With about a month and a half left until the Trump administration takes over the White House, I called Bill McKibben, a journalist, author and activist, to ask where the climate movement goes next.

(I also reported on how youth climate activists are evolving — changing tactics and growing up.)

The outlook for the movement that McKibben has helped lead for more than three decades may seem grim. Donald Trump, who has called global warming a “scam,” is likely to reverse many of President Biden’s climate policies. Trump is expected to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, dismantle regulations and target Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.

For McKibben, who helped start the conversation on climate after the publication of his New Yorker essay “The End of Nature” in 1989, fighting back against Trump’s policies remains a primary goal.

But the climate movement also plans to spend the next four years hunkering down at the local level. McKibben’s newest organization, Third Act, a nonprofit group for climate activists older than 60 that he started about three years ago, is highlighting the push for change at the community and state level. Over the past 18 months, they’ve begun a new strategy: attending the meetings of obscure state agencies or commissions that hold a lot of power over the energy transition.

We covered the pivotal election of one such board in Arizona, which sets utility rates and decides whether to add fossil fuels or renewables to the electric grid. In November, all three open seats went to Republicans.

“These are places that no one has engaged much with for decades,” McKibben said. “They’ve been protected by a force field of their own boringness.”

Youth climate groups have also said they’re pivoting from a national to a local stage, pushing for state-level laws like the Climate Change Superfund Act in New York, which could hold polluters accountable for climate change.

“This time around the resistance will be local,” Jamie Henn, who co-founded 350.org with McKibben and now runs Fossil Fuel Media, said. The effort will focus on community and regional-scale clean energy projects, and laying the groundwork for a big push to bring climate issues into the 2028 presidential campaign.

“We can’t survive heading into 2030 without bold leadership on climate back in D.C.,” Henn said.

The movement’s national issues

Climate change was not a major issue for most voters in the 2024 presidential election. McKibben said the lack of a Democratic presidential primary was partly to blame. To raise climate back up, Henn said it should be framed as more of an economic issue.

Sushma Raman, the interim executive director of Greenpeace USA, also said environmental leaders needed to highlight the economic opportunities of clean energy over the threats of climate change. “Climate disasters are taking place irrespective of who’s in the White House,” Raman said. “The clean energy transition must proceed.”

The Inflation Reduction Act should be defended as robustly as possible to keep money flowing into clean energy projects, McKibben said. And, he added, President Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas export terminals — or what McKibben calls “carbon bombs” — should be made permanent.

Changes in tone and strategy

It’s still too early to tell how Trump’s win will affect the climate movement, but McKibben said these were “uncharted waters.” While some parts of the movement are refining their economic arguments, other climate leaders hope to center their message on people that have been disproportionately affected by environmental harms or climate disasters. As I reported today, the youth climate movement has largely reframed itself as the youth climate justice movement.

And the work that lately excites climate leaders like McKibben is more celebratory. He wants to spread excitement about a future powered by sun, wind and energy storage, not fear over an increasingly warming world.

“My sense is there’s a great hunger for some very positive things to be working on in what is a very dark moment in both our nation’s and our planet’s history,” McKibben said.

Other activists agree. “There’s a new wave of climate activism that’s going to start emerging,” said Leah Thomas, a youth climate activist who started a nonprofit called Intersectional Environmentalist after gaining attention for one of her social media posts. “It’s going to be something more rooted in joy and radical imagination and community building.”

Three-quarters of Earth’s land got drier in recent decades, U.N. says

From the American West to eastern China, more than three-quarters of Earth’s land became persistently drier in recent decades, according to a United Nations report released Monday that called the shift a “global, existential peril.”

Industrial emissions of planet-warming gases were a major culprit, the report said. If nations don’t stop the rise in temperatures, the drying is likely to expose more places to sand and dust storms, wildfires, water shortages, crop failures and desertification.

Nearly one in three people live in moisture-deprived areas, up from one in five in 1990, the report said. — Raymond Zhong

Read the full article.

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Correction: The Thursday newsletter misstated the share of global carbon removal attributed to biochar last year. Biochar accounted for more than 90 percent of the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere through purchases tracked by CDR.fyi. It did not account for more than 90 percent of the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere globally.

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