Common sense in the midst of our climate emergency, from environment guru Bill McKibben.  T

The Crucial Years

More from a sense of duty...

But duty matters

Bill McKibben

Jun 30, 2025

Confession: I spent part of yesterday on a long, fast hike under a heavy backpack into a deep northeast wilderness, instead of doing what I probably should have: stayed inside at the computer, trying new ways to fight the budget bill the Senate is about to pass. But I needed, I think, to hurt a little, and more to remind myself that the world is still real, solid, operating in somewhat the fashion I’ve always known. Since I couldn’t take you with me, a small gift above—an image from last week captured by my new Fathers Day wildlife camera—that’s a coyote purposefully making his way through the forest behind my house, bent on the rounds that the rules of nature have enforced since time began.

I don’t pretend to understand the rules now prevailing in our political jungle. Far more than ever before in my life it seems an exercise in pure and corrupt power, but even that power is operating only half-logically. This new bill does everything it can to kill off solar and wind power, including by imposing a sweeping new tax on them that appeared out of nowhere over the weekend. In their place it adds yet more subsidies for that 18th century technology, coal. Sun and wind accounted for more than 90 percent of new electric generation last year in this country, and around the world. It’s the cheapest power on planet earth; it’s clearly where the planet is heading; it’s our only serious hope for fighting the spiking temperature of our planet.

I don’t really think those, or any, arguments matter at the moment. So it is more out of a sense of duty than of hope that I urge you to get on the phone this morning and make one last set of calls to your Senators. Here’s the link and the numbers we’ve been using for days at Third Act. Perhaps it will make a difference, but if it doesn’t then acting out of duty is a good thing nonetheless. I believe that—I’m not certain why, but I do.

Yes, this free newsletter depends on a few kind people paying the modest and voluntary subscription fee. But today it’s far more important to call your Senator. Here’s the link again: https://thirdact.org/act/urge-your-state-senator-to-oppose-the-gop-budget-bill/.

Can I explain what’s going on? In part, of course: the fossil fuel industry helped pay for this government, and now they’re getting their reward, in the form of legislation clearly and explicitly designed to slow the transition to clean, cheap, renewable energy. Every solar panel they can keep off the market—in this case with new taxes—is another few barrels of oil, another few hundred cubic feet of gas, another mountaintop of coal they can excavate, sell, burn. It’s a losing battle: the world is clearly and decisively headed in this direction, even if we’re for the moment not. But in the process of losing this battle, it will cost Americans huge sums of money. Here’s how the Center for American Progress listed the costs:

• Electricity bills for households would increase by $110 in 2026 and go up 10 percent for businesses.

• Investors could pull back more than $500 billion of unspent investment in U.S. manufacturing.

• 840,000 jobs for Americans would be at risk from downsized investments and canceled projects across the country.

• Grid reliability and energy supply could face new challenges, as data centers are estimated to account for almost half of electricity demand growth by 2030 and new energy supply is lagging.

As the mild mannered to a fault Jesse Jenkins put it on Bluesky yesterday,

The energy provisions in the Republicans' One Big Horrible Bill are truly so bad! Who wants this? The country's automakers don't want it. Electric utilities don't want it. Data center developers don't want it. Manufacturers in energy intensive industries don't want it.

Hell, even Elon doesn’t want it—and if it’s too ugly for someone who sentenced a million humans to die by shutting down USAID it’s got to be pretty bad.

And of course scientists don’t want it. Because it means that America—eleven percent of global emissions—will play no part in the life or death fight against climate change in the decisive next few years. But that, I fear, will not matter to the handful of Republicans who might still stop this bill. Jenkins gives his list as follows: Lisa Murkowski (AK), John Curtis (UT), Jerry Moran (KS), Thom Tillis (NC), Lindsey Graham (SC), Susan Collins (ME). I find it hard to believe Graham will ever break with the president; and Tillis was forced into retirement by the president over the weekend for daring to point out that the bill would also destroy rural health care (probably a stronger argument for the holdouts). But it doesn’t matter who exactly. Call your Senator. Make the case. It’s your job as a citizen, and just because our leaders are not taking their jobs seriously does not give us permission to follow suit.

I hesitate to say it, but I fear that one reason some on the right are putting forward this preposterous bill is because they want to spur on the end times—that in their pursuit of heaven they see creating hell on earth as an accelerant. That’s a cultural argument, and apparently a fairly powerful one.

Which is why, once this budget fight is finished, we have to get to work on a cultural project of our own, which is SunDay. Because win or lose here, its’s clearer than it’s ever been that that we have to rebuild support for solar energy from the ground up in this country. It’s not a hopeless task: the economic wind is at our back, every other country is at least starting to try, and blue states and cities have considerable powers to help even in the face of DC’s obstruction.

But that’s for tomorrow. Today the task is to defend those millions who will be tossed off Medicaid. It’s to prevent ICE from becoming an even more enormous police force. It’s to keep grotesque billionaires from adding to their haul.

No powerful person is going to do it for us—Jeff Bezos spent the weekend flying his pals on private planes (check out emissions stats here) into Venice, which may be the first city on earth to fully succumb to rising seas.

Our job from here on out—a job we’ve all begun with the protests of recent weeks—is to make ourselves heard. It may not work tomorrow. It may not work until we’ve gotten more decent people into office. But it’s our job, and not to be shirked. And in some sad way it’s an honor: we’re the people who get to make the desperate stand for a country and a planet that works.

And then once you’ve made your calls go for a hike, or a walk, or listen to bird calls on YouTube. The real world, troubled yes, is still out there. For me anyway it’s a source of strength for the fight.

In other energy and climate news:

+Victory in California, where activists have defeated a plan to build the nation’s largest wood pellet project. Longtime readers of this column know that burning wood to produce electricity may be the single most perverse plan on the planet, and today the company that wanted to build two big new plants for the conversion of California forests into small chunks that could be shipped abroad raised the white flag.

The company cited:

• The amount of input received during the California Environmental Quality Act Process with the draft environmental impact report, which reached 50,000 comments in opposition

• Current biomass market conditions, which have weakened after governments turned away from subsidizing the industry and accompanying facility closures

+Also in California, and not so cheerful: smoke damage from the recent wildfires is turning into one more giant headache for homeowners trying to deal with recalcitrant insurers.

Although their homes might still be standing, many victims of the January fires now find themselves navigating similar insurance ordeals, from costly and time-consuming delays to outright claim denials. While multiple insurance providers have been the subject of complaints, the California FAIR Plan is under particular scrutiny. The state’s insurer of last resort is facing an investigation by the California Department of Insurance as well as lawsuits from policyholders.

As of May, the Department of Insurance’s consumer services division had received about 120 complaints regarding FAIR’s handling of smoke damage claims related to the LA-area wildfires. The situation is so difficult that some homeowners say they wish their house had simply burned down, said Michael Soller, the department’s deputy commissioner of communications.

“That’s a terrible place to be,” he said.

+Important new study shows that America has made very little progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions this century. Our leaders (the Democratic ones) have touted progress in cutting carbon, but that was mostly by switching to natural gas, and Kevin Kircher in the journal Energy Policy makes a compelling case that leaking methane has trapped almost as much heat.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that United States net greenhouse gas emissions have declined over the last two decades and are now about 17 % below their 2005 level. However, a large body of independent measurements suggests that over the same time frame, surging oil and natural gas production from shale formations increased emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and the main component of natural gas, well beyond EPA estimates. Accounting for these increased methane emissions removes over two-thirds of the apparent post-2005 decline in United States net greenhouse gas emissions. This result suggests that Americans may need to work harder than expected to reduce emissions at a speed and scale consistent with international climate goals, highlights the need to mitigate methane emissions, and calls into question the role of natural gas in climate action plans. Other nations should carefully consider methane emissions when evaluating the climate impacts of oil and natural gas imported from the United States.

Since I’ve been making this case since at least 2016, I feel vindicated, though I’d rather have been wrong. (Recurring motif in my life).

+Finally, some sweet news: Britain made clear this week that its citizens will be able to join the ‘balcony solar’ revolution sweeping the apartments of Europe.

The DIY panels are already fitted to about 1.5m balconies in Germany, where they are known as Balkonkraftwerk (balcony power plant). They typically save households about 30% on their energy bills and cost between €400-800, with no installation fees required, meaning they pay for themselves within six years.

We could do this in America too—that’s what SunDay is about. The Sun of the Week comes from the wonderful climate thinker Genevieve Gunther: You can add yours to the thousands in the global gallery at SunDay.earth

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/more-from-a-sense-of-duty