Tag Archives: sustainability

Rise Up for Our Planet September 18-21

August 14, 2025Future Hopeclimate, climate-change, environment, global-warming, sustainabilitytedglick

It is crystal clear that millions of US Americans are prepared to organize and take action to fight the efforts of the Trump regime to impose a form of 21^st Century fascism on the USA. From the first youth-led, #50501 actions in all 50 states on February 5^th to the more than five million people who came out in over 2,200 localities on June 14^th, No Kings Day, and everything in between and since, it is unquestionable that there is a mass resistance movement that is not giving up.

History is calling upon us to step up, and we are doing so.

This resistance movement has been a multi-issue movement participated in by people with a wide diversity of radical to progressive to liberal to common sense sentiments but who are united in our fear, rage, and support for democracy and social and environmental justice.

One of the issues of this multi-issue movement has been the climate crisis, but it has not been a priority. This is the case even as the world’s scientists and accelerating extreme weather events worldwide are clearly saying that this existential crisis is getting worse, and time is running out to turn things around in enough time to prevent worldwide climate catastrophe.

Since the Trumpists have taken office it has become increasingly clear that, despite significant Republican voter support in many states for jobs-producing wind and solar energy and electric cars, the Trump Administration is doing everything it can to halt and reverse the growth of these critical industries. A few weeks ago the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, former NY Republican candidate for Governor, announced that he intends to try to overturn the “endangerment finding” upheld by the US Supreme Court 16 years ago. That finding determined that CO2, methane and four other greenhouse gases are pollutants that can be regulated and reduced.

But the climate movement in the US and elsewhere is fighting back. Finally, on the fall equinox weekend of September 20^th and 21^st, the climate crisis will be a central issue in mass demonstrations around the US and beyond.

On the 20^th world leaders will be gathering in NYC for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week. A major climate justice demonstration will be held that day in NYC, convened by international 350.org, DRUM, Climate Defenders and the Women’s March and endorsed by over 100 other groups so far. Simultaneous actions will happen on that day around the world as part of a Draw the Line campaign. The youth-led Fridays for Future is calling for actions around the world beginning on September 20. We are uniting across the world to demand a better future for our communities and for all living beings!

Then on Sunday, September 21, “Sun Day”, local actions around the country organized by national Third Act will “celebrate solar and wind power and the movement to leave fossil fuels behind. Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power on the planet—and gives us a chance to actually do something about the climate crisis. But fossil fuel billionaires are doing everything they can to shut it down. We will build, rally, sing and come together in the communities where we must work to get laws changed and work done.”

But this isn’t all that is happening five weeks from now. On the Thursday and Friday before this big weekend, September 18-19 in Washington, DC, actions are happening each day calling for: Hands Off Our Planet, No Fracking Petrostate

–Thursday morning: Action at the monthly meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to demand that this agency do what the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals has said they must do: stop approving new methane gas projects unless they have done serious analyses of the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice impacts of proposed new methane gas pipelines and other infrastructure.

–Thursday afternoon: Action at the federal headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency as the beginning of a sustained national campaign to demand its restoration and the removal of Administrator Lee Zeldin.

–Friday morning: A Petrostate Tour stopping at trade associations that have captured our government, compromised the environment, and violated private property rights, including the American Petroleum Institute (API), American Exploration and Production Council (AXPC), and the American Gas Association (AGA).

These DC actions are being organized by Beyond Extreme Energy, Elders Coalition for Climate Action, Third Act Actions Lab and the UnFrack FERC Campaign, supported by many others.

The peril our planet is in cannot be overstated. The popular democracy movement which has done so much over the last seven months to resist Trumpist tyranny must, really must, hit the streets next month.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21^st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.

The Trump Death Cult, Part 2

August 6, 2025Future Hopeclimate-change, energy, environment, renewable-energy, sustainabilitytedglick

Six weeks ago I wrote a column entitled, Fighting Climate Meltdown and the Death Cult. In it I said, “This would-be fascist government wants to roll back hundreds of billions of dollars approved in 2022 for wind and solar energy, electric cars, buses and trains and other clean and jobs-producing energy. This is the kind of energy we must shift to as rapidly as possible if we are to avoid the breakdown of ecosystems and human societies worldwide. It’s as if Trump and the MAGA’s were a death cult, truly, and not just when it comes to energy policy.”

I wrote this before the vote, one week later, on the Big Billionaires Bill that passed in the House and the Senate by the narrowest of margins. Millions of US Americans, predominantly low-income working people, will be hurt because of this bill’s passage.

At the very last minute of the months-long work of putting together this legislation there was an effort to insert language to make its energy provisions even worse by adding a new tax on wind, solar, batteries and other clean energy technologies. This tax would be levied if companies cannot prove that their products are made without Chinese parts. This provision, if passed, would have made the bill much worse. Fortunately, there were enough Republican Senators who refused to support it so that it was taken out before the final vote.

Interestingly, as far as I can tell, no one has come forward to take credit for this diabolical effort to decimate these rapidly-growing and world-critical technologies. I’d put my bet on Trump and/or Steven Miller being behind it, almost certainly.

One week ago this Trumpist campaign in support of fossil fuel industry dominance of US energy took another huge step when Lee Zeldin, head of the EPA, announced that it will move to overturn the 2009 Supreme Court “Endangerment Finding” which determined that there are six greenhouse gases (GHG’s) that are air pollutants which endanger public health and welfare.

If this 16-year-old finding is ultimately overturned by the current Supreme Court, it would be a huge dagger, a knife to the chest, of US efforts going on since 2009 and before to reduce those GHG’s and shift, instead, to a 21^st Century clean energy economy that cleans up air, water and land, particularly in environmental justice communities, and gives humankind a fighting chance to prevent worldwide ecosystem and societal breakdown as this century progresses.

Then there is the recently revealed Trump Administration policy linking lower tariffs for other countries to their agreeing to buy US-produced, climate-destroying methane gas exports. Was this from the beginning a major purpose of the tariff campaign?

Truly, maddeningly, Trump, Miller, Zeldin, Vance, the whole cabal, can best be described given all of these actions, and more, as no less than a death cult. Their actions prove that they literally don’t care about anything other than the amassing of as much wealth and power for themselves and their billionaire backers as they can. They are climate criminals.

Fortunately, the US movement for climate justice is very much alive and kicking. There is organizing going on in every state and numerous localities in support of the urgently needed shift away from fossil fuels and to clean renewables, battery storage, electric vehicles and electric heating/cooling systems. These clean energy technologies are advancing worldwide and, still, if now more slowly, in the US.

Support for renewables among the US population continues to be high. A recent Pew Research poll in June reported that 68% continue to support wind power and 77% support solar power.

Our job today is to expose the deadly implications of the Trump/MAGA policies, activate the clear majority which supports making the clean energy transition, fight in every way we can against the planned dramatic expansion of fossil fuel, especially methane gas, pipelines, export terminals and infrastructure, and groundswell a visible, in the streets, mass climate justice movement that refuses to quit.

Down with the Trump death cult.

Fighting Climate Meltdown and the Death Cult

June 28, 2025Future Hopeclimate-change, energy, environment, renewable-energy, sustainabilitytedglick

“This is a fight for life. And like all fights, you need a tremendous amount of bravery to take it on. Before I started working on climate change, I didn’t think of myself as a fighter, but I became one because I felt I have a responsibility to preserve the world for my son and children everywhere. That kind of fierce protectiveness is part of the way that I love. We can draw on that to have more strength than our enemies because I don’t think they’re motivated by love. I believe love is an infinite resource and the power of it is greater than that of greed or hate. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.”

-Dr. Genevieve Guenther, The Guardian, June 24

On June 14^th I spoke at one of the 2,200 or so “No Kings!’ actions around the country, this one in Newark, NJ. In part I said, “This would-be fascist government wants to roll back hundreds of billions of dollars approved in 2022 for wind and solar energy, electric cars, buses and trains and other clean and jobs-producing energy. This is the kind of energy we must shift to as rapidly as possible if we are to avoid the breakdown of ecosystems and human societies worldwide. It’s as if Trump and the MAGA’s were a death cult, truly, and not just when it comes to energy policy.”

I’ve thought about this characterization that I made since I did so publicly. I’ve wondered if it was too over the top, too rhetorical. I’ve thought about all of the many other people down through history, Hitler and the Nazis as exhibit number one, who clearly fit this description.

There’s no question Trump would like to rule the world and that he cares little about the lives of Black, Brown and Indigenous people, low-income people, women and lgbtq people. He’s a racist and sexist through and through. He’s OK with genocide in Gaza, doesn’t even feign to be concerned, instead dreaming about turning Gaza into another luxury resort on the Mediterranean Sea. He wants to drastically increase the already obscene US military budget, etc., etc., etc.

But what I think makes the “death cult” phrase unquestionably accurate is his and his billionaire buddies’ very explicit efforts to stop and reverse the growing worldwide, and US, shift from fossil fuels to renewables and a truly clean and green economy.

We are already far down the road as far as climate disruption and danger. Climate scientists are telling us that there is a very real possibility of soon passing environmental tipping points that could destabilize the climate for generations, centuries. Those who are doing all they can to set back renewable energy and achieve “energy dominance” via coal, nukes, oil and methane gas; these people, Trump and his government appointees, the fossil fuel industry and the banks and billionaires who support them, are absolutely a death cult.

Fortunately, a big majority of the US population supports the shift to wind, solar, electric vehicles and heat pumps and other truly renewable energy sources. This is crucial, and a reason not to lose hope.

What is the evidence for this assertion? Here is one source: a poll released in late January this year by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication:

Registered voters across the political spectrum support many policies designed to reduce carbon pollution and fossil fuel dependence and promote clean energy, including:

88% support providing federal funding to help farmers improve practices to protect and restore the soil, so it absorbs and stores more carbon.
77% support funding more research into renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power.
74% support setting strict limits on methane emissions from oil and gas production.
73% support regulating carbon dioxide (the primary greenhouse gas) as a pollutant.
69% support providing tax credits or rebates to encourage people to buy electric appliances, such as heat pumps and induction stoves, that run on electricity instead of oil or gas.
69% support funding more research on global warming and climate change by Federal agencies such as NASA, NOAA, and the EPA.
67% support requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax and use the money to reduce other taxes (such as income tax) by an equal amount.
63% support transitioning the U.S. economy (including electric utilities, transportation, buildings, and industry) from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050.
58% support providing tax rebates for people who purchase electric vehicles.

Note that these percentages could not be what they are unless more than a few Trump voters had these views. There is widespread, tri-partisan support on this huge issue.

So is there hope? Yes, there is. There’s hope not just because of the results of this, and other, polls but because of the massive local demonstration turnouts in every state since Trump took office, over 5 million people the most recent time on June 14. There is hope when climate and social justice state assemblyman Zohran Mandani decisively wins the New York City primary on June 10. And there are so many more examples, so many of us rising up on issue after issue and continuing to resist.

There is absolutely no question that the national progressive movement in the United States is in the ring, landing punches and fighting hard in this existential and urgent battle for the future.