Community solar, land trusts, and co-governed broadband scale when policy signals and subsidies lower friction. Local and state programs (and, where available, federal incentives) open the door. Remove the supports, and scaling slows. There is a workable formula. open.substack.com/pub/aclimate...

I’m a climate scientist. Let me fix this headline. “Nearly a century ago, scientists showed that burning fossil fuels warms the planet. Today, we know human emissions account for over 100% of the warming. Yet dark money and disinformation still work to keep Americans addicted to fossil fuels.”

Data centers’ diesel backup generators are emitting pollutants that can cause health problems for residents. That’s on top of contributing to higher electricity prices and sucking up communities’ water. Is it any wonder communities across the country are organizing to stop them?

Brilliant read, and spot on. 👏🏾

Memorial Day was born in a Black cemetery in Charleston, 1865. That origin was erased. The pattern of sacrifice & forgetting never was. New dispatch on what it means to build institutions that give communities real power over their futures. groundtruthdispatches.substack.com/p/martyrs-of...

👏 Congratulations to Columbia Climate School professor of climate @sheilarose.bsky.social and climate scientist Marco Tedesco, co-authors of #TopViewedArticle in @wiley.com#TopViewedArticleAnnals of New York Academy of Sciences, ranked within top 10% of most-viewed papers published in 2024! ➡️ https://bit.ly/3RfzdmE

Residents in Fayette County, Georgia noticed their water pressure was unusually low. Turns out that a data center 20 miles away had been drawing 30 million gallons of water in secret through connections the county didn't know existed. Is it any wonder why so many are opposed to data centers?

How far we've fallen below any standard of decency that allows people to live like this."She said that she was not aware of the full extent of the crisis until 2017, when a United Nations report compared the conditions in the country to those in the developing world. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/u...

This Politico piece is 🔥 "The images of white Republican legislators wearing MAGA flags to vote, Black lawmakers being jostled by white police officers...speak louder than words. And that was just last week. The ads write themselves." www.politico.com/news/magazin...

New dispatch is up on Substack. This is a time of reckoning. It is the only way I can make sense of the moment we are living through. To counter this we have to show up in our communities and take back the power that has slipped away from us for too long. open.substack.com/pub/groundtr...

Is it time for a working class (affordability) climate agenda? Clearly, yes. Mamadi's win is a template. "A recent survey ...found that 70% of voters, including 65% of Republicans, believe climate action can lower the cost of living." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito leaned on an erroneous claim that Black voter turnout now tops white voter turnout, in his Callais v. Louisiana ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act, reports The Guardian. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Silver lining on Court's VRA retreat. May restore Democratic strength in the South. "The G.O.P. may find it more difficult to win in more diverse districts of the kind that existed before the reshuffling of maps prompted by the Voting Rights Act." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/u...

Renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels in much of the world. They cut emissions, create jobs, strengthen energy independence, and help protect our planet. They’re scalable and abundant. The question is no longer whether we can do this. It’s why we aren’t.

New Substack Newsletter - Ground Truth - is live. Dispatches on justice, power, and what comes next. First post: The Reckoning Has Already Started. Check it out: groundtruthdispatches.substack.com

Amazing graphic of US drought crisis, reaching beyond “extreme” into “exceptional.” New levels of extreme weather from fossil fuel pollution.

Data centers are changing our politics: "... it was the sheer scale of the proposals, the suddenness with which they’ve appeared and the secrecy surrounding them that is punching emotion into the issue, turning out thousands of Democrats and Republicans..." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/u...

🌍 The Horn of Africa is in mourning. Farms are barren, deserts are advancing, rivers are drying, pests are spreading, and crops are dying. Climate change is not a distant threat,it’s here. #ClimateAction #HornOfAfrica #ClimateCrisis

Last Environmental Justice Law & Policy seminar of the semester at Columbia Law. In a time of rollbacks, we spent a semester mapping the legal levers that still exist — and there are many. These students give me hope. The work continues

Gift link. Great piece, remarkable embedded footage: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/u...

Wow, I think this sums it up: "The Supreme Court’s decision on Wednesday on the Voting Rights Act is a mind-boggling piece of judicial overreach....With this ruling, the court has acted more like partisan legislators than like impartial judges." www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/o...

An eye-opener of an article "Lately Americans have become fixated on the explosion in data centers and the power needs of artificial intelligence. That is actually a small part of a much bigger problem. Our grid is too old and our supply of electricity too small." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Thanks to Richard Briffault, @sarabronin.bsky.social, Brian Connolly, @toreydolan.bsky.social , @sheilarose.bsky.social @nicholashandler.bsky.social, Sharon Jacobs, @noahkazis.bsky.social, Mary Kroeger, Jonathan Levine, Amy Monahan (1/2)

I know the birthright thing has led to many complaints abt structural flaws in the legal academy, many of which I’ve made myself. But also? How many lawprofs are really making this anti-history argument. It’s 3 or 4, right? There are ~10,000 law profs in the US. That points to something else.

A possible super El Niño is coming, which means extreme heat and droughts all over the planet. As the climate crisis worsens, these extreme weather events are bound to get wilder. Are we prepared?

There was ONE ATC in the tower at LGA during last night's crash. ONE ATC, at LGA!, dealing w ALL air and ground traffic, including a plane filling w a strange smell and no gate to return to. The Pentagon wants $200B for a vanity war, but our ATC towers are empty. Budgets are moral documents.

This report shows that cities can achieve what was once thought impossible: cutting toxic air pollution by 20-45% in a little over a decade. London, Beijing and San Francisco have done it with EV’s, bike lanes and shutting down fossil fuel burning. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

In a new @latimes.com Op-Ed, I discuss how Kansas’s recent law invalidating 1,700 transgender individuals’ driver’s licenses raises significant questions about proportionality and administrative purpose. It criminalizes trans folks for no benefit to anyone. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

So, we are going to regulate your company like a utility, right?

Finally someone said it. The "housing supply"/Abundance strategy only goes so far if we are not paying enough attention to what kind of housing we are building and for whom. Seems intuitive for me, but good to see new empirical data documenting this reality check. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/r...

New special issue! Read it here: escholarship.org/uc/lawandpol... This issue features an introduction by Sumudu Atapattu and Carmen G. Gonzalez, articles by @juliadehm.bsky.social, @sheilarose.bsky.social, Usha Natarajan, and Erika George, and book reviews by Shohini Sengupta and Carolina Saito.

Trump pulled US out of Paris Climate Agreement in 2017 & again (after Biden rejoined) in 2025. Now he withdraws US from UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, as Project 2025 wanted. In 1992 the Senate unanimously ratified & President GHW Bush signed it. Re-ratifying requires a 2/3 Senate vote.

"What gives you hope?" is a tough prompt in these times, but one that's always worth reflecting on and sharing. Here are some thoughts from me and my colleagues around the Columbia Climate School (@climate.columbia.edu @sheilarose.bsky.social and more)

keep thinking of a vocally anti-woke reporter who insisted that the term "environmental racism" was nonsense

Proud to announce that my article "Racialized Landscapes and Climate Adaptation Economies" is now out in the Journal of Law and Political Economy's symposium on Racial Capitalism, Climate Change, and Law. Article can be accessed here: escholarship.org/uc/item/1f56...

The rate of global mean sea level rise has increased from ~2.1 mm/year in 1993 to ~4.5 mm/year in 2023. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Great article by @sheilarose.bsky.social calling for “just adaptation economies” that embed antidisplacement measures in resilience investments, support community ownership/stewardship of land and prioritize policies to counteract persistent social/spatial inequities escholarship.org/uc/item/1f56...

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. Learn more about this year's #BOTY and other big advances in science: https://scim.ag/493Tpgx

COP30 overpromised, underdelivered, empowered distractions, backtracked on issues and once again gave big oil and big ag a free pass. Unfortunately, the suspicions of climate scientists (here in Brazil and abroad) were confirmed again.

Recently back from #COP30. This is spot on- "if it wasn’t clear already, fundamental changes must now be made in the UNFCCC rules. A small number of rogue nations cannot be allowed to block progress for the rest of the world."

Wednesday 3:21 pm: A 252 mph wind measured by a dropsonde (weather instrument dropped from Hurricane Reconnaissance flight to observe wind/temperature/dewpoint as it descends to the surface) in Hurricane Melissa is the strongest wind on record measured in a hurricane: news.ucar.edu/133047/recor...

If a 2003-style heatwave hit Europe today, at ~1.5°C warming, it could cause ~18k deaths in a week, rising to ~32k at 3°C. Even with current adaptation, extreme-heat mass-mortality events remain plausible. Every 0.1°C of warming matters.... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

NEW: As world leaders meet at #COP30, Oxford research reveals which countries are turning climate promises into action and which aren’t. 🌍 The Climate Policy Monitor gives the clearest picture yet of how national laws stack up against global climate goals. 🧵 [1/10]

Zohran Mamdani would not be the first Dem socialist Mayor of NYC. Other Mayors, like LaGuardia and Dinkins, governed like socialists and/or embraced socialism. Though "City Hall has never had a leader with ties quite that close to democratic socialism," as Mamdani. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/n...

Hoping for more candidates like this. We need to reclaim Christianity and the moral/ethical high ground from those who have used it as a weapon against the most powerless and marginalized populations in our society. substack.com/@luciaromano...

12 Benchmarks of our slide to autocracy. We are not there yet, but we will be if we are complacent. I found this a useful read from the NY Times editorial board. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

NOAA aerial imagery is coming in. Hurricane Melissa literally turned western Jamaica from green to brown. Vegetation damage is immense — recovery will take years.