Introduction to Issue #9

If you’ve arrived at this Issue #9 of the Climate Change on LinkedIn Newsletter without having seen Issue #8, we encourage you to check it out as well. ?It had A LOT of great content, and is an example of a particularly “beefy” issue (and readers loved it!).?

In this issue you’ll see how we’re planning to structure the Newsletter going forward to ensure a systematic focus on topics that “really matter,” while still being able to include randomly interesting posts. ?Here’s an outline:?

• The Big Picture - capturing the larger context within which climate change will have to operate for at least the next four years.

• Climate Change - pulling together content covering climate science, milestones, impacts, and forecasts.

• Communications - focusing on the critical topic of communicating climate change to diverse audiences

• Shifting Theories of Change - how we’re expecting climate change to be tackled (or not), and by who (and why)

• Climate Barriers and Solutions - covering both sides of the climate solutions coin (including conversations covering non-solutions)?

• Other Posts - well, everything else!?

As you’ll see we try to integrate content into a story format, but that’s not always possible. And you may have noticed that this Issue, like Issue #8, is coming out a bit late. It’s largely for the same reason - namely that there are so many bad things happening in the United States right now that it’s easy to get distracted! ?

The Big Picture

The “big picture” with respect to successfully tackling climate change has gotten substantially worse since Issue #8, and is arguably approaching a “worst case” situation. It’s not just that the new Administration isn’t crazy about climate change, it is literally trying to wipe climate change off the map as it has successfully done with the Gulf of Mexico! ?But it goes much deeper than that. 2025/06 Ingmar Rentzhog_Trump Blitzkrieg Is Simply Operationalizing Project 2025 , according to a new study examining the two in detail. And the eventual goal might be described by 2025/07 James Souttar_The Private Equity Model, First Developed In the U.S., Is Now Being Applied to the Federal Government, and is likely to result in the ‘flip, strip and shit-all-over’ outcome pioneered by private equity shops. Of course 2025/06 Olivia Lazard_The U.S. Has Normalized Bribery won’t help, suggesting a dangerous “race to the bottom” that will have negative ?climate implications. Similarly, 2025/07 Swati M._The Reallocation of Philanthropic Funding to Other Priorities Will Hurt Climate suggests a “double whammy” with regard to near-term climate progress. And 2025/07 Rob Cooper_New Secretary of Energy’s Climate Views Are Really Something is disconcerting, including as they do that “Net zero by 2050 is a sinister goal that has not delivered any benefits, but it has imposed ?tremendous costs.”

When it comes to specific agencies, 2025/05 Peter Dupont_Is This How It All Ends? , responds to the dismantling of USAID, while ?2025/06 Rhett Ayers Butler_Some Conservation Impacts of Losing USAID details some of the specific conservation programs that are being shut down in Africa. ?FEMA is also a very relevant agency to climate change, which is why 2025/06 Carolyn Kousky_FEMA Being Thrown Under the Bus by Trump Administration is disconcerting. 2025/06 Sasja Beslik_US Department of Homeland Security, Which Includes Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Ordered to Eliminate All Climate Change Activities and the Use of Climate Change Terminology raises obvious concerns. Next is NOAA, that may get a bit lost in the shuffle of all the other chaos. ? 2025/07 Rick Spinrad_Some Thoughts on NOAA, from a former NOAA Administrator, suggests that NOAA has always been substantially understaffed given its mission, and includes a short essay on the folly of saving money by destroying NOAA.

2025/06 ?Derric N. Pennington_Is LinkedIn Self-Censorship Now Necessary? profiles his own experience with social media posts being used to get him fired, which could presage all sorts of other self-censorship across the private sector and the government. A big part of the current Administration's strategy is to instill fear. ?

Of course there is always the search for the silver lining. 2025/06 Eliot Whittington_Climate Strategies Adapted to Change 15 Years Ago, and They Can Again puts a rather positive spin on the current situation: “Fifteen years ago, according to this line of thinking, the climate movement faced a similar reckoning. The Copenhagen summit collapsed, the financial crisis forced governments and businesses to retreat, and climate action fell into disarray. Yet, within five years, a new strategy emerged, one that built business engagement, navigated political realities and delivered the Paris Agreement. Climate action shifted from “aspiration to market reality.” “The world changed because the movement adapted.” That said, it’s not at all clear that today’s situation is analogous to collapse of climate talks in Copenhagen, and is the Paris Agreement something to characterize as a shift from "aspiration to market reality?" ?

And in terms of the question of how to respond to the ongoing Blitzkrieg strategy of the Trump Administration, 2025/07 Joseph Gelfer_Rather That Fight for Incremental Climate Rescues, Climate Populism Is the Needed Response to Trump’s Actions.

Climate Science, Impacts, and Forecasts

2025/06 Nick Spencer_What If We’ve Been Seriously Under-Estimating the Risks of Global Temperature Increase? , provides an in-depth look at why we should be asking the question. ?Along the same lines, 2025/07 Steve Jewson_A New Paper Provides Better Estimates of Climate Extremes Probabilities suggests that many of the estimates of the probabilities of extremes given in the climate literature are underestimates, for statistical reasons. The size of the underestimation varies from small to large depending on various factors, and may be a factor of 2 or more.

With respect to climate futures, 2025/08 David Hone_Shell’s New Surge Scenario Anticipates Robust Economic Growth and AI Advancements discusses one of Shell’s new suite of Energy Security Scenarios. ?Interestingly, 2025/06 Ketan Joshi_Take Shell’s Energy Scenarios With a Grain of Salt ?looks back to a scenario paper from Shell in 2001 that envisioned a hydrogen-fueled future. To be fair, it’s not the goal of scenarios to accurately predict the future, but it is always interesting to see how thinking has evolved over time.?

2025/06 Darius Nassiry_The Growing Consequences of Extreme Heat , reports on a new paper suggesting that anthropogenic warming will lead to a tripling of the land area in which young adults will be exposed to fatal heat if warming reaches 2?°C above preindustrial levels.

2025/06 Jonas Balsby Kromand_How Can the Safe Operating Space Within Planetary Boundaries Be Allocated to Countries, Sectors, Companies, or Products?, raises an interesting (albeit probably just a theoretical) conceptual question. It’s hard to imagine the “safe operating space” ever being approached in the same way as the “global carbon budget,” particularly given how unsuccessful that conversation has been.?

Following up on the Los Angeles fires, 2025/06 Darius Nassiry_$1 Billion of Costs From L.A. Fires Will be Spread Across the State via Insurance Premiums Surcharges, given that the state’s FAIR plan providing a back-up insurance provider has run out of money. It’s still too early to have a good sense of just how far and wide the impacts of the fires will spread when it comes to California and U.S. insurance markets.?

On the factoid front, 2025/07 Ken Pucker_If SUVs Were a Country, They’d Be the 5th Largest CO2 Emitter , and in the U.S. constitute 80% of sales. A big unintended consequence of the “light trucks” exemption written into CAFé standards many years ago.

Messaging Climate Change

2025/06 Joe Romm_Mom's Clean Air Force First Ever Ad Pleading for Climate Action focuses on the climate ad that ran during the recent Super Bowl. Did it seem effective to you? ?

2025/06 Ingmar Rentzhog_Swedish Radio’s Worst in Class Climate Reporting points to a fundamental problem with climate reporting, that key messages aren’t getting to the people that need them.

A commonly heard argument is that efforts to tackle climate change are driving up energy costs, but 2025/07 Jamie Skaar_The Real Reasons Behind California’s High Energy Bills reports on a new Stanford study suggesting that climate policies are nowhere near the top of the list.

2025/06 Ketan Joshi_Check Out the Greensky Community on Bluesky , notes that there has never been a better time to fight back against the tech-bro neo-fascist oligarchy by joining the Greensky community.

2025/07 Ketan Joshi_Passing Off AI-Generated Text As Your Own is Unethical and Dishonest raises a legitimate point, but it also leads to the question of where is the tipping point between honest and dishonest use? AI tools can be of tremendous value in communicating climate change to a wide variety of audiences.?

And for a very useful guide to good Greenwashing, there is 2025/07 Roger Cohen_Your Guide to Successful Greenwashing, which lays out in satirical detail how to do greenwashing right!

Shifting Theories of Change

Not surprisingly, companies continue to retreat from their climate and net zero objectives. ?Ken Pucker continues to dig into this trend, including via 2025/07 Ken Pucker_Sustainable Investors Continue to Flee References to Climate Change reports on the growing number of companies retreating from #ESG and #DEI, and suggests a reason. Focusing in more specifically on a single company, 2025/07 Ken Pucker_HSBC’s Remarkable Energy Transition Retreat ?recalls that just a year ago HSBC came out with one of the first and most-detailed transition plans for a major bank, with its then CEO saying the energy transition was a massive economic opportunity and the bank was very well placed to capitalize on it. And yet now they’ve pushed those targets back by 20 years.?

Of course the retreat from climate targets is not universal, nor will it happen all at once. 2025/06 Günther Thallinger_Allianz Will Follow Through on its Sustainability and Net-Zero Goals since what is not sustainable cannot be sustained, and cannot be economically successful. It’s not clear how this conclusion corresponds to a century of economically successful fossil fuel use. ?2025/08 Felicity Spors_Sustainable and Climate-Conscious Investing Isn’t Optional - It’s Smart Business reports on efforts by one group of institutional investors to keep climate action alive! ?And Stephen Fern argues that 2025/07 Stephen Fern_It’s a Big Deal for JP Morgan to Put Out a Major Report Emphasizing Climate Risk in today’s fractious political environment.?

Climate Barriers and Solutions

There is always a lot of LinkedIn content pointing to climate barriers and solutions. 2025/06 ?Beyond Fossil Fuels_Data Centres Cannot Cost Us the Climate points to a new report raising the alarm that growing data centre demand could derails Europe’s low carbon transition. ?

On a positive note, 2025/06 Johan Rockstr?m_Regenerative Good Growth Offers a Scalable Path to Sustainable Food Systems represents Johan’s LinkedIn debut, although the contrast between “good growth” and “degrowth” was seized on in this comments. Regardless, Johan is someone to add to your “to follow” list for climate change. Commenting on Rockstrom’s post is 2025/06 Mark W. McElroy_Until Mainstream Accounting Systems Are Reformed We Won’t See Sustainability Progress.

With respect to a range of climate technologies, 2025/06 Mark Jacobson_Time to End Policies Promoting Non-Biological Carbon Capture suggests that carbon capture is a dead end, and each $ spent on such efforts is an order of magnitude less effective than a $ spent on renewables. 2025/06 Gavin Mooney_Don't Waste Biofuels on Road Transport. They’re Needed in Aviation points to an interesting statistic, that the amount of land required to fuel a car with biofuel is 130x greater than the amount of land required to fuel and EV.

On a more positive note, 2025/07 Gavin Mooney_Solar + Storage Set to Become Most of World’s Lowest Cost Generating Resource by 2027 reports on a new paper suggesting that solar will rapidly leave wind behind in terms of cost-effectiveness. One way to provide the necessary storage is suggested by 2025/07 Jamie Skaar_Massive Potential of Pumped Storage Across the World, reporting on a new study suggesting as many as 820,000 sites where pumped storage could be implemented around the world.

2025/06 Sharon Wilson_Oil and Gas Companies Launch Methane Library to Empower Industry Professionals questions whether those companies should be trusted to provide such a resource if they won’t commit to stop drilling new wells. 2025/06 Jean Boissinot_10 Years of Climate Stress Testing - What Have We Learned? includes Jean’s recently presented slide deck on exactly this question.

With respect to climate finance, 2025/06 Antoni Ballabriga_A Call for Pragmatism in Driving Sustainable Finance urges a change in how we approach sustainable finance metrics and taxonomies. ?A message that parallels what the Newsletter’s Dr. Mark Trexler (of all people!) will be talking about this Sunday at Jen Novakovich’s Sustainable Beauty E-Summit. Registration if free! ?Also on the subject of carbon finance, 2025/06 Pedro Moura Costa_It’s Time to Look Beyond Voluntary Carbon Markets When It Comes to Climate Finance argues that after 30 years of focusing on carbon markets, which attracted less than $1 billion in revenue in 2023, it’s time to think more broadly about climate finance.

2025/08 Bill Baue_ Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Bioregionalism But Were Afraid to Ask points to resources through which you can come up to speed on the topic, which emphasizes regenerating and stewarding life-supporting systems at the scale of bioregions—geographic areas defined by ecological, rather than political, boundaries.

As always, market mechanisms including carbon offsets got plenty of air time on LinkedIn the last couple of weeks. There are efforts to expand the market, for example by increasing liquidity. ?2025/06 Rene Velasquez_New Carbon Trading App in Beta reports that the new app is being launched with goal of democratising access to and participation in carbon markets in order to spur liquidity. A remarkable number of integrity initiatives continue to be launched, including 2025/06 Peter Ellis_Science for High Integrity Frameworks to Transform the Carbon Market (or SHIFT-CM) which met for the first time in December, and restates the importance projects adhering to additionality, durability, and leakage standards. ?Then there is 2025/06 Janet Peace_The Bipartisan Policy Center Establishes New Voluntary Market Task Force. Making light of all these new initiatives is 2025/06 Roger Cohen_Announcing the Global Integrity Carbon Initiative (GICI)! , a satirical response to what seems like the announcement of a new carbon market integrity initiative every couple of weeks. 2025/05 Cheryl Sansonett_The Standard for Tracking Carbon Market Quality Has Arrived reports on new Calyx Global carbon market indices. 2025/06 Clive Spash_Destroying Nature to Save It points to the seeming contradiction between opposing carbon offset markets while advocating for biodiversity credit markets, which in many respects are even more challenging. While 2025/06 Drea Burbank_Didn’t We Learn Our Lesson About Inflated, Unsubstantiated Claims? suggests that biodiversity credit markets can be a lot “cleaner” than carbon markets, if they avoid the same BS. Interestingly given his role in building voluntary carbon markets as the founder of EcoSecurities, 2025/06 Pedro Moura Costa_It’s Time to Look Beyond Voluntary Carbon Markets When It Comes to Climate Finance argues that after 30 years of focusing on carbon markets, which attracted less than $1 billion in revenue in 2023, it’s time to move think more broadly about climate finance.

There are also the frequent restatements of carbon offset arguments. 2025/06 Josh Margolis_Companies Buying Carbon Offsets Are the Volunteer Firefighters of Climate Change , makes an impassioned plea that since we’re unable to enact real climate policy, we should see companies purchasing offsets as “among the first responders, the volunteer firefighters, that stand between us and an accelerated descent into hell and high water.” ?As is always the case, however, there is no addressing of “how good is good enough” when it comes to the integrity of voluntary carbon markets. ?And 2025/07 Margaret Morales_Removals Don’t Make Better Offsets restates yet again something that’s been known for decades, but it’s necessary to keep restating it since it runs counter to much of today’s offset orthodoxy.

Other Posts

2025/06 Alice Hill_The Adaptation Imperative , argues that recent events reinforce the need to be thinking a lot more seriously about adaptation in parallel to mitigation.

If you’re looking for bite-sized pieces of good news, check 2025/06 Assaad Razzouk_Good Climate News!

If you’re looking for people to follow in the sustainability space, you might want to take a look at 2025/06 Sergio Magro Dacinto_#1-20 of My Top 60 Sustainability Influencers List, as well as 2025/06 Sergio Magro Dacinto_#21-40 of My Top 60 Sustainability Influencers List

Concluding Notes

We hope you found Issue #9 thought-provoking. ?The next four years are going to be even more challenging from a climate change perspective than we realized when putting together Issue #8! ?If you have feedback on the format of this Issue we’d love to hear from you!?

Mark Trexler and Zsolt Lengyel?