I’m bummed AND we’re winning…

A pep talk for a bum week, plus Harry Styles for extra delight!

Dear beautiful humans,
I know this little newsletter’s readership hails from all parts of the globe, so I hope you’ll indulge me this modestly regional edition. The specifics are Canadian, but the undulations are global. Undulation is a weird word, but I’ll wave away my worries about it.

It was a bummer of a week here in Canada. If you don’t follow our news beyond the puckish success of Heated Rivalry, you need only know that our PM effectively destroyed the last remaining vestige of serious, emissions-reducing policy, the Industrial Carbon Price, and capitulated to the oil industry in spectacular fashion. I’m particularly invested in this file, as I’m working on it. And I was in the midst of doing some core narrative message testing on it this week when I woke up with a lurch to the rumours of Carney’s backpedaling (or kayfabe) on the pricing timeline.

Reader, it was a bummer. Especially because in interviews with C-suite stakeholders across the country, I’d learned that so many of them, even the unexpected (mining, cement), were already doing really meaningful work to reduce their carbon intensity. Mining, a global operation for the most part, has been building against the certainty of carbon pricing for fifteen years(!). As recently as last week, China had committed to harmonizing to Europe’s carbon price (kinda huge!). And ⅔ of the world’s GDP is already carbon priced. So…I just really didn’t think our Prime Minister would be that weaksauce.

But oil and gas, and their powerful lobby, have captured the narrative, made it all about them, and done a tidy job of dispensing with even the slightest pretense of caring about, well, anything. Last week a formerly climate-minded Liberal trotted out nonsense arguments that I thought we’d moved past. And a few days ago an oil exec said the quiet part out loud: of course, we’ll pass on the costs of any improvements we make, to you, dear consumer, even as we reap billions for ourselves, leaving our wells uncapped, and a trail of cancer, hubris, and bad cologne wherever we do business. (Ok, I paraphrased.)

I think the down part of the undulation came from having expected too much, yet again, of our leaders (fool me twice…more like, fool me a hundred times, if you’re me! my friend Hannah always jokes that I like everyone…to my detriment). I’ve given our man Carney patience and understanding — we have a loose federalism, the Premier of Alberta has him by the Oxford shirttails, we must remain strong and united in the face of wingnut bullies, volatile economics, and repeated hockey defeats (fingers crossed this time). And the polling agrees — separatism is minoritarian sentiment but not politically marginal. Hard things are complicated. I get it.

But also.

Leaders gotta lead. And our current government has high support right now, and good faith energy among the body politic, if not the climate cognoscenti. A leader’s job is to see the future and map us there. I love the name of Whole Earth Catalogue founder Stewart Brand and Brian Eno’s trippy think tank, Long Now. And I think every elected leader should be forced to do an annual Long Now retreat: you are a steward of this arbitrary swatch of geography for but a tiny dollop of time in the grand continuum of human existence. Be wise. And wear good shoes.

But enough about the leader. What can a disheartened climate worker do? Persist, electrify, and breathe. My old mantra: Grieve, Breathe, Seize.

But what are we seizing, Sarah? Hmm…Everything! I read Garrett Bucks’ always perfect newsletter a few days ago, and his hed and dek sum it up, in the face of another wave of disappointment.:

It’s important to remember that we are winning.
It’s not about clinging to false hope; it’s about not giving up.

He writes in the key of American fascism, which is a degree of order more imminently severe than Canada’s recent efforts to turn up the temperature on the boiling frog (though to be sure, that frog’s boiling is caused by the same fascism that creates the conditions for petro-masculinity to persist), but the sweep of the idea is the same:

And yet here I am talking about how we’re winning. I promise I’m not being brusque, though it is important to define our terms. By we, I mean those of us who wish for a country and planet where everybody is safe and loved.¹ And by winning, I’m not inferring that we have fully defeated this or any empire of cruelty. Ours remains a world that worships money and hierarchy far more than care and dignity. That was true before Trump, and remains particularly true under his watch.

Readers, I understand if nothing about this moment feels victorious. This gerrymandering apostasy, to take just one example, is disempowering by nature. Powerful people in suits and robes are picking and choosing whose votes matter and whose votes don’t. Red State Republicans? Deserving of enfranchisement. Black voters? This is America, so you know how that story goes.

If you feel like the fix is in, that no matter how unpopular Trump becomes, we’ll wake up in November to find that dirty tricks and duct tape were enough to manufacture another MAGA victory, you’re not being hysterical. That’s the game. Disenfranchisement isn’t just a structural reality, it’s a spiritual state.

But we are winning. Through collective action and agitation, we continue to reveal that this Emperor is as naked as they come. Even the most callous dictators require a popular base for their dirty tricks. Every strongman’s hope is that, over time, their opposition will become more demoralized and less willing to take to the streets. It matters then that Trump is historically unpopular. It matters that Republicans keep losing elections. It matters not only that anti-Trump protests continue to grow larger, but that the thousands of actions on May Day showcased an increased tactical sophistication.

This beautiful arc is being articulated not just by Bucks but by many, many others. Rebecca Solnit has written about this moment of profound rupture (We are crashing into the future! What a visual!), and Bill McKibben has written about the fossil fuel industry’s death rattle, as the sun takes ascendancy. We know that this is that final undulating shake. And yet it is causing, and will cause, so much avoidable pain and death, so this moment is, to put it elegantly, craptastic.

But the joy comes from knowing that we have not just all the things that Bucks talks about — the humanity, solidarity, love, and the unity that is kicking fascists out of office and ushering in dancing ministers (I mean, could you have imagined this a month ago?). We also have this electric transition that I yap about incessantly. That’s real, too. Joy and a warm home, powered by clean electrons.

One of my other clients is a solar and battery company doing magical things in the southern United States. It’s a great story of folks literally taking back the power — turning their homes into distributed power plants, saving money, strengthening their resiliency. These are not the people you’d expect to be ushering in the clean energy transition, which perhaps makes it all the more delightful.

It’s sad still to see so much waste and capitulation and opportunity squandered (Canada, be smrtr!) when there is beautiful climate and life-saving work to be done. But as Bucks says, it’s about not giving up. I hope you will not give up together with me. Because I know that we’ve got this.

Can I end with Rebecca Solnit’s glorious words? Yes!

From global geopolitics to major technologies and industries to our most intimate relationships and identities, everything is changing fast. I believe we’re in an era of dissolution and that that’s a lot of what transformation looks like; I also know that the struggle to emerge from the chrysalis is hard and not all of the butterflies make it. I see the past receding and the future emerging at dizzying speed.

i just draw this Venn over and over again. I bought Molly Crabapple’s book, Here where we live is our country: the story of the Jewish bund, at City Lights last month. Have you read it?

This planet

How are you not giving up? Lemme know, please.

Last Planet - competency!

Readers of this newsletter are the smartest humans, and I always want to meet everyone in person. Thank you, E, for this:

Do you watch the series Hacks? (me: YES!) It’s a gem of a show with clever commentary on culture and climate change (pardon the alliteration). In this latest season they’ve veered into the tumultuous and topical subjects of AI, automation, and the resultant loss of jobs–focusing on creative-based work like writing.

There’s a scene where the lead comedian character, Deborah, is pitched by a VC guy to grant him her entire body of work to train his LLM. That way the general public can pay for his product to write funnier speeches using AI. It’s only when he suggests that the product would save Deborah the trouble of coming up with her own jokes that she realizes this is not so exciting of a prospect. When he asks her why she wouldn’t use it, she says “there’s no short cuts”, he retorts that he’s created one with this model to which she says, “ok fine yes there is but using that shortcut makes it something else. It makes it not art”, he says, “I’m sorry but your joke about laser hair removal is art?”, she concedes, “ok you’re right it’s pretentious to call it art but that laser hair removal joke is something I arrived at after trying a million other versions. Every time that joke didn’t work, not only did I make it better, but it made me a comedian. Because to become one you have to do it and fail and do it and fail over and over and over until you figure out who you are”, to which he says “Lady, stop squawking at me. All I’m trying to do is make your life easier”, and she says “But it shouldn’t be. Why are you trying to optimize the creative process, I mean, that’s one of the things we’ve actually figured out. We’re good there. You know, we have been ever since cave men told stories about bears...I mean, fix the ozone, come up with a cure for cancer!”, he says “Oh my gosh cancer again, look it sounds a little bit like you don’t really respect QuikScribbl.”

This whole scene effectively captures a philosophical argument that is taking place in the world. Do we want short cuts at all costs or do we want competence, that takes time to develop? As you observantly point out, there’s a ten in there for a reason!

If we look at the latest federal election, it seems like a lot of Canadians do still want competence. Out of a sloganeering rage-baiting anti-vax convoy supporter and a pragmatic economist, Canadians appear to have made a choice for competence, particularly in the face of dangerous threats from incompetence (or, framed another way, competence at doing bad stuff).

At the same time, there’s no doubt this looming sense that the wool is being pulled over us to some extent. The Breach went to the Liberal convention and spoke to folks attending. The video they made is worth a watch. As we breathe a sigh of relief not to have a climate denialist in the PMO, we’re talking about spending time, money and energy on brand new fossil fuel pipelines that will make our air harder to breathe and threaten the future of the economy in an electrified world. Meanwhile China, Pakistan, France, Spain and others are rapidly deploying new renewable projects.

The extra crapitudinous thing about the weakening of pricing is the signal it sends. We triangulate from various signposts to build our Overton window of acceptable climate action, and this agreement shifts those signposts, making it easier for politicians and industry leaders to retreat even further.

It’s for the same reason that we must call out incorrect narratives in the media. We know media power is increasingly dispersed, but even across AI-enabled content streams full of slop and hot takes, folks take their cues from established sources. That’s why it’s so important for big outlets like the New York Times to get it right, and so unhelpful when they don’t. My friend, the veteran climate communicator, David Fenton (who also has a new podcast BTDubs), has been leading this charge. Last week, he succeeded in getting a group of folks to challenge a dum dum article that stated that leaders shouldn’t talk about climate change. Great, but damage done, NYT.

Likewise, this framing from the Globe irked me because it presents the wrong view of how climate folks feel about the carbon pricing MOU. I believe it initially said views were mixed, but was changed thus in a subsequent iteration.:

Others disagreed with detractors. Clean Prosperity, a Canadian climate policy advocacy group, said the deal represents an important break with policy that wasn’t working for the environment or for business. And the Business Council of Canada and the Chamber of Commerce lauded the deal for delivering certainty to business and the oil and gas industry.

Climate folks aren’t detractors, and lumping scattered business interests into this paragraph is a weird conflation. Climate folks were almost 100% unified in their condemnation of the agreement, and MANY other business and industry groups felt likewise. I hate the ‘for its partism’ of modern journalism almost as much as I hate having to call it out.

Cool deck alert:

Fossil Fuel lobby narrative capture is real. Even clean energy folks don’t know some of the basics about how much of our economy is derived from O&G. Spoiler alert: much less than you think. Here’s a great deck from Gavin Pitchford that helps upend some of our misguided priors.

Stuff

If you’re in Vancouver, I’m speaking at the heat pump symposium this Wednesday, May 20th. With some REALLY smart contractors! I’ll talk behavioural science and electric adoption.

If you’re in Toronto, I’ll be speaking, alongside some great folks, at the Seaton Village Green Neighbours’ Electrify your home talk, next Thursday, May 28th. Palmerston Library! Come.

Housekeeping

Thanks so much for reading! Always tell me how to make this newsletter better! I really appreciate your feedback, comments, likes, and shares!

Wishing you health and sanity and beauty and movement,
Sarah

People dancing

The collab between the amazing choreographer Ryan Heffington and Harry Styles is just wow. I love both these two, and I always covet Harry’s outfits. (And a PS if you read this far…I’m in the CityDance Showcase on Sunday if you’re in Toronto. I am biased but I love this show - adults of all ages and abilities coming together to showcase their skills. It’s Toronto at its most joyful.)