We're talking about nearly a half billion fellow humans dealing with unprecedented heat

https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1672535526073565186

@billmckibben @CherylBozarth The advantages of elevated CO2 for agriculture are even more important. Rising CO2 levels have raised global crop yields by at least 20%, and helped mitigate drought risks, which greatly improves global food security.
sealevel.info/learnmore.html…

Since this once-spunky-if-odd website seems destined to collapse in on itself in the days ahead, becoming a black hole occupied by people who think the globe is cooling, polio wouldn't be so bad, and being awake is a terrible fate, I feel like getting a few things out while I can So: Libraries are amazing. We have socialism for books, and it works.

I think this is the most important set of climate numbers I've come across in a decade. They are a Rosetta Stone for understanding why banks and the financial system are at the center of the crisis.
Right now capitalism is a suicide machine.
newyorker.com/news/daily-com… Here is the companion piece that makes it clear it's not just @Google and @Apple and @Microsoft whose money drives the crisis--it's all of ours as well billmckibben.substack.com/p/your-money-i…

HARVARD JUST DIVESTED FROM FOSSIL FUELS.
Because great activists never let up.
They don't use the word 'divestment,' but they said they have no direct investments left, will make no new ones, and that their indirect investments are in 'runoff mode' and will be allowed to expire Yes, it's messy, and somewhat incomplete--the wonderful campaigners @DivestHarvard have a good response showing the places the university still must move. But the richest school on earth, which in 2013 pledged never to divest, has been forced to capitulate

An overlong thread of personal info, with one or two twists at the end.
First piece of 'news': I'm starting a free substack newsletter of my very own. It's going to be called The Crucial Years, because--well...here we are, between a rock and a hot place

billmckibben.substack.com That means today's installment of my New Yorker "Climate Crisis" will be the last, though I'll still write regularly for the magazine. So many thanks to everyone--esp. Virginia Cannon--who made it a pleasure, and to all those I got to pass the mic to!
newyorker.com/news/annals-of…

Guys, we've crossed the marsh and the Enbridge crossing point of the Mississipi is now occupied. I think this camp will last until Line 3 is stopped.#StopLine3 The scene here is solemn and joyful. Treaty rights need respecting and so do the laws of physics. Instead of 800,000 barrels of oil crossing this wetland there are thousands of people.

Walloping Wolverines!! Huge divestment news out of Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan--as heartland a school as you can imagine--announces plans to stop investing in fossil fuels!
record.umich.edu/articles/u-m-s… This is crucial because a) it's a big big endowment b) it's arguably, along with the already divested UC system, America's foremost public university and c) most of all, it's a huge reversal, won by courageous students. Here's what I mean:

So Biden's climate/energy/environment team is mostly complete, and on balance there's never been anything like it in U.S. history. With people like @RepDebHaaland and @GinaNRDC and @JohnKerry and @JenGranholm, there's high profile and seriousness of purpose There are weaknesses (Vilsack at Ag strikes me as the only downright dud, a wasted pick that shows no understanding farming must change), and questions (Regan at EPA was a fan of burning wood pellets when he was in NC.) And they have to overcome Joe Manchin and Mitch McConnell.

So, every once in a while by pure chance, one knows something about something in the news. Today that's me--it's about a guy named Brian Deese who is up for an econ job in the Biden administration. But it's a longish story. I've spent most of my life living in rural America, much of it in a remote, poor, red, and exceptionally beautiful corner of upstate New York. Among other things, I taught Sunday School in the basement of the Methodist church in our town of 300

This feels like the most serious announcement from a =n oil major: after years of pressure from activists, BP to cut oil and gas production 40% by 2030. Far from perfect, but far from normal
cnn.com/2020/08/04/bus… The smart people @PriceofOil say BP has recognized that 2030 is the money date, not the 2050
priceofoil.org/2020/08/04/sta…

Right before Xmas New Yorker editor David Remnick called to ask if I'd do a weekly climate newsletter under the magazine's auspices. My 1st reaction was yes: it was where I'd begun writing about all this in my early 20s and now I was...older if not wiser
newyorker.com/home/newslette… But my 2nd reaction was, what about this newsletter HEATED that @emorwee had just launched, and that I was very much enjoying. Would it damage her effort? So I asked, and she graciously said she thought not: "there's plenty of space out there for more newsletters...Hell yeah!"

Went out for a long ski in the woods this morning, and thought about why the @nytimes editorial rankled me so much. It had nothing to do with their picks, and everything to do with the depiction of @klobuchar as 'realist' and @SenWarren as 'radical.' (i.e., 'unrealistic') In the field I know best, climate change, the 'adversary' is physics. Because we have waited (thanks to the fossil fuel industry) so long to get started, physics leaves us no choice but to move very swiftly. Say, at the speed envisioned by people like @warren or @SenSanders

Biggest news in a long time. After a ton of pressure, Blackrock--which owns more fossil fuel stock than anyone on earth--announces it will put 'climate change at the center of its investment strategy.' A huge--if by no means final--win for activists!
nytimes.com/2020/01/14/bus… Here's the CEO, Larry Fink: “The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance.”
They are saying they will sell stock, reshape indexes, and vote for shareholder resolutions. This puts huge pressure on other players

I'm normally the most earnest and sedate of Twitterers but I have to say: today was one of the most ebullient days in all the years I've been in the climate fight.
#1 First and foremost, of course, was watching youth activists from around the country join Greta in Congress These young leaders are so great. And since I've done this a few times, I can tell you that the buzz building for Friday's climate strikes is immense. It's going to be the biggest day of climate action the planet has ever seen

The New Yorker has been publishing for 94 years, and I believe this is by far the longest 'Comment'--opinion piece--they've ever run. Partly because I'm longwinded, but mostly because it offers a newish take on the greatest crisis we've ever faced
newyorker.com/news/daily-com… It begins with the small and noble band of activists who have taken on the big banks, the insurance companies, and the asset-managers. These amoral enterprises make sure that the fossil fuel industry has the money it needs to keep building new stuff

Thread here. I'm beginning to worry about the 2020 election. There are so many Dems, and so much passion, that it seems to me great damage could be done unless real care is taken. Some of that is on the candidates, but some of it is on us, and I have a small idea that might help. The toxicity that defines so much of Twitter--whether it comes from bots or real but entirely unrestrained people--may lead to such bitter feelings and such deep divides that Trump, despite his unpopularity, wins again. nymag.com/intelligencer/…