Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

I have suggested that for The Climate Movement there are five overlapping dimensions of justice: generational, distributive, environmental, climate, and justice for nature.

This is our final post in our subseries on Climate Justice, and is focused on achieving Climate Justice by making things better, the third of the three actions of justice. So what is involved in doing so?

Everything.

All we do as the Climate Movement on our Olympian Fields of Action. All the efforts of our Climate Action Supporters. All we do through ARTC and Governments-&-Markets to achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal: to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. All we do through the other two actions of justice: stopping bad stuff and setting wrong right.

In sum: all we do as The Catalytic-4.

I simply can’t think of anything we do that isn’t trying to make things better in relation to climate justice, in working to address the five distinct aspects of climate change that call forth our efforts to achieve climate justice:

1) legacy emissions and legacy pollution;

2) the systemic aggregate nature of the problem;

3) the simultaneous erasure of margins of safety, such as the destructive momentum built up in the oceans;

4) tipping points;

5) the unjust distribution of consequences.

While every step in the right direction makes things better, we can’t settle for making things less bad. If we are not careful, these five distinctive aspects can lead us in that direction, can have us settle for stopping the bad stuff. There is a huge amount to do to stop the bad stuff, but we can do so in ways that also set wrong right and make things better. We must continually strive for all three together.

Justice won’t let us stop with stopping the bad stuff. We must keep moving forward. We must keep making steps in the right direction until things are actually better.

Moreover, making things better can never be separated from setting wrong right and remain part of achieving justice. If things are made better only or primarily for those who haven’t been seriously impacted by climate change, or who won’t be in the future, we haven’t achieved justice; indeed, we have made things more unjust, and therefore we really haven’t made things better at all.

Thus, when it comes to justice, including climate justice, we must never forget that we can’t make things better if we don’t also set wrong right. As I’ve said, this means those who have been the most harmed, and those most threatened — the poor, the powerless and less powerful, the marginalized, the vulnerable, children and subsequent generations, and the rest of nature — must be at the front of the line when we are making things better.

This won’t happen on its own. We must make it happen. We must make justice happen.

Together, as we strive for justice we become our better selves, we become who we always hoped we would be. And along the way, as we achieve some measure of justice, we create a hope that keeps us moving forward in this great calling to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better and our future come faster — all accomplished through The Catalytic-4 working together.

This is why hope and justice are a reinforcing symbiosis. Justice creates hope; hope empowers justice.

Without this calling to achieve justice we can’t have the dual power we need to be the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world on all of our Olympian Fields of Action. We can’t be a moral movement. We won’t have the moral power to create the power of numbers we need to be the first and indispensable Catalytic Source of Transformation that pushes the other three — Climate Action Supporters, ARTC, Governments-and-Markets — to become what they must be. We won’t overcome climate change.

This is why love is our most important Movement Value. This is why we must come together to support one another through the Climate Movement. Only continuously empowered by love, only as we move forward together, can we live in and live out our calling for justice until we see justice in the lives of those who never deserved anything less.

Our love must give birth to justice.

And then we will see it. We will see the hope from justice that is everyone’s birthright. Sustained by our love, we will make hope happen when together we make justice happen and our future come faster. Striving together we are creating our justice masterpiece. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in our Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you are doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

Because domestic cats have a tendency to get themselves into trouble, we joke that they have nine lives. Well, we could use some of that longevity when it comes to CATS or Climate Action Teams. I leave it up to each CAT to determine what their nine lives constitutes!

CATS can help with the long enough dimension of climate action, our seventh characteristic/imperative/goal of the Climate Movement, by helping individuals increase their length of active engagement.

However, if there is one Achilles heel of Climate Action Teams it is their longevity. To be honest, some CATS may not fulfill their potential on this score. They may not even make it to the Olympic Trials and compete on their Olympian Fields of Action. In other words, they may not fulfill their potential on any of the seven essential characteristics and goals of the Climate Movement because they don’t exist long enough or are dysfunctional to the point where they cannot achieve anything, wasting precious time and talent — snuffing out many of their nine lives all at once.

If passion is not combined with humility, if narcissistic “righteousness” masquerades as a search for justice, if morality is just another word in service of getting one’s own way, if creativity cannot or will not help in achieving our vision, purpose, and Major Goal but is trapped in its own vanity, if our choices don’t bring about the fullness of freedom but rather its opposite, if love is not true to itself and the achievement of justice not its aim, then such a CAT will actually impede needed progress.

In such cases it should be dissolved quickly and individual Artist-Athletes should find or create a new CAT that can make it to their Olympian Fields of Action and help our Movement become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world. The kairos-climate-clock and the success of our vision, purpose, and Major Goal demand it.

Remember, though, that action-types, justice-types, those who push for change, well … we can be strong-willed, bull-headed, hot-blooded, arrogant, and a whole lot of other traits that make relationships bumpy and challenging. So if you see potential or diamonds in the rough, have the wisdom not to pull the plug prematurely. It may just be that the litter box needs a good cleaning!

The Climate Movement, just like all social change movements, is and will be a bit of a mess. But it’s our mess. Organic messes are fine. Toxic dysfunctional ones are not. It can take wisdom and patience — but not too much patience — to know the difference.

Even healthy, well-functioning CATS may last just a few years, but in that time they kept their Artist-Athletes at it. And as one CAT’s season comes and goes, you are free to join another one! CATS may not last as long as organizations, but they still can increase the time individuals devote to organic and strategic climate action. They can also forge friendships that last a lifetime, friendships that can help our Movement in a future we cannot yet see.

CAT Promise

Finally, let me suggest a Climate Action Team Promise that each Artist-Athlete affirms. It should be made publicly in front of your Team and possibly others.

Members promise to:

• Show up and see each other regularly face to face (or screen-to-screen).

• Show up and grow The Climate Movement by having others join your CAT, or if the CAT is full, start another CAT.

• Show up and affirm our Ten Movement Values: love, justice, beauty, freedom, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability, and success.

• Show up and nurture organic change within your CAT as you value and call out everyone’s gifts and creativity.

• Show up and grow together and support one another in our commitment to our vision, purpose, and Major Goal: overcoming climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

• Show up and regularly participate in collective action.

• Show up and work together to help create The Climate Movement into the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world.

• Show up to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better and our future come faster, thereby making hope happen.

You may have noticed a theme: you gotta show up!

Who is the Promise made to, whether implicitly or explicitly?

• Yourself

• Your family

• Your friends

• To everyone you love

• Your Climate Action Team

• To all who have been and will be harmed

• To what is greater than yourself

It may just be that being a part of a Climate Action Team is the greatest thing you’ll ever do to create a better world.

When all is said and done you will look back and realize that in becoming a creative Artist-Athlete on your Climate Action Team you made a contribution you could never have done on your own. You will see that your CAT called forth from you gifts you didn’t know you had that transformed the rest of your life, taking you in directions and towards achievements you never thought possible. You will see that being a part of your CAT gave you the courage to live out your values, to put yourself on the line for the greatest cause of your life, the greatest cause of our time. Thanks to the support of your CAT you were there. You were where you were supposed to be, making a contribution only you could have made. Instead of an absence, you were a presence, a glorious, faithful presence that made a difference.

When all is said and done and you look back on your life you will see that being an Artist-Athlete on your Climate Action Team was one of the things that helped make sure your life meant something, that your being on this earth mattered. You were part of something beautiful that made the world a better place.

Ours is a time for regular folk to become heroes together. Nothing less than greatness is our calling. Being a part of a CAT can make this a reality.

So Join The Climate Movement and create/join a CAT!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, and other posts in our CATS Subseries. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

I love salt. I’ll never forget the day my doctor told me to add salt to my diet. I was thirsty all the time and yet I was drinking water constantly. Solution? Salt.

Well, we just may need a little sodium in our energy diet. Or maybe a lot of sodium. It’s “salt-shaker-storage” time, so to speak.

This is the second of a two-part ARTC Series on energy storage focused on batteries. Part One contextualized the Series in our broader conversation about our Third Catalytic Source of Transformation, the accelerating rate of technological change or ARTC, and then focused on lithium ion batteries with their falling costs, rising sales, and increased volume.

This post starts our continuing conversation about the future of energy storage focusing on what’s ready to take off: sodium-ion batteries.

Sodium-ion batteries are very similar to lithium-ion batteries. They are competitors in many of the same market niches for stationary and mobile energy storage needs. They store electrical energy as chemical energy so it can be turned back into electricity when needed.

The MIT Technology Review calls sodium-ion batteries one of their “10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2026.” Why? Because sodium-ion batteries

offer potential cost reductions of more than 30%, improved performance in extreme temperatures, and reduced supply chain risks associated with lithium mining.

Whereas lithium is only available in a few countries (Chile, China, Australia) and its mining is environmentally damaging, sodium is 1,000 times more prevalent and is found all over the world.

Bottom line: when it comes to EVs and energy storage for electricity, lithium is the present, but sodium will be a big part of the future.

When will sodium’s future arrive? It’s just beginning.

EVs

When it comes to EVs with sodium-ion batteries, three Chinese companies are leading the charge:

• BYD, the world’s largest EV manufacturer and second largest battery manufacturer;

• CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, and;

• BAIC or the Beijing Automotive Group, China’s sixth-largest automobile manufacturer.

These three are pushing each other to get better.

Recently BAIC announced a prototype vehicle with the following specs:

• fully charged in 11 minutes;

• a 280 mile range based on an energy density of over 170Wh/kg, and;

• can operate in -40F to 140F (extreme temps are an achilles heal of litium).

This summer CATL will introduce the first mass-produced EV with sodium-ion batteries and around a 250 mile range. They have also announced a sodium-ion battery with 175 Wh per kg, which also allows for around a 280 mile range. These batteries also “demonstrate high safety, passing tested under tough conditions including crushing, drilling, and sawing without smoke or fire while maintaining continuous power supply.”

Goodby:

• the overhyped “range anxiety”;

• charging time concern;

• decreased performance in lower temperatures;

• safety concerns.

Hello market share.

Stationary Energy Storage Systems (ESS)

Currently Sodium-ion batteries are a teeny tiny fraction of the utility-scale battery market. The IRENA graph below tries hard to picture this. Is there some yellow up at the top representing Sodium? Squint hard. Even if you can’t quite see it, it’s supposed to be there.

Even so, analysts are bullish about sodium-ion’s future. A key factor: sodium’s abundance and geographical spread make it a much cheaper input than lithium.

A recent announcement about a potential game-changer has them even more excited. BYD has developed a sodium-ion battery with a 10,000 charge life cycle, which equates to 20-30 years or more.

When looked at from the Periodic Table, both lithium and sodium are light elements — but sodium is three times heavier. This allows for greater energy density in lithium batteries. For EVs this means longer range and greater efficiency because lithium batteries weigh less for comparable performance.

For stationary situations, this weight advantage doesn’t apply.

Thus, sodium-ion’s advantages for stationary systems start to add up:

• a cheaper input;

• superior performance in extreme temperatures;

• systems lasting 20-30 years or longer;

• weight and energy density less of a factor or even a non-issue.

BloombergNEF projects that by 2030 sodium-ion battery systems could account for 23% of the stationary energy storage market. And if economies of scale kick in sooner, uptake will go faster.

Two years ago sodium-ion’s characteristics and potential led one analyst, Auke Hoekstra, to pen this speculation:

Sodium batteries will become ridiculously cheap. That in turn will revamp our electricity grid: local demand response will be key, resilience and grid stability will improve, grid reinforcements will become less of a costly bottleneck, and solar and wind will thrive. In terms of our energy system, batteries will change everything. … And all of a sudden we will put stationary batteries everywhere.

We’re not there yet. But we could be.

With lower costs and better performance for both lithium and sodium batteries, and with hybrid systems combining them for the best of both, such energy storage will transform the electricity sector:

• renewables + batteries = zero climate pollution from energy generation, storage, and utilization;

• bye-bye fossils;

• more freedom from the grid, less dependency on monopolistic utilities, more off-grid systems, and less need for new grids or expensive grid upgrades paid for by consumers.

In sum: clean, climate-friendly, cheap, and reliable.

The Battery Future Ain’t Either/Or

The beginning of the rise of sodium-ion batteries doesn’t mean the fall of lithium batteries anytime soon. It’s not one or the other, but one and the other.

Lithium battery manufacturers and researchers are continuing to innovate, e.g. improving energy density that increases EV range, and performance in very cold weather, as well as reducing full charging times to as little as 5 minutes.

One analyst sums up the situation for stationary energy storage:

Forecasts suggest sodium-ion shipments could expand rapidly over the next five years, moving from early GWh-scale deployments toward meaningful grid-level penetration by 2030. The trajectory points toward diversification, not displacement.
Lithium will remain critical.

But sodium has crossed a psychological and technical threshold.
The 10,000-cycle benchmark signals that sodium-ion is no longer a fallback technology — it is a strategic pillar in the global energy transition.

The future of batteries will not be singular. It will be multi-chemistry, application-optimized, and supply-chain resilient. And sodium has officially entered the core conversation.

The Catalytic-4 Must Deliver Speed & Scale

The International Energy Agency (IEA) loves to throw water on tech market penetration by up-and-comers like sodium-ion batteries, and do so here as well:

Relying on potential disruptive breakthroughs is a precarious foundation for business success, and especially for broader industrial strategy. In the absence of an efficient, competitive battery manufacturing ecosystem, even promising advances may struggle to reach commercial scale quickly enough to deliver real benefits.

Of course, the IEA consistently underestimated how quickly renewables would ramp up. So there’s that.

Still, we can’t afford for them to be right on any up-and-comers who can make a strategic difference.

In general, outside of speciality niches, it will take a few years before sodium batteries are cost-competitive, and then have a cost-advantage.

However, price doesn’t always win, at least in a timely fashion. Intransigence, ignorance, inertia, wanting to milk what will become stranded assets — these barriers and others can slow the uptake of sodium-ion batteries.

What this means for us is simple: for any promising tech that will help us overcome climate change, The Catalytic-4 must work together to deliver speed and scale. That means The Climate Movement must play its strategic role and push their other three to play their roles. If things aren’t moving fast enough, we must push until they are.

So where we see that sodium-ion batteries — or any other promising tech — can help us achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal we must push their uptake and utilization.

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, and other posts in our ARTC Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

To achieve the climate dimension of justice we must do the three major actions of justice: stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better. I will cover the first two in this post.

Stop Bad Stuff

For some, this is what we are about: eliminate climate pollution that leads to climate impacts at the speed and scale necessary. That’s a huge, huge lift in itself.

But eliminating the pollution that leads to impacts is not the only bad stuff we must stop. We cannot have a narrow carbon/GHG-centric view of climate justice. We cannot just be focused on those emissions.

We cannot pluck carbon out of the muck and say we’re done.

We must recognize the interrelated overlap of climate pollution with other dimensions of justice — distributive justice, environmental justice, justice for nature — as well as our vision, purpose, and Major Goal: to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. Enhancing wellbeing includes addressing the human health impacts of fossil fuels and the impacts of environmental degradation on people and the rest of nature.

Some technological and policy solutions stop the bad stuff much more completely than others, such as electricity produced by solar, wind, and geothermal, as opposed to coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power. Others pluck carbon out and must be combined with other efforts, such as carbon capture that isn’t nature-based. Even nature-based sequestration must be done in a manner that promotes ecosystem health.

And, of course, stopping bad stuff isn’t the only action of justice. We must also set wrong right and make things better. The technological solutions already mentioned can help with these, too, if thought through from the start and implemented fully.

Set Wrong Right

What does it mean to set wrong right for those most harmed: the poor, the powerless and less powerful, the vulnerable, the marginalized, today’s children and subsequent generations, and the rest of nature?

Does setting wrong right in the context of climate justice mean holding those accountable in some way? Does it include what is called retributive justice, which usually involves some form of punishment? Fines? Penalties? Incarceration?

I personally don’t think retribution is a constructive response in keeping with all of our Movement Values.

If fines and penalties can be imposed through the courts that could serve as a deterrent. But it will never be near enough.

What if those accountable are no longer living? What if a Big Producer of Polluting Products goes out of business?

There are many instances where a nation has done things to set past wrongs right (e.g., reparations). This is one of those times.

Instead of retribution, what about the polluter pays principle? With climate change, polluter pays is different than, say, it is for toxic pollution. Instead of paying to clean up the pollution, the polluter pays to address climate consequences; that’s the mess to be cleaned up.

For nations and Big Producers who are accountable, to set wrong right is to clean up the mess you made. The climate version of polluter pays is a partial response, but not a complete one.

You must also make amends for the harm caused.

So in setting wrong right there are two interrelated steps: (1) clean up the mess; (2) make amends and help heal the harm.

More specifically, for the Big Producers of Polluting Products and countries primarily responsible for past emissions, setting wrong right means two basic things in the climate context.

1) Cleaning up the mess you made by paying for adaptation, funding “Loss and Damage,” and helping build resilience.

2) Making amends and healing the harm by making things better for those who have been wronged, including the rest of nature.

Precisely because we are dealing with justice and not charity, setting wrong right in these ways cannot simply be left to good intentions.

First, the nations and Big Producers primarily accountable must help those most harmed by funding and assisting with adaptation efforts and building resilience in its many forms: strong, innovative economies powered by abundant clean energy, good healthcare, high quality universal education, impact-ready infrastructure, food and water security, and species protection and ecosystem restoration.

Cleaning up the mess must also involve paying for what is called in the international climate negotiations “Loss and Damage.”

Conceptually this is rather straightforward. If you break something, you pay for it. If you have caused climate impacts, you pay for the loss and damage. Of course, given both the historic nature of climate emissions and the systemic aggregate nature of the problem, assigning accountability is incredibly complicated, let alone highly politically fraught. Nevertheless, it must be attempted, and some very modest progress has been made via the international climate negotiations concerning the relationships between and among nation-states.

But what about the Big Polluters of Polluting Products who are accountable for climate change?

Remember, climate accountability involves five classes:

1. Nations, or more specifically, national governments.

2. Upstream fossil fuel producers that are state owned (i.e., where the state has a controlling interest), or are state-owned-and-run enterprises.

3. Upstream fossil fuel producers that are investor-owned corporations (both public and private).

4. Midstream state owned and state-owned-and-run fossil fuel burning utilities.

5. Midstream investor-owned fossil fuel utilities.

The international climate negotiations are attempting to deal with the first class, and by extension the second and fourth classes. But what about three and five, investor-owned upstream and midstream Big Producers of Polluting Products, the oil companies and the fossil fuel utilities?

In the minds of many my third class are the really bad actors. They account for 31% of the fossil climate pollution from 1940-2022, and four are in the top ten from 1854-2023: Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell.

How much harm is each one accountable for? How much should they pay to set wrong right and clean up the mess they’ve made?

For example, a recent effort published in the journal Nature concluded that Chevron is accountable for between “$791 billion and $3.6 trillion in heat-related losses over the period 1991–2020.” More broadly, the study found that “extreme heat linked to greenhouse gas emissions from 111 companies cost the world economy $28 trillion.”

That’s just looking at one impact, extreme heat, over only 20 years.

Another study hot off the press (Mar. 25, 2026) by Burke et al in the journal Nature, shows that even after discounting future damages, i.e., making them worth less (which I consider to be immoral1), Big Producers of Polluting Products are accountable for mind-boggling amounts of loss and damage.

For example, as shown in their graph below, Saudi Aramco is accountable for $64 trillion in past and future damages based on pollution from their products between 1988-2015. ExxonMobil is accountable for $29 trillion. Without discounting it would and should be much more.

One thing Burke et al remind us of, which is captured in their graph: “estimated past damages will only account for a modest subset of the anticipated total damages that a historical emission will eventually cause. Settling debts for past damages will therefore not settle debts for past emissions (p. 961).” In other words, we are dealing with two harms: past harm (the light green part of the bars above) and future harm (the dark green). Again, the dark green has been discounted, which it shouldn’t be, meaning that the harm is even greater. But why future harm from past pollution? Because CO2 stays in the atmosphere trapping heat until it is removed through the carbon cycle or by carbon capture technologies.

Second, making amends by doing the third action of justice, making things better, can go a long way towards setting past wrong right— e.g., using climate solutions to create a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything, especially the poor, the powerless and less powerful, the marginalized, the vulnerable, children and subsequent generations, and the rest of nature.

These two actions of justice are not separate, they are united. We do both when we achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal.

More specifically, to set wrong right means that those most harmed are at the front of the line when it comes to enhancing wellbeing. It means we have a particular focus on ensuring that their lives are made better — and made better in a substantial way so that their wellbeing is in keeping with that of everyone else.

A rising-tide-lifts-all-boats approach simply will not do. There is no such thing as trickle-down justice — a dangerous and deadly sham. For those who have been, are being, and will be the most harmed we must be intentional about raising the level of wellbeing to that enjoyed by everyone.

For example, Sub-Saharan Africa, with many nations that will be hit by climate impacts, is projected to continue to be mired in energy poverty through 2050. We must not let that happen. Energy prosperity from generating their own power via renewables plus storage must be their future.

In the vast majority of circumstances setting wrong right will have to be accomplished by appropriate levels of government ensuring that it be done. This can certainly take place through climate policies but should not be limited to them. The Catalytic-4 must work together to achieve all of climate justice.

Setting wrong right, including for the rest of nature, cannot be the orphan of climate justice, or the forgotten step-child. Without it there isn’t justice.

“Gee, we always meant to do it; somehow we just never got there. Oops.”

For some in the Climate Movement, this is your Olympian Field of Action on which to lead the rest of us. For some CATS, this could be a major focus. We need you to go for Gold. We need you to direct us on when and how to weigh in at strategic moments to make setting wrong right a reality. There is no more important job.

Where’s the hope for climate justice in stopping bad stuff and setting wrong right? We’re the hope! We make hope happen by making justice happen. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in the Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

With this post we are continuing our Subseries on CATS or Climate Action Teams.

Thus far we’ve discussed how CATS can make us: (1) big and broad and active enough, our first Climate Movement characteristic/imperative/goal in the first post, (2) passionate enough and deep enough, our second and third characteristics/imperatives/goals, and (3) dynamic enough, our fourth characteristic/imperative/goal.

Because we are in kairos-climate-time, to make our future come faster we need to be organic and strategic enough, our fifth characteristic/imperative/goal of The Climate Movement.

Out of all of our social forms, all the ways we can be together enough, CATS are where the combination of organic and strategic change will be — must be — the most powerful. Living in and living out our Movement Values of wisdom, pragmatism, and creativity, messy and non-linear must be combined with efficient and targeted to achieve something stronger and more effective than either alone. That’s hard. It’s also glorious.

CATS are organic precisely because each one is sui generis. In contrast to existing organizations and campaigns, there has never been a group like you before, nor will there be one like you ever again. You don’t have to think and do things outside the box because you were never in the box. You make your own box — and it doesn’t have to be a box!

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn from the past, the tried-and-true, as you freely become what your gifts and abilities inspire and allow you to be.

It does mean that the choices are yours — choices your CAT makes together and choices each individual Team Member Artist-Athlete makes within the group. Within their CAT each individual can choose to exercise gifts and talents and take on roles that no other group has provided the opportunity for them to do before.

It does mean that this unique combination of gifts of all the Member Artist-Athletes must be set free to become something new, something none of you could be on your own, offering a contribution to our Movement only you can give. As I’ve said, CATS are one of the greatest expressions of freedom of our time.

Climate Action Teams are not cookie-cutter confections stamped out at a factory. You are not robots controlled by your maker. You are not a part of a hive mind controlled by the Collective. You are one of a kind, and your unique contributions cannot be offered by anyone else.

Organic change embodied in CATS may not be as streamlined and efficient in the near term as some cookie-cutter approaches might be. But it makes our Movement more creative, more free, and thus more resilient and robust — and all of this makes us better able to achieve victory — and victory is what being strategic is all about.

This leads us to see that teams are strategic because of all their strengths I have thus far enumerated, all of the ways we embody our Climate Movement characteristics/imperatives/goals. We won’t achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal without our Climate Action Teams, and achieving these things is the essence of our being strategic. So by being themselves CATS are strategic.

A key reason Climate Action Teams are strategic is because they help individuals to be strategic.

As the name says, Climate Action Teams are about action —but not just action for action’s sake to make us feel better, actions to show how “good” and “pure” and “righteous” we are — narcissistic righteousness. Well past time to nip that nonsense in the bud.

In keeping with our Movement Value of success, CATS are about actions that make a difference. As lone individuals, even those connected to organizations through donations or membership, it is quite hard to be consistent and not scattered or episodic with one’s actions, which significantly diminishes one’s effectiveness.

There are many good things CATS can do on their own, especially at their local level, especially within social groups and institutions in which they or their individual Artist-Athletes belong.

Doing only what your CAT can do is strategic, because otherwise it won’t get done.

And just like the Olympics, you and your CAT need to compete on a particular Field of Action where your participation can shine, where you all are perfectly positioned to make a strategic difference.

Super heavyweight wrestlers will do well in their sports, on their teams. But they probably wouldn’t shine in synchronized platform diving or the gymnastic floor exercise.

At the same time, our particular gifts and abilities can be fitted to specific roles within the team, such as goalie, or halfback, or fullback, or forward.

But for our nation to do its best in the Medal count, our best efforts must come together with those of all the other CATS, organizations, coalitions, faith groups, and businesses. This is where CATS can greatly benefit from participating in strategic campaigns devised by organizations and coalitions.

Climate Action Teams, while absolutely vital, can only be strategic enough when they join larger strategic efforts.

Finally, like every individual Climate Movement Artist-Athlete, all CATS must not only find their particular Olympian Field of Action, but must also participate with the Climate Movement as a whole on the two Fields of Action we all share: (1) growing and improving the Climate Movement itself, and; (2) engaging public policymakers to help us achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal. For CATS and the Movement these are at the very center of being strategic.

So let the creative, organic nature of change find its deepest roots in your CAT, but then combine that with larger strategic efforts that keep us on the path to victory as we stay ahead of the climate clock. Only through this combination will Climate Action Teams be strategic enough.

The bottom line is this: for us to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything we must have a plethora of CATS the world over who are being organic and strategic enough.

Join Mvt!

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

This is the first in a two-part Series on batteries, or, more broadly, energy storage. This post, Part One, does two things: (1) contextualizes this conversation in our third Catalytic Source of Transformation, the accelerating rate of technological change or ARTC, and then (2) looks briefly at our current situation with batteries and energy storage. Part Two will look at future possibilities.

ARTC For Climate’s Sake

In the 19th Century in France there arose a slogan, “Art for Art’s Sake,” that was subsequently taken up by American artist James McNeill Whistler and others. It represented the view that art does not have to be reduced to some deeper moral purpose or narrative. Beauty is its own justification. In the early part of the 20th Century a Latin translation was put above the lion’s head in the MGM logo.

But when it comes to ARTC, Climate Movement Artist-Athletes (i.e. everyone in The Climate Movement) cannot go along with a slogan “ARTC for ARTC’s sake” — at least not all ARTC.1

No, we have a moral agenda. We want to make ARTC, our third Catalytic Source of Transformation, work for us as we overcome climate change, to stop bad stuff, set wrong, right, and make things better, to create a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

Our goal: strategic ARTC for climate action. ARTC for humanity’s sake. ARTC for Creation’s sake.

But Is Tech Change Accelerating?

But is tech change actually accelerating? I have briefly made the case for this (and will say more in future posts). To illustrate ARTC, I’m relying on powerful graphic visual representations. One of the most important comes from the work of Ian Morris.

Morris has measured the ability of humans to capture and use energy over time — including calories from food. As can be seen in the above graph showing energy capture from 14,000 BCE to the year 2000 CE, tech change connected with energy capture has not progressed gradually or consistently over time. Over thousands of years it barely budged. In the West it even declined during the Middle Ages. But beginning with the Industrial Revolution it has shot up like a rocket and hasn’t slowed down since.

Fossil fuels have been around as long as homo sapiens have. So why did we suddenly start capturing and releasing the stored fossil energy with the Industrial Revolution?

It is the combination of fossil fuels and tech change that made energy capture, and the economic wealth that went along with it, shoot straight up. Why?

As I have discussed briefly earlier, I believe Nobel prize-winning economic historian Joel Moykr, Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Romer, and others have explained the various pieces of the puzzle.

I’ve combined these pieces and boiled it down to this: ARTC happened and keeps going due to the continual production of useful knowledge generated by what I call the “ARTC-Combo”: (1) specialization; (2) nonrivalry of knowledge, i.e., its endlessly copyable and useable nature, and; (3) market competition.

But now the energy storage source of the Industrial Revolution is killing us and the planet and it’s well past time to switch from this dirty, limited energy storage source to clean renewable forms of energy capture. ARTC-and-fossils haven’t painted a pretty picture when it comes to the environment and human health, and now the climate scourge.

The time of the fossils is over, as is their paring with ARTC. The ARTC-Combo has found ways to divorce ARTC from dirty old fossils and their death dealing.

Not ARTC for fossils’ sake. ARTC for humanity’s sake; ARTC for Creation’s sake.

We are on the cusp of not just an energy transition, but an energy revolution, driven forward by ARTC, the accelerating rate of tech change.

It’s our job as The Climate Movement to ensure that ARTC in this new revolution in energy production, storage, and utilization helps achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal: to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. To achieve this we must have speed and scale of transformation the likes of which the world has never seen — and ARTC plus The Climate Movement, indeed, all of The Catalytic-4, can make that happen.

ARTC & Batteries

One of the ways ARTC is allowing us to capture energy for our use are new approaches to energy storage, particularly batteries.

Like me, the folks at Ember are also adapting the work of Ian Morris. They have created their own graph below showing energy capture, storage, and utilization over time. Employing alliteration with the “F” sound, they break things down into four eras: Foragers, Farmers, Fossils, and Photovoltaics. Just as the Agricultural Revolution, i.e., the move from Foragers to Farmers, brought about a 100-fold increase in energy capture per hectare of land, so the move from fossils to clean energy systems, primarily photovoltaics plus storage, will create another 100-fold leap in useful energy, what they call “energy abundance.”

As a recent Ember report framed it, comparing the Agricultural Revolution with this new one:

The shift to renewables represents an agricultural revolution for energy, moving from searching and extracting scarce fuels to harvesting abundant sunlight in place. Much as granaries and refrigeration transformed food markets, storage will turn electricity from perishable to persistent, unlocking a new era of energy abundance (emphasis added).

Ember calls what’s coming “the electrotech revolution.” They mean that our future will be run on electricity, including the transportation sector.

Right now and for the foreseeable future useful electricity cannot be stored as electrical energy. It must be utilized when it is created. It’s a use-it-or-lose it kinda situation — unless you can find a way to store energy from electricity.

When you do so cheaply and reliably, when you create “silos for sunshine,” in Ember’s phrase, everything changes. But it’s the type of change that humanity has accomplished before. As Ember states:

Renewable electricity may be a new kind of harvest, but the challenge of storing it, and the system-wide shifts it sets in motion, go back to the dawn of agriculture. The technologies may be new, but the dynamics are as old as civilisation.

Energy Storage and the Present

Today, one key way to store electrical energy as chemical energy is with batteries. The most common form are lithium-ion batteries, which turn electrical energy into chemical energy that can be stored until electricity is needed and the chemical energy is turned back into electrical energy.

What’s going on right now is the outgrowth of the continual production of useful knowledge via the ARTC-Combo funneled into learning curves and economies of scale. This process has dramatically but predictably driven down costs. The International Renewable Energy Agency or IRENA reports that

Between 2010 and 2024, the costs of battery storage projects declined 93% … This cost reduction was driven by technological chemistries, advancements materials in battery efficiency improvements, manufacturing scale-up and optimisation, as well as increased market competition (emphasis added).

In other words, ARTC at work.

As their graph shows, as battery prices go down, capacity goes up.

BloombergNEF also has a nice graph below.

As Evelina Stoikou, the head of BNEF’s battery technology team, remarked:

Cut-throat competition [part of the ARTC-combo] is making batteries cheaper every year. This is an important moment for the industry, as record-low battery prices create an opportunity to lower EV costs and accelerate the deployment of grid-scale storage to support renewables integration around the world.

The cheaper current battery storage gets, the more batteries are bought. The more bought, the cheaper it gets. And that’s just with lithium batteries. Even cheaper ones are on the horizon. (See Part Two, forthcoming.)

And where are these batteries being produced? Well, for those of us in the US we can take pride in a highly successful effort by the Biden Administration to boost the domestic battery industry. As Canary Media recently reported:

“For the first time, the United States now has the capacity to supply 100% of domestic energy storage project demand with American-built systems,” said Noah Roberts, executive director of the U.S. Energy Storage Coalition. … ​“That is a fundamental shift from where we were just a year and a half ago, when the majority of battery storage systems were imported.” … The development of U.S. grid-battery manufacturing has happened at a dizzying pace. Roberts called it ​“one of the fastest industrial scale-ups in recent American history (emphasis added).”

This is a clear example of what The Catalytic-4 can do together to create speed and scale.

But we must broaden our horizons here and not be so myopic. Ember and others who are looking at energy storage holistically see a completely different picture — “the batterization of everything,” as Gerard Reid put it — than those who only think about batteries as storage for “dispatchable” electricity created by a utility. In the future, just about any tech that needs energy may come with its own storage, meaning it won’t have to stay tethered to the electric grid.

And where will the energy come from in the first place? From the power of the Sun captured by renewables creating useful energy in the form of electricity. In other words, a climate-friendly energy system.

Our job as The Climate Movement, as Climate Artist-Athletes together in common cause, is to ensure that the speed and scale of this transformation helps us overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. We must channel the power of The Catalytic-4 towards this purpose.

We must make ARTC strategic, which includes making it just. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, and other posts in our ARTC conversation. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

In my introductory post for this Climate Justice subseries I briefly introduced five distinctive aspects of the problem that are connected with climate justice:

1) so-called legacy emissions that become legacy pollution;

2) the systemic aggregate nature of the problem;

3) the simultaneous erasure of margins of climate safety, such as the destructive momentum built up in the oceans;

4) tipping points;

5) the unjust distribution of consequences.

This post covers the fifth and final distinctive aspect.

Discussions of climate justice must keep a strong focus on the unjust distribution of consequences due to the fact that Big Producers of Polluting Products have caused the problem, but the poor, the powerless and less powerful, the vulnerable, the marginalized, and children and subsequent generations, will bear the brunt of the impacts — even though they have done nothing or next to nothing to cause the problem.

The powerful creating conditions where they benefit while the less powerful suffer has been with humanity since our beginnings.

But the scale, longevity, inescapability, and the impersonal nature of this unjust dynamic, all of this synergistically combined, is something new.

The powerful and Big Producers of Polluting Products are literally making the climate around the world unjust — the climate. Injustice is literally baked into our everyday lives. Making the climate where each of us lives unjust has also never happened in human history.

And because their gains from doing this will help shield them from the consequences they have created through the adaptation and resilience they can afford to make, the powerful and Big Producers can get away almost scot-free from climate impacts — at least for a time.

As for the impersonal nature, if, say, poor villagers in a poor country were to wonder who did this to them — who caused the weather to become more extreme, more floods and droughts and heat, more crop failures and devastation of livelihoods, more hunger and starvation, more disease, more stunting of their children that will last their lifetimes, with many of these impacts and more happening synergistically — who could they point to? Who can be hauled into court and held accountable.

Of course, court cases are starting to be filed. To no one’s surprise, the powerful and guilty are pushing their political flacks to issue them a get out of jail free card. Just another Epstein-like and Trump-like effort from “conservatives” & the fossils to escape responsibility and undermine the rule of law through politics. We must not let them.

What about holding them accountable in the court of public opinion? It has been pointing fingers at various actors. But the systemic aggregate nature of the problem makes this a much more complicated determination, than, say, a local industry that was polluting a river.

Finally, the unjust distribution of climate consequences includes the rest of nature, which is utterly powerless to do anything about what we, the human race, are doing to them through the synergistic impact of climate + environmental degradation and species extinction.1

This unjust distribution of consequences may turn out to be the most terrible in human history, which is why our cause is one of the greatest causes for justice ever, and why we must become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world on all of our Olympian Fields of Action.

Where’s the hope? We are the hope! Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, and other posts in our Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

Climate Actions Teams or CATS are vital to helping us be dynamic enough, our fourth Movement characteristic/imperative/goal, which involves a forward-driving tension created by the relationships between the tried-and-true, discipline, and two of our other Movement Values, freedom, and creativity.

As for tried-and-true, there is tons of information available about small group dynamics in general and what makes them work best. There are all kinds of lessons from faith traditions, the Civil Rights Movement, and other social change movements, and from more recent experiences utilizing social media and various Apps. We must not hesitate to tap into the tried-and-true.

CATS must have discipline to make our contribution. We won’t become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world without discipline. We must come together regularly. We must remain true to our vision, our Movement Values, our Major Goal. We must be trustworthy and do what we say. We must keep the faith and finish the challenge. We cannot do any of this without discipline, both as individuals on the team and the team as a whole.

As I said in an earlier post, Climate Action Teams are one of the greatest expressions of freedom in history. We are born with permission to be in one. But we must choose to be a part of one. We must choose to stay in one. We must choose to give ourselves fully. We must choose to participate in the actions of the CAT. We must choose to struggle together towards justice and the fullness of freedom as we make hope happen and our future come faster.

Each CAT is effectively a blank slate and a free state, a place where the organic nature of successful movements can really thrive — messy, non-linear change that simultaneously results in more resilient and creative results. As Artist-Athlete-Members we are free to choose how to be a team. No one has the authority to tell us what to do. We can model ourselves on other CATS, we can take counsel from the wisdom of the past.

But those are choices, not requirements. We can, if we so choose, chart our own course.

As individual Members, we are free to create our own role on the CAT based on our gifts and abilities and the feedback and advice of our Teammates, or from mentors, friends, or Artist-Athletes from outside our group. Creating our own role is quite different than other social forms like organizations, where roles are already fairly prescribed.

But we must never lose sight of the fact that all of these choices are the means to freedom; they are not the fullness of freedom.

Freedom is not doing whatever the hell we want. Freedom is choosing rightly to create a better world, which only arrives when everyone is free to be who they were created to be and exercises their freedom to become so. This means a world where justice reigns, a justice that comes from love. Love is the ultimate power-source of both freedom and justice. And Climate Action Teams are the most natural place in the Climate Movement where we can choose to say the L-word and let love grow, let love out, let its power be made manifest in our actions to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better, actions to create a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

Again, part of our freedom is the freedom to do things differently than was done in the past. We must learn from the past and benefit from the tried-and-true. But we must also let our Movement Values of wisdom, pragmatism, and creativity help us see that past lessons may not fit present realities. They may need to be adapted, or new approaches may be needed. We must have the discipline to stay true to achieving our vision, purpose, and Major Goal even if that means doing things differently, even if it means transforming or even abandoning long cherished and comfortable traditions and approaches. Needed change takes discipline, a discipline driven by love.

This is why discipline, freedom, wisdom, pragmatism, and creativity must all work together. And when they do CATS can produce both organic and strategic change (a topic I will discuss more fully in our next post in this CATS Subseries).

We can be quite creative with CATS because each one is new or relatively new. Again, this is different than, say, being a professional in an organization. When folks are in professional mode, it’s hard to think outside the box because they’ve been trained to work within the box; in some cases, they’ve made the box!

But in the Climate Movement we must not be beholden to the boxes of old if they no longer quite fit. As the need arises, as creativity inspires, we must create new and bigger boxes, or get rid of the box altogether as we form a circle! We must let organic change enjoy its full flowering. In Climate Action Teams this will be much easier to do.

(BTW, for all those working in climate organizations and campaigns, environment and conservation organizations, and other organizations where climate is your focus, I would urge you to consider being a part of a CAT where you can be and do things you may not be able to do in your job. It’s also where you can do things differently, or be pushed out of your comfort zone by your CATmates.)

And yet, as much as we need creativity, as much as we honor and benefit from the organic, we also want to be efficient and effective and achieve our Movement Value of success, i.e., we want to be strategic, which gets us back employing wisdom and pragmatism as we look to the tried-and-true for ways that will minimize or eliminate floundering around — because we are on the climate clock and we don’t have time to waste.

Time to become a part of something greater than yourself. Time to create or join a CAT and be the driving force in creating the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world as we make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our just future come faster. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in the Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

MAGA Is For Solar Competing Fair and Square Without Any Help From Taxpayers

They aren’t doing it for the climate. Don’t even mention the word.

They don’t like for clean energy to be given incentives, and they especially don’t like anything they might call “mandates.” They want clean energy to compete in the “free” market on their own two feet fair and square without any help from the pockets of taxpayers.

Guess what? Now that profits and price are in clean energy’s favor, now that others have done the heavy lifting to make it so, now that the Trump Administration’s stupid attacks on clean energy, as well as growing demand for energy — including from AI and data centers — are driving up prices and electricity bills, MAGA and other conservatives have seen the light.

And what is the light that has dawned? The light bulb that has finally lit up? It’s this. In most cases, clean energy and battery storage are the cheapest and fastest way to create more electricity and lower prices.

Never mind that it has never been fair and square

Ok, before proceeding, I need to blow off some steam.

Never mind that we’ve never had a “free” market in energy. Never mind that in the US the fossils have been provided over a century’s worth of corporate welfare. Never mind that in the transportation sector oil has been a state-supported monopoly. Never mind that many utilities in the US, state-sanctioned monopolies, have opposed and resisted solar and wind for decades to keep their old, polluting coal-burning power plants going. Never mind that the economic, political, and monopolistic power of the fossils, the likes of which no industry in the history of the world has had, has been mercilessly used to beat up on “the little guy” and suppress the underdog clean energy industry.

Never mind that the fight has never been fair and square, or that there’s never been a level playing field, or that the thumb of government has been on the scale of the dirty fossils for over a century.

Never mind that MAGA et al. probably weren’t in support of the decades of work by creators and producers — R&D, commercialization, etc — to bring clean tech to where it is today, cheap and fast, so we can benefit from it. Never mind that most of MAGA & Co have been, “moochers” and free-riders in this regard.

Seriously, never mind all that, not to mention climate change and air and water pollution and toxic waste — and that most of these costs aren’t included in the current price for the dirty fossils, which if they were, would probably put most of them out of business pretty quick.

Never mind that in their “free” market fantasy, price gives “rational consumers” all the info they need to make their decisions — except, of course, the info about the cost of the gunk that can harm their kid’s health and kill people and create the most dangerous threat humanity faces in this century and beyond.

For the moment, now that my steam has been blown, never mind all that stuff.

Our Value of Pragmatism Says Work With Them

Why never mind all the stuff we really care about, and some they claim to care about?

Because our Climate Movement Value of pragmatism, guided by our other Movement Values like wisdom, justice, and success, says we should take whatever openings we find to work with others to reduce climate pollution, all things being equal. If that means working with MAGA and the Trump Administration, we should do it. (I had to choke that last part out about Trump & Co, let me tell you.)

Solar & Enhanced Geothermal: Here’s What’s Going On

Solar

Now that the GOP has taken away those “unfair” incentives for solar to address a climate crisis they don’t believe in, solar is looking better to many Republicans.

As Politico reported, conservative political strategist and message maven Kellyanne Conway‘s polling firm recently found promising results in five states that voted for Trump in 2024 — Texas, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, and Indiana. Their polling showed that:

three-quarters of Trump voters agreed “that solar energy should be used in the US to strengthen and increase” the domestic energy supply, with 62 percent of Trump voters holding a favorable view of solar energy.

In another poll in Texas from a different pollster with similar results taken a year ago, 64% of Republicans had a favorable view of clean energy and 81% supported a “free-market” approach to clean energy as opposed to “mandates” at 18%.

Politico’s reporting highlights MAGA wants cheap electricity now, and solar fits the bill:

Heather Reams, CEO of conservative energy group Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, said consumers are focused on their rising power bills — and pressing policy makers for answers now.

“Not, ‘What nuclear reactor are you going to build for me 15 years from now?’ What are you going to do for me today?,” she said. “That’s where solar has its hand up, saying, ‘We’re ready to go right now.’”

Political/policy groups are starting to form to push clean energy. For example, there’s a new outfit that began in Virginia called “Energy Right,” i.e. done right by the right, funded “by industry and philanthropists” according to the Washington Post. It’s headed up by Skyler Zunk, who before this worked on conservative political campaigns.

Here’s Energy Right’s initial pitch on their website:

As America develops renewable energy across the rural landscape, we stand for energy done the right way — elevating our communities to the best possible position for the long term. Take control of your community’s energy future and join our movement to see clean energy done the right way.

Look, they’re a movement!

As their Mission Statement puts it:

Energy Right is a trusted conservative voice and resource for informed decision-making on responsible clean energy development that drives local economic growth and prosperity.

Some prominent influencers also are starting to get in on the act, such as Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller.

All told, there is some MAGA recalibration going on concerning solar. We should take advantage of it.

Enhanced Geothermal

Another area ripe for collaboration, or at least pulling in the right direction, is what is called enhanced geothermal. Whereas Congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration have tried to kill just about anything related to solar and wind — R&D, tax credits, other incentives, etc — this is a new form of clean energy that they support. Dems like it too.

Support for enhanced geothermal spans the political gamut. Everyone from DOE Secretary Chris Wright to AOC are involved in trying to move enhanced geothermal forward.

But why the Republican interest?

Let me back up a second. For us to be able to use electricity to power stuff it must be created. Most power plants in the world right now — coal and nukes — create electricity by boiling water, and the steam is used to turn a turbine that creates the electricity. So if you have heat to boil water, you can create electricity.

The interior of the Earth has lots of heat. What is called “standard geothermal” exists where hot water reservoirs are located fairly close to the surface. However, such sites are very limited.

“Enhanced geothermal” uses new tech and procedures to create new hot water reservoirs.

In the US, estimates from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory or NREL suggest that there is 90GW of economical capacity, enough to power over 65 million homes by 2050.

Furthermore, this is what is called “baseload” power, or power that is available all the time, not contingent on the Sun or the wind or sufficient water in the case of hydro power.

To sum up: it is zero-emissions economical baseload power.

So why do Republicans like it, given that it is a form of clean energy? Here’s why. The tech and the know-how to do the drilling come from the oil and gas industry.

Cha-ching, bata-boom. It’s fracking for heat.

Well, if it is done safely and sustainably, I say more power to them — and the rest of us!

Saying Yes to Common Ground

So even in the most polarized political atmosphere of our lifetimes we can find common ground around (1) more solar right now, and (2) working today to ensure that we fulfill enhanced geothermal’s promise in the future.

In other words, if it is helpful and not hurtful, we should go for it.

One pragmatic strategic caveat: for many of these folks, to be branded with the idea that they are working with “The Climate Movement” could be the kiss of death. So some of us who are a part of The Climate Movement can work with them while wearing other hats, or no hat at all. In other situations we don’t have to join hands and work together at all even as we are pulling in the same direction. They show up on one side, we show up on the other, but both in support of solar and enhanced geothermal.

There will probably be a time in the future where we part ways with those we find we can work with today. That’s fine. But today, if we can agree on ways to employ clean energy, including with MAGA and the Trump Administration, we should take it.

This doesn’t mean we back off one iota from calling out all of the terrible things the Trump Administration is doing elsewhere.

Let our Movement Values of pragmatism, informed by wisdom’s discernment and our striving for justice and success, guide us as we create a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

Introduction

In previous posts of this Climate Justice Subseries I have covered the first three distinctive aspects of climate justice: #1) legacy emissions and legacy pollution and #2) the systemic aggregate nature of the problem in post 8.1, and; #3) erasure of margins of climate safety in post 8.2.

Now it’s time to discuss tipping points, the fourth distinctive aspect of Climate Justice.

Perhaps the most worrisome consequences of climate change are when tipping points in natural systems are exceeded, leading to the collapse of such systems. The ones closest to tipping are pictured in the map above.

The combination of major climate and environmental tipping points — e.g. climate impacts combined with habitat destruction and environmental degradation — have the awful potential of becoming the greatest injustice ever perpetrated on the future.

According to the world’s leading scholars on this issue, a tipping point is reached when a “change in part of a system becomes self-perpetuating beyond a threshold, leading to substantial, widespread, frequently abrupt and often irreversible impact”.1

Could Come Faster

These tipping points could come faster than scientists have been expecting. That’s because global warming is happening faster than many thought. As I wrote in the previous post in this Subseries:

Climate pollution continues to rise, and a just published study in one of the most respected journals suggests a significant temperature increase since 2015 — the year the international climate talks that took place in Paris affirmed the 1.5C target. At the present rate we will exceed 1.5 by 2030.¹

Identified Tipping Points

So far, more than 25 tipping points have been identified.

Tipping points include:

• Warm-water Coral Reefs (see areas labeled “A” in map at top). We’re already there: “warm water coral reefs are crossing their thermal tipping point and experiencing unprecedented dieback, impairing the livelihoods of hundreds of millions who depend on them.”

• The Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. We are close to the point where their melting becomes unstoppable, which will produce two meters of sea level rise by 2100, exposing 480 million people to flooding. It won’t stop there. All told, Greenland’s ice sheet would produce 7 meters. If all the Antarctic ice sheets were to melt they would produce 58 meters.

• The death of the Amazon rainforest. This would release a great deal of CO2, further accelerating climate change, and wipe out untold species. Some experts believe we are close the point where death becomes inevitable.

• Arctic permafrost thaw, which is already releasing both methane (a potent Greenhouse Gas) and carbon. (See areas labeled “D”, in map above.) The world’s permafrost contains nearly double the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere, and four times more carbon than we have emitted since the Industrial Revolution.

• The shutting down of a major system of ocean currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This would, among other things, wreak havoc on agriculture, severely disrupting rainfall patterns, potentially leading to massive famine and starvation. A recent study suggests that a shutdown of AMOC could occur around mid-century, or as early as now and as late as 2095; any of these would be sooner than previous research has suggested. As a leading expert puts it: “A full AMOC collapse would be a massive, planetary-scale disaster.”2

Catastrophic Consequences We Must Avoid at All Costs

Natural tipping points will, in turn, lead to political and social tipping points, stressing our human systems and institutions to their breaking points, leading to instability, chaos, conflicts, wars, and collapse. Past civilizations have disintegrated due to climate change, but this would be on a scale never before seen.

Such tipping points would also lead to the collapse of numerous ecosystems and the extinction of many species, which would in turn have catastrophic consequences for humanity.3

Avoiding major tipping points is a key driver for why we are striving to keep warming to 1.5C with minimal overshoot that is quickly brought down to a level natural for our time.

Before going further, however, I must make a vital point. A lot of harm, destruction, suffering, and death can happen before major tipping points are reached. We are already experiencing such harm. Tipping points aren’t necessary to make climate impacts a justice issue. We don’t need to reach tipping points to justify the need for the three actions of justice: stopping bad stuff, setting wrong right, and making things better. They aren’t necessary to justify our vision, purpose, and Major Goal, to justify the need for the Climate Movement to become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world. We don’t need tipping points to spur us to do everything we should be doing, everything our other Movement Values of love, beauty, freedom, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability, and success are calling us to do.

That said, major tipping points will make consequences exponentially worse. They can create so much destructive change that adaptation and resilience will be blown away. Tipping points are a profound violation of the Better Future Covenant and make a mockery of sustainability. They are the opposite of hope.

If combined, major tipping points in large natural and human systems have the potential to transform the planet into something never seen before by human civilization. Humanity will survive, but they will curse our memory for perpetuating what could become the greatest injustice ever.

Catastrophe Is Not Inevitable; Making Hope Happen Is the Answer

This is not inevitable. It won’t happen if we all play our part together.

But we must face the fact that it is possible, and the mere specter does harm to our wellbeing. Even so we must face the reality of this possibility.

We don’t find hope in denying reality — we find hope in facing it together.

To extinguish this specter we must seize all of the hope available to us: we must become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world; we must become CATS; we must make hope happen by ensuring the other three Catalytic Sources of Transformation achieve their potential; on all of our Olympian Fields of Action we must make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful, and our future come faster.

We must. We can. We will.

Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in this Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

CATS Can Make Us Passionate

Climate Action Teams or CATS not only are essential to helping The Climate Movement become big and broad and active enough. They are also vital to helping the Climate Movement achieve our second characteristic/imperative/goal, being passionate enough.

CATS are places where you have permission to be passionate; even more so, where you need to be passionate. CATS need to be places where you can let your passion out or see the passion of others and experience your own, where you can touch and tap into the deep places that sustain your passion. Passion helps you to be your fullest self, to be fully alive by faithfully living in and living out your values. Climate Action Teams are where you can let your passion and those of your teammates motivate you and spur you to consistent bold action.

Our CATS provide us the relational connection we need to play our part in overcoming climate change while creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. And a vital part of this relational connectedness is passion.

Finally, being a part of a Climate Action Team can help prevent our moral passion from devolving into arrogant self-righteousness or, even worse, prophetic narcissism.

Ours is the greatest moral cause of our time; our Major Goal is profoundly ambitious, even audacious; our Movement will be the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world; our cause is just — deeply so.

But all of this does not make us morally superior. In fact, to really own all of this is to become chastened in the face of the challenge, in the recognition of our complete and total inability as individuals to do anything about the climate crisis on our own; becoming a part of this great worldwide movement should humble us to our very depths.

We achieve greatness through humility. It is one of the keys to our attaining greatness together.

CATS Can Make Us Deep

CATS help us to be deep enough, our third characteristic/imperative/goal.

Only with depth of commitment will we get ourselves out of this mess. It is the L-word and our other Movement Values that will provide the depth we need. And it is in our CATS where we can say these words out loud, where we can intentionally tap into and claim their power.

As CATS we are together because of who and what we love, and love is the heart from which justice springs.

• We are together because we are a moral movement, because we strive for justice: to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better.

• We are together because we affirm the Better Future Covenant, that we are to make and leave a better world for today’s children and subsequent generations.

• We are together to name who we are fighting for because we love them.

• We are together to create a safe and supporting place to become what we were meant to be, to play our part in the greatest moral cause of our time, to make a difference and create a better world, to love and be loved.

• We are together to make hope happen and our future come faster, all out of love.

Now, not to scare anyone off and leave the wrong impression, as I said in an earlier post about the Movement as a whole, Climate Action Teams will not be goopy all the time, continuously emoting, sitting in a circle sharing our feelings. Action-types like me will be running for the exits.

But just as athletic teams are powered and motivated by their emotions and feelings even as they simultaneously keep their wits about them while they implement their game plan, so must we strive for such a game-winning balance, playing it cool as we take the winning shot and jumping for joy as it swooshes through the net.

Love isn’t just feelings, or even the deeper emotional component of love. Love is action. Love is also a wellspring for our humility. Love is doing what’s best for who and what you love. From deep within yourself love takes you out of yourself to nurture, protect, and defend your beloved. That is the essence of love, and it is more than deep enough to see us through. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in our CATS Subseries. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

Finally! In the recent State of the Union (SOTU) Mr. Trump said something we both agree on! I’m starting to see Mr. Trump in a whole new light.

With a little creative editing, sorta like with Trump and the Epstein Files, our views now completely align. I just borrowed Mr. Trump’s Sharpie — you know, the one he uses to redraw hurricane forecasts — and made his comments even greater.

You won’t believe how incredibly great, how hugely spectacular, how bigly stupendous, how fantastically orgasmic this never-before seen both new and improved statement truly is. It has so much truthiness in it, it’s beyond truth. Seriously. Very seriously. I mean it.

There just might be something to this “alternative facts” approach to reality. I mean, it can be really powerful, even liberating. Time to wake up! The truth is a prison.

So let’s take this alternative facts Sharpie drawn approach for a spin.

Ok, back to the SOTU. Reports are that Mr. Trump didn’t talk about climate change in his State of the Union speech, the longest in history.

Terribly and profoundly WRONG!

As you can see from the transcript above, the one improved and authorized by me, he most certainly did. Here’s my corrected, new and improved version:

What a difference a president makes. … now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world, the hottest. It’s getting bigger and bigger and stronger [climate change, obviously] . Nobody can believe what they’re watching … because I kept my promise to drill baby drill.

Now in my new and improved version Mr. Trump might have stretched the truth a little when he proudly proclaimed that the US is the hottest country. Ok, so there’s a little poetic license here. No harm, now foul.

The US may not be the hottest, but we certainly must give Mr. Trump credit for making the US — and, hey, the entire globe, come on, now — hotter. And, of course, sexier. And climate change bigger and stronger. Well that just goes along with Mr. Trump’s entire program, making things bigger and stronger. Come on!

But the lying Democrats, the lamestream media, the liberal climate hoax green scam purveyors, never want to give Mr. Trump credit for anything.

Oh, hold it, wait a minute. Seems like they do want to give Mr. Trump credit for making the world hotter and climate bigger and stronger. Hmmm …

But of course all of the lunatics with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) keep lying about Mr. Trump’s record with, you know, the truth, like how household electricity bills are up 13% since Mr. Trump took office. (Are we supposed to take US Energy and Information Administration’s word for it? Geez.)

And, of course, all these folks with TDS never smile. Stop trying to confuse us with the facts, you non-smilers!

They try to smear Mr. Trump with the truth by pointing out he has done everything he can to cancel clean energy projects that would have made electricity even cheaper.

The result?

• 173,000 good paying clean energy jobs lost or delayed.

• $61 billion in lost or delayed private investment.

• 354 projects canceled, delayed, or laying off staff.

• 14 million homes that could have been powered by this lost energy capacity.

They even point out that Mr. Trump’s and the Republican’s “Big Beautiful Bill” removed cheaper, cleaner power sources from our electricity supply while giving corporate welfare tax breaks to the fossil industry.

All these TDS people want to do is make Mr. Trump look bad by smearing him with the truth about his record. It’s sad, really. So sad.

These TDS losers have forgotten the lesson we learned in the 19th Century, that pollution equals progress. Mr. Trump’s war against clean energy and his propping up dying fossils with taxpayer money is simply another way Mr. Trump is taking us backwards so we can Make American Great Again. Why can’t these TDSers see the alternative truth? Why can’t they see how much we’re winning because of Mr. Trump?

Some have seen the light, that Trump is Mister Right. That’s why Mr. Trump was recently the proud recipient of “The Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal” award (no joke), to go along with his FIFA Peace Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize medal.

So to Make America Great Again in our Sharpie-drawn alternative-facts Trump World we must Make America Dirty Again. MAGA = MADA. MAGA is absolutely mad for MADA! That’s why Trump’s EPA has weakened air pollution regulations for mercury and other pollutants that harm kids and kill people. That’s why Trump’s Department of Energy — hereafter to be known as Trump’s Dirty Old Energy or TDOE — has forced dirty coal power plants about to retire to stay open, bragging about it in a TDOE Fact Sheet on “Beautiful Clean Coal.”

Winning, so much winning! As Mr. Trump said in his SOTU: “We’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we’re winning too much. We can’t take it anymore.”

So for all you TDS sufferers out there, time to get MADA. Time to fall in line with TDOE. Sick of the climate crisis? Sick of hearing yourself whine about pollution? MADA and Sharpie-drawn alternative facts are the cure. So get MADA and feel better. Join MAGA/MADA and revel in all the winning. So much winning we can’t take it anymore.

Once again, as Mr. Trump said in his SOTU, with a creative assist from me — I mean this is so great, it bears repeating — “What a difference a president makes. … now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world, the hottest. It’s getting bigger and bigger and stronger [climate change, obviously] . Nobody can believe what they’re watching … because I kept my promise to drill baby drill.”

Wait a minute …. Reading that again has somehow broken the alternative facts MADA spell! I’m back to sanity! Back to the real truth. Darn. It was so much more fun making sh*t up and lying my ass off.

Now, for all of you TDS sufferers out there like me, especially those driven to TDS by your concern over climate change, misery loves company. So become a part of The Climate Movement so you don’t suffer in silence! Together we can have compassion — which means “to suffer with” — for one another as we deal with our climate-induced TDS. Together we are a climate-induced TDS support group that helps one another admit we are losers when it comes to MADA-winning. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Share

Join Mvt!

In my last post in this Climate Justice Subseries I covered the first two distinctive aspects that climate justice must take into account: (1) legacy emissions and legacy pollution, and (2) the systemic aggregate nature of the problem.

This post is about the third distinctive aspect: the simultaneous erasure of margins of climate safety, such as the destructive momentum built up in the oceans.

The world is not doing well when it comes to overcoming climate change. Climate pollution continues to rise, and a just published study in one of the most respected journals suggests a significant temperature increase since 2015 — the year the international climate talks that took place in Paris affirmed the 1.5C target. At the present rate we will exceed 1.5 by 2030.1

Sobering.

Even more sobering is the fact that right now things would be much worse if we didn’t have margins of safety built into many natural systems. Whenever we increase risk, such as the increasing risk of extreme weather events, as we do with legacy emissions combined with current climate pollution, we erase natural margins of safety.

The erasure of margins of safety is especially true of the oceans, which have actually been keeping more dangerous and destructive terrestrial or land-based climate impacts at bay. They have been absorbing 90% of the heat from global warming, keeping the land much cooler than it would be, and are currently absorbing 30% of our CO2 emissions. Sadly, both are not without cost, and both have limits.

The oceans have been absorbing blows, protecting us from climate consequences, which has allowed many of us to be blithely unaware, shielding us from facing what we have wrought.

Concerning heat, as one scientist put it, “Every year about 134 million atomic bombs of heat is being trapped by the ocean. It has kept global temperatures down and kept the land livable but we have to realise that energy hasn’t gone.”

This warming is in the oceans themselves, which could have a dramatic impact on their webs of life, making survival for species at the top of the food chain much harder. Hot waters are killing plants and choral reefs where many species live. Lots of them are leaving the heated up waters of the tropics and heading towards the poles, while also trying to live further down where it is cooler, but also where there is less oxygen. In landlocked bodies of water like the Mediterranean the latter is the only option.

These heated up waters are already starting to have consequences for humanity: sea level rise due to thermal expansion; coastal inundation; intensified hurricanes; more extreme weather on land in the form of floods and droughts, and; bleached corals. All of this will lead to forced migration, food insecurity, and political and social instability, which will fall most heavily on the innocent and powerless.

Prof. Matthew England sums it up: “By absorbing all this heat, the ocean lulls people into a false sense of security that climate change is progressing slowly. … The oceans have stored the problem. But it’s coming back to bite us.”

There are also huge long-term consequences. We have already stored so much heat in the oceans that it will take hundreds of years to bring it back down. So even as our children and subsequent generations do their best to stop and even reverse global warming, it will take generations before this excess ocean heat is dealt with and planetary warming is brought back to where it should be.

And so not only are we bequeathing legacy emissions and legacy pollution, we are also bequeathing legacy ocean warming. But unlike the former, where natural climate solutions and direct air capture can suck up some of the legacy emissions, there is no known natural or technological solution for all of this ocean heat — at least none that I am aware of.

As for the cost of CO2 absorption, the creatures of the oceans are already paying the price due to the oceans becoming more acidic. The minerals used by some sea creatures to build their shells and skeletal structures — oysters, lobsters, clams, coral reefs — are being dissolved.

Without this 30% CO2 absorption buffer provided by the oceans we would have already crossed various tipping points by now. At some point, however, this margin of safety will be spent and the oceans will begin to lose their ability to absorb CO2, leading to greater warming. A recent study suggests this will happen around the turn of the century — one more thing we are taking from our children and their children.

It goes without saying that these things we are doing to the oceans are a profound violation of the Better Future Covenant and all of our Movement Values. They are another reason why we must become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in history, making the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful as we make our future come faster. This will all happen through The Catalytic-4 working together.

All of us in the Climate Movement are about stopping the bad stuff that is erasing these natural margins of climate safety.

But to set wrong right and make things better, well some of us must help the rest of us discover what we must do. It could just be that this is your Olympian Field of Action!

Where’s the hope? We’re the hope! Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in our Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

Climate Action Teams or CATS will be vital to making the Climate Movement big and broad and active enough, our first characteristic/imperative/goal.

Big and Broad Enough

Social science research tells us that 3.5% of a population can create social change. But to create the needed speed and scale of change, by 2030 we’re going to need more:

• 5% of the world’s population, or

• 400 million worldwide.

This means we need to get big fast to match the scale and speed of the challenge and make our future come faster.

We are on the kairos-climate-clock. The time is now to grow, grow, grow!

Besides your own particular Olympian Fields of Action, there are two Fields of Action on which all Climate Movement Artist-Athletes must participate for us to achieve our Major Goal: (1) growing and improving the Climate Movement itself, and; (2) public policy engagement, where we advocate for climate action, ensure implementation, and defend against attacks.

CATS and Our Top Priority

But right now and for the foreseeable future it is growing and improving the Climate Movement that should be seen as the top priority for all of us.

Why? Well, first, because it hasn’t been — at least based on my knowledge of the US context. It ain’t gotten enough love, or respect. Truth is, “grassroots organizing,” in the US, especially by most mainstream environmental organizations, isn’t taken as seriously as policy advocacy; the latter is the grown-up’s table.

For those of us in the US, and other places like us in this regard, it’s well past time to see growing the Movement for what it is: indispensably strategic.

This leads to my second point: growing and improving the Climate Movement should be seen as our top priority because doing so makes possible the big and widespread changes we are trying to achieve via public policy and through businesses.

CATS will play a major role in having The Catalytic-4 work together to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. As we in The Climate Movement become bigger and broader, the more others will join us or become Climate Action Supporters ready to push government and business leaders to be bold, including making ARTC strategic. And the bigger and broader CATS help The Climate Movement and Climate Action Supporters to be together, the greater will be our ability to create the speed and scale of change necessary and our future come faster. So making both bigger and broader are top priorities, and CATS will help us to be Artist-Athletes on the Growing-the-Movement Field of Action so we can also effectively perform on the Public-Policy-Field-of-Action.

Third, because we are light years away from achieving the goal of 5% of the population becoming Climate Movement Artist-Athletes by 2030.

Let’s take the United States. According to the US Census Bureau, by 2030 the US population will be about 355 million. Children up to five years old are projected to be 24.3 million. So let’s subtract these children from our available population to be in The Climate Movement. That leaves us with 330.7 million. Let’s round down to 330 million.

Our 5% goal would have our movement made up of 16.5 million, rounded down to 16 million.

So, 16 million in the US by 2030.

Those of us in the US have a lot of work to do!

Organizations can help with starting teams and coaching and resourcing teams. But they just won’t be able to start enough.

Given that freedom, one of our 10 Movement Values, is fundamental to a growing cause, Climate Movement Artist-Athletes must be free to start CATS of their own volition and encouraged to do so.

Now remember, not all Artist-Athletes from around the world will become part of a Climate Action Team. But we need many to do so because CATS will play a vital role in growing the Movement towards our goals of 5% or 400 million by 2030 and 10% by 2040.

The numbers needed mean we simply can’t start CATS fast enough, which dovetails nicely with our Movement Value of freedom.

Climate Action Teams are one of the greatest expressions of freedom of our time. Everyone on the planet can start or join a CAT.

You don’t need anyone’s permission. You were born with permission! It is part of your birthright as a human being.

Even in situations where governments or societies or corporate culture or any other form of social or political coercion works against Climate Action Teams, freedom still reigns to start a CAT, however covert or countercultural you must be. Because of the growing threats of authoritarianism towards democracies and the rule of law and our ability to influence our governments, CATS are a bulwark of freedom.

Every Climate Movement Artist-Athlete needs to seriously consider joining or creating a Climate Action Team, ideally of 5-10 members. Such CATS can be organized based on many factors, but usually they will revolve around things CAT members have in common, including any combination thereof, such as:

§ School

§ Job/profession

§ Organizational affiliation/membership

§ Faith community

§ Where you live

§ Shared interests

§ Age

Your Team could be — and this is coming right out of my imagination —

• the Tulsa Gardners Climate Action Team #4,

• the Shanghai Swifties For Climate Action #26,

• the Pawtucket Plumbers For Climate Action,

• the University of Toronto’s Matter Lab Climate Action Team,

• the Bulawayo Youth Climate Action Team #2,

• the Glasgow Geezers for Climate Action,

• the Canberra Square Dancers for Climate Action,

• Amazon Employees in Seattle Team #16,

• the K-pop Climate Action Team #98, or

• Barrett Elementary’s Climate Action Team #3.

But, please, don’t let the lists above impede your creativity in forming your own CAT! They are offered to spark your imagination. Come up with your own CATS “Dream Team,” and then make it a reality!

Meeting in person is always best but is in no way a requirement. Meeting online is just fine, as long as everyone can interact with everyone else in real time on a regular basis. You can’t become a team otherwise. You won’t have the cohesion you need. You won’t know what roles each of you will play at particular times. You won’t know your other Teammates well enough to recognize their gifts and abilities and call them forward.

Staying connected in all the other ways we have at our disposal, such as social media or Apps is also encouraged. But it cannot replace being together in real time.1

Just like Olympic teams, each member of a CAT has a position or role to play; each has responsibilities. The coach can’t do it all, nor can the star player. A CAT isn’t a team without each player’s active preparation and participation.

Finally, we must be broad enough so that policymakers and the populace at large perceive us to be representative of the society as a whole, a vibrant cross-section working together, another way we ensure that we can’t be suppressed, missed, or ignored.

Active Enough

Climate Action Teams are essential for making the Climate Movement not just big and broad enough, but also active enough. Why? Again we need to be all three so our story is told in a way that can’t be suppressed, missed, or ignored. Then The Climate Movement and Climate Action Supporters can push their societies to make changes at the speed and scale necessary.

So what does active enough mean?

It means we must have a constant, continual stream of visible actions taking place in every country around the world.

Why? The rest of society must be reminded constantly of the need for climate action at the speed and scale required because we are in kairos-climate time. We must achieve message saturation and values engagement within our societies.

This means that leaders and the average person are reminded regularly of the necessity of bold climate action now, and that everyone has a role to play — so much so that this is at the forefront of their hearts and minds and engages their values and connects to what they hold most dear.

So for Climate Action Teams what does being active enough look like in practice? You are free to determine this on your own. My suggestion is for the CAT to participate in an organized activity about once a month. These can be actions the CAT organizes or actions you participate in that are organized by others (e.g. a major rally in a large city).

To achieve message saturation and values engagement, all action events must have a message/values-amplification strategy. It is not enough for your event to be seen and experienced in person by those who are near the event. You must get the word out through the news media and social media.

Even if you aren’t able to generate traditional news coverage or “earned media” you can still have all of your CAT members, and as many of the other participants as possible, communicate your message and values via your social media channels with videos, pictures, audio, and text. Make it CATchy. But it doesn’t have to be purrfect.

In other words, communicate to as many people as you can utilizing as many ways as you can as creatively and effectively as you can to increase support for action, grow our Movement, and support/push action by government leaders.

The bottom line is this: without continual public actions by Climate Action Teams the Climate Movement won’t be big, broad, and active enough. And if we aren’t we won’t achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal. To join together in a CAT is to participate in one of the greatest expressions of freedom of our time.

Ours is a serious endeavor.

But we don’t have to take ourselves so seriously.

So, my friends, let all CATS unite! Let’s be CATchy together! Let’s meow in purrfect harmony!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in the broader Olympian Fields of Action series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

Mr. Trump’s illegal war with Iran has demonstrated once again the distorting influence of oil and gas on the world economy and international politics.

Besides terrorism, one of the main ways this war with Iran can do damage internationally is by disrupting the supply of oil and gas going through the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for about 20% of worldwide consumption. Major shipping companies have suspended operations until they feel safer.

What about unforeseen economic and political consequences?

Take Taiwan as an example, as illustrated by this NYTimes analysis:

Taiwan imports more than 96 percent of its energy, most of it from the Middle East. About 60 percent of Taiwan’s oil — and about a third of its natural gas — arrives by ship from countries via the Strait of Hormuz.

Any shortage of energy supplies to Taiwan could endanger the global economy, which relies on the island’s manufacturing powerhouses for semiconductors used in smartphones, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence systems. A handful of factories in Taiwan make the vast majority of the world’s advanced computer chips, and they depend on a consistent supply of electricity.

How many of us thought about computer chips and the world economy when we learned about Mr. Trump’s illegal war? Not me.

Given that no one knows when this will end, could it tip economies around the world into recessions?

Oil vs. Us

My articulation of The Climate Movement’s vision, purpose, and Major Goal is that we are working to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

Oil is against all of that.

Just on climate pollution, one scholar notes that:

By supporting their political survival, fossil fuel wealth also creates incentives for autocrats to undermine efforts to reduce emissions. Leaders of authoritarian regimes rich in fossil fuels have consistently avoided, delayed, and outright opposed both national and international climate action.

Climate change is more than enough reason to kick our oil addiction. But there’s so much more. From the perspectives of justice, democracy, the rule of law, equality, and sustainability, oil is a toxic curse.

Oil props up dictators and repressive regimes, leads to civil wars and massive amounts of corruption around the world, and exacerbates both income and gender inequality.

It also leads to underdevelopment. Nigeria is a prime example. It is Africa’s #1 oil exporter. Sadly, that has only made things worse:

despite $583 billion generated from oil exports since independence (NEITI, 2023), its development level remains one of the lowest in the world (UNDP, 2023). The oil curse theory sets three main reasons for this phenomenon: oil revenues trapped the country in a vicious cycle of economic undiversification, inequality and corruption : all of these three ‘symptoms’ undermining its development.

Furthermore, multinational oil giants have more power than most countries and are part of the rampant corruption in low-income, oil-rich countries — not to mention its corrosive political impact in rich countries.

We’re A Great Cause of Freedom

Mr. Trump’s illegal war against Iran simply reminds us of all the ways oil is a toxic curse.

That’s why being a part of The Climate Movement, working together to end climate pollution and overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything, is one of the greatest causes of freedom in human history.

To loosen the toxic grip of oil is to let freedom ring all over the world for every person and every creature that calls the Earth our home.

Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

In my introductory post of this Subseries on Climate Justice I wrote that there are five distinct aspects of climate justice that must be considered:

1. so-called legacy emissions that become legacy pollution;

2. the systemic aggregate nature of the problem;

3. the simultaneous erasure of margins of climate safety, such as the destructive momentum built up in the oceans;

4. tipping points;

5. the unjust distribution of consequences.

In this post I will discuss the first two: legacy emissions becoming legacy pollution, and the systematic aggregate nature of the problem.

1. Legacy Emissions Becoming Legacy Pollution

Two factors are important in understanding so-called CO2 legacy emissions and legacy pollution. Neither are benign, and one can lead to the other. The first increases risk of harm. The second actualizes harm.

First, in the case of climate change, anthropogenic or human-caused CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t stop trapping heat until it is removed through the carbon cycle. This means that some of the CO2 released at the start of the Industrial Revolution is still trapping heat, and some of the CO2 we release today will be trapping heat for a thousand years and more.

In other words, CO2 creates a legacy.

Second, emissions don’t become a pollution problem until a threshold is reached and harm begins to occur. (Remember: pollution is too much of something in the wrong place causing harm.)

But even before the harm threshold, legacy emissions reduce the margin of safety and increase the danger, increase the risk of exceeding the threshold, and, much worse, move us closer to tipping points. (On tipping points, see here and here.)

As such, legacy emissions violate the Better Future Covenant.

Once the harm threshold is reached, legacy emissions are transformed, so to speak, and become legacy pollution, because they are contributing to harm. The harm builds upon this legacy, so that past emissions, or legacy emissions, become legacy pollution.

Without legacy emissions there wouldn’t be a climate problem, which today is a climate crisis.

Concerning the past and the present it is too late to do the first action of justice, stopping this particular bad stuff, climate legacy pollution. It has already been emitted and is now where it shouldn’t be causing harm. The damage and the danger have already been actualized. Even if today we could miraculously stop all climate pollution, the bad stuff caused by legacy pollution would still be with us.

However, while for the past and present the harm of legacy pollution has already been baked in, and the harmful consequences we have experienced and are experiencing will continue to reverberate into the future, we can do something to help stop some of the additional new bad stuff from happening in the future due to legacy pollution.

For those of us in the Climate Movement, because we are a moral movement, because of all of our Movement Values, especially justice, we must do something.

We must; we can; we will.

In implementing our vision, purpose, and Major Goal, i.e., to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything, we should be doing all three actions of justice to help make our future come faster.

With legacy pollution we can’t stop the bad stuff that has already been baked in, impacting past, present, and future. But we can try to stop some of the future bad stuff, and we can work hard to redress the bad stuff impacts through the next two actions of justice, setting wrong right and making things better.

So how can we stop some of the future bad stuff brought about by legacy pollution?

Some good news here is that CO2 legacy pollution doesn’t have to be left up to nature on its own to clean up. There are two ways we can help by actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

First, we can work with nature through natural climate solutions, in this case sequestering carbon in trees and soils, which are referred to as sinks because, like a kitchen sink, they can temporarily store carbon. However, as the term sequester and the metaphor of a sink indicates, this storage isn’t permanent. As part of the natural carbon cycle, this carbon will return to the atmosphere once a tree dies and soil carbon is disturbed; the stopper of the sink is released and the sink is drained of its contents. However, while they temporarily store carbon, such natural climate solutions can help buy us time to ramp up everything else we need to be doing at the speed and scale necessary to achieve 1.5C with minimal overshoot while bringing atmospheric CO2 down to a level that is natural for our time.

Second, we can also suck legacy carbon out of the atmosphere through carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches like direct air capture (pictured above), and enhanced rock weatherization (pictured below), as well as new possibilities needing more R&D like marine CO2 removal (mCDR).

Some in the Climate Movement are afraid that such technologies will be used as an excuse to keep polluting. If we remain true to our vision, purpose, and Major Goal and our Movement Values we will not let that happen. But neither should we oppose these efforts. The opposite is the case. Because of the continuing and future damage of legacy pollution, we must support and encourage such solutions.

(I will have more to say about all of this in a future series of posts called “Just Suck It Up.”)

2. A Systemic Aggregate Problem

I’ve discussed the crucial fact that climate change is a systemic aggregate problem many times. Because of this, it is the Big Producers of Polluting Products and the nations who harbor them, and not individuals, who are accountable. Individuals, by definition, cannot cause or resolve systemic aggregate problems.

So individuals are not accountable for this systemic aggregate problem.

But because we can do something about it together, we are responsible for overcoming it in a way that creates justice.

Why? Two reasons:

1. the nature of the problem itself, requiring change at a speed and scale never before attempted, and

2. our Movement Values and the Better Future Covenant.

Because of speed and scale, our societies will never overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything without The Climate Movement pushing for this to become a reality. How? By ensuring that the other three Catalytic Sources of Transformation — Climate Action Supporters, ARTC, and Governments-and-Markets — play their parts. The Catalytic-4 must work together.

Together, we are indispensable, which means we are responsible.

As individuals we are responsible for playing our part in creating the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world to make our future come faster. We are responsible for not falling for the individualistic carbon footprint scam.

Rather, each of us must find our particular Olympian Fields of Action upon which we give our best and go for gold, knowing that victory for our nation and the world can only be achieved if each of us plays our part for our team.

As individuals we are responsible because this is what our Movement Values of love, justice, beauty, freedom, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability, success, and the Better Future Covenant calls us to. We are responsible to ourselves and one another to remain faithful to our best selves.

As such, we are responsible for playing our part in achieving the three actions of justice — stopping bad stuff, setting wrong right, and making things better — which includes holding the Big Producers of Polluting Products and nations most accountable to account.

In sum: climate change is a systemic aggregate problem that creates profound injustices, which due to the speed and scale of change needed to overcome climate change in a just manner requires the Climate Movement to become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world so we can push the other three Catalytic Sources of Transformation to play their parts, including holding the Big Producers of Polluting Products and nations most accountable to account.

Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, and other posts in our Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

As we continue to explore how those of us in The Climate Movement can be together enough, our sixth characteristic/imperative/goal, this post introduces a new Subseries on Climate Action Teams or CATS.

Our vision, purpose, and Major Goal are big, much too big for an individual, or a civil society group, or a CAT, or an organization, or a coalition, or a climate-friendly business, or even a nation. That’s why we must grow the Climate Movement into the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world.

But our Movement can’t be made up of just individuals and environmental/conservation/climate organizations, even individuals connected to such organizations. Nor can we get the job done through existing civil society/volunteer organizations, associations, the organized units of faith communities, coalitions, or climate-friendly businesses.

In short, all of the ways we can be together enough that we have explored thus far will be insufficient for us to play our part in creating speed and scale, and to do so while establishing justice and enhancing wellbeing for everyone and everything.

To stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better, to make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our future come faster, our Movement also must be made up of volunteer Teams.

With Climate Action Teams or CATS we can be all that we need to be: big and broad and active enough, passionate enough, deep enough, dynamic enough, organic and strategic enough, together enough, and long enough. Without Teams, we won’t. It’s that simple.

CATS meet regularly to support each other in our sustained commitment to collective action over time to achieve our Major Goal.

As such, CATS do three basic things:

1) We meet.

2) We support.

3) We act.

CATS are essential to having us come together regularly. And coming together regularly, being together enough, is key to having us be all that we need to be, both as individuals and as the Movement as a whole.

And boy do we need the support.

When we meet we do one simple thing to support one another right off the bat. We break what I call the Climate Talk Taboo.

In the US this Taboo may be the worst, given how opponents have successfully made talk of climate change controversial, falsely framing it as a “political” subject, as in “Let’s not talk politics at the dinner table.”

In a Yale/George Mason poll from Fall 2025 we find that only one in five (20%) say they discuss global warming with family and friends either “every day” (1%), “a few times a week” (5%), or “a few times a month” (15%).

But recently this taboo has become more toxic, as hope-stealing Climate Silencers have not simply made climate an uncomfortable topic of conversation. They have added public intimidation, legal action, and threats of persecution.

Friends, it’s simple. We won’t make it if we don’t break the Climate Talk Taboo and defy the hope-stealing Climate Silencers. We won’t make it if we aren’t together enough through CATS.

Just like Olympic athletes have family, coaches, trainers, backers, and teammates to support them, we need encouragement and help and cooperation from others we see regularly. Without support from other Climate Action Artist-Athletes, most of us simply won’t make it. We won’t be all we need to be for as long as we need to be without the support of others who are on the same journey. We must help one another to use all that we are in service of something greater than ourselves — because you will never be fully yourself until you do.

We must help one another to live in and live out our Ten Movement Values: love, justice, beauty, freedom, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability, and success.

We meet so we can support so we can act — act until the job is done. We meet so we can join our gifts and abilities with the gifts of others to do more than we could alone. And in the doing and becoming we need support to see it through.

For the Climate Movement to become what it needs to be — the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world — we need Climate Action Teams. We need CATS.

Before you become a part of a CAT you must first become a part of the Climate Movement. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in the Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

Ok, you see that text above in aqua blue. Read it and let it sink in. It’s from a just-published peer-reviewed journal article by eight prominent climate scientists who work in the US, Germany, Denmark, and Austria.

When I talk about “overcoming climate change,” this is what I’m wanting to get us as far away from as we possibly can. I don’t want us anywhere “uncertain tipping thresholds.” I don’t want us crossing them and committing us “to a hothouse trajactory with long-lasting and potentially irreversible consequences.”

Yea, we don’t want that.

That’s why for years I have defined overcoming climate change as this: to keep warming to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, or with minimal overshoot that is quickly brought back down; we then continue to reduce beyond 1.5C to a level that is natural for our time.

The 1992 Rio Climate Treaty, from which all of the international negotiations or COPs flow from, said we are working “to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

That means avoiding what the text in aqua blue above says we’re starting to do. We’re starting have the climate depart “from the stable conditions that supported human civilization for millennia.” This is a profound violation of our Better Future Covenant with our children and subsequent generations.

Concerning the three actions of justice — stopping bad stuff, setting wrong right, and making things better — this GHG/temperature goal is focused exclusively on the first, stopping bad stuff.

I have argued that we should do the first action of justice, stopping the bad stuff, stopping the aqua blue stuff, in ways that help us do the second and third actions of justice, set wrong right and make things better. (For more on justice, see my Hope & Justice Series.)

We definitely can’t achieve justice if we are not stopping the bad stuff. That means stopping the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from fossil pollution and deforestation that will help stop the temperature increase driving climate impacts so that we stop those consequences.

The Findings of Ripple and Colleagues and the Tipping Point Window

According to these prominent scientists here’s our current situation:

Today, global temperatures are as warm as, or warmer than, any period in the last 125,000 years and it is likely that carbon dioxide levels are higher than at any time in at least the past two million years.

And

the Paris Agreement formalized the aim of limiting warming to 1.5◦C above preindustrial levels, yet global temperatures have recently breached this limit for 12 consecutive months, coinciding ,with record-breaking heat, wildfires, floods, and other extremes. … climate model simulations suggest the recent 12-month breach may indicate th[e] long-term average is at or near 1.5◦C.

And

A central concern is the activation of climate tipping elements … Tipping may already be underway or could occur soon for the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, boreal permafrost, mountain glaciers, and parts of the Amazon rainforest. These processes could raise global temperatures, accelerate sea-level rise, release vast stores of carbon, and destabilize ecosystems. The precise threshold temperatures remain uncertain, but research shows that crossing one or more of these thresholds could trigger self-reinforcing processes … If one element tips, it can trigger a cascade effect, pushing other systems past their thresholds. Such tipping cascades have the potential to drive self-sustaining climate change adding to the risk of triggering a hothouse Earth trajectory (emphasis added).

And

In short, we may be approaching a perilous threshold, with rapidly dwindling opportunities to prevent dangerous and unmanageable climate outcomes.

Their two graphs above from their Figure 3, which I’ve written on and modified by placing these two possibilities side by side, illustrates that we are moving ever closer to a “Tipping Point Window” — something we don’t want to enter into. That’s because we don’t know where a tipping point that could create a cascade of tipping points is in this Tipping Point Window.

In this case, as pictured in the graph on the right, sooner is bad. A cascade-causing-tipping-point happening sooner would push us into a “Hothouse Earth.” But, if we’re lucky, a later one gives us time to back out of the Tipping Point Window danger zone and return ourselves to a safer climate zone.

So, let me sum up:

• more bad stuff is happening now,

• we may already be at or near our temperature avoidance goal of 1.5C,

• we may be closer than we thought to tipping points we don’t want tipped and a runaway train of climate consequences we don’t want to imagine in a hellscape they call Hothouse Earth.

Yikes.

Bottom Line: We want to stay out of the Tipping Point Window altogether because we don’t want to be playing Russian Roulette with our future, hoping we get lucky even as we put more bullets in the gun.

Climatic Pasts, Possible Futures

Let’s take a look at their Figure 1 pictured below, modified by me. It shows over one million years of global temperature history, with 275 future years out to 2300 tacked on over on the right. As you can see, the development of agriculture and human civilizations took place during a period of very stable climate in comparison to preceding climates.

But we’re pushing ourselves and the rest of nature out of this stable zone that is colored yellow. Over on the right, we’re currently in the orange shaded area, instead of in the safe yellow area where we should be.

If it were just about temperature increases from GHGs we release, then I’m confident we won’t see the temp increases in red. Not gonna happen.

But it isn’t just about a linear GHG-temp calculation. We’re tampering with non-linear, dynamic, interrelated ecological/geological/climate systems that create a variety of tipping points. The wrong combination could create a self-propelled tipping point cascade.

And then we’re no longer in charge of our future. We won’t avoid the red zone in the graph, above, that Ripple et al call a “Hothouse Earth.”

Well, screw that.

Realistic Hope and Urgency

Some of you may be thinking: “Geez. With all this bad news, where’s the good news? Ok, hope-guy, where’s the hope? Where’s one of your snappy one-liners to make me feel better?”

I’m not here to give folks a feel-good hope fix.

As I said in my second post, what I’m offering is realistic hope. Only on realistic hope can we build our Climate Movement. If we don’t have a realistic understanding of our situation, what we’re faced with, we can’t change it. We gotta see it to solve it.

We must understand the urgency for us to make our future come faster at the speed and scale necessary to overcome this threat by creating a clean energy transformation and a relationship of balance and harmony with the rest of nature that keeps us out of the Tipping Points Window.

Creating Our Vision: The Catalytic-4 Can Lead the Way

We don’t want our future to be based on luck, with the odds loaded against us. We want to stay away from that.

We want it based on our vision, purpose, and major goal: to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

Even though time is running out, we still have time to stay out of the Tipping Point Window.

Where does our realistic hope come from? Given our reality, where’s the hope?

Let’s zoom in on my modified version of Ripple et al’s Figure 1:

You can see that I’ve drawn a green arrow. It’s pointing to where we are right now, our current point in time. I’ve also written, “The Catalytic-4 can keep us safe.” From our current point in time Ripple et al’s graph has three black dashed lines representing three possible temperature trajectories. The lowest one keeps us in the orange, the second has us going from orangish-red to red, and the third is all red.

The lowest one is the only one of their trajectories that will keep us out of the Tipping Points Window, the Danger Zone.

How do we stay safe? The Catalytic-4, working together, can keep us safe — even have us moving back towards the yellow. I’ve illustrated that by adding a fourth trajectory represented by green dashes. This is our Catalytic-4 trajectory.

As a reminder, The Catalytic-4 are:

1. The Climate Movement

2. Climate Action Supporters (i.e. popular support for climate action)

3. ARTC or the accelerating rate of tech change

4. Governments-&-Markets.

As I’ve discussed before (e.g. here and here), 2-4 are already poised to play their roles.

• In most countries support for climate action is above or close to our goal of 80% popular support.

• ARTC has already created most of the tech we need.

• Governments-&-Markets have created conditions where profits and price are working in our favor.

It’s The Climate Movement that must up its game. The Climate Movement is indispensable for ensuring speed and scale, accomplished by pushing the other three to fulfill their climate action potential and by creating Catalytic-4 Strategic Synergy.

Social science research has shown that 3.5% of a population can create social change. Well, given our challenge, by 2030 I think we need 5%, or 400 million worldwide and 16 million in the US.

So if we want to stay out of the Tipping Points Window and follow the green dashes and get us back into the yellow, The Climate Movement must pull our destiny into the present and become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world. And we must do so sooner. And we can.

That’s why the most strategic thing we can be doing right now is growing and improving The Climate Movement.

In the section of their article titled “Moving Forward,” Ripple and colleagues write:.

While the exact risk is uncertain, it is clear that current climate commitments, which have us on track for roughly2.8◦C peak warming by 2100, are insufficient and greater climate mitigation efforts are needed.

No kidding.

That’s why, together, we will make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our future come faster. Ours is a time for regular folk to become heroes together. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Share

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

Note: This is the first post in an 7-part Subseries on Climate Justice.

Preamble: Three Things to Keep In Mind

Before we begin our exploration of the climate justice dimension, let me remind us of three quick points concerning the relationship between hope and justice more broadly.

First, remember that hope and justice are a virtuous circle. Because justice is what we hope for, achieving justice creates hope, which in turn inspires more efforts to create justice.

Second, part of achieving justice is finding clarity on what we mean by each of the five dimensions of justice, in this case what we mean by climate justice. Such clarity helps us see what we are striving for, allowing us to figure out how to achieve it, generating hope in the process.

Third, the Climate Movement is a moral movement; we are about right and wrong. It is this combined with our numbers that give us power to make change. Justice is at the very center of this right-and-wrong understanding of who we are. Justice is moral power. Understanding what makes us powerful, claiming and realizing our power to create a better world and help make our just future come faster, creates hope to carry us forward.

And now for our discussion about climate justice.

Climate Justice: One of Five Dimensions

For some in the Climate Movement the words “climate justice” cover all five dimensions of justice we are discussing:

• Generational

• Distributive

• Environmental

• Climate

• Nature.

In other words, for these folks wherever climate intersects with justice, that’s climate justice.

However, for others of us it means something more specific. That’s why, in this justice context, I use the term “climate” for one of the five dimensions, keeping in mind that they are all interrelated, and that when we say we want a just and prosperous sustainability, all five dimensions of justice are included.

As I have previously discussed, to achieve the desires and demands of justice through these dimensions we must do the three actions of justice on our Olympian Fields of Action:

1. stop bad stuff,

2. set wrong right,

3. make things better.

There is no Field of Action where we are not striving for justice. As such, on every Field we are creating moral power.

Climate Justice: Five Distinctive Aspects

But before looking at how we must work to achieve climate justice through the three actions of justice, we must summarize five distinctive aspects of climate change that discussions about climate justice must address:

1. so-called legacy emissions that become legacy pollution;

2. the systemic aggregate nature of the problem;

3. the simultaneous erasure of margins of climate safety, such as the destructive momentum built up in the oceans;

4. tipping points;

5. the unjust distribution of consequences.

While all five of the dimensions of justice are interrelated, it needs to be highlighted here that all five of these distinctive climate justice aspects have strong intertemporal and intergenerational ties.

Viewed more broadly, these aspects, while distinctive, are not unique to climate change. But the consequences they help create certainly are unique in the history of humanity. Tipping points are especially worrisome, creating a specter of the greatest injustice ever perpetrated on subsequent generations and the rest of the natural world.

Finally, as with all five of the dimensions of justice, with climate justice we must always keep in mind who has been, is being, and will be treated unjustly: the poor, the powerless and less powerful, the marginalized, the vulnerable, and today’s children and subsequent generations. These are the ones for which justice demands that we stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better as we make our future come faster and our world more beautiful. (See my posts on The Who of Justice for a fuller discussion.)

Exploring climate justice involves a deep and rich conversation. To give you a sense of my contribution, here’s the outline of this Subseries:

Post #8.0 — Climate Justice: Introduction (this post)

Post #8.1 — Legacy Emissions, Legacy Pollution, and the Systemic Aggregate Nature of the Problem

Post #8.2 — Erasure of Margins of Climate Safety

Post #8.3 — Tipping Points

Post #8.4 — Unjust Distribution of Consequences

Post #8.5 — Achieving Climate Justice by Stopping Bad Stuff and Setting Wrong Right

Post #8.6 — Achieving Climate Justice by Making Things Better

Remember: hope and justice are a virtuous circle. The five distinctive aspects of climate justice help give us clarity on what we are joining together to overcome. Ours is a time for regular folk to become heroes together. Nothing less than greatness is our calling. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in this Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.

Subscribe now

Join Mvt!

Businesses As The Good Guys and Gals

We discussed business foes in our last post.

What about other businesses? Can there be legitimate climate-friendly businesses?

Not only are there such businesses, including the clean energy industry and the clean energy storage industry (e.g. batteries) and those implementing net-zero commitments, but they have been and will be essential to achieving our Major Goal. (I’ve already discussed business coalitions here.)

It is through businesses — innovators, producers, buyers, sellers — that most implementation will take place.

Hold it. In previous posts I have argued that the Invisible Hand will never be able to play a part in overcoming climate change because of the Five-P’s.

1. Its chief, overriding motive for is Profit.

2. Profits within a competitive market system are driven in large part by Price.

3. Profits and price are focused on the Present, not the future.

4. Polluters and Producers of Polluting Products don’t

5. Pay anything for the pollution, dumping it into our environment for free, thus not reflecting the full cost in the price paid by consumers, depriving them of the information they need to make an informed choice.

And yet I’ve also argued that markets are already playing a vital role because profits and price now favor clean energy. To recap:

1. The green/climate economy has surpassed $5 trillion annually and will exceed $7 trillion by 2030.

2. To achieve 1.5C by 2050 — our temperature reduction goal — about 75% of needed mitigation efforts are cost competitive today (55%) or nearly so (20%).

3. Morgan Stanley reports that 86% of asset owners and 79% of asset managers surveyed in September 2025 expected they would continue to grow their climate/sustainability investments, up from 80% of owners and 78% of managers in 2024 (see graph, above).

4. Two charts (below) from the World Resources Institute (WRI) utilizing data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) clearly shows clean energy investments and jobs are going up, up, up, while the fossils are going down, down, down.

5. National and regional economies (e.g., the US, EU, South Africa) and major companies around the world (e.g. Apple, IKEA, Volvo) have decoupled economic growth from climate pollution. No longer does growth have to mean more pollution. In fact, the opposite is the case.

We’ve gotta beat bad with better, and we’ve got better.

What gives? How did profits and price become so favorable? It happened because the four Catalytic Sources of Transformation worked for decades to make it so. As I put it:

Climate action and clean energy advocates and supporters of both, ARTC, and governments have worked for decades to create these market conditions in the Present. It certainly has been a patchwork and a somewhat irregular affair. But they’ve gotten us here.

Governments-&-Markets: The Fourth Catalytic Source of Transformation

The fourth of The Catalytic-4 is Governments-&-Markets. The hyphens I’ve placed to connect them are there to emphasize that they must work together to play their part. “Governments” is put first because they must find ways to make markets achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal. This could result from a wide variety of government policies: incentives, taxes, regulations, mandates, codes, standards, public-private partnerships.

But to achieve the needed speed and scale of change, The Climate Movement, bolstered by Climate Action Supporters, must push governments to make the accelerating rate of tech change or ARTC strategic, and structure markets to achieve our purpose.

In keeping with our Movement Values of freedom and creativity, governments should use the least amount of power necessary to get the job done. Sometimes that could mean being quite forceful and directive, especially given the speed and scale of our challenge.

We must not hesitate to use government power when needed. To stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better and our future come faster, we cannot let free-market ideologues and those motivated by greed bully politicians and policymakers from using government power when it is called for.

Remember, as I said in part one of this two-part Subseries, we can determine business friends from foes by: (1) their profit motive, and; (2) the ideology, i.e., the ideas that shape behavior, of key decision-makers.

In stark contrast to our business foes — free-market ideologues and those driven by greed who don’t care about climate consequences — there are many people around the world working to have Governments-and-Markets play an indispensable part in achieving our Major Goal.

Instead of profits and the ideas that shape our behavior working against us, what we need to continue to do is make profits and behavior-shaping ideas work for us.

Instead of profiting from the causes of the problem, we must accelerate the shift to profiting from the solutions. We must make profits serve efforts to keep warming to 1.5 with minimal overshoot.

Instead of a rigid free-market ideology and greed, we must be guided by our Movement Values and seek to attain the behavior-shaping ideas contained in our vision, purpose, and Major Goal — a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

To make our future come faster, we need to continue to structure markets with government power so that businesses and their customers can do well by doing good, thereby stopping the bad stuff, setting wrong right, and making things better, creating beauty, enhancing freedom, and bringing sustainability into existence.

In short, we need markets working for us, but they must be molded and shaped to do so.

The Business of Climate Movement Artist-Athletes

What does all of this mean for Climate Movement Artist-Athletes?

As I have argued, for us to achieve our Major Goal, as individuals most of us must be a part of collective entities or social forms that are engaged in climate action. We will never embody our seven characteristics/imperatives/goals (see below) without such social forms. And we won’t achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal unless we embody these characteristics — including being together enough.

For many people on the planet, the one social form they are most involved in (besides their families) is where they work. There are many fields of climate action upon which we can perform. Where we work can be one of them.

We’ve All Got a Job to Do

It all leads to this: Climate Movement Artist-Athletes who work for a business: it’s your job, if you are able, to work with others at your place of employment to make the business work for us; it’s your job to help grow the Movement by encouraging your colleagues to join us. It’s your job to find ways for your business to support and create the needed synergy of The Catalytic-4.

If for some reason you can’t do these things you might consider finding another job where you can. If you can’t, then use wisdom to discern how you can advance our cause from within without creating resistance. Become wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove.

Climate Action Supporters: it’s your job to support Climate Movement Artist-Athletes leading the charge within your business, and strongly consider becoming an Artist-Athlete yourself.

Climate Movement Artist-Athletes and Supporters within businesses: You are vital. You are strategic. We need you working from within.

It’s very simple: without you we can’t make our future come faster and overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances the wellbeing of everyone and everything.

But just like all Climate Artist-Athletes and Supporters, we need you on the outside, too, on the two Olympian Fields of Action we all participate on: growing and improving The Climate Movement and pushing for public policies that will achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal.

For the rest of us, we have our job, too: as citizens and consumers we must create the conditions that lead to businesses working for us.

And so we see that the two Fields of Action upon which we all must engage — (1) growing and improving the movement and (2) engaging policymakers — are also to be found within and intersecting with the business space.

We must be striving from the inside and the outside to have businesses working for us instead of against us. And we will achieve this when we have both the profit motive and behavior-shaping ideas such as our vision, purpose, and Major Goal becoming a symbiosis that makes a major contribution to achieving them.

Because profits and price now favor clean energy systems in many situations, what The Climate Movement must push for is the needed speed and scale. That’s our job.

One of the things we can do in our businesses is create Climate Action Teams to support each other— one social form nesting in another. (I will discuss Climate Action Teams in more depth in the next Subseries in this Olympian Fields of Action Series.)

We’ve all got a job to do because we are the hope we’ve been waiting for. We are at work making the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our future come faster. Join us!

Join Mvt!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, and other posts in this Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.