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3 days ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
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3 days ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
Let me begin with a little but of business, or perhaps anti-business. I am worried there may be people paying for a subscription to this newsletter who have forgotten that they subscribed in the first place. Thanks to the blunders of our president, I know money is tighter than ever. If you need to cancel your paid subscription, the instructions are here.
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1 week ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
It snowed last night in the Green Mountains, a typically beautiful late-season fluff-fest. Which meant I got to rise at 6 this morning and go for a ski before the spring sun turned it to slush—helpful, because I needed to clear my head a little. That’s because word came last night that, having dispensed with immigrants, law firms, humanitarian workers, and universities, the Trump administration was now turning its crosshairs on climate advocates.
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2 weeks ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
We are living through a week unlike any other in my lifetime; maybe the last truly comparable stretch was the bank closure that marked the start of the FDR administration, but then the president was there to tell Americans they had nothing to fear; now we have a president who can only insist we “take our medicine.” He is constantly hyping the fear, and he is doing it with the constant invocation of a word—”emergency”—designed to send us into ever-deeper panic.
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3 weeks ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
Within an hour of Trump’s imposition of new tariffs, analysts at J.P. Morgan put out this guidance for their investors:“We view the full implementation of these policies as a substantial macro economic shock not currently incorporated in our forecasts. ..
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4 weeks ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
I think American history— which sadly includes slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration—means that we should be actively working to level the playing field between all Americans; as I said in my last book, I think there’s a strong argument for reparations. But you know who doesn’t think so?
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1 month ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
It must have seemed like a huge week for the fossil fuel industry: as the Wall Street Journal put it yesterday (and you could sense the headline writer’s glee), “The fossil fuel industry gets its revenge on green activists.”The oil-and-gas industry is landing blow after blow against climate activists. The Trump administration has cranked out approvals of major projects to ship liquefied natural gas from the Gulf Coast and killed a host of climate-related initiatives.
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1 month ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
I spent part of the morning reading the Powell memo—the famous document written by the future Supreme Court justice in August of 1971 arguing that American business and industry had to get its act together so it could dominate the country’s political life and prevent the threats to “the American system” from “the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.” In the short run, Powell was unsuccessful—the EPA had...
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1 month ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
We’re reaching the point with the second Trump administration where, as Wall Street investors would say, the crazy is “priced in.” There’s absolutely no reason to expect anything other than aggressively dishonest and profoundly stupid governance.
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1 month ago | 
billmckibben.substack.com | Bill McKibben
I just put out a newsletter yesterday, and normally I wouldn’t bother you for days. But something happened in my home state this morning that I just plain wanted to tell you about. Readers will probably have picked up by now that I love Vermont, and also that I love winter. I’m a nordic skier, but all respect to those who chase gravity on the downhill slopes—and never more than now.