Business Needs Nature, Bad Bunny, and the Endangerment Finding Repeal

Welcome to The Climate Roundup newsletter. Your weekly edit of the climate and environmental stories shaping our planet and our culture and how the two are deeply connected. We live in a global ecosystem shaped by human decisions. Let’s make good ones.

Sign up for The Climate Roundup weekly newsletter here

For The Love Of Nature

Businesses depend on nature and biodiversity to make their products and services, whether it be a specific plant or animal species or an entire ecosystem. Pretty obvious, right? But “unsustainable economic activity and a focus on growth as measured by the gross domestic product, has been a driver of the decline of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people and stands in the way of transformative change”, states a major report on Earth’s biodiversity. Evidenced by nature’s 40% decline since 1992 and the continuation of business-as-usual economic activity, the business community does not appear to be connecting the dots that they need their raw materials to be alive and well, if they themselves want to remain alive and well.

It’s crass to talk about nature in economic terms, but we must. For those who look at the world through a lens of dollars and cents, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, woof) is for them. It argues that the current dire state of nature’s decline foreshadows business’s own imminent decline and presents a systemic risk to the global economy. ISPBES is the world’s leading body on biodiversity, and this report was signed off on last week by 140 countries, who apparently support the notion that the world’s focus on GDP is harmful to nature. The report lays out 100 actions businesses can take to become helpers rather than pure destroyers of nature.

As a point of grounding, the IPBES report found that “in 2023, an estimated $7.3 trillion of public and private finance flowed into business activities that are harmful to nature, while just $220 billion goes to activities that conserve biodiversity”. Furthermore, “governments subsidise activities driving nature’s destruction by $2.4 trillion each year.” That’s a whole lot of nature-harming without consequences or accountability.  (Keep reading the full essay here.)

Philanthropy At Work:

🏔️ Last week we welcomed a new organization onto Gen E for you to support. Alaska Wilderness League works to protect the beautiful land, water, wildlife, and cultures of Alaska from extractive and destructive industry and commercial activity. And they have an action for us to take: submit a public comment opposing oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Refuge. The Trump administration has opened an official comment period, intended for fossil fuel companies to nominate the new areas they want to drill. So let’s flood this public commenting opportunity with citizen disapproval. The goal is to discourage oil companies from purchasing leases to drill. History is on our side. Past attempts at selling off the Arctic to drill have not been fruitful – even the oil and gas companies know it’s unfavorable and economically risky. With this action, we can remind them that that thinking still holds.

👩‍⚖️ NRDC is hard at work suing the Trump administration for reckless pro-pollution actions that harm our health now and will harm the health and prosperity of future generations. Now, they are preparing to sue after last week’s official repeal of the endangerment finding, which has allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in our country. Below are some cases in court now. NRDC is:

✊ Suing the IRS and the Department of Treasury over new rules for tax credits that unfairly and illegally discriminate against wind and solar projects
✊ Suing the Department of Energy for failing to respond to requests for information about why it cancelled already-obligated funds for clean energy
✊ Supporting lawsuits filed by their coalition partners to reinstate federal funding for wind and solar power

Environmental News:

👀 We won’t belabor the point that last week the Trump administration did in fact go through with repealing the endangerment finding. It is/was the Environmental Protection Agency’s tool to regulate greenhouse gases from industry in order to protect human health. We won’t dive deep into how this repeal also eliminates vehicle emissions standards, which was good for both health and wallet. We’ve been talking about all of this for the past year leading up to this moment. All we can do now is root for the good guys to win in court (see above, NRDC is on the case, among others), and hope that the Supreme Court is not compromised so badly that it abandons the precedent it set nearly 20 years ago when it ruled that greenhouse gas emissions do endanger human health and welfare, and that it’s EPA’s job to regulate them under the Clean Air Act.

🛑 Something actually smart is brewing in politics: bipartisan support for a moratorium on data center development. Bills have been introduced in both Republican and Democratic states, with New York being the latest to propose a 3 year pause on permits for the construction of new data centers. Some politicians, from as far apart ideologically as Bernie Sanders to Ron DeSantis, are even calling for a national moratorium. Reasons vary, but they include environmental concerns, energy price increases, and the perpetuation of psychologically harmful consequences of unhinged AI. This shared desire to stop and think before barrelling forward with an industry’s objective is an incredibly refreshing sign of hope for American culture.

😖 And then there’s this: Trump has executive-ordered the Defense Department to purchase electricity created from burning coal. He will really stop at nothing to obstruct American progress. Aside from the obvious environmental and health issues caused by mining and burning the dirtiest class of fossil fuels, coal is the past. It’s been declining in use and as an industry here for years because of market forces and technological advances in other forms of energy production. It’s too expensive to run coal plants now that we have much cheaper ways of producing energy (like from solar and wind, and sure even gross gas). Anyone with any intelligence can see that. Holding on to coal and forcing it down American lungs by ordering retired coal plants to stay open, and now forcing government agencies to give it money is a national embarrassment, and I’m not sure why his party doesn’t challenge him on this one. Everyone knows coal’s time here is done.

🚙 Only 7 gas-powered cars sold in the entire country of Norway in January. Think about that. Can you imagine the day when we can say that about the US car market? Those 7 future US individuals will be quite the hard-core holdouts, because by that point it will be utterly gauche to be buying and burning fuel to make your car go zoom. It’ll be a pure identity move that’s super inconvenient because gas stations will be on the brink of extinction. When the day comes in the US where we’ve all adopted electric vehicles because it’s just the way we do things, who wants to bet the new ICE car owners will have last names that begin with a T and end in a rump?

Climate Meets Culture:

🐰 In case you missed it, during the halftime show of the Superbowl, Bad Bunny made a climate statement. It was during the part of the performance with the sparking electric poles, and the song was “El Apagón” , which means “The Power Outage”. It’s about the regular blackouts endured by the people of Puerto Rico, due to their outdated, shoddy electric grid powered by fossil fuels, which is extra vulnerable to climate-fueled extreme weather. Bad Bunny’s music video for the song is actually a 23 minute documentary about the island’s unreliable electricity and gentrification. Last month, Trump’s DOE canceled $450M in funding meant to upgrade Puerto Rico’s grid, and last year they “redirected” $365M in funds that were slated for residential solar and battery storage, a method of electricity generation that proved to be highly resilient when Jamaica faced Hurricane Melissa last year. Give the people their solar power!

🛷 A climate casualty: the Idaho Sled Dog Challenge. The annual competition is now canceled forever due to a lack of snow and unsafe conditions. They’ve had to cancel the past three years, and have been experiencing the unpredictability of winter snow long before that, so the organizers decided to throw in the towel. Just another example of how the climate crisis is a now thing, not just a future thing.