Trump Makes It Official: No One is Coming to Save Us

Hey folks—We’ve moved from the era when avoiding the planetary crisis was the most pressing mission on Earth, to one where avoiding further catastrophe is now a subset of the challenge of responding to a climate and biosphere now in crisis.Could there be a better time to have unchecked corruption, reinvigorated predatory delay and a general collapse of competance in Washington, D.C.?In this impromptu podcast, I talk Trump, the lost Orderly Transition, and why reactive, forced climate response is so costly, unfair, and zero sum. Luckily, reactive, forced climate response seems to be mostly what we’ll get for at least the next half decade.Here’s the Bill McKibben quote I bumbled: "The most important news of last week, though you would have had to search hard to find it, was that the carbon dioxide monitoring station at Mauna Loa recorded the biggest single-year growth in co2 in its 66-year-history, rising 3.58 ppm." Apologies as well for the work-from-home moment at the end. (My family happily and unexpectedly tumbled in the door to announce the end of my work day.)To brighter days and better news…AlexPS: I’m teaching another Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics class on Thursday, January 30th. Details here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexsteffen.substack.com/subscribe