton disregard for ecosystems abroad. In the case of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine, this same ignorance is contributing to one of the worst Mediterranean algal blooms in thirty years, forcing five of six Israeli desalination plants to be shut down.

Water insecurity poses a very real threat to Israel which currently relies on desalination plants to provide upwards of 90% of municipal and residential water. Worsening climate breakdown has been increasing this reliance year over year.

Israel Water Authority Director, Yehezkel Lipshitz, announced plans in August to begin construction on of one the nation’s largest desalination plants near the coastal city Netanya. With a projected annual production of 400 million cubic meters it could provide 40% of Israel’s water needs. But the new infrastructure will prove to be of little value if Israel’s military actions continue to threaten local ecology.

Law of the Land

The second of Barry Commoner’s four informal laws of ecology states, “Everything must go somewhere.” A lesson Israel is learning the hard way as the algal bloom clogs the shit out of their desalination systems, leading experts to question its cause.

“For a bloom this unusual to occur, there has to be something that wasn’t there before.” — Dr. Avner Gross

Algae require warm water, sunlight, and food in order to grow. An algal bloom occurs when that balance is exacerbated by an unnatural influx of nutrients. The concentration rises rapidly, followed by a massive die off, depleting oxygen levels and suffocating other aquatic life, producing what’s known as a “dead zone.”

Mediterranean summers already provide plenty of warm water. Warmer temperatures across the region are also contributing to increased storm activity. These storms, in turn, create a more volatile Mediterranean Sea capable of stirring up nutrient-rich sediments long settled on the seabed. Leaving the algae to respond in kind.

According to climate researcher, Dr. Avner Gross of Ben-Gurion University, the massive influx of “war dust” created by the IDF’s rampant destruction of the Gaza strip since 2023 is a likely source of that nutrient-rich sediment.

“A building is ultimately crushed rock, and crushed rock contains minerals. Explosives contain phosphorus and nitrogen, which also feed algae,” Gross told Israeli outlet Haaretz.

Over 75% of all structures in Gaza are classified as ‘possibly damaged’ to fully ‘destroyed,” according to UN data. That damage has to go somewhere and it brings with it unintended ecological consequences.

Nothing in Isolation

Israel’s current water crisis is emblematic of the imperialist boomerang effect, but the algal bloom is not an isolated example of Israeli ecological imperialism. Nor have Israel’s actions been confined to Gaza either.

Israeli journalist and Haaretz columnist, Gideon Levy, has documented for years now the sealing up of Palestinian wells by cement trucks orchestrated by Israeli Civil Administration under guard by the IDF. Bearing witness to these acts, Levy described them as “one of the ugliest evils of apartheid.”

Al Jazeera reported last year on Israeli military orders to uproot 3,000 olive trees near Ramallah in the West Bank. A long-standing symbol of Palestinian culture, the IDF claimed the olive trees posed a “security threat.”

Actions like these are textbook examples of ecological imperialism in which colonizers knowingly or unknowingly generate environmental inequalities as a means of exerting control over a local population. But the algal bloom reveals to a unique degree the level of ecological ignorance with which Israel is carrying out these actions. Unlike ecological imperialism enacted by remote powers, often with little immediate domestic recourse, Israel is actively undermining its own stability within the region.

As with any ecological issue, the reality of the situation is one of dynamic relationships across many variables. It’s not as simple as “blown up buildings became algae food, dead algae clog pipes.” Rather, these variables antagonize one another over time until they reach a tipping point.

Dr. Gross was also keen to point out that there has also been an increase of untreated sewage from Gaza into the Mediterranean due to the extent of damaged Palestinian infrastructure. But available data suggests the sewage alone could only account for approximately 20% of the algal biomass, prompting Dr. Gross to consider the nutrient-rich “war dust.”

And as the world stage becomes increasingly volatile in the face of climate breakdown, it is incumbent upon us to become even more vigilant if we are to have any hope of anticipating ecological consequences that will undoubtedly become more nuanced.

Returning once more to Commoner’s four laws, the first states “Everything is connected to everything else.” That is to say, apartheid is by it’s very nature anti-ecological. A lesson Israel is actively refusing at their own peril.

Free Palestine.

One out of every two people on planet Earth will likely die by 2050 due to the increasing severity of climate breakdown. That’s 4 billion people — approximately the same as the infamous Thanos snap. But we’re not talking about some allegorical comic book plot. This is according to data published last year by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) at the University of Exeter.

The catastrophic scenario assumes global average temperatures will continue to rise to 3°C above pre-industrial levels (we’re currently at 1.5°C). The death toll, mostly in the Global South, could be lessened to just 2 billion assuming we manage to limit warming to just 2°C over the next fifteen years, but there is very little to suggest we are on track to achieve that goal.

But according to a paper published this past June in the journal Sustainable Development, “easing [the] population to 4 billion by 2200” will prove the best path towards achieving sustainability. Grim as that may sound, the paper’s been garnering outsized attention within the climate conscious corners of social media, with some going so far as to champion its proponents for “finally putting it out there.”

But I saw it on Instagram!

The earliest instance of the paper making the rounds outside academic circles came when the popular climate news profile @ageofcollapse shared a truncated version on Instagram. It’s not exactly hard to see how an account predicated on the looming threat of societal collapse could be incentivized to amplify catastrophic narratives, but at a moment when science aggregators exceedingly outperform long-form science communication, I think the algorithmically charged content warrants increased scrutiny.

Eco-fascist might sound hyperbolic to some, but we can’t afford to ignore the rise of far-right ideologies occurring in lockstep with global temperatures. A worrying trend author, , recently referred to as a “procrastination penalty” for decades of hamstrung climate action. And while @ageofcollapse might not endorse extreme authoritarian solutions to the climate crisis, their comment section suggests others do.

In what I intended as a fairly objective comment, I pointed out that the role affluence plays driving environmental impacts was absent, per the well known IPAT formula (Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology). It garnered something of a snarky reply in which they implied I hadn’t read the paper. But I did. And while the paper is admittedly more nuanced than their post, it unfortunately revealed more blind spots within the scientific community when it comes to addressing climate breakdown.

But rather than simply dunk on an Instagram account that I tend to appreciate more often than not, I think it would be more constructive to critically examine the paper in question alongside a 2025 preprint for the journal Ecological Economics titled “Living Well Within Limits in Ten Stylized Facts” (LiLi Project). A paper that I believe offers a far more desirable path forward — namely for the 4 billion plus individuals it bothers to accommodate.

Both papers acknowlege population growth as a primary variable in global environmental impacts, but they diverge in important ways. Where Keegan et al. identify population growth as the main driver of environmental degradation, the LiLi Project bothers to ask “how can 8 billion (and more) people live well within planetary boundaries?”

Further, the comparison between these papers is strengthened by the fact that both examine population in terms of global energy usage making quantitative considerations fairly consistent between the two. Keegan et al. deem energy use a “good overall indication of resource consumption” and the LiLi Project employed the Decent Living Standards framework to provide energy-based accounting of material goods and services.

A is for Arrogance

Starting first with my initial criticism that affluence was absent in the @ageofcollapse Instagram post, Keegan et al. did in fact employ the IPAT formula. But they outright admit to ignoring more dynamic modeling such as the STIRPAT formula that would have allowed researchers to select for factors like socioeconomic status.1

As if anticipating this criticism, the authors claim the “paper’s size and purpose limit the exploration of regional variation and the effects of varied incomes, technologies, and policies on per capita impacts.” In other words, the nuance between high income and low-income nations was too burdensome to tease out. But considering the life and death stakes of their claims it feels methodologically lazy, if not irresponsible.

Perhaps most troubling is the question of how we are to achieve the projected population. Keegan et al. routinely call for a voluntary and gentle and just transition, but they make no prescription as to how to achieve said outcome while simultaneously claiming existing efforts to curtail population growth “are not urgent enough.” They do point to data which demonstrates improving global education rates for girls and empowering women to choose how many children they have can lower fertility rates, but there is no world in which these trends are capable of halving the global population on their supposed timeline.

As for the timeline, the researchers target 2100 and 2200 using the UN’s projected high and low fertility rates as well as the more ambitious Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Despite their results demonstrating that a reduction in population is feasible, one metric is glaringly absent: projected global average temperature.

Per Climate Action Tracker’s optimistic and worst case temperature projections: 2100 is likely to reach 1.9°C, while 2200’s optimistic projection is an unsettling 3°C. Worst case scenario, Earth reaches 2.6°C by 2100 or an unimaginable 7°C above preindustrial levels in the year 2200. Taken into consideration with the aforementioned actuarial projections, just 3°C of warming alone will slash the existing population and trigger a host of cascading tipping points that are sure to wreak havoc on any human population that remains.

Simply put, aiming to reduce the population “gently and justly” over the next seventy years may appear to provide a measure of relief to current resource use trends, but it is foolish to expect it will alleviate the most immediate impacts of ecological collapse on a timeline that has any bearing on reality.

The idea that the world’s population could be lessened by a factor of two should be laughable on its face. Devoid catastrophic die-off, it would take just over sixty years and a fertility rate of zero for half of the world’s current population to drop to four billion at the current global death rate (around 64 million annually). That is to say there is no scenario in which the just and gentle transition prescribed by the paper’s authors is feasible.

In fairness, despite however unfortunate, deemphasizing the significance of affluence in environmental impacts is hardly unique to Keegan and his colleagues — particularly amongst researchers from high income nations who are likely to have already had children, if they so chose.

It is all too easy to blame foreign populations for environmental degradation, but this ignores a rapacious global economy that, unlike humanity, must grow or die.2 This is where the methodology of the LiLi Project takes a notably different approach.

LiLi Project

Julia Steinberger, of the University of Lausanne, and her research team set out to investigate the systems in which we live and to ask whether it is possible for the world’s current population to live well and to do so within planetary limits. The team developed an analytic framework specifically geared to interrogate the systemic relationships between three interrelated components: biophysical resource use, provisioning systems, and social outcomes.

The first, biophysical resource use, examines energy use as a measure of productive and consumptive impacts. Provisioning systems broadly refers to the economy and goes beyond simple market dynamics in order to examine power relations, inequality, and the impacts of public and private ownership. Finally, social outcomes addresses the notion of well-being based on non-substitutable, universal human needs satisfiers. As for determining planetary limits, the LiLi Project employed Johan Rockström’s planetary boundaries framework and the “safe operating space for humanity.”3

The LiLi Project is impressive in its scope, and rightfully deserves a more thorough exploration of its own, but three main takeaways stand out as it relates to our critique of overpopulation and the question of whether a sustainable, “pro-human, pro-nature future” is possible for 8 billion people.

Spoiler alert: The Lili Project winds up confronting capitalist hegemony head-on.

While some may balk at the idea of achieving any one, let alone all three, of these goals, I suggest that you sit a minute longer with what whittling the world’s population from 8 to 4 billion over the next seven decades would actually entail. Whether Keegan et al. are willing to publish it or not, the only path capable of achieving their end is to willfully accept wanton death at the hand of food shortages, life-threatening air quality, prolonged wet-bulb temperatures of 35°C, and the sudden violence of increasingly common severe storms — to say nothing of the death toll that will be brought on by protracted resource wars and the violent suppression of resultant climate refugees. But as Mark Fisher famously said, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

True sustainability demands tackling inequality

A “pro-human, pro-nature future,” as Keegan et al. claim to champion, definitionally must be for all. So where then do we draw the line when discussing matters of sustainability? And how? This demands we grapple with issues like determining acceptable levels of material inequality if we are sincere in building a truly sustainable world and not conclaves of isolated privilege.

The LiLi Project did just that. They employed a methodology published in 2021 in the journal Environmental Research that combined national survey data, ecological footprints, and statistical modeling to reach a consensus capable of “describing fair income ratios for the highest earners (CEOs, specifically) to lowest paid unskilled workers.”4 Although this task will undoubtedly prove challenging and almost certainly involve some degree of variability between regions, we start by aligning economic production with social goals.

The LiLi Project demonstrated that by targeting inequality specifically, rather than as a tangential symptom to be improved indirectly by economic growth, it is possible to leverage positive feedback loops to drive sustainable outcomes that go beyond the initial impact targets. For example, the team modeled feeding the revenue from a luxury carbon tax into retrofitting homes. It both reduced inequality and emissions.

Capitalism masks true well-being

Both papers highlight the significance of the transportation sector making up 30% of global energy use. But the LiLi Project also identified the capitalist treadmill of overproduction and overconsumption as the primary driver of global environmental impacts where Keegan et al. point to overpopulation.

“Overconsumption of higher income class is a deliberate outcome of an overproductive economic system.”

As an example, the LiLi Project points to an automobile industry currently incentivized to produce an inordinate fleet of new vehicles each year. Whether producing internal combustion engines or EVs, the cycle of overproduction perpetuates car-dependent environments that actively suppress the necessary adoption of low-emission alternatives like public transit as well as investment in accompanying infrastructure.

More people, less energy

Arguably the most significant finding of the LiLi Project is that the global population could reach upwards of 10 billion by 2050 while simultaneously decreasing global energy demand to 40% of present levels. The team concluded this based on an energy-model that inventoried prerequisite goods and services based on the Decent Living Standards framework along with global energy demand.

“We find that energy required to provide decent living standards to about 10 billion people in 2050 could be as low as 149 EJ, which is about 40% of current global energy consumption.”

Although possible, this outcome is far from guaranteed. It is only feasible under conditions that prioritize “collective modes of provisioning and low-energy goods and services” along with “the most efficient technologies that are available today, or likely to be by 2050.” That is to say, this is only one of many futures on offer. But the LiLi Project doesn’t shy away when faced with the grandeur of said future.

“Living well within limits requires a massive restructuring of the whole economy: dethroning powerful industrial conglomerates, reorienting production and work to sectors most required for human needs, as well as unprecedented reductions in inequality and excess consumption.”

Beware of Discursive Power

Comparing these two papers demonstrates how the discursive power of capitalism obfuscates scientific inquiry, regardless of a paper’s peer-reviewed standing. Terms like “overpopulation” launder a worldview that places the blame for degradative environmental impacts at the per capita level rather than the vast array of economic, political, and social relationships in which the vast majority of the world’s people struggle.

Population can hardly be the defining issue in a world in which high income nations earn on average 60x and consume energy at a rate 13x that of low-income nations. Perhaps surprisingly, this data comes directly from Keegan et al. The LiLi Project brings further granularity to the disparity within high income nations where the top decile of the UK population consumes as much energy annually in flights alone as the bottom fifth do in total. These are the red flags of an economic system geared to extract value and eschew any responsibility for the externalities left in its wake.

It is true that species can reach what ecologists refer to as “carrying capacity,” but it is naive to apply that same logic to a global species with the capacity for dynamic change in how we choose to invest in areas like infrastructure and trade. Advocating we manage global population before confronting issues like overproduction and overconsumption only serves to reinforce existing structural inequalities while normalizing mass casualty events, not to mention the impacts to countless other species with whom we share the planet.

The claims of Keegan et al. may not be inherently violent, but there simply is no achieving a “gentle and just” decline in global population figures within an inherently unjust capitalist economic paradigm.

Sources

@solarpunkplanner isn’t your typical Gen Z influencer. As she sees it, she isn’t an influencer at all. Social media is just a fun hobby. But at just twenty-three years old, the young woman behind the fast-growing Instagram account is sharing a message that feels tailor-made for the moment.

“We’ve experienced a lot of change in the last twenty years. Millennials and Gen Z grew up with a lot of hope and were promised a reliable process, but we also grew up with more doubt than previous generations.”

With an infectiously bubbly affect, @solarpunkplanner offers a fresh reprieve from much of the doom that can, understandably, overwhelm online climate discourse.

We had planned to sit down for a conversation on Chicago’s Riverwalk — home to many clever urban design elements — but those plans were thwarted by one of Chicago’s many intensifying summer thunderstorms. Instead, I got the full Zoomer experience when she answered my video call mid-commute home on the L. (And yes, let the record show she wore headphones and was quite considerate of her fellow commuters.)

Who is @solarpunkplanner?

Born in California and raised in Cleveland, the seeds of an ecological outlook were planted early while assisting a project to build bridges for African elephants during her time studying abroad in Kenya. After graduating with a degree in economics, @solarpunkplanner then moved to Chicago to work as a research assistant at the University of Chicago.

At the time, she had little to no interest in becoming a climate “influencer.” But her proximity to economics research prompted a shift in perspective. Suddenly, the economics papers she was buried in felt more like artifacts of another era than they did guideposts for the future. That’s when the city she now found herself in, itself a beacon of urban planning, started to tease out a new course of action.

Currently working towards a Master’s in Urban Planning & Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago, @solarpunkplanner is committed to building in real-life the future she advocates for online. As she has come to see them, “cities provide a policy lab.” They bare the fingerprints of their most engaged citizenry. And championing her vision for "patchwork solutions” is just one lever that can help bring about a better future than the one her generation stands to inherit.

@solarpunkplanner started first as short videos on TikTok, but she quickly found the platform rewarded quantity over quality and pivoted to Instagram (although, she admits, TikTok’s editing features are still preferable). But taking to social media was always “about meeting youth where they already are.” Because, in her own words, “the best way to learn is to teach.”

Well aware of the pitfalls of performative activism Instagram can be known for, it’s important that her online presence honestly reflects the real-world engagement she hopes to encourage in others. A regular volunteer with Friends of the Chicago River and Strong Towns Chicago, it’s not an exaggeration to say she is arguably more active offline than on.

Even still, in the four short months since bringing her message online, an organic audience is already taking root. Now boasting over forty-five hundred followers and counting, @solarpunkplanner’s reach extends well beyond Chicago to include anyone eager to build resiliency in their own communities. Whether you’re dealing with climate impacts like worsening heat domes, stormwater flooding, or systemic issues like food apartheid, @solarpunkplanner is likely talking about innovative solutions.

Her vision? Solarpunk.

Why “Solarpunk?”

Solarpunk is incredibly emblematic of our digital age. Born on the internet in 2008, the first known reference to “solarpunk” was a post on the now fallow Wordpress blog, Republic of Bees. (If anyone has a present-day lead on the author, please hook me up. I’m actively trying to track them down for a conversation.)

Inspired by the literary aesthetic steampunk — the imaginings of an alt-Victorian era in which steam supplanted oil as the industrial fuel of choice — solarpunk envisions a brighter future born of harmony between technology and the natural world. Idealistic as this might sound, solarpunk has contained a strain of self-awareness from its onset.

“I find it very unlikely that a transition to renewable energy can be accomplished without serious political fights.” — Republic of Bees

Despite anticipating resistance from entrenched power, Republic of Bees was also keen to point out that the realization of “solarpunk ideas, and solarpunk technologies, need not remain imaginary.”

Unlike atavistic appeals like romantic pastoralism, solarpunk actively celebrates the potential on offer if we choose to pursue innovative applications of modern developments with existing technologies — as evidenced by the author drawing inspiration from the maiden voyage of the Beluga Skysail back in 2008.

Solarpunk x Urbanism

Lofty though a solarpunk future might sound, its practical realization lies in how we approach rather mundane domains like urban planning. Cities don’t just spring up from nothing, nor will they evolve overnight to include green roofs or efficient public transit powered by renewable energy.

Importantly though, like cities, the solarpunk vision continues to evolve. And for @solarpunkplanner that evolution encapsulates her approach to urban planning and policy. “Urbanism is the level democracy functions best,” meaning it allows for development to respond to engaged communities at the root level.

A Bridge Between Eras

As our conversation was coming to a close, @solarpunkplanner shared something that seemed to fly in the face of those that might be quick to dismiss the need for sweeping climate action as little more than laundering an immature desire to disrupt the status quo.

“I [actually] don’t like change. I like consistency. But anxiety is toxic, so having a positive outlook is necessary. Solarpunk is imaginative and can compete with all the fear-mongering.”

Such an honest and grounded take was refreshing to hear. All too often the weight of the climate crisis can feel as though the only way through is to wait for inadequate and antiquated systems to crumble. But in reality, that only guarantees more destruction than what is already baked in. Solarpunk, conversely, bothers to ask what can we leverage now in order to build the better systems we so desperately need.

At the risk of betraying my own disaster bias, I was curious to know if she saw any parallels between being a “planner” amidst the climate crisis and the quintessential “prepper” — a community long-known for stockpiling everything from provisions to firearms and ammunition ahead of their chosen doomsday.

“Planner just comes from urban planning. I think it’s more collectivist, whereas prepping tends to be individualistic.”

And at a time that for many feels as divisive as ever, we need now more than ever to advocate for solutions that prioritize healing divides rather than exacerbate them.

Reflecting on our conversation, it became clear that @solarpunkplanner is still very much in the service of building bridges. Whether it’s infrastructure for elephants, or rethinking how we redress decades of isolation amongst marginalized urban communities, solarpunk may just prove to be the thread capable of stitching the seams between today’s crisis and a brighter tomorrow.

This Saturday, millions of Americans are expected to take to the streets, again, across all fifty states (likely around the globe, as well) to make their virulent opposition to the Trump administration known. Their message? “No Kings!”

The message is simple and to the point. Very American. But whether or not this protest movement proves effective begs one question:

What about the rest of the GOP, who aren’t named Trump?

That threat is far more insidious. Like discovering black mold in your basement. And we’ve been breathing this shit in for years, decades even, none the wiser, as our so-called democracy grows sicker.

I’m talking about “Unitary Executive Theory” — an anti-American political project masked by jargon. If this is the first you’re hearing of it, you’re not alone. And even if you have, it’s entirely likely you’re not all that sure what it means. And that’s kinda the point. The jargon is the point. Allow me to explain.

In Jargon They Trust

One of the first lessons you’re likely to learn should you choose to become a writer is this: Avoid jargon.

Jargon is a catchall term that describes overly opaque and unnecessarily dense language. Basically anything that requires technical-know-how on behalf of your audience.

Jargon isn’t kryptonite, but by its very nature it makes writing less accessible to broad audiences. It’s worth noting, too, that a good writer shouldn’t write down to their audience. Good writing should strike something of a balance between elevated and accessible language.

Employing jargon as a political tactic probably sounds counterintuitive. But here jargon serves to take advantage of the fact most people won’t ask for a definition of terms in a room full of their peers. A classic case of choosing to go along in order to get along.

It is further helped by the naive, but understandable, assumption that those in government are somehow inherently smarter than the rest of us. But if both Trump administrations have taught us one thing, it is that very, very dumb people can rise to incredibly powerful positions. And in this case, what lies beneath the dense language lurks the makings of a modern American king.

Built this way

The Republican Party is fundamentally at odds with the altruistic aims of a representative democracy. That is to say Republicans benefit most when tasked with representing as few interests as possible. Not unlike the hierarchical structure of most businesses. Tell me, when was the last time you cast a vote for your boss? Exactly.

What has long been championed as the fight for “small government” is little more than an attempt to silo power in the hands of a few. This strategy can be seen in the fervent opposition from Republicans to any proposal likely to increase representation of Americans. Two popular examples include calls to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court, or granting statehood to Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

But the most emblematic of the GOP’s aims has to be their effort to mold the office of the President in the image of a CEO. As the singular arbiter of the executive branch, wielding complete and total power. What they call the Unitary Executive.

C-Suite in Chief

Pitching the president as a CEO dates back to the Reagan administration and set in motion the decades-long Unitary Executive project. The “theory” comes by way of interpretation of what’s known as the Vesting Clause of Article II of the constitution:

“The executive Power [of the United States] shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

Proponents will tell you that “vested” means the president, and the president alone, wields complete power over all members of the Executive Branch — including civil servants and independent of preexisting organizational structures.

Donald Trump may serve as the most illustrative figurehead of the movement to date, but it’s important we clock the progress of this political ideology before we’re blinded by bright orange and punny signs come Saturday.

Over a decade before Trump’s hostile takeover of the political arena, the White House figure that most embodied the Unitary Executive political prerogative was none other than Dick (Fucking) Cheney. (Still waiting on confirmation of his middle name.)

Cheney’s career includes all the hallmarks of UET. After serving in government as Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush, Cheney went on to take the helm of the Fortune 500 company (and government contractor) Halliburton. Cheney served as chairman of the board and Halliburton CEO from 1995 to 2000, stepping down from the company on the same day he was named as Vice Presidential pick by the son of his former boss.

What followed was eight years of further reshaping the American government in the image of an executive suite, laying the groundwork for presidential cabinets that more closely resemble the boardrooms from which these cronies crawl.

By cloaking their political ambition — to extract power from the American People — in lofty, academic language, GOP strategists successfully imbued their aspirations with the allure of authority while simultaneously leveraging the fear of sounding stupid. A tactic that is furthered by the GOP’s 6-point advantage over Democrats amongst non-college-educated voters, according to PEW research.

It’s only fair, then, to ask, what if obfuscation confusion is their goal? Suddenly, jargon is starting to look like a clever tool.

Beyond Kings

So, if you’re planning on taking to the streets with your fellow Americans this Saturday, do so armed with the knowledge that the threat we oppose is far greater than Donald Trump alone.

When we say “No kings!” we mean no CEO, no unitary executive, and yes to checks and balances. Yes to a government granted power by the People!

We are not subjects of the government. We are not its customers. And we’re certainly not subscribers (barf). No, we are the government. A government for the People and by the People.

That is what we are fighting for.

Earth’s Greatest Enemy is a new feature-length documentray from Abby Martin, journalist and founder of the Empire Files. Building on decades of anti-imperialism reporting, here Martin investigates the often overlooked intersection of the U.S. military and the multi-pronged environmental crises we face.

The film opens with a strangely familiar face. Seated at an upright piano that is remarkably in-tune considering it also sits under the cover of a tarp strung up by fellow unhoused Los Angelenos, an Army veteran plays for the camera as he describes the unrelenting chronic pain of injuries suffered while enlisted.

“Laughing is the only way I can get through it.”

His familiarity suddenly clicks when the filmmakers cut to an Army of One recruitment ad from the late 2000s — I knew I had seen his face before. But the satisfaction of placing a face is short-lived as the audience immediately begins to feel the weight of the heavy veil about to be lifted.

Martin sought out a career in journalism in order to shine a light on U.S. imperialism, motivated in large part by the lies that led to the invasion of Iraq. She met her husband and collaborator on the film, Mike Prysner, at a veteran-led antiwar protest. Prysner is himself an Iraq war veteran. Even still, it wasn’t until the couple welcomed their first child that the lens with which they view the many ills of the Pentagon broadened to include its downstream ecological consequences and the mounting threat posed by climate change.

With over eight hundred bases around the globe, the U.S. military dwarfs any other fighting force on the planet. For sake of comparison, Russia and China rank second and third with fewer than one hundred combined bases. As you might imagine, these bases are incredibly energy hungry, consuming on average more than a quarter million barrels of oil each day. Precise figures are difficult to come by because the U.S. military is exempt from emmissions accounting. That is also to say that when we account for national greenhouse gas emissions the military is immune.

“We’ve become numbers numb — they like it that way,” Barry Sanders, author of The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, tells Martin during an interview.

“I’ve never heard anything about the ecological impact.” — Unnamed service member

Sanders has been at the vanguard of the dual issues of militarism and environmentalism for over two decades. Martin and her documentary crew bring a visual gravitas to Sanders’ reporting that has yet to be seen. But as jarring as it is to watch naval officers carry out the standard operating procedures such as dumping compressed bricks of trash overboard, or infantry exploding hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of unused ammunitions rather than transport them elsewhere, it’s the shear disconnect from the looming threat that is climate change that makes the documentary so striking.

It’s easy given the international sprawl of bases to dismiss to the devastation wrought by the U.S. military as out of sight and out of mind. But to that the documentary responds with one of its darkest chapters: Camp Lejeune.

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune is a sprawling 264-square-mile training facility along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast where for over thirty years service members, their families, and locals were routinely exposed to contaminated ground water known to produce cancers and other ailments. According to one activist interviewed for the documentary, a local cemetery has come to be known as “Baby Heaven,” due to the prevalence of stillbirths coupled with an infant mortality rate akin to centuries that pre-date modern medicine rather than the self-proclaimed “greatest country on Earth.”

A fully independent project, Earth’s Greatest Enemy will rely on the support of engaged audiences if its impact is to be felt on the scale it deserves. Relevant as the film feels today — especially as we wage what is perhaps the dumbest war in our nation’s history — you’re not likely to find the film recommended on your Netflix carousel anytime soon.

Fortunately, a screening tour featuring Abby Martin herself is ongoing, with many specialty screenings scheduled to coincide with Earth Day next month, on April 22nd. Screenings can found on the film’s website. And if you don’t currently see a screening listed in or near your community, the team behind the film has made it easy for academic institutions, organizations, or local theaters to request to host a screening.

In an age when we are inundated with more content than anyone could hope to watch across multiple lifetimes — much of it curated in favor of the very forces this film chooses to interrogate – Earth’s Greatest Enemy offers a searing indictment of the world’s largest polluter and it’s incompatibility with marshaling a meaningful response to the climate crisis.

A worthy addition to the provocative pedigree of films like An Inconvenient Truth and Fahrenheit 9/11, Abby Martin’s Earth’s Greatest Enemy is a film that demands the audience seek it out. Because the algorithm will not spoon feed this film to you. And the U.S. military certainly doesn’t want you to see it. But I certainly hope that you will.

This article was written in December, 2025 but unfortunately was not published elsewhere as originally intended. It is being published here now because the story of the residents of Saline, Michigan deserves to be heard as loud as possible. Their fight is our fight.

Cyber Monday hit different this year in the small town of Saline, Michigan. On the typically quiet corner of Ann Arbor Road and Michigan Avenue, a crowd of nearly two hundred residents braved sub-freezing temperatures to add their voices to the growing chorus of rural Americans saying no to the domineering actions of Big Tech.

“Everyone’s got a reason to be against this,” Saline resident and self-proclaimed ‘nobody,’ Joshua Lebaron, stressed when we spoke about the issue. “But,” he quickly added, “enough nobody’s can still make a difference.”

Related Digital, a Texas-based developer specializing in constructing data centers, recently purchased 575 acres of generational farmland from longtime Saline residents, Amy Marr and John Feldkamp. Despite a surname so synonymous with Saline that the property actually sits on Feldkamp Road, the siblings have no interest in farming and were eager to sell. (A worrying trend that deserves its own investigation.)

If built, the Saline data center would require 1.4 gigawatts — roughly half the power generated by the Hoover Dam — making it the single largest addition to the US grid in history.

Nobodies, Unite!

The proposal first drew suspicion from community members when Related Digital sued Saline township in September after a request to rezone the farmland was denied in a 4-1 vote by the town board. The lawsuit asserts that the data center is “a legitimate land use” and that Related Digital are victims of exclusionary zoning with “a strong taint of unlawful discrimination and denial of equal protection of the law.” Residents of Saline claim otherwise and feel they are being forced out of a truly democratic process.

Joshua Lebaron was one of the first to marshal his fellow community members after speaking during public comments at a town meeting on November 12th.

“Josh was calm, sincere, and just made a lot of sense — everything he said felt reasonable and well thought out,” shared fellow Saline resident, Brittany Troyan. “I messaged him on Facebook and asked if he’d be interested in putting a small group together to start brainstorming possible next steps and strategies.”

Until then, Lebaron thought he was one of a relative few who were opposed to the development of the data center. But his public comments struck a nerve and gave voice to those who had already been quietly organizing on the issue.

Lebaron reciprocated the outpouring of support writing a post on the town’s active Facebook group offering to host an in-person meeting at his home. But interest quickly snowballed and the need for a larger venue became obvious. Enter Saline’s resident flower farmer, Beth Foley, whose barn-turned-wedding-venue was no stranger to hosting large groups.

Less than a week after Lebaron’s public comments, a lawn chair coalition of concerned residents coalesced in the barn at Bella Terra, bundled up under blankets and gathered around space heaters.

“The group officially formed during that meeting in Beth’s barn,” said Jordan Rice, a local homesteader with a background in activism who volunteered that night to help manage the group’s then-fledgling Instagram account @stopsalinedatacenter.

In the months since, the account has grown to over fifteen hundred followers and continues to build digital solidarity with similar groups pushing back against unsolicited data centers in nearby Pennsylvania and as far away as Arizona. Notably, the SSDC counts the official Instagram account of Michigan Attorney General, Dana Nessel, amongst their followers.

Nessel’s support isn’t merely digital. In a public statement issued last month following the Michigan Public Service Commission’s (MPSC) deafening non-answer related to an ex-parte application to green light contracts between Related Digital and DTE Energy, Nessel explicitly sided with Saline residents.

“Residents have made clear their opposition to these hidden agreements, and their concerns deserve to be fully heard – not brushed aside.” — AG Dana Nessel

Ex-parte is legalese for a motion that allows a court to move forward on behalf of one party without involving the other. By definition, undemocratic.

AG Nessel further echoed the concerns of the Saline residents in a video posted to Instagram.

Holding up the contract between Related Digital and DTE that her office was provided, the redactions are rivaled only by the recent release of the Epstein files. Entire sections replaced with black rectangles support the claims of residents that the contract is opaque and fueling skepticism. And yet, DTE maintains that transparency and consumer protections are amongst their top priorities.

Combatting Abstraction

With a population of just over nine thousand, the existing electricity needs of Saline would be dwarfed by Related Digital’s required 1.4 gigawatts — a demand comparable to adding one million new single-family homes. A point of friction with the September lawsuit.

Court documents show Related Digital cites existing zoning would allow “over 500 single family homes on the Property.” Five hundred single family homes equates to roughly .05% of the anticipated draw by the data center. A discrepancy so significant that it’s hard to believe one the countries largest data center developers is unaware.

It’s worth noting too that issues of demand aren’t merely abstract numbers. Not only is the energy demand comparable in measure to the Hoover dam, but much like the water contained therein, were it to fail for any reason, the sudden rupture would result in local blackouts and broader grid failures. Meaning those closest to the source are the most directly effected. Considering these risks and local opposition, it’s worth asking who the data center would benefit.

Subsidizing the Surveillance State

The Saline data center is intended to serve digital surveillance contractor Oracle and OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, has openly admitted to the reality of severe risks associated with AI. But rather than earn public support, Related Digital has opted instead to employ strong-arm legal tactics and, allegedly, to lean on political connections.

The court of public opinion wasted no time highlighting existing connections between Miami billionaire and owner of Related Digital, Stephen Ross, and sitting Michigan Secretary of State and 2026 gubernatorial hopeful, Jocelyn Benson.

Prior to her pivot into politics, Benson was CEO of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality, an extension of Ross’ Related Companies. The same Related Companies where Benson’s husband, Ryan Friedrichs, is currently a vice president. A position Friedrichs took after retiring from a lobbying career once Benson sought public office.

According to a public statement from Related Digital, were any conflicts of interest to arise should Benson become governor, “Ryan would then recuse himself from any projects before the state.”

Despite these explicit connections, it’s hard to quantify Related Digital’s political influence. But it’s also naive to think their connections have little bearing on matters with such significant economic consequences. Polling on data centers and AI more broadly reveals public reticence exists well beyond Saline. Concerns which are fueled in large part by the substantive fears of rate hikes now or in the future — to say nothing of the ecological consequences.

Lurking in the Dark

Rate hikes as a result of one’s proximity to data centers might seem intuitive but in actuality it has been difficult to nail down. Utility bills don’t suddenly include a line item to indicate customers are now collectively “Subsidizing an AI data center.” This makes it difficult to fight back against the dual-pronged entity of developer and utility company. But, thanks to research by reporters with Bloomberg, we now have data that proves it.

After surveying the distribution costs from a central node along the grid, researchers were able to correlate distinct spikes in both demand and price precisely when a data center came online. We can visualize the impact of a data center similar to the way light bends along its path of travel when passing planetary bodies so large they warp space-time.

Virtually all residential growth and conventional commercial additions to the grid typically produces a negligible impact to overall node traffic. The supply appears constant, not unlike light traveling through space. But, if an object large enough to produce gravity were to suddenly interrupt the path of light, we would know it by measuring the bend it causes to passing light. This is exactly what researchers found when they identified discrepancies in the otherwise typical constant draw from the central node along the grid.

The metaphor of a presence so significant that it can’t even hide in the shadows is striking. We shouldn’t then be surprised when anti-democratic tactics are employed by those who stand to benefit most by the approval of yet another data center.

A Dark Horizon

The concerns raised by the residents of Saline and other small towns make it clear we are officially in the Wild West AI era. One that will be defined by issues many thought were still years away. Issues, though, that promise to be so disruptive to the status quo that they may just be capable of spanning the widening gulf between American partisan hemispheres.

“We had MAGA hats and the knit pink ones in one room,” Joshua Lebaron was keen to point out, describing the scene at Beth’s barn.

“Folks are seeing through the fog, that this is us vs. them,” Jordan Rice shared, highlighting the increasing awareness amongst the general public of the centrality that wealth inequality plays in the struggle to mount a meaningful resistance.

If one thing is to be taken from the fight in Saline, Michigan, it’s that the balance between public and private power has never felt more contentious and that conventional partisan divides no longer adequately describe the landscape before us.

Big Tech and the private companies tasked with providing public utilities are actively thwarting democratic oversight while forging a path that fundamentally transforms our collective future.

At its most stark, this is a fight between those that believe in a human-curated future with public ownership of utilities, versus one decided by and for machines.

Machines that, at least for now, can’t mobilize in the streets.

Calls to overturn “the system” can be heard from all corners of the media. Hell, even conservative commentators will unironically lambast the status quo — despite typically benefiting the most from stasis. But what this revolutionary rhetoric actually means can be difficult to parse.

It’s hard to argue “the system” is anything other than global capitalism. Borders may still define nation states but capital moves freer than ever and corporate incentives have long betrayed any semblance of national loyalty (assuming it ever existed in the first place). One such naked display of executive corporate allegiance was laid bare when then-CEO of CBS, Les Moonves, addressed the network’s coverage of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign at a media and telecom conference.

“But, you know — it may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS, that’s all I got to say.” — Moonves

Perverse as the incentives of the global capitalist economy are, it is understandable that some may hesitate before endorsing its wholesale upheaval. But dialysis patients shouldn’t have to fear that their support of transformative societal action could in some way jeopardize their access to life-sustaining treatment. And yet, our individual precarity remains a cudgel for those in positions of power.

But rather than capitulate to what could easily be seen as extortion in another light, the question that follows then is this: How can we dismantle the quotidian “system” that so many rely on? How do we actually go beyond capitalism to build a world that serves people before profit?

Simple, we’re going to compost it.

Humble Humus

The humble compost heap offers a rather adept model with which we can understand the revolutionary roles needed if we are to bring about a more beautiful world. Overturning the system becomes a turning over of the lumpen status quo. Agitation becomes aeration.

Compost is not a passive process either. It is very much active and depends on the participation of its constituent parts that arise at distinct levels. To orient the revolution around these ecological principles provides a framework that goes further than the mere destruction of the status quo. We decompose it and create the energy-rich loam from which a new socio-economic order can take root.

Methane & Money

Compost offers a compelling analogy because it is not merely the act of breaking down food scraps. To compost is to retool organic material at its most fundamental level in order to liberate the building blocks of life. That sounds pretty revolutionary to me.

According to EPA, food waste comprises 24% of solid waste in municipal landfills. As that organic waste wants to decompose, it releases methane. While no where near the atmospheric concentration levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane is a particularly pernicious greenhouse gas, capable of trapping nearly eighty times as much heat as CO2 in twenty years. Currently, landfills account for an estimated 58% of the fugitive methane emissions contributing to global warming each year.

Much like this organic material trapped in landfills, economic material, aka capital, also remains trapped. Almost a decade ago, OXFAM international published an economic report that identified just eight men owned as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity. Nearly four billion people. Speaking to this grotesque imbalance, Executive Director of Oxfam International, Winnie Byanyima, had this to say:

“Inequality is trapping hundreds of millions in poverty; it is fracturing our societies and undermining democracy.”

The COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated this divide. According to a followup report published by OXFAM in 2023, of the nearly $42 trillion created in new wealth in the two years of the pandemic, “the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth.”

Facilitator > Creator

Unfortunately, landfills are more likely to become gardens before the world’s wealthiest willingly adopt policies that release their grip on trapped capital. Both compost and revolution can only occur under specific conditions. As Clare Foster, editor of Gardens Illustrated, says in her book devoted entirely to compost, our task is to facilitate the adequate conditions, such that a diversity of players can get to work. Much like the global climate, this requires a delicate balance of heat, oxygen, and moisture.

“You’re setting up the right conditions for a whole host of creatures to do the work.”

And just like the heat that activates the initial stages of decomposition, the conditions for revolution have been set on this planet that has been getting hotter for decades; goaded by mounting economic pressures like inflation and rampant wealth inequality not seen since the Gilded Age.

Agitation as aeration

Contrary to the image invoked by references to heaps and piles, compost is not served by sitting idle. Stagnation means defeat. Whether it’s spinning a bin, or taking a literal pitchfork to the pile (could this revolutionary analogy be any more apt), healthy compost demands we constantly turn the source material over in order to maintain the process. Then the bacteria get to work.

“If conditions are favourable in the compost heap, they can multiply at an amazing rate, reproducing by binary fission.”

From the ground up

The first to arrive are known as psychrophiles. Psychrophiles are active at lower temperatures and are primarily tasked with digesting carbon compounds. Energy released by metabolizing the carbon provides the initial energy that raise the internal temperature and creates the conditions for what comes next.

Psychrophiles serve something of a similar role as individuals who have long known that a drastic change is needed. The same individuals who have demonstrated the tenacity to wade through the often bleak work of community organizing, social work, and fundraising, well before significant change seemed likely. Thanks to their tireless effort despite society’s low appetite for change, the milieu in which we all exist slowly starts to shift. And those who previously struggled to see any other way start to see opportunities where they were once absent.

Then the mesophiles show up and these bacteria are extremely efficient. Most decomposition will take place under these fairly moderate conditions. While high temperature revolution might sound sexy, there is something to be said about maintaining constancy over highly destructive flashpoints. It’s important to remember that what we are building is far more important than what we are doing away with.

Foster is keen to point out that it’s actually very possible to achieve adequate decomposition in compost heaps that never reach high temperatures. Importantly though, they must be well managed. Larger organisms, like worms and insects, also start to work in tandem with the mesophiles to break larger pieces in smaller, more manageable chunks.

In the context of an Ecological Revolution, this might look like national organizations geared to tackle specific elements like electoral reform and education coupled with local coalitions tackling issues like restoration and mutual aid. Smaller pieces make for efficient decomposition. Anyone who’s tossed scraps into a compost heap knows shredded material decomposes faster. The more surface area we can expose the better.

This is why it is crucial to get active with groups like the DSA, Science for the People, Third Act, as well as hyper-local groups like neighborhood environmental coalitions. Only together and in great numbers can we efficiently smother the issues that plague our communities and society writ large.

As mentioned, the rate of decomposition during these initial stages is capable of sufficiently breaking down most organic matter within the compost heap. But the primary variable remains time — a luxury easily granted to compost but that the our moment cannot afford. In order to go beyond the mesophilic capacity, temperatures need to get really hot.

Some compost can reach temperatures hot enough to boil an egg. It is at this stage that thermophiles become active. And while decomposition is swift at such high temperatures, the compost heap can often only sustain these conditions for about three to five days before dying back. Not unlike a grassroots revolution in which burn out is a very real concern.

This highlights the value of turning over your compost and bringing new comrades into the fold. By introducing fresh air into the mix, assuming sufficient organic material remains, the thermophilic process will begin again.

Complete the rot

Reaching these temperatures has the additional benefit of destroying diseases and preventing weeds from growing in the compost. Once the heat starts to die back, other organisms, like nematodes, protozoa, mites, and wolf spiders pick up the remaining slack to complete the rot. This is when white, web-like mycelial structures start to form in a healthy pile and fungi produce natural antibiotics that help keep diseases at bay.

Unfortunately, we need not look far today to find glaring examples of societal ills like racism, misogyny, and xenophobia that were once thought to have been rendered uncouth in public discourse. Facing these threats demands a thorough antibiotic response. Steady decomposition alone is not enough.

The whole process can take as little as six weeks if temperatures get hot enough. But it can take months to fully rot. Which means we have to remain steadfast in our commitment to ecological values like diversity and adequate access to nutrients and other essentials.

“A bit of roughness..can help the structure.”

Eventually, assuming the process has been well managed, you’re left fine dark brown mixture that looks like crumbly chocolate cake and smells like earth. But like all good things, don’t expect compost, or society for that matter, to be perfect. One is a rare commodity and the other is a fantasy. But we can learn a great deal about solidarity from soil.

As Foster reminds us, “a bit of roughness..can help the structure,” that’s what a good sieve is for. Only then can we begin the next phase, when we plant the seeds of what is to grow from our of collective work.

Fossil fuels are the “smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em” of energy. But even as addictions go, they’re a bum deal.

Only after we plumb the Earth for oil, tear at coal seams, or frack gas trapped miles beneath the earth’s surface can we begin the arduous process of transporting and processing these archaic fossilized forms of energy in order to distribute their refined counterparts.

And after all that, when we’re finally filling up at the gas station, a combustion engine will only convert 30% of that fuel into usable energy. More than three-quarters of the energy is wasted as “excess heat.”

That would be like dropping three cigarettes in a puddle for every one that we can actually smoke. A deal that would compel even the most committed smoker to pick up an electronic vape. Meanwhile, the largest nuclear reactor this side of the Kuiper belt spills all the energy we could ever need across this planet in the form of sunlight.

A Solar Dawn

What was once the challenge of harnessing the sun’s energy, Bell Labs solved back in the 1950s, when they developed the first photovoltaic cells thanks to research funded by pay phones!

(Insert nostalgia-laden anecdotes from a collect-call childhood.)

What followed was the challenge of storage during those moments when the sun isn’t shining. And thanks to recent advances in battery tech — like Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) which uses less critical minerals — a new solar dawn is brightening.

“24-hour solar generation is here — and it changes everything.”

According to a report published in June by renewable energy think tank, Ember Energy, ‘Round-the-Clock’ solar is knocking on the door. One of the key takeaways hinges on the 17kWh battery.

Batteries are like sex — cheaper, safer, & longer is almost always better. And when it comes to providing reliable solar energy, batteries are a “fast, flexible way to overcome grid bottlenecks.”

Ember’s report looked at what it would take to provide continuous 1kWH energy supply in various cities. In Las Vegas, the sunniest city they examined, they found that just a 17kWH battery was capable of meeting these demands.

Personally, I find battery size to be fairly nebulous so to help put that in perspective, the batteries in most EVs on the road today range from 2x to as much as 5x that size.

That is to say, a 17kWh battery is pretty small. And not only are the battery specs diminishing, solar panels themselves are becoming more densely packed with photovoltaic cells. A trend that is already reducing the land requirements of a solar revolution — a common criticism lobbed by critics of solar energy.

Those criticisms start to fade even faster in light of applications like the ‘agrivoltaic’ integration — placing solar panels in farm fields alongside crops to provide knock-on benefits, like shade, in addition to the solar energy harvested.

To illustrate this point, environmentalist and author, Bill McKibben, shared an anecdote from a research trip for his new book Here Comes the Sun during a recent appearance on the Lever Time podcast.

Standing in an Illinois cornfield, a farmer who’s already bought in to the agrivoltaic revolution tells McKibben just what is possible within a single acre:

“That’ll produce enough ethanol to drive my Ford F-150 25,000 miles. When I cover that same acre in solar panels, I get enough electricity to drive my Ford F-150 Lightning [the EV version of the same truck], not 25,000 miles, but 700,000 miles.”

The US harvests approximately 90 million acres of corn annually. Nearly one third of the global supply. The majority of which is used for animal feed or to produce ethanol fuel. Critics of solar rarely contend with the reality that a robust adoption of solar energy will in effect create land, not shrink it. A feat that no fossil fuel can compete with.

Cost-Competitive

The Ember report further illustrates a progressive 40% price drop year over year, from $275/MWh in 2023 to $165/MWh in 2024. In many sunny places, prices are already cheaper than coal and nuclear.

And these advances are happening despite massive industry pushback, not the least of which includes the weaponization of bureaucracy and legal hurdles that we discussed in a previous article.

“Valuable for emerging economies, where solar-powered industrial and economic zones can emerge in sunny areas far from existing grid infrastructure.”

As populations continue to migrate with a shifting climate, grid expansions are a necessary reality we have to contend with. Here, solar + battery solutions offer further savings compared to conventional energy infrastructure. Installing solar on existing grid connections can provide as much as five times the capacity before considering costly upgrades.

Will (of) the People

It’s become comically frustrating to repeat this point but Ember reports the “biggest barrier…is business-as-usual mindset.” And this is why revolutionary dialogue amongst those of us aware of these benefits is so important. We cannot afford to let the most acquiescent set the tone for the conversations that must be had.

“The barrier is no longer technical feasibility, but regulation conservatism and risk aversion.”

Any meaningful discussion of energy infrastructure must address concerns of redundancy and reliability. Both are just as relevant when considering fossil fuel-based systems as they are in solar + battery solutions. But with the ability to oversize a solar + battery system, coupled with increasingly reliable weather forecasting to anticipate low energy days, it’s far easier to accommodate systemic lulls than it currently is to anticipate a sudden gas turbine failure.

The Kingpin ain’t gonna cut you off

These advances in solar and battery technology make it clear that we have fundamentally entered a new energy era. What is needed now is revolutionary demand from the public for solar — and that starts with knowing just how inefficient the conventional system we are being sold is.

For years folks like Naomi Oreskes have called out Big Oil for leveraging the same playbook as Big Tobacco. And in light of the aforementioned advances in solar + battery storage, that analogy starts to become even more perverse.

Internal documents from oil conglomerates, like ExxonMobil, have been littered for decades with the tacit understanding that their products are irrevocably changing the Earth’s climate. And yet, their public-facing rhetoric using phrases like “energy demand” intentionally frames the multinational corporations merely as service providers to a public that is helplessly addicted to fossil fuels. That is not true.

The fossil fuel lobby are hardly history’s first altruistic drug dealers. In fact, they are explicitly aware of the advantages solar + battery storage, but would prefer to leverage this clean power to prop up the more profitable oil & gas market. Shell has gone so far as to adopt solar solutions to literally drill for oil! More on that in a future article.

“Solar and/or wind energy in combination with batteries and standby diesel engines is fast becoming the system of choice for oil and gas operators to power their offshore wellhead platforms.” — Shell

And so here we sit, poised on the precipice of an energy revolution or the continued stranglehold by the world’s longest standing corporate powers. Corporations that remain hellbent on squeezing every red cent they can before we take what is rightfully ours: abundant energy from a sun we all share in common.

Zuccotti Park

Unwilling to let an uncertain future come to pass,

what’s possible occupies the imagination

of those gathered in a park

that bears the memory of unmoved masses.

“Mic check!”

The call emerges

from an ambiguous center.

“Mic check!”

Echoes ripple,

beneath umbrella antenna.

With earshot established,

affinity follows.

The streets feel narrow,

their message bold,

“Stop Funding Fossil Fuels”

Federal Reserve NYC

Amassing in the heart of Wall street,

the crowd deploys against doors

through which the funding flows.

The people’s microphone is no longer enough,

for a message that demands the attention

of uninterested ears.

“If you arrest one of us,

one hundred more will come!”

“If you arrest one of us,

one hundred more will come!”

Projecting more than it protects,

an irony-laden vest

will do just fine

against the people’s ire,

and shots unfired —

Kevlar need not apply —

the Disorder Control Unit has arrived.

But with linked arms

and the activist’s drum,

the timeless rhythm

of opposition

moves tireless feet.

“Noisemakers are change-makers!”

Just ask the cowbell,

and tambourine.

So remember,

whether your history rhymes,

or feels entirely new,

between poetic lines

often lurks the truth:

“We’re here to unfuck the world.”

The March to End Fossil Fuels took place two years ago, on September 17th, 2023.

I’ll be the first to admit it, a banner calling on President Biden to “End Fossil Fuels” looks downright naive given the current political climate. But I think it’s worthwhile to remember the context of the moment.

This was weeks before Israel’s genocidal response to the attacks of October 7th began, capturing the ire of humanitarians around the world and calling into question decades-long commitments to international law — or in the very least, the pretense of international law. And it was well before then-former President Trump took office in his second term, going full mask-off with authoritarian power grabs rarely seen on home soil (of course, the mask was Made in China).

Two years ago, the world was a very different place.

The March

A diverse crowd of demonstrators, numbering in the tens of thousands, gathered along Manhattan’s historic Broadway theater district with the shared vision of reorienting towards an ecological future, free from the stranglehold of fossil fuels.

United in the singular call-to-action, the crowd represented a diversity of motivations.

Indigenous voices were the heartbeat of the march.

Comrades from the Global South didn’t shy away from the message that the fossil fuel industry sits atop centuries-long colonial power imbalances.

And a delegation of Young Democratic Socialists of America echoed these demands. Highlighting the power workers hold despite fueling an economy that is fundamentally rigged against them.

The march snaked through Manhattan before spilling into a massive crowd on 1st Avenue, just up the street from the United Nations.

While the demands of the march were undoubtedly lofty, the words of the politicians, activists, and community leaders who took the stage grounded the electric call-to-action.

Over the course of hours new friends and strangers shared moments of joy and cried honest tears. As the crowd dispersed, one thing felt most certain: Before we build the new world, we were going to have to find a way to mourn the world we’d already lost. That meant more heartbreak. Little did we know what was just over the horizon.

What’s changed?

It’s understandably difficult to imagine a world without fossil fuels. All the more considering how the political landscape has evolved since 2023. But to that I would say this: The entrenched, self-perpetuating systems of global capitalism has never felt more up for debate.

In the two years since the March to End Fossil Fuels we have undoubtedly seen a shift in the collective psyche that was previously hard to imagine. Recent polling from Gallup shows public support for capitalism has been waning as self-described democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani surge in the public eye.

“For the first time, less than half of Democrats (42%) view capitalism positively, while a slight majority of independents (51%) still do.”

This isn’t happening inside a vacuum either. Many who were once unquestioning advocates of the neoliberal world order are today bearing witness to the authoritarian playbook with which those in power are willing to protect the status quo.

The question is, how will we direct this historical momentum? Because change isn’t only possible, it’s inevitable.

Where to now?

None of this is to say that in another two years we’ll be living in some solarpunk utopia. But I do think we are witnessing the general instability many assume is necessary if a truly new energy paradigm is to be born. To borrow a visual from everyone’s favorite psychedelic philosopher, Terence McKenna,

“This is what it’s like when a species prepares to depart for the stars. You don’t depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions — it’s a fire in a madhouse!”

Fortunately, our task at hand isn’t nearly as grand as that which McKenna was hoping to usher. Before we concern ourselves with navigating the cosmos, our primary concern must be to preserve a planet future intrepid generations can still call home. A priority that doesn’t rank very high amongst the most ardent advocates of a space-faring humanity.

That preservation begins with reorienting the energy with which we power civilization. And to step into a new energy paradigm fundamentally means creating a new economic paradigm. What McKenna would call a “major symmetry break” with history. Or what I have been calling the Ecological Revolution.

Daunting as these ideas are, history often shows that we can’t help ourselves. We’re too tempted by the unknown. But unlike the uncertainty of past paradigm shifts, the very preservation of our future now hangs in the balance.

This alone should compel us to keep marching. Because our species depends on it.

Post Script

Aside from wanting to revisit one of the most compelling personal experiences of collective activism, one reason that I wanted to share these images is to make sure they have a home independent of my personal portfolio.

Times are hard and I haven’t been in a position to maintain the cost of my professional website, where my photography usually lives. If you have the means, I would greatly appreciate your support. Every cent goes towards my ability to provide written and visual ecological stories that are tragically underserved in today’s media landscape.

While hurricanes, heatwaves, wildfires, and floods have long been referred to as “natural” disasters, data is increasingly demonstrating just how linked these events are to unnatural forces.

That is to say, the frequency and ferocity with which these events occur is directly related to variables within humanity’s control. But the industries most responsible have weaponized the functions of government tasked with responding in kind.

Calm before the storm

Last year’s Hurricane Helene was the deadliest storm to hit North Carolina. Just weeks later, the news cycle had already shifted to warnings coming from government officials in Florida.

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor delivered a dire message for residents during an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in advance of the storm making landfall:

“Helene was a wake-up call. This is literally catastrophic and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”

And yet the 2025 hurricane season has been relatively quiet, by comparison. September 10th is typically the reliable peak of hurricane season and current forecasts report an uncommon lull. But according to AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert, Alex DaSilva, their preseason predictions saw the lull coming as far back as spring.

"It is certainly possible that we see lulls during the tropical season due to an enhancement of dry air if an Atlantic Niña develops.”

Even as the peak of hurricane season passes in uncommon fashion, DaSilva and his team make clear the threat of major storms still looms on the horizon. This threat is due in large part to what experts refer to as rapid intensification.

Storms of the Future

Rapid intensification is what set last year’s Hurricane Milton apart from storms of a similar initial intensity. Milton went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane — capable of sustaining wind speeds of 158mph or greater for over a minute — in under twenty-four hours.

Meteorologists have been documenting rapid intensification of otherwise natural storm systems since the seventies. The biggest contributing factor has been rising ocean temperatures. And in the Gulf of Mexico, 2024 was a markedly hot year — well above the average of the last decade. 2025 has proven no different.

In the simplest sense, warmer water provides more energy to storms forming above. Sea-surface temperature (SST) has traditionally been an important metric, but as ocean temperatures rise overall, warmer waters now extend deeper than surface readings can account for. This has led researchers to rely on ocean heat content (OHC) to provide a more thorough measure of how deep that warm water goes. Essentially providing a fuel gauge for meteorologists.

According climate scientists, trends in OHC have been worsening primarily due to humanity’s continued reliance on burning fossil fuels. As global temperatures continue to rise with increases in GHG emissions, ocean temperatures follow suit. Meaning deeper warm water and even more sustained energy for storm systems.

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Unnatural Disasters

The planet’s oceans have long served as a crucial energy sink. According to NOAA, the oceans have absorbed “more than 90 percent of the warming that has happened on Earth over the past 50 years.”

A relatively small hurricane, Milton offered a glimpse of what is possible when an otherwise typical tropical storm forms atop these unnaturally warm waters. And as was also the case with Milton, this process is expected to occur more often on the back of already devastating storms — leaving communities with little time to respond to the first and prepare for the next.

Importantly, this trend isn’t unique to hurricanes. Worsening heatwaves have also been shown to have direct links to the fossil fuel industry.

A recent paper published in Nature demonstrates the GHG emissions of the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement producers are directly responsible for exacerbating recorded heatwaves of the last twenty five years.

“One-quarter of these events were virtually impossible without climate change.”

— Yann Quilcaille, et al.

Quilcaille and her fellow authors also make it clear that current efforts to monitor heatwaves is “highly uneven.” Specifically in equatorial regions and the broader Global South where the worst impacts of climate change are most pronounced. Impacts that environmental humanities professor and author, Rob Nixon, would classify as the ‘slow violence’ perpetrated on the world’s poorest communities.

This awareness means that those who champion the Ecological Revolution can no longer afford to think in such simplistic terms as ‘natural’ disasters. Our rhetoric must evolve alongside our capacity to measure and track the inputs of these tragic events. We must call out the relative few whose actions are demonstrably responsible for undue suffering around the world.

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Our response to these tragic events must be twofold: Spur significant investment in alternative renewable energy sources and, this is crucially important, lessen energy demands in the Global North. To fail on the latter is to continue to fall victim to the Jevons paradox (more on Jevons in a future article).

But we also need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that climate denial necessarily manifests as cartoonish villains found in storybooks and on the silver screen. Rather, there are those who, despite an intelligent understanding of the implications of reports like that published by Nature, choose instead to place their priorities elsewhere, namely protecting annual profits.

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

― Benito Mussolini

Fascist forces are on the rise

Published since 2021, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School release an annual report titled Opposition to Renewable Energy Facilities in the United States.

“In nearly every state, local governments have enacted laws and regulations to block or restrict renewable energy facilities, and/or local opposition has resulted in the delay or cancellation of particular projects.”

In the 2023 edition, the authors identified “57% more contested projects than the March 2022 edition (from 187 to 293).” The most recent edition published in June found, “an increase of 16% in the prevalence of local restrictions in just one year.”

“The June 2025 edition of this report finds that severe restrictions, including outright bans and de facto bans on siting renewable energy facilities, as well as controversies over individual projects, are becoming more prevalent—particularly at the local level.”

The Sabin Center’s report illuminates the brazen playbook of big business when their capital is threatened. An industry responsible for killing millions has successfully weaponized bureaucratic hurdles with the sole intent of hindering the public’s capacity to respond to climate change with the “unprecedented scale and pace” required.

Florida Man

Last year Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law a bill that exemplifies the indifference of the fossil fuel industry in the face of climate change. The bill no longer requires Florida lawmakers to consider climate change when making energy policy and effectively removed all monition of climate change from existing Florida law. Ironically, Florida is one of the most susceptible states to the effects of climate change.

Among other aspects, the law also established significant legal obstacles that prevent the development of offshore renewable energy investments throughout the state; demonstrating yet again the extent to which the fossil fuel lobby will go to literally prevent communities from pursuing projects that might jeopardize their stranglehold on our energy supply.

Climate Criminals

While these tactics have been employed for decades, we are beginning to see the most severe downstream impacts with increasing frequency. We can no longer afford to view these tactics in their most innocuous light.

History has proven time and again that when the interests of private industry become so entrenched with government that they supersede those of the people, the people have little recourse but to rise up. Unfortunately, we currently live at time when the President Trump and the GOP more broadly do not hesitate to label protestors ‘terrorists.’

Meanwhile climate activists in the U.K. have received five-year prison sentences for “conspiracy to cause public nuisance,” aka planning to block traffic. Yes, you read that correctly. They were sentenced for something they planned to do. Worse still, the U.K. is arresting elderly and disabled citizens for simply vocalizing their support for Palestine Action. Each of these anecdotes buttress claims of fascism.

While some would rather dispute the virtue of various forms of protest, one thing is not up for debate: The global fossil fuel industry is the single greatest driver accelerating climate change. And if billions of dollars worth of damages following repeat hurricanes isn’t a public nuisance — not to mention the lives lost — then I really don’t know what is.

To ignore the parallels of history is to acquiesce in advance. The question that follows then is this: At what point do we demand fossil fuel executives and industry lobbyists are held accountable for what their own internal documents made clear decades ago?

Until we make that threat felt as real as the coming gale-force winds, I’m afraid they will continue to use every means available in order to maintain business-as-usual.

If you’re reading this, you’re one of but a few folks who will have proven novelist, screenwriter, and self-help author, Steven Pressfield, wrong. But the man was onto something when he provided a cold dose of advice to writers of all stripes:

“In the real world…nobody wants to read your shit.”

What then are science writers to do at such a critical time for both people and planet? Pressfield’s suggestion:

• Streamline

• Make it sexy, scary, or fun (or informative, but that’s debatable)

• Apply liberally

So, without further preamble, allow me to blunt: Regardless of how success is measured, we are in the midst of The Ecological Revolution is now. and it will define humanity’s place on the planet for millennia. *edits included for effect

Revolution starts in the mind…

Gil Scott-Heron’s 1971 track “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is simultaneously one of the coolest of its era and one of the most insightful, revolutionary sentences of recent memory. When asked in an interview years later, Scott-Heron had this to say:

“The first change that takes place is in your mind.”

“You have to change your mind before you change the way you live and the way you move.” — G.S.H., Interview 1989

It took me an embarrassingly long time to come to this realization, but when it clicks, it clicks. The revolution must occur in our mind before we can see it reflected in the world around us. If we wait on the world, we’re guaranteed little more than a front row seat to the degradation of all that we care about.

Today’s Ecological Revolution hinges along a similar admission. It calls for a healthy dose of vulnerability and an openness to whatever comes next. Given the gradual pace — despite the isolated moments of grandeur — it’s only after we admit to ourselves that we are living in the midst of tragic ecological degradation that we can begin to grok the magnitude of the macro trend.

According to a 2023 paper published in the journal Science Advances by Katherine Richardson et al., including Johan Rockström of the the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research,

“Some of today’s changes will only be seen on evolutionary time scales, while others are already affecting climate and biosphere integrity.”

Issues like biodiversity loss, land-use change, biogeochemical feedback loops, and atmospheric greenhouse gases are in the beginning stages of feedback loops that will lead to exponential impacts if not addressed in stereo.

• Half of all the wildlife populations have declined by 73% over the past fifty years

• 95% of annual deforestation occurs in the Global South where biodiversity is highest

• Human activities, such as industrial agriculture, are releasing reactive forms of nitrogen and phosphorous at rates that have surpassed planetary systems boundaries, such that they are already impacting ecosystem development

To believe we can witness the worst of these impacts before being compelled to act is at best willfully ignorant of the advances that have been made in our understanding of systems dynamics, or a historic display of hubris.

Share STRANDED (ASSETS)

Revolutionary times, indeed…

To some, revolution is a scary word. Many reject the idea on its face. Afraid of its association with guerrilla warfare, guillotines, and blood in the streets. To that I say, look around. The quotidian capitalist system makes no issue producing at least two of the three — a clean sweep if we swap guillotines for military drones (I’m looking at you Daniel Ek).

Fundamentally, revolution speaks less to the use of violence by some than it does to the defining characteristic with which the collective orients. First, it was agriculture, then science, industry, technology, and information. The advent of each has been deemed a revolution, retrospectively — in large part because of just how fluid our awareness of history, and more specifically scientific knowledge, tends to be.

In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn was keen to point out the challenges science historians face trying to nail down exactly when to establish conventional knowledge. Often, “additional research makes it harder, not easier, to answer questions.” Kuhn goes on to acknowledge the “growing difficulties in distinguishing the ‘scientific’ component of past observation and belief that their predecessors had readily labeled ‘error’ and ‘superstition.’”

And yet some, like political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, had the gaul to proclaim we had reached “the end of history” at the end of the so-called Cold War. (In fairness, Fukuyama’s own views have evolved quite a bit in recent decades.)

But an honest historical materialist analysis says otherwise. Society is perpetually in relationship. An ever-evolving synthesis of our knowledge of the day and the material, economic conditions on the ground. And for the better part of the last half century, that has meant a growing ecological awareness of the extractive toll of capital on our finite planet has been percolating.

What we need now is to force an awareness of The Ecological Revolution in real-time. To wait for future generations to deem it so will have meant we were too late. Unlike conceptual revolutions of the past, the ecological balance with which we must reorient will have been destroyed.

Transcendent Science

To study ecology is to consider our place within the environment, and by extension, history. Not only does it account for the past, but it demands we consider the future. Not just what is possible, but what is likely. By most measures, and compared to other scientific disciplines, the consideration of history is novel.

Ecology’s roots reach deep into both the natural and social sciences, such that a diversity of perspectives on the natural world exists amongst ecologists. In their seminal text by the same name, philosopher David Keller and ecologist Frank Golley set out to distill the philosophy of ecology. Their goal was to provide a synthesis of these dual veins. Together, they provide one of the greatest pitches for thinking ecologically:

“Ecology is captivating due to the sheer comprehensiveness of its scope and complexity of its subject matter; ecology addresses everything from the genetics, physiology, and ethology of animals (including humans), to watersheds, the atmosphere, geologic processes, and influences of solar radiation and meteor impacts — in short, the totality of nature…An ecological world-view emphasizes interaction and connectedness.” — Keller & Golley

And that’s just it. Ecology manages to weave together seemingly disparate branches of thought. Unlike other disciplines, ecology demands we consider both the object of investigation as well as the subject. There is no ‘outside’ from which to stand.

Whether you’re imagining the proverbial snake eating its tail, or craving a donut, the point remains the same: Ecology provides a toroidal structure with which to examine our world and our place in it, ranging from the microscopic to the galactic.

Action > Answers

The whole point of arguing for an Ecological Revolution is to demand we act on our knowledge. Simply knowing these problems exist is not enough. All we know for certain is that we can no longer afford to stand still.

One of the hallmarks of the polycrisis is that it demands we step without knowing quite where our foot will next land. We must actively resist the entrenched system of abstract global capital while building a democratic economy based on an ecological framework. Building the proverbial plane as we are flying it.

This means recognizing that there will be detractors. Let them detract. The time for compromise was decades ago — if it ever existed. We cannot waste time appealing with reason and logic to those who suffer from an insatiable desire for wealth. These prescient words ring truer by the day than they did fifty years ago:

“Ecologists should not waste their time telling the rich to share.” — Science for the People, 1973

The success of an Ecological Revolution will not measured by our ability to heal the toxic lack of self worth that drives perverse economic accumulation. History has proven the failings of those who naively believe they are tasked with winning the hearts and minds of everyone equally. Conversion is the fool’s errand of religion. Conversely, dialectical historical materialism empowers a far more efficient method by which to transform the world, daunting though it remains.

The good news is revolutionary action can take many forms. It can be attending your first DSA meeting. Or, if you’re already politically active, inviting three friends or colleagues to join your next event. Maybe it’s offering your time or financial support to a local mutual aid network. But it almost certainly means educating yourself so you can actively avoid indirectly supporting the entrenched powers that benefit from our ignorance.

It’s easy to feel disheartened by the clear and present danger of the many social, political, and ecological crises we face today. But that feeling can and will only change through collective, direct action. As many therapists agree, “Mood follows action.”

This is why I believe it is critical to actively frame our collective struggle as The Ecological Revolution. It is empowering. And for history to remember this moment as anything less will mean we failed in our endeavor and the fascists won.

According to the London School of Economics, ‘stranded assets’ commonly refers to fossil fuel reserves and their constituent infrastructure that:

“may end up a liability before the end of its anticipated economic lifetime.”

This speculative designation explicitly prioritizes the promised profits of investors over the known degradation of ecosystems or the communities to whom these “resources” originally belong. That is to say, the integrity of the global financial system rests on realizing tomorrow’s ROI (return on investment) despite knowing today they come at a grave ecological cost.

Put another way, science is not in charge. Preserving the quarterly status quo trumps the concerns set to play out over the next quarter century. This perverse incentive structure remains the primary driver of the dual-pronged ecological and climate crises we face today and will serve as the bedrock of our investigation moving forward.

Stranded, Stunned, & Stalled

Assets can become liabilities for any number of reasons: government regulation, legal action, shifts in the marketplace, even natural disasters. Aside from the latter — over which even today’s economic elite have little control — those who stand to extract profits from fossil fuel investments have a vested interest in preserving their good standing with little regard for the downstream consequences.

“Most of the market risk falls on private investors, overwhelmingly in OECD countries, including substantial exposure through pension funds and financial markets.”

And yet, according to a recent study published in Nature, 60% of all known oil and gas reserves and nearly 90% of coal “must remain unextracted” if there is any hope of curtailing global temperature rise and limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2050.

This means that if the world’s democratic governments were to act in accordance with leading scientific consensus, and in the best interests of the people whom they claim to represent, then the nearly $1 trillion valuation of these reserves and any existing infrastructure intended for their extraction must go unrealized.

This is no small demand. The implications of which are revolutionary. These so-called democracies have quite literally been tasked with charting a transition to a new world. A world that synthesizes economic prosperity and ecological harmony. And yet, little effort has been made to do so. Just the opposite in fact.

Multi-national oil and gas conglomerates have continued to post record profits, as the planet puts up record temperatures year over year, all while lobbyists assuage fears of continued exploration and exploitation.

We’ll always have Paris…right?

One of the seminal targets of the Paris Climate Agreement established the goal of limiting Earth’s warming to 1.5°C of above pre-industrial level. In the decade since, we are no where close towards realizing this goal.

According to the Climate Action Tracker, just seven of the 195 signatories to the agreement are “almost sufficient” at reducing their emissions to reach their target.

Among the mere seven nations that have made the most progress is Norway. A country that is currently one of the chief exporters of oil and gas around the globe and actively supports the further expansion of oil and gas exploration. By Climate Action Tracker’s own admission: (insert nifty accounting magic)

“The exported emissions from Norwegian oil and gas are not considered in the CAT’s overall “Almost sufficient” rating.”

Hardly a beacon of progress. But cutting against this myopic economic worldview is the still burgeoning field of Marxist ecology and the accompanying political project, eco-socialism.

From The Roots Up

Not much older than John D. Rockefeller’s monopolistic Standard Oil, the field of ecology grew organically out of the interaction between biology and the social sciences during the late-nineteenth century.

Despite some of the sordid seeds in science at the time (some early conservationists are known to have entertained ideas like eugenics, scientific racism, and a generally Euro-centric disposition), ecology evolved beyond these narrow views and is today tasked with examining the holistic relationship between organisms and their environment. The study of human ecology followed suit as anthropogenic impacts on the environment became increasingly relevant to our understanding of ecosystem dynamics and climate change today.

While not all ecologists endorse a historical materialist approach, those that do have made significant strides over the last half century. Scholars have recovered original ideas from significant socialist thinkers, including Marx himself, who is often misrepresented to have dismissed nature in his defense of labor. A closer reading through a modern ecological lens reveals both Marx and Engels to have celebrated a mature understanding of the relationship between man and nature, recognizing nature to be far more than the naive but picturesque wilderness ideal.

“The first object for man—man himself—is nature…” — Marx

A topic that certainly warrants further exploration at a later time, it was Marx’s analysis of German chemist Justus von Liebig’s soil science that informed his conception of what scholar John Bellamy Foster has termed a ‘metabolic rift.’ Recognizing the nutrient depletion as a result of a profit-driven agricultural project devoid of natural balance, Marx’s analysis of the issue offered something of a precursor to today’s ecological critique of industrial agriculture.

Conversely, there are those within the eco-modernist camp that like to profess advancements in technology will naturally temper the degradative impacts of economic hegemony. But the rapacious appetite for consumption at the heart of the capitalist project routinely proves that advances in efficiency rarely reduce consumption, but rather increase overall consumption as it becomes more efficient to do so. (Think, have you ever seen traffic improve with the addition of another lane?)

As it relates to the modern notion of stranded assets, political economist and professor of sociology, James O’Connor, helped bridge these symbiotic worlds when he coined the first and second contradictions of capitalism:

• The absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.

• The absolute general law of environmental degradation under capitalism.

In his book The Ecological Rift, John Bellamy Foster points out that, while the second law relies on the first, it is the latter that poses the most obvious challenges for capitalism today.

In other words, the ecological degradation at the root of capitalist expansion is the driving force of stranded assets of all kinds — well beyond the purblind fixation on fossil fuels and tangential infrastructure by the financial sector.

What we’re willing to lose…

Bringing this introductory article to a close, I want to stress the severity of the moment in which we find ourselves. The ideas borne out in pages of theory over the past two centuries are today anything but theoretical. Whether ecological, political, or social, the global community is in a state of tumult the likes of which hasn’t been seen for decades but has been foretold.

Those who cling to quotidian norms are the same class who have long feared even the most benign regulations. Meeting our moment cannot be achieved by well-meaning reform along the fringes that preserves the very system that produced the crises today’s generations have been tasked to solve.

Put another way, you and me, our loved ones, and the world we love are being left for stranded. Whether it is our public lands, food sovereignty, or even basic human rights, these are the true assets worth fighting for tooth and nail. These are the lines we must draw and refuse to cross. This is an ecological revolution.

We have a world to win!

“…the abolitionists in this country knew that their clothes were made by slaves, and that the cotton was picked by slaves, and that this was a slave process. But they knew they had to change the system, not their clothes.”

— Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian

No one who engages with climate science in any meaningful way is immune to moments of overwhelm brought on by the sheer magnitude of its implications. But just when it feels like there’s no hope, I remember Oreskes’ historical annecdote, and it serves as something of an eco-anxiety release valve.

I first encountered the quote when climate psychologist, Margaret Klein Salamon, appeared on the Rich Roll Podcast during the summer of 2020 — when anxieties of all sorts were flaring.

Responding with the deftness of a judo champion when confronted with the reality that “by living in the system, by consuming, there is some level of guilt and responsibility,” Salamon employed Oreskes’ example of a similarly complicit people having achieved what then must have surely felt impossible.

Proximity to the southern slave economy couldn’t be avoided in the nineteenth century. One could not simply swap guilt-soaked slave cotton garments for a more benign alternative. No, but those who opposed the entrenched economic reality of their day actively waded through the hypocrisy of their predicament knowing systems change was on the table.

That same task is what lies before us today.

Why should I trust Naomi Oreskes?

Oreskes’ scientific and academic career has been defined by a willingness to interrogate both our contemporary and historical understanding of science. First as a geologist, earning a Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation in 1994. And then as a faculty member at Stanford, Dartmouth, and New York University as a professor of history of science.

Oreskes went on to earn her reputation as an authority on climate change following the publication of an essay in the journal Science back in 2004 titled "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change".

The essay, which has been credited with influencing the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, took aim at whether or not the scientific community’s consensus opinion on human-induced climate change warranted skepticism, or the “both sides-ing” by the media in the name of fairness, despite lopsided evidence. Oreskes disputed these by,

“analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords ‘climate change’…Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.”

“All major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements.”

It is important to remember that Oreskes published these findings over twenty years ago. At a time when, for many, climate change had yet to enter the zeitgeist. Its impacts were isolated and, given the professional discretion expected within the scientific community, much of the Western media framed climate-related risks through a lens of what was merely possible.

It’s easy now, with the benefit of hindsight, to see how the fossil fuel lobby ran the same playbook that had successfully muddied concerns from the medical establishment regarding tobacco and nicotine decades earlier. Unfortunately the playbook worked — again. Stunting what otherwise could have rallied support for a swift transition away from extractive energy infrastructure.

But Oreskes cemented herself amongst the most trusted voices on climate. She continues to speak at global conferences and has published seminal books, like Merchants of Doubt, that have helped to expose the brazen willingness of a minority keen to obfuscate climate science while prioritizing continued profits over people’s health and planetary wellbeing.

Confronting Capital

Whether it was her intention or not, considering the implications of Oreskes’ anecdote within the context of today’s economic, political, and ecological landscape demands we confront global capitalism in the same way abolitionists confronted slavery. Neither are compatible within a truly just, equitable, and democratic society.

No amount of accounting magic can mask the ecological rift wrought by the industrial revolution. And it is precisely this disproportionate distribution of greenhouse gas emissions by the world’s wealthiest nations that makes redress of the climate crisis so daunting.

Even as countries like the United States and United Kingdom leverage “energy efficiency” in service of lowering per capita emissions, the Global North continues to plumb the Global South for its resources. In effect outsourcing the most severe impacts, such that entire island nations are being forced to evacuate while prolonged droughts and 100-year-floods are destabilizing the agricultural sector, employing the greatest share of the world’s workers. By 2050, the UN anticipates upwards of 200 million climate-displaced persons.

But the Global North’s appetite for continued accumulation in service of a blind “number go up” ideology can no longer sustain itself simply by outsourcing its degradative practices. The wolf has turned inward.

Time for a Slow Goodbye

I share Oreskes quote because I believe she zeroes in on what a sincere climate movement must be built on: Solidarity and the belief that the necessary change is possible.

Over the course of the last year here on Substack (almost to the day), I have slowly been refining how I write about the climate crisis. From book reviews to reporting on severe weather events, to articles on climate activism, peer-reviewed journals, and political campaigns, my intention was to cast a wide net. But in recent months, having read far than I have written, I finally feel like I have found a vein that will continue to provide an abundance of material as well as a tight vision for my readers.

While I still sincerely believe in the value of living a slower, more intentional lifestyle, I want to tighten the aperture of my work, and hopefully contribute to the growing chorus of ecological writers I’ve come across on the platform.

So I am excited to announce that I am finally shedding my naive reticence to tackle economics. And with it the_slow_times will be evolving.

Guided by a passion for environmental sociology, THE STRANDED ASSET will explore the interplay between ecology and economics. I will strive to equip readers with a toolset with which we can confront capitalism and, importantly, begin to imagine what comes next.

A more in-depth introductory article is coming soon. So stay tuned.

Until then, and as always, thanks for your support.

Tea leaves are an unreliable electoral strategy. And trying to read political winds of change often doesn’t feel that far off. But when those winds blow hard — like Zohran Mamdani more than tripling voter turnout amongst 18-24 year-olds — well that’s more than bluster.

It’s political alchemy.

Here at the the_slow_times, despite an awareness of bleak forecasts, my hope is to bring attention to levers of change — however slow though they may be. So when a 33 year-old political newcomer manages to turn the tables on New York City’s Democratic establishment, it just might signal one such lever: Youth voters.

Something of a white whale in Democratic circles, the youth vote has long been sought after by enterprising candidates. All too often though this cohort of new and first-time voters has proven unreliable when it comes to actually showing up. But as tensions between the electorate and our elected officials become increasingly taut, historical trends are starting to shift.

Power in Numbers

Those who have a vested interest in continuing business-as-usual fear the rising class consciousness that is rearing its head across the country.

It was hard to ignore when Elon Musk poured millions into a Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Even harder when his candidate of choice was trounced. And when the disgraced former Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, loses handedly in the first round of the Democratic Primary after receiving the support of the largest super PAC to ever get involved in a municipal election, it highlights an edge everyday voters still have.

It’s important though not to be naive. Money will prove instrumental in politics for the foreseeable future. But there are policies in place that are helping to shift the balance of power.

In New York City, for example, candidates receive access to public funding after the campaign raises a minimum threshold on their own. While the Cuomo campaign still managed to outspend Mamdani by something like 3:1, the city’s Matching Funds Program allowed Mamdani’s fledgling campaign a chance to really compete.

And despite being an underdog by most metrics, Mamdani’s team harnessed another advantage. They spoke directly to the number one issue for a majority of New Yorkers: the cost of living.

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Cost of Living

“The phrase ‘cost of living’ should radicalize you.”

The above quote has been making its way around the internet quite a bit in recent years. It’s pithy and does a lot to capture the sentiment of many New Yorkers and Americans more broadly. Mamdani smartly centered his campaign on this fundamental issue.

An unabashed Democratic Socialist, Mamdani believes the government has a responsibility to provide for its constituents over corporations. This means creating an economy that provides a livable wage, decent housing, and access to affordable necessities like food.

Ten years ago, the word socialist was an albatross around the neck of any political hopeful. Anyone who remembers Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign at the time will remember pundits hurling it with the vitriol of a slur. But in the decade that followed we endured a global pandemic that, for all its many challenges, provided voters with a glimpse of just what is possible when a government has its back up against an actual wall. It turns out the government can provide for its people in meaningful ways like the child tax credit, extended unemployment benefits, or freezing rent — a tent pole issue of the Mamdani campaign.

With Youthful Eyes

Returning to the voter data from the mayoral primary, it’s important to keep in mind that many first-time voters were literal children during the 2021 mayoral election. (This is one reason political commentators speculate polls were unable to accurately capture their support.) Nearly all of the 18-24 year-old cohort were in high school during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many watched as former President Joe Biden failed to follow through on his promise to pass the torch to a new generation, as many expected. Instead, the consultant class of the Democratic Party pushed a gerontocratic rerun before it all came crumbling down on live TV a year ago this same week. The same consultant class that for years tried to tell voters how they should feel rather than listen. (As evidenced by the brutal reality check on offer after touting “Bidenomics” during 2024’s ill-fated campaign.)

But as Mamdani has been saying throughout his campaign, the time as come for the Democratic Party to shift from lecturing to listening. It might sound simple, but when your agenda is informed, not threatened, by the honest feedback of a majority of voters, it turns out that is an incredibly powerful political force. A force that money alone cannot buy.

And while we can’t sit around and wait for future generations to save us, we should be comforted by the sign that a new economic message is resonating with voters who have yet to buy into the status quo.

If the turnout on display in last week’s NYC primary can carry Mamdani through the general come November, as is expected, then Democratic hopefuls in the midterms will have little choice but to embrace the economic populism the masses are calling out for.

Zohran Mamdani surprised supporters and opponents alike last night with a decisive first-round victory in the Democratic primary for New York City Mayor ahead of November’s general election. But as unexpected as Mamdani’s swift victory may have been, research suggests his success could be a harbinger of future electoral victories for candidates with pro-climate agendas.

RCV in NYC

New York City elections employ the pragmatic but still relatively uncommon practice of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). In RCV elections, voters rank candidates in order of their preference. The lowest ranked candidates are removed in successive rounds until one candidate claims a clear majority. Providing an avenue to support multiple candidates without “sacrificing” one’s vote, RCV elections often go through multiple rounds before determining a winner. Considering this, Mamdani’s early victory is all the more significant.

Just last week, as Mamdani was making headway in recent polls, Brooklyn resident and co-host of The Majority Report on YouTube, Sam Seder, was asked to weigh in on the race. Recognizing the tight nature of the race, Seder looked for what most savvy political commentators would: a variable that just might sway enough would-be voters to non-voters.

“I am going to check the weather and tell you,” said Seder. “On monday it’s going to be in the high nineties. On Tuseday it’s going to be 100° at 2pm. My sense is that if we look at enthusiasm, banking [early] votes is important, particularly for Cuomo, because I do not think the support for Cuomo is as intense. It may be larger, but not as deep.”

Seder’s take seemed intuitive enough. But it was also representative of a more nuanced trend seen in elections elsewhere.

How’s the weather?

It’s hardly newsworthy to say that inclement weather on election day will effect voter turnout. But this impact has also been found to be “partially offset by increased use of alternate voting methods.” Methods like early voting and absentee ballots allow more of an electorate to cast their vote.

Adoption of these methods also serves to counter the historical disadvantage day-of voting has posed for constituencies that are typically more likely to support a progressive agenda — voters like single parents, care-givers, or members of the working class voters who lack freedom in the workplace to go vote. But inclement weather doesn’t tell the whole story. As Seder clued in on, heat is its own distinct variable. And not necessarily how you might expect.

Can you feel the heat?

Living on an increasingly warming planet means that election day is only going to trend warmer. But unlike a day-of hindrance like a storm, data suggests we may actually expect marginally higher voter turnout and, importantly, a positive correlation with pro-environment candidates. And unlike their conservative counterparts, progressive values trend positively as more voters turnout.

A study published in July of 2024 tracked the relationship between voter records and wet bulb temperature on Brazilian presidential elections from 2010 to 2018. Wet bulb combines temperature and humidity to provide a more accurate accounting of the day’s heat stress.

In each of these elections, an increase in temperature on election day reliably produced an increase in vote share for the distinctly pro-environment candidate. In this case, Marina Silva, Brazil’s former Minister of the Environment. While promising, the authors of the study were careful to acknowledge shortcomings also associated with this trend.

“Voters’ responses to climate salience appear to be short-lived, emphasizing the need for continuous and consistent engagement on environmental issues to maintain public support for long-term climate policies.”

While their research supports that some may be swayed to vote along pro-environment lines on a particularly hot day, these short-lived motivations hardly provide for a reliable strategy that candidates seek. It is incumbent then on politicians to successfully connect a policy agenda that addresses the challenges many face today to long-term climate solutions.

Mamdani’s initial win in New York City appears to have managed just that. Issues like affordable housing, free public transit, and local city-owned grocers — each a tent pole issue of Mamdani’s campaign — may not shout “climate” but, if enacted, will produce meaningful results for New Yorkers where the climate crisis is likely to exacerbate pre-existing issues.

Looking to the future

The future of climate politics is unlikely to don the garish green tropes associated with Green parties of the past; defined by niche environmental concerns that splinter support along obscure lines. Rather, it will hinge on progressive issues that unite people and planet.

While the road forward is long, an engaged and younger electorate is proving itself well-equipped to recognize environmental issues often rear their head where traditional economic and social issues intersect.

Today the issue is affordability. For the millions of our neighbors living paycheck to paycheck, the end of the month is the end of the world. Tomorrow the issue is universal healthcare — especially as underserved communities continue to suffer heat-related deaths at disproportionately higher rates.

As the lines between these issues blur, we can begin to see just how interrelated our needs and the needs of the planet are. And wins like Mamdani’s offer something of a battle-tested strategy to keep these local issues central to the broader climate movement.

We’ve been programmed to focus on national elections. But a top-down strategy to climate politics has long been riddled with pitfalls and the uncomfortable question of, But what if we win? How will we enact the agenda we seek? It’s precisely when we start asking these questions that the sage advice to vote local starts to resonate at an increasingly higher frequency.

And that’s just it. Climate politics will almost certainly be a slow, arduous path. One that is unlikely to find its first heroes on the national stage. It will be community leaders, like a thirty-three year-old state assemblyman who’s successfully fought alongside members of his community to provide for faster and free public transportation.

As the old world crumbles, we are actively laying the foundation on which whatever comes next is built. And it will demand a local politics that is ready to break the mold.

Next stop, November.

Over the past month, I have made a concerted effort to be more active with Substack Notes. It’s a great outlet for short form content. But it’s also easy to lose track of Notes if you don’t engage with the Substack app regularly. And in keeping with the slow ethos, I like the idea of providing my readers with the means to visit the app as infrequently as they wish.

I’ve also been trying to think of content I could offer paid subscribers of the_slow_times, without paywalling writing that I consider as something of a public service. Enter: Headwinds.

A perk for paid subscribers, Headwinds will serve as something of a “digest” — a curated collection of Slow Notes from the past month, coupled with a distillation of sorts that teases out a through line running through it all. Importantly, most of the content will remain accessible to free subscribers, either in real-time via the Substack app, or via the Notes tab on the_slow_times dashboard. But if you’re interested in a monthly retrospective, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

This is a work in progress, so let me know what you think. Thanks and enjoy!

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