Climate Movement: It’s Phoenix Time
First Take: From Trump’s Climate Policy Destruction We Will Rise to Triumph
Oh, they’re probably popping champaign corks, maybe doing a lame version of the Snoopy dance. Whatever.
My Climate Movement friends, let me state this right at the beginning before delving into the darkness: it’s Phoenix time. Time to rise from these ashes.
They might see it as their crowning achievement.
I see it differently. I see it as the spark that can help to light the torch of resistance as we find our way out of this morass and into the light. I see it as what can jump-start us out of being stalled with no momentum; dead in the water. Out of the remnants of the destruction they have wrought I see us rising like a Phoenix.
They think they’ve won. But theirs is a pyrrhic victory that will leave the taste of ashes in their mouths. They are tap dancing on their own graves. That’s because what they’ve really done is launch us towards ultimate triumph.
A Perfect Storm of Climate Policy Destruction
What I’m talking about is the Trump EPA’s withdrawal of the so-called “endangerment finding” — the scientific basis justifying regulation under the Clean Air Act of greenhouse gases (GHGs) as a threat to human health. This finding underpins all of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) regulatory efforts on GHGs like carbon dioxide.
Truth is, it’s hard to put into words how bad the Trump Administration is on climate change and clean energy more broadly. We have a narcissist who proclaims climate a hoax and clean energy a scam. He must do whatever it takes to prove he’s right to maintain the Potemkin Village he’s created to fool himself so his fragile ego won’t crack. The anti-climate true believers within his administration are milking Trump’s narcissism for all it’s worth. I’m sure they’re reveling in their moment in the dark.
It’s as perfect a storm of policy destruction as we’ll ever see by people who are literally insane — trying to get back to some fake-glory fossil fueled past, trying to do over what will never be again. They’ll keep doing it trying to get their demented death-dealing fantasy to become reality. And in the process they are turning the US into a second rate power, a laughing stock the world over.
They are trying to be dwellers in a past that never was. As Heather Cox Richardson noted:
In a ceremony at the White House yesterday (2/12/26), surrounded by coal industry leaders, lawmakers, and miners, President Donald J. Trump was presented with a trophy that calls him “the undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal.” At the event, Trump signed an executive order directing the Defense Department to buy billions of dollars of power produced by coal and decried “the Radical Left’s war on the industry.” Anna Betts of The Guardian noted that Trump also announced the Department of Energy will spend $175 million to “modernize, retrofit, and extend” the life of coal-fired power plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kentucky.
Fossil corporate welfare at its finest, exposing for all the world to see that coal is no longer competitive in a market that was never “free.” For over a century the fossils have been recipients of corporate welfare in a market designed for them.
But what these past dwellers can’t see is that we are the ones making our future into reality.
As far as the clean energy transition is concerned, they’re only slowing it down a bit in the US, diminishing our economic competitiveness and wellbeing, while the rest of the world moves forward. We’ll keep reducing GHGs, too, as the Axios graph from Rhodium’s analysis shows.
Problem is, overcoming climate change demands more than a transition. We need speed and scale. We need a transformation. The world is not on track and we need the US government to play a constructive role. But what we get is stupidity and arrogance and mendacity.
Of course the withdrawal of the EPA endangerment finding will be challenged in court.
If/when this endangerment finding case gets to the Supreme Court I have less than zero confidence they’ll do the right thing. They’ve already set the stage with recent rulings. As Trump’s EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, said at their endangerment celebration: “We looked at what the highest court in the land had said, and we used a very simple metric: If Congress didn’t authorize it, E.P.A. shouldn’t be doing it.”
The Supreme Court is now simply politics by another means, driven by a radical right political ideology and fundamentalist faux interpretive theories (originalism/textualism). The most radical members believe in their own self-righteousness even as they trash the Court’s reputation with their ethical violations and utter disregard for precedent. In other words, they are acting as if they are above the law.
In the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 Congress addressed a key legal argument of our opponents against action by explicitly defining GHGs as an “air pollutant.” No matter. In the end, whether the most radical members get their majority to repeal the landmark 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA ruling saying the EPA had the authority to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act, or whether the less-radical radicals have their majority take a less in-your-face approach and gut it, makes nary a difference.
To sum up, here’s the gist of our situation in the US: all three branches are against us at the federal level. In this grim Trump time, no wonder that more broadly American optimism has shrunk to an all-time low according to Gallup.
Some around the world are foolishly following Trump’s lead. A recent Axios post puts these pathetic pieces together, calling it “The World’s Great Climate Collapse.” It suggests that “The last year has seen an epic reversal that spread quickly from governments to boardrooms to pop culture.”
Our Moral and People Power Will Propel the Passage of Strong Climate Laws
There has never been a greater need for leadership from The Climate Movement in the US and around the world.
There’s only one thing to do: defeat our opponents and achieve victory through our two great powers: our moral power and our people power. With these powers we will push for climate action at every level of government in the US and comparable levels the world over — school boards, city councils, county commissions, public utility commissions, state courts, state legislatures and governors.
In the US we will also retake Congress in this year’s elections and then the presidency in 2028 and we will pass strong climate laws, including one that unambiguously requires the EPA to regulate GHGs as part of our overall approach to overcome climate change by keeping warming to 1.5C.
We have the moral power: our cause is just, our cause is what love calls us to.
We don’t yet have the people power.
Combining Our Fury with Our Movement Values to Create Moral and People Power
Sometimes causes pump up their opposition into villains to rally the team. Well, they’ve pumped themselves up. It would be hard to think of anything worse than this bunch.
They have made us angry, and we should do something useful and constructive with that anger. It’s time to rally together. Time to push back. Time to have our fury turn us into a powerful and beautiful Phoenix.
But we must recognize that anger will never get us all the way to where we need to be. Our Ten Movement Values will do that. We won’t let our opponents turn us into pale imitations of them. We’ll stay true to ourselves. It’s imperative for us to maintain our moral power.
As such, it’s time to live in and live out our Ten Movement Values:
love,
sustainability, and
Minneapolis is showing us the way: non-violent resistance, organizing for justice, strength from togetherness, moral and people power melting the masked power of injustice hiding behind a badge. Immigration, climate change — different bullies, same leader.
As we live in and live out our Movement Values it’s also time to become our seven Movement characteristics/imperatives/goals:
We especially need to lean into the first, becoming big and broad and active enough. Social science research says a movement made up of 3.5% of a population can be successful.
Our goal is 5% by 2030, or 400 million worldwide and 16 million in the US.
That’s why growing and improving The Climate Movement is our Olympian Field of Action where we all come together, where we all participate, where we all must make our contribution. It’s the most strategic thing we can be doing right now.
Our outrage, our fury, combined with our Movement Values, will help us become what we are destined to be: the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world. Together we are making the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our just and prosperous future come faster.
It’s our kairos-climate-time. There has never be a time more urgent for you to join us or invite others to join us. Our opponents have had their day. But the future belongs to us. Join us!
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