My Latest: Climate Realism (Still) Means Climate Justice
Why unlocking trillions in climate finance is an “existential necessity.”
Dear friends,
When the sun rose on Wednesday, November 6, and I stepped outside to greet it as I often do, mug of coffee in hand, it was like a thick cloud had dissolved and a great (caffeine-assisted) clarity appeared. All the torturous uncertainty of the election campaign was gone, and we could see as a stark fact the political reality we now face in the United States. This may sound bizarre, but the effect, for me, was strangely calming. OK, I thought, now we know what we’re up against. We know what we have to do. Game on.
Of course, this is no game.
I can tell you I’ve decided that my job now is to double down on my journalism—because the press itself is under threat, and this is no time to step back from the basic task of honest reporting and writing. I’m also showing up for as many movement conversations as I can, and I’ll stay ready to answer calls to mobilize when they come. And they will come—they’re already starting.
So, at the moment, I simply want to share my latest piece with you: “Climate Realism (Still) Means Climate Justice,” an interview for The Nation with the great and indefatigable Tom Athanasiou, one of the key authors of a hugely important and useful new report from the Civil Society Equity Review just released today at the UN climate negotiations, COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan. Tom is a leading researcher and campaigner for global climate equity who’s been at this work for decades, and there’s nobody better to explain this stuff. We talked about where climate geopolitics may go from here, in the wake of this election—the outlook may not be quite as grim as you think—and why “climate finance,” mobilizing trillions of dollars globally to enable the fastest and fairest possible phaseout of fossil fuels in the developing world, may be the most consequential political and moral task the world faces.
I hope you’ll have a chance to read the interview. You may find it eye-opening. It might even stiffen your resolve to face the day.
-Wen
P.S. In other news, Haymarket Books has officially announced that my new book, Learning to Live in the Dark: Essays in a Time of Catastrophe, will be coming out in the spring. I’ll have more to say about it in due time. So watch this space, as the saying goes.