By Jim Miller, The Jumping-Off Place
Also published in The Jumping-Off Place
What to do? Unite for Climate March on Saturday, May 3rd at 11am at Waterfront Park
For anyone with even a causal interest in climate activism, it has been clear since the election of Donald Trump that the only place where any proactive policy on climate might be enacted is at the municipal and state level as the Trump administration has stacked every single federal agency with climate deniers and oil and gas industry representatives. As the President pushes for more and more extraction of fossil fuels, even advocating for a move back to dirty coal, environmentalists and their allies have been looking to city measures and state laws, like the “polluter pays” bill that creates a climate superfund making its way through the California legislature, to fight back.
Last week, taking a page right out of Project 2025, Trump signed yet another questionable executive order designed to halt any form of climate-friendly policy from taking root in the states. As the Guardian reported:
In a Tuesday executive order, Trump instructed the Department of Justice to “stop the enforcement” of state climate laws, which his administration has suggested are unconstitutional or otherwise unenforceable.
The president called out New York and Vermont, both of which have passed “climate superfund” laws requiring major fossil fuel companies to help pay for damages from extreme weather.
This is a deeply anti-democratic but strategic move meant to blunt “municipalities’ climate action, which serve a crucial role in counterbalancing Trump’s anti-environmental agenda.” Clearly, there will be legal pushback from states and cities, but this latest gambit illustrates just how relentlessly the administration and its allies on the right and in corporate America want to kill the climate movement, since it represents a profound threat to both their destructive war on the environment and to the deep economic inequality that is both a driver and a product of catastrophic climate change.
Any governmental effort that would effectively address the climate crisis would inevitably restrict corporate power and private ownership of the commons that many amongst our current crop of overlords think they have a divine right to. It is, as Naomi Klein put it, capitalism versus the climate, the enrichment of the few versus the health and well-being of the many.
Don’t be confused by the corporate pushback to tariffs. While Wall Street may not be bullish on the uncertainty that Trump’s crazy tariff war creates, the moneyed interests are all over the possibility of a world where ordinary people have no real ability to check their excesses or make them pay any price for the “externalities” of fossil fuel extraction and consumption.
Thus, in the minds of the current regime, it is not only policies that threaten corporate power which need to be eliminated, but even the ability to gain accurate knowledge about our situation that might impact public opinion or give ammunition to the climate movement. Again, the Guardian observed this dire news last week:
Every four years, the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is required by Congress to release a new national climate assessment to ensure leaders understand the drivers of – and threats posed by – global warming. It is the most comprehensive, far-reaching and up-to-date analysis of the climate crisis, playing a key role in local and national decision making about agriculture, energy production, and land and water use.
The next assessment is due by 2027. But now, Nasa has ended its contract with the consulting firm ICF International, which convened the USGCRP and coordinated the federal agencies that contribute to the quadrennial report.
“There’s really no coming back from this, and it means we are all less informed about climate impacts, and won’t have the most up-to-date information on risks and threats,” said one federal staffer who was engaged in USGCRP activities, and who requested anonymity to avoid retribution. “USGCRP helped me to leverage resources from other agencies for use in my own work. But without these networks, I’m left without a support system and the latest science on climate change.”
Why do this? Knowledge is power and an informed public is dangerous for any oligarchy. Hence, the need to eliminate the truth and defund research. You can’t lose an argument about policy that you know you are likely to lose if you don’t have to acknowledge that the issue at stake even exists. It’s the very definition of Orwellian. Just toss the climate crisis down the memory hole and poof! it’s gone.
This may seem suicidal, but that’s only if you think in terms that bring the human and environmental costs of greed into the equation. Sadly, that is not part of our dystopian story right now. What we don’t know might greatly harm us, but as long as there is money to be made destroying the world, the plutocrats are pretty chill about it.
In this case, U.S. banks are betting against our ability to ever reach our climate goals while looking to get even richer by investing in air conditioning as the rest of us cook. The ugly reality underlying all of this is that the bulk of the billionaire class knows they and perhaps their children have the means to adapt to catastrophic climate change even as it unleashes untold horrors upon the rest of the globe.
The stark truth we are facing is that, for our current ruling class, a future of north/south geopolitical conflict, deep class polarization nationally, and a myriad of, as one Trump minion put it, “the side effects of civilization” be damned as long as the bottom line comes out in favor of the rich. Any response to our current moment that looks away from this central fact is a fool’s errand.
Winning an election that does not seek to upend this dynamic and establish thoroughgoing democracy with real checks on moneyed interests will not result in a better future. But if there is one silver lining in this current crisis, it is that it offers us an opportunity to reevaluate the meaning of democracy and advocate for a real one that can save the future.
Want to raise your voice about the climate crisis? Join San Diego 350’s Unite for Climate March on Saturday, May 3rd at 11am at Waterfront Park.