Issue #8 Candidate Posts

Introduction to Issue #8

You may have noticed that this issue of Climate Change on LinkedIn is almost a week late in appearing. That’s in large part because the Newsletter’s editors are a bit shell-shocked by what is going on in Washington D.C., although it is Mark Trexler in the United States who has been particularly tempted to simply go hide with “a” bottle of wine!

Starting With the Bull in a China Shop

Although 2025/03 Roberta Boscolo_This Year Is A Critical Moment for Climate Action! the Trump Administration did not get the memo. There is far too much going on in Washington D.C. to cover here, and that’s not our role with the Newsletter, but one can’t help being horrified watching first the Agency for International Development (USAID) , and now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) be illegally taken over and eviscerated by Elon Musk. Of course, as noted in 2025/03 Lucy Hargreaves_Executive Order: Unleashing American Energy this is just a small part of what’s going on that’s relevant to climate change. Not to mention the disappearance of hundreds of websites - 2025/04 Laurie Shoeman_Where to Find Disappearing Climate Websites. And who knows the implications of other craziness like 2025/05 Dan Gardner_Trump Playing a Dangerous Game with Canada.

And while it’s certainly true that 2025/03 Rhett Ayers Butler_Giving Up Is Not an Option there is relatively little introspection into how to think about and respond to what’s going on. 2025/04 Hilary Sutcliffe_Responding to the Trump Administration being a notable exception, and Ezra Klein’s short videoblog 2025 Ezra Klein_Don’t Believe Him is a great quick listen. 2025/04 James Vaccaro_Are We the Leaders We’ve Been Looking For? raises the question, “if not you, who?” 2025/04 Dana Fisher_Climate Activism is BACK! suggests a silver linking: “We were seeing this crazy, very, very fractured climate movement, which was in abeyance, where most Americans, while they said they cared about climate change, were not willing to march in the streets for it. That is all over!” Hope springs eternal, although maybe 2025/04 Ben Tolhurt_1,000 Protesters at Appeals Hearing for UK Climate Protesters is good news. And if you’re motivated to think differently about your future in the climate space, check out - 2025/03 Tim Riedel_The Global University for Impactful Careers.

The topic of climate communications is one that deserves more attention today than it generally gets, as discussed in 2025/01 How to Stop Trump's Climate Pollution. Written by expert communicator David Fenton, it’s well worth reading:

“Democrats and progressives ceded the narrative propaganda war to Trump. We failed to communicate at the level of people’s values or daily struggles — if we communicated at all. We built no lasting mass or digital media institutions or even a corps of social media influencers to counter the right. We suffer from what Lakoff has dubbed “the Enlightenment fallacy” — that great ideas sell themselves. They don’t. We are now seeing, in real time, the consequences of this failure across almost every issue of importance.”

But even if we were to starting focusing more on the key topic of communicating climate change in ways that would matter, is it too late to counter the climate misinformation industry? With AI-based tool and AI-generated videos there is 2025/03 Ken Pucker_The Accelerating Incidence and Impact of Misinformation, not to mention the here-and-now 2025/04 Ken Pucker_The Misinformation Being Spread by the Wall Street Journal. Also on the communications front 2025/03 Virpi Oinen_Why the Focus on Cartoons to Explore Complexity? suggests we probably need to find other ways to teach complexity science. On another communications front 2024/11 Wim Vermeulen_Announcing the “We The Hopeful” Communications Initiative lays out one approach to communicating climate success, although it doesn’t provide a lot of insight into how the success was achieved!

A growing subset of the climate communications conversation relates to “climate populism.” 2025/04 Josh Felser_MAGA Loves Climate suggests that there is a lot of room to reframe climate conversations in ways that will appeal to MAGA populism. The person on LinkedIn most consistently talking about a new climate populist approach to tackling climate change (as far as we know) is Joseph Gelfer. We’ve discussed his posts before, including 2025/01 Joseph Gelfer_10 Tips For Climate Populism. We can’t list all his posts, but you can easily check them out, including 2025/05 Joseph Gelfer_Is It Time for #DarkClimate?. And if you’re looking to dig more deeply into the topic of climate populism check out Climate Populism 101.

If you’re determined to find some good news - 2025/04 Assaad Razzouk_There Is Good News! And for a path forward - 2025/03 Michael Barnard_Remain Focused on Being a Pragmatic Techno-Optimist. And while it may seem hard to find positive news right now - 2025/04 Paul Martin_Don’t Bother Looking for Silver Linings in the Trump Administration, there are people looking for that silver lining, including 2025/03 Glenn Hurowitz_Delivering Gigatons of Reductions Regardless of Who Is In Office, Along similar lines, 2025/03 Paul Watkinson_The United States Will No Longer Be Able to Slow International Decision-Making presents a positive spit. And suggesting an answer to a very good question - 2025/03 Kiana Kazemi_Where to Go For Climate News.

Is the Climate Conversation Shifting?

In our prior Newsletter we noted that 2024 may have signaled a fundamental shift in the overall climate conversation, with much more focus on the near-term seriousness of the problem, as opposed to discussing how to achieve the 1.5 or 2 degree targets. For a quick visual 2025/03 Ed Hawkins_Climate Indicators As We Enter 2024, or check out our 2024 Climate Visualizations page in Your Climate Change Toolbox.

A substantial amount of the credit for a shifting climate conversation is being given to reports like 2025 Institute and Faculty of Actuaries_Planetary Solvency - Global risk management for human prosperity. Based on the report, 2025/02 Hans Stegeman_We’re Finally Getting Serious About the Impacts of Climate Change suggests that the financial and economic implications of climate change are causing a change in the discussion. The report argues, for example, that climate change could cause a 50% drop in GDP. If you’re wondering where such a substantial change in thinking about the economic impacts of climate change could come from, check out 2024/07 Ortec Finance_Time to Switch From Quadratic to Logistic Climate Damage Functions. These results lead to argument that 2025/03 Sandy Trust_Planetary Solvency Would Be Profitable! which shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise. The conclusion is buttressed by other factoids such as 2025/03 Sasja Beslik_Climate Change Likely to Trigger Market Panics, and 2025/03 Jeff Goodell_Future Heat Mortality Rates Could Rival Worst of COVID-19 Pandemic. Although it’s by no means clear that the direction of the climate response will actually change -

2025/04 Laurie Laybourn_What If Climate Disasters Don’t Trigger Action?

In addition to seeing climate change as a bigger and near-term problem, there seems to be a much greater willingness to characterize key efforts to date, e.g. voluntary corporate commitments, as failures at least in terms of larger climate objectives. 2025/04 Lincoln Bauer_WEF’s First Movers Retreating on Climate and 2025/04 Green Central Banking_Six Major US Banks Have Left the Net Zero Banking Alliance, and (https://app.thebrain.com/brain/37ed2719-80aa-4e4b-a607-db8f87ef71fc/9aa09653-41c8-4f4e-8b58-8bdab53ca727)2025/03 Charlie Gardner_Getting Beyond “Does It Pay to Go Green?”. And 2025/03 Alison Taylor_Why Do We Listen to the Edelman Trust Barometer? addresses the same higher level question as 2025/03 John Moorhead_Is Davos Fit For Purpose? Depends on the Purpose.

It’s not hard to understand the source of the problem - it has to do with the theory of change. 2025/04 Ken Pucker_Meeting Your Carbon Targets Doesn’t Favor Your Market Capitalization notes that if achieving targets doesn’t influence investors, we shouldn’t be that surprised that companies are willing to retreat from those targets. Along the same lines is 2025/04 Charles Cozette_Nothing Bad Happens to Companies Missing Their GHG Targets. Leading to the conclusion that 2025/04 Ken Pucker_We Can’t Count on Corporate Emissions Targets, and the question 2025/04 Lisa Sachs_Why Do We Continue to Rely on Corporate Emissions Targets? Something of an alternative view from 2025/04 NewClimate Institute_Reimagining Corporate Climate Targets suggesting what it calls a new approach to corporate targets, although it’s not at all clear why the climate outcomes would be any different. All of this contributes to the fundamental question of 2025/04 Julia Vol_Is There Such a Thing as a Sustainable Company? And 2025/04 Cary Krosinsky_What is the Transition Pathway Initiative Up To?

Continuing the theme 2025/03 Martin Gallardo_Net Zero is a Fantasy makes an aggressive case, while 2025/04 Greg De Temmerman_The Problem notes that there is no real plan for rapid decarbonization, specifically raising the very same theme that caused Mark Trexler to name his organization The Climatographers, based on the challenge of navigating our path to climate success when we don’t really have any idea what the map looks like. “Climate + Cartography” to = “Climatographer.”

And the changing nature of the conversation is not all about decarbonization, e.g. 2025/04 Darius Nassiry_Ecosystems Are at Risk of Collapse.

Will Attribution Studies Influence the Climate Risk Conversation?

One implication of the swing towards “climate emergency” conversations is that more and more events are being blamed on climate change. One result of that is that we’re likely to see many more debates over exactly what the role of climate change was in any given event (or trend).

Some examples:

It is very common to hear that the rapidly growing number of billion dollar disasters in the United States is the fault of climate change. But then you see this (paywalled) article in the Washington Post 2024/10 The real reason billion-dollar disasters like Hurrican Helene are growing more common concluding that when you control for variables including “more homes” and “rising home prices” there is no climate change “signal” at all with respect to billion dollar disasters. Which seems odd - even ChatGPT will tell you that climate change is contributing at least modestly to the growing number of billion dollar disasters. But it’s very hard for most readers to penetrate the assumptions and modeling used on either side of the discussion.

This is even more true for the recent fires in Los Angeles. 2025/05 Robert Vautard_Exploring What Was Behind the Fires in Los Angeles sets the stage, and then there is 2025/04 Ketan Joshi_Attribution Study Links Warming to Los Angeles Fires. But then you can read through a very detailed Breakthrough Insitute blog post 2025/01 How much did increasing “Climate Whiplash” impact the Los Angeles Fires? which basically concludes that climate change had nothing at all to do with the LA fires. Counter-intuitive at best, again, but a data and modeling-based conclusion that is virtually impossible for 99.9% of the population to evaluate on its merits.

These two situations, and the descent into attribution debates, can be differentiated from another huge topic of discussion - what’s happening with the AMOC (the system of Atlantic Ocean currents transporting heat from the tropics into Northern latitudes including Europe). There was a positive paper that came out recently as discussed in 2025/04 Oliver Bolton_AMOC Showing Signs of Stability. But since there have been dozens of papers on this topic, with wildly varying conclusions regarding what’s going on with the AMOC, the average person can’t possibly interpret the science. If you do want to better understand what’s going on, check out - 2025/01 The AMOC is slowing, it’s stable, it’s slowing, no, yes, … But the more fundamental point is that in the absence of any solid attribution conclusions, the basic risk message still needs to be communicated. As scientist Stefan Rahmstorf has noted, the risks are such that we should ensure with 99.99% confidence that the AMOC does NOT slow or stop due to human activities. Of course we’re doing nothing of the sort.

These conversations can get very complicated, and while the issue of attribution is certainly scientifically legitimate, it’s not particularly clear that attribution studies will end up doing more than fueling whatever conclusion your particular confirmation bias leads you to favor. Given that, what role will it play in the larger objective of communicating climate change and risk?

Carbon Offsets and Markets

And of course plenty of discussion of carbon offsets, even as the retreat of companies against their climate and net zero targets would seem likely to undermine carbon market growth expectations. 2025/04 Robin Hicks_Carbon Offsets Behind Most Greenwashing in Southeast Asia flags the familiar greenwashing issue, 2025/04 Peter Ellis_Where The Removals Conversations Went Off the Rails tries to pinpoint exactly when we started seeing removals-based offsets as superior to avoidance-based offsets. And 2025/02 Peter Sainsbury_The Case for “Controlled Burning” Carbon Credits suggests expanding the scope of what we consider a carbon offset. (Mark Trexler Note: sounds great conceptually, but based on extensive work we did on this idea a couple of decades ago, it’s pretty challenging to turn into practice in a way that would meet basic offset criteria).

In terms of corporate offset strategies 2024/02 Robert Hoglund_Climate Action Beyond Company Value Chains Key to Net Zero lays out the case for moving beyond conventional offsets, while 2025/03 Owen Hewlett_Companies Should Be Setting Carbon Prices Internally suggests that that is how companies can best figure out how much money to spend on “beyond value chain” climate change mitigation. That said, 2025/03 Joseph Sarvary_Would “Beyond Value Chain Climate Action” Really Work? raises some key questions about this approach, and 2025/04 Alexia Kelly_The “Contributions” Model for Carbon Market Will Promote Greenwashing makes an impassioned plea for sticking with a more conventional approach to carbon offsets.

In the “silver lining’ category, carbon market veteran 2025/04 Alex Michaelowa_The VCM’s Failure Could Allow Article 6.4 to Become the Benchmark suggests a silver lining in the decline of voluntary carbon markets, since it could facilitate adoption of a more rigorous approach under Article 6 (although it must be noted that that rigor is not yet in place).

As an interesting example of carbon offset baseline uncertainties, 2025/04 ClientEarth_Court Ruling Keeps Case Against “Zombie Well” Alive reports on a court case challenging the abandonment of oil and gas wells, interesting in the carbon offset context because of the “baseline” question in terms of avoiding methane emissions from such wells. Is the baseline that the well would never have been capped, or that the well’s would have been capped (as already generally legally required by the way.

And if you have a climate-related business idea, check 2025/04 Ann Lerner Nesbitt_The Climate Collective’s Climate Accelerator

Concluding Notes

We hope you found Issue #8 thought-provoking. The next four years are going to be challenging from a climate change perspective, and we’ll try to pull together LinkedIn posts and materials that make it easier for readers to see the forest for the trees.

Mark Trexler and Zsolt Lengyel