Bill McKibben on Climate Activism in the Age of Trump 2.0

[Brenda]

(Warning - there's a photo of Chump within the article, but still worth reading the whole interview)

By Elizabeth Kolbert • March 3, 2025

In the first six weeks of the new Trump administration, it’s become clear that the president intends to undo not just Joe Biden’s environmental legacy, but an entire generation’s worth of action on climate change. The administration has announced it is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. It has frozen Inflation Reduction Act grants, stopped issuing permits for offshore wind development, and declared an “energy emergency” to boost fossil fuel production. The White House appears to be preparing to go after the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” which undergirds EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, while cutting EPA spending by 65 percent.

Elizabeth Kolbert: If you care about the future of the planet, what do you do at a time like this?

Bill McKibben: I think it’s fair to despair a little bit. I mean, we should acknowledge what a remarkable moment it is that the government of the most powerful country on Earth, at least for the moment, is rejecting flat-out the science that’s been developed over many decades, often by scientists working for the government, about the single most dangerous thing that’s ever happened in human history. And the level of irresponsibility, indeed just craziness, is off the charts.

Kolbert: The moratorium that the Biden administration put on export permits for liquefied natural gas was a big climate win. You were very much a part of that. But now Trump seems to be using the threat of tariffs to get countries to increase their liquefied gas imports from the U.S.
McKibben: This scares me a ton. It’s one thing for us to derail our own energy future, and it’s another to try and derail everybody else with what is essentially a shakedown. My guess is that it’ll work in the short run, and it’ll backfire in the long run. Europeans have figured out in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine that it was foolish to be dependent on the good graces of Vladimir Putin for their energy supply. Anyone who puts themselves more under the thumb of Donald Trump than they need to is a fool.

We’re gearing up to do this big national day of action in September. It’s called Sun Day. I think it’s going to be a huge celebration of possibility. And I think that that’s more dangerous right now to the MAGA agenda. They depend on people staying in a fearful crouch, convinced that whatever they have is under threat from somebody. And the idea of Sun Day, instead, is that we’re on the edge of this extraordinary possibility for solar. I’m excited about figuring out how we do huge parades of e-bikes, and inaugurate dozens of community solar farms, and have thousands of Americans opening their homes so their neighbors can see their heat pumps. And get millions of people who already have solar panels to put a green light in the window that night to tell everybody that they’re powered by the sun.

I sense in everyone’s despair and upset — all of which is completely justified and correct — a sort of hunger for some kind of joyful possibility, for something to rally around as well as stuff to rally against.

A solar plant built in the Navajo Nation, Kayenta, Arizona. Brandon Bell / Getty Images

After decades of using a gas range I bought an induction one last summer (love it very much) in part to get the IRA's rebate. No small thing, about $800. But now Chump is cancelling it. I betcha a lot of MAGA were expecting some rebates, too.

First I heard of Sun Day - will look into that.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/bill-mckibben-interview