Issue 10 - Things Can't Get Much Worse, Right? Hence the Light at the End of the Tunnel!!!

Introduction

We’re working to get the bi-weekly schedule for our Climate Change on LinkedIn Newsletter back on track, but the flood of news is not making it any easier. It’s always been true that we’re only able to cover a slice of great LinkedIn commentary, but that slice seems to be getting smaller all the time! 

This 10th issue of the Newsletter follows the same systems-based thinking format you’ve seen in recent issues, with a couple of variations. We start with the “Big Picture” that sets the context for much more granular climate-related discussions. In the face of so much “Big Picture” bad news, we’ve added a “Humor” section that might distract you for a few minutes. Then we move on to the “Science and Impacts,” “Solutions and Barriers,” “Theories of Change,” and “Other Content” sections of the Newsletter.  

The Big Picture

The Big Picture was pretty bad a couple of weeks ago, when 2025/07 Joe Romm_NOAA Staff Between Disturbed and Terrified reported on the general sense of foreboding. Well, its gotten worse:  2025/09 Bill Hare_The Changes To NOAA Staffing And Other Departments Such As The National Weather Service In The US Are Extremely Concerning and 2025/09 Joe Romm_American Meteorological Society Warns of Irreparable Harm to Americans. And if you’re not sure why NOAA and the National Weather Service matter, take a look at  2025/09 Laurie Shoeman_A National Weather Service Primer.  By some accounts we’re dismantling future prosperity: 2025/08 Joe Romm_The Dismantling of U.S. Scientific Leadership and Future Prosperity. 

Or course the Big Picture is A LOT bigger than NOAA and what comes next in terms of potential privatization of weather services as called for in Project 2025.  For example, 2025/09 Elizabeth Morrill_The Situation at USAID is Worse Than You’re Being Told questions the veracity, for example, of Elon Musk suggested that USAID ebola program funds were restored. The EPA may be next - 2025/08 Eric Haxthausen_Exploring the Implications of a 65% Reduction in EPA Staff notes what responsibilities the EPA didn’t yet have the last time it was staffed at such a level.  It may even be, as called for in Project 2025,  2025/09 Darius Nassiry_EPA Head Suggests Reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding, which forms the basis for basically all of the federal government’s climate rules under the Clean Air Act. In a rare note of optimism, 2025/09 Joe Romm_The Endangerment Finding May Be More Resilient Than Assumed. Meanwhile, at the Department of Energy 2025/08 Sebastian Manhart_Did DOE Kill Carbon Dioxide Removal?

In a very different but still “Big Picture” venue, 2025/08 Cameron Barr_The Washington Post Goes All In On “Freedom” and “Markets” reports on the latest journalistic retreat by Jeff Bezos. Of course all kinds of efforts are underway to slow down the Blitzkrieg strategy being used by the new Administration, efforts that are being covered in all kinds of venues of their own.  One small but very relevant example is 2025/09 Jonathan Gilmour_Saving FEMA’s “Future Risks” Database From Oblivion reports on efforts to rescue datasets that are at the very least being made non-accessible, and that at worst could disappear entirely. 

Humor as Intervention

It’s hard to imagine the “Big Picture” getting worse, which is why we’ve included this “humor” section.  The only things one could envision making things substantially worse from a “Big Picture” perspective would be the collapse of Western alliances that have underpinned global stability for decades. Oh Wait:  That Happened Friday!  (laughter!)  Well, at least we haven’t launched trade wars with out largest trading partners, which would tend to distract our collective attention even more from topics like climate change. Oh Wait:  That’s Supposed to Happen Tomorrow!  (sobbing!).  And for a sense of how quickly things could spiral take a look at 2025/08 Sean Moffitt_52 Things Canada Can Do to Respond to Trump’s Tariffs. 

With that settup, here are some videos you might find entertaining in the context of the “Big Picture.”  2025/02 The Marsh Family Reacts in Song to this Weeks Oval Office Meeting is infuriating but well worth listening to (and they turned it out in 48 hours!) Check out and subscribe to their YouTube channel, which seems under-subscribed for the communications work they’re doing (and have been doing for a long time!) Some oldies but goodies include 2024/02 Battle Hymn of the Trumpublic which is bit scary in how accurately it portrays where we are today. 2024/09 A Project 2025 Alternative Reality Starring Julie Andrews  is a funny/sad takeoff on the Sound of Music in a world in which women have lost most of their rights. 2024/10 Hitler Phones Trump to Congratulate Him is very funny if you ARE looking for some confirmation bias of your own, and you don’t pay too much attention to what is actually being said in German (hint - it bears no relationship to the subtitles!). It’s worth noting that progressives are by no means the only ones taking advantage of this medium.  2025/1 Elon Musk as Sherlock Holmes makes clear that the conspiracy nuts are even more on top of the satirical video genre than progressives.  Just take a look at some of Free Media’s other videos on their channel. And I won’t be able to resist watching Part 2 of 2025/1  THOR's Greenland Quest: A Donald Trump Parody (Part 1), which uses the word “parody” in its title to attract more viewers, when in reality it’s just MAGA red meat.

Science and Impacts

Only a couple of science and impact posts in this issue, including: 2025/09 Roberta Boscolo_Rate of Biospheric CO2 Uptake Declining. On the never-ending AMOC front, another new study - 2025/09 Jon Baker_New AMOC Study Challenges Idea of Imminent Collapse concluding that “Our findings suggest a catastrophic AMOC collapse before 2100 is unlikely.” Celebrations ensued, but 2025/09 Laurie Laybourn_Let’s Put AMOC Into a Larger Risk Conversation Context gets it exactly right. This never-ending AMOC back and forth of “we’re about to die” vs. “we’re not about to die, but we might die sometime in the future” is not very helpful from a climate communications perspective. Apropos the AMOC, you may have seen reference in earlier Newsletters to Randy Olson’s ABT communications framework, which you can explore in more detail in this Synthesis of Randy Olson’s ABT Thinking (it’s well worth exploring!). Here’s a simple attempt to apply the ABT to the ongoing AMOC conversation:

(AND) We have long known that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a key component of Earth’s climate system, acting as a vast conveyor belt that moves heat from the tropics to northern latitudes. This process helps regulate temperatures across Europe and North America AND plays a crucial role in maintaining global weather patterns, including monsoon cycles and hurricane formation. Historical evidence from ice cores and ocean sediments confirms that the AMOC has slowed dramatically—and even shut down entirely—multiple times in Earth’s past, with devastating global consequences. For decades, scientists have worked to determine whether the AMOC is currently weakening, how soon it could collapse, and what the implications would be if it did.

BUT the uncertainty in AMOC research has created a major communication challenge. Different models and studies offer conflicting conclusions—some suggest a collapse is unlikely this century, while others warn it is likely to happen within decades, and could even be imminent. This divergence of findings is easily misinterpreted by the public and policymakers to suggest scientists have no real idea what’s happening, and to conclude that a lack of certainty means a lack of risk. In reality, uncertainty in a system as critical as the AMOC should be seen as an urgent warning, not a reassurance.

THEREFORE, we must shift AMOC messaging away from debating whether or not the AMOC is collapsing “right now,” and towards a risk-based conversation that reflects the importance of the AMOC to global stability.

This is a “quick and dirty” ABT - ABTs seem simple enough until you really start digging into them -  but you might nevertheless recognize the power in this kind of narrative statement. In which case you might want to take a look at our AI-generated Synthesis of Randy Olson’s ABT Thinking based on several of his books. 

In terms of climate impacts, on a sad note - 2025/08 Taryn Foster_It Is With Immense Sadness That I’m Sharing The News Of The Coral Bleaching Event Unfolding At Ningaloo Reef

Solutions and Barriers

We now move on to climate solutions and the barriers to those solutions.  These are huge topics, so we’ve been pretty selective.  2025/04 Ollie Potter_How Supercapacitors Can Replace Batteries in Bicycles was energizing, and here’s where you can dig deeper into the specifics of the company and the technology. 

Most of the “solutions posts” we identified represented well-trodden issues. 2025/08 Eve Tamme_Key Points From 333 Page Carbon Removals Report also includes a selection of key images from the report. In what is probably a less sanguine take, 2025/08 Ketan Joshi_For All Of The Various Problems In The Emerging World Of Carbon Removal, Occidental Petroleum Exemplifies The Absolute Worst Of The Worst, characterizing CDR as becoming much more like point-source CCS - a tool used by the fossil fuel industry and high emitters to openly delay the elimination of hydrocarbon reliance. In case you’d missed the message, 2025/08 Paul Martin_Trees Are Awesome, But Won't Save Us From Climate Change does the simple math. While 202508 Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjorkskov_Emissions Reductions and Ecosystem Restoration Are Both Key to Saving the Planet makes a similarly often stated point. 

And on the hydrogen front, 2025/08 Michael Barnard_Hydrogen Hype Meets Hard Costs: Europe’s Pipeline Plan in Trouble, suggesting that hydrogen pipelines cost far more than expected, hydrogen itself is far more expensive than assumed, and the economics of large-scale hydrogen transport and hydrogen as an energy carrier simply don’t hold up. The future is electrons, and the pipeline of the future is HVDC (high voltage direct current transmission). Even as 2025/08 David Cebon_Dutch Energy Giant Gasunie Publishes Reports That Play-Down The Problems Of Re-Using Gas Pipes For Hydrogen. But the direction of the conversation seems clear, with  2025/08 Joe Room_Green Hydrogen's Kryptonite: Plummeting Battery Costs Plus Soaring Electrolyzer Costs Means Electrification Crushes Hydrogen Economy.

When it comes to the barriers to climate action, we chose a pretty broad mix. 2025/08 Josh Felser_My Electrified Co-op Journey Into Hell – Part 2 is thought-provoking look at the complications of putting building electrification into practice at, literally, ground level. If you missed his first installment you might want to read it first: 2024/09 Josh Felser_My Electrified Co-op Journey Into Hell – Part 1.  Coincidentally, 2025/09 Dylan Tanner_Business Lobbying Against Building Electrification reports on InfluenceMap’s extensive investigation into the business interests looking to impede building electrification. And pulling in a podcast for some variety - 2025/2 Catalyst: Cultivated Meat’s Trough of Dissilusionment is a very interesting "listen" to what happened to all those companies promising cultivated meat, where the industry stands today, and what would help jump start it.  

Stepping back while sticking with barriers, 2025/08 Daniel Yergin_The Energy Transition Is Proving To Be More Difficult, Costly, And Complicated Than Expected. It Is Time To Rethink Priorities, Polices And Investments In Light Of The Complicated Realities discusses the problem that what has unfolded to date is not so much an “energy transition” as an “energy addition.” Which isn’t helped by 2025/08 Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE)_Fossil Fuel Companies Are Shaping What Kids Learn About Climate Change In Our Schools points to a new report discussing how dozens of fossil fuel companies and industry-linked organizations are infiltrating Canadian classrooms - funding misleading climate education, influencing curricula, and shaping teacher training. And in a similar vein, 2025/9 Lincoln Bauer_Shedding Light on Corporate Sponsorships of COP suggests that little good will come of companies becoming more active in sponsoring key events like Conferences of the Parties. 

Last on barriers, 2025/08 Brandon Locke_The EU’s New Fossil Fuel Emissions Rules Are One of the Biggest Climate Wins of the Decade, But Now Are Under Threat reports on industry players trying to weaken the rules based on the challenges of tracing fossil fuel supply chains, while proposing a new approach via a White Paper. To inform the topic, 2025/03 Portland’s Airport Hypes Sustainable Timber, But Those Lofty Claims Are More Complicated Than They Seem is a very interesting look at the challenges of being “truly green” even under the best of circumstances, based on Portland’s experience with its beautiful new “entirely sustainable” airport ceiling. As the article explores, despite best efforts it’s only possible to identify the exact provenance of about 1/3 of the timbers used in the construction. So are the claims legitimate?  Are they greenwishing? Could they be seen as greenwashing?  

Theories of Change

Theories of Change basically refers to pathways by which we might overcome the barriers to climate change mitigation in order to implement solutions and ultimately “solve” the problem. There is a lot of discussion of the need to change our “theories of change,” or at least to explore them more directly.  2025/09 Paul Watkinson_It Would Be Easy To Despair, But Now Is The Right Time To Refocus, Look Clearly At Why We Are Not Succeeding, And Identify Ways Forward is one example.  But the message is pretty abstract:  “At a domestic level, we need to find ways to build more successful climate policies, ones that respond to the legitimate concerns of our citizens who are tempted by the discourse of populists because they see climate policies as threatening their well-being. At an international level, we need to move away from sterile negotiations and fights about headline phrases, and use the practical information we can draw from the process to support concrete action, whilst putting some order in the bloated action agenda.”  2025/08 Greg De Temmerman_What Narrative Do We Need To Induce The Required Systems Change? asks whether we should scare people and run the risk to get them depressed or hyper anxious, or use a positive narrative to show that despite the size of the challenge there might be a desirable future in sight? To wrap things up 2025/08 Joseph Gelfer_Book Review Rant: How We Sold Our Future: The Failure to Fight Climate Change goes on a self-professed book review rant against the most commonly voiced theories of change.

There are several theories of change “pathways” in common discussion, and they’re separated out below: 

• The Abundance Narrative

• Voluntary Actions

• Make Sustainability Profitable

• Regulation and Policy

• Market Mechanisms

• Technology Innovation and Deployment

The Abundance Narrative

You may not know much about the Abundance narrative and how it relates to a “theory of change” we’re covering in this Newsletter, but that will probably change with the publication later this month of Ezra Klein’s book “Abundance.”  2025 Klein_Abundance. As noted in the book blurb: “To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. . . . Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.”  

The Abundance narrative is politically attractive, and we’re going to start hearing much more about it. You’ll see reference in the blurb to the need to build out renewable infrastructure to tackle climate change goals. Absolutely true. But it’s much less clear what the larger implications of “abundance” would be for GHG emissions and climate change, and it’s not something you see addressed in the Abundance literature that has accumulated over the last couple of years. That’s arguably because Abundance proponents have a very different view of climate change as a problem. In that view, based on conversations with thought-leaders in the space, “que sera sera” when it comes to climate change.  In other words, the idea of top-down regulation and policy aimed at tackling climate change has been shown to be infeasible over the last two decades. Climate change is going to happen, hopefully moderated by technologies and innovation, and we’ll have to adapt to the rest. If this is a fair way to characterize the Abundance narrative, and if that narrative catches on, it will obviously upend most of the “theories of change” conversations discussed here (and elsewhere).  And it has parallels to other lines of argument:

Voluntary Actions as Theory of Change

From a “theory of change” perspective, “voluntary actions” conversations are dominated by the retreat of companies from their voluntary commitments, as exemplified by 2025/09 Ben Elgin_Southwest Airlines Pulling Back From Alternative Fuels including laying off seven out of 10 employees on two key teams working to reduce its emissions and increase its use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). And offset advocates aren’t happy: 2025/08 Rich Gilmore_HSBC’s Blaming of SBTi and Carbon Offsets For Retreating on Corporate Commitments is BS.  

But the retreats take a number of forms, as per 2025/09 Ken Pucker_Newly Appointed Head Of Sustainability For HSBC Says The Time Has Come For Banks To Stop Penalizing Clients That Have A Large Carbon Footprint, suggesting that "an overly restrictive policy toward fossil fuels puts at risk the reliable supply of energy and may even undermine the transition to a low-carbon future.”  2025/08 Raz Godelnik_Are Banks Downgrading Sustainability Roles to Better Integrate Them Into Corporate Operations?, as some banks’ PR departments are announcing, suggests it’s more likely a response to external pressures, and that climate advocates need to identify leverage points that increase pressure on banks to prioritize sustainability. “It’s ultimately a game of pressure.” Absolutely true, but what ARE those leverage points.  

At the same time, there’s always the search for the silver lining - 2025/08 Daan Walter_BP’s Scaling Back on Renewable Energy Isn’t Bad News suggests that the very fact that BP is scaling back suggests that the next stage of energy sector disruption is getting started.

Profitable Sustainability as Theory of Change

Arguably under the category of “why didn’t I think of that?,”  2025/08 Genevieve Bennett_We Need to Kill the “Economy or Ecology – Pick One” Sustainability Messaging  builds on Nawar Alsaadi’s attached post saying that “If the sustainability community wants to win this battle, it needs to accomplish only one thing: making the word “sustainability” synonyms with “profitability”. To do this we need to move away from building an elaborate reporting ecosystem to building a sustainable business intelligence ecosystem, where human expertise and cutting-edge AI fuse to unlock the next phase of sustainable value creation.”  Which doesn’t answer the question of how you “make sustainability profitable” without the policies and measures that would “internalize the externalities” leading to climate change and non-sustainable activities generally. 

Regulation and Policy as Theory of Change

2025/08 Hannah Daly_New Irish Policy Requires New Data Centres To Build On-Site Generation, Which Is Likely To Rely On Fossil Fuels reports on the immense pressure data centers are placing on Ireland’s climate obligations as one fifth of Ireland’s metered electricity is used by data centers.  2025/09 Georg Kell & Andreas Rasche_The European Commission's Omnibus Proposal Is Based On A Misleading 'Cost Narrative' Which Introduces A False Trade-Off: You Can Either Have Comprehensive Reporting And Due Diligence Or You Can Have Competitiveness. They argue that declaring sustainability reporting and due diligence a competitive disadvantage may appease populist and revisionist sentiments, but it won’t prove a winning strategy for Europe‘s future.

2025/08 Simone Tagliapietra_What To Make Of The EU’s New  Clean Industrial Deal?, which focuses on electrification, leading the way with public procurement, and investing, but leave open critical issues of state aid, global dimensions, and governance. 2025/08 Jos Dings_Will This Week's EU Clean Industrial Deal (CID) Turn The EU's Fortunes In Attracting Cleantech Investment And Innovation? suggests that throwing more public money at cleantech manufacturing under current rules won't make a difference. 2025/08 Simon Evans_Official Advisers Climate Change Committee Say UK Should Cut Emissions 87% By 2040 based on estimates it will be a lot cheaper than originally thought. 

Market Mechanisms as Theory of Change

It’s good to know that markets will now have the Washington Post firmly on their side -  2025/08 Cameron Barr_The Washington Post Goes All In On “Freedom” and “Markets,” regardless of whether markets are the right tool for a particular job or not.  2025/09 Sophus zu Ermgassen_What Are 'Biodiversity Offsets', 'Nature Positive', 'Biodiversity Credits', And How Do All Of These Things Fit Together? reports on a new paper "Biodiversity Offsets, Their Effectiveness and Their Role in a Nature Positive Future".  2025/08 Climate Focus_Major Progress in Global Carbon Markets: Art6.4 (PACM) suggests big progress in robustly advancing Article 6.4 during February meetings of the Supervisory Committee.  2025/08 ECOPTIMA_Questioning Digital Monitoring Reporting and Verification (dMRV) provides a quick assessment of the Gold Standard’s recent announcement of three innovative digital Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (dMRV) pilot projects. 2025/08 Owen Hewlett_ There Is A Lot Of Confusion About Whether And Where Carbon Credits And Carbon Removals Count Towards Corporate Targets suggests that counting them erroneously against the wrong thing harms both the framework and the market/mechanism. That’s the issue, not whether they count but making sure they count for the right things. Since the Newsletters Mark Trexler carried out some of the first jurisdictinal-REDD work for the U.S. EPA during the 1990’s, we can’t miss including 2025/08 Donna Lee_Advocating for the Importance of Jurisdictional In Addition to Project-Level Mitigation which assesses Calyx Global’s expertise in J-REDD (Jurisdictional REDD) as a tool for climate change mitigation these 25+ years later.  2025/09 Henry Kronk_No Carbon Offset Greenwashing Case Ever Has Ever Been Won in the U.S. wonders how greenwashing charges can have been as effective as they have been, given that record. That said, the “in the U.S.” is an important caveat since there have been cases won in Europe. 

At a more philosophical level, 2025/08 Nathan Truitt_ Mitigation Hierarchy : I Would Like To Offer A Brief Suggestion For How We Might Change Our Thinking challenges the idea that we should always seek to avoid an impact, or reduce that impact, prior to compensating for or offsetting it. 

Technology Innovation and Deployment as Source of Change

(Realizing this was addressed under "Solutions and Barriers" above. Will sort out for next issue!

Conclusions

We hope you’ve found this issue of “Climate Change on LinkedIn” thought-provoking, which is its primary goal.  If so, consider taking a look at Mark Trexler’s new “Climate Learning With AI Newsletter.” It’s not a typical newsletter; it’s really a way to share some of the outputs he is generating from intensive work with generative AI tools. He might spend hours getting to an insightful analysis of “climate news," or "climate change public opinion," or, "what are the trends in climate change litigation?” The prompts themselves can be a couple of pages long in their own right. Through the Newsletter he'll share examples of those AI-generated outputs that readers would be interested in.‼️Trigger Warning: These will be AI-GENERATED OUTPUTS. If you don't want to be exposed to AI-generated content don't sign up for the Newsletter! If you’re interested in exploring how AI can help us more rapidly come up various climate change learning curves, do sign up for the Newsletter on LinkedIn, or if you’d rather just receive the Newsletter’s content in PDF form to your inbox, sign up here!

Mark Trexler and Zsolt Lengyel