Pausing the climate change conversation

A personal take on a tired topic — and where to go next with it.

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September 2024 on the streets of Washington DC —

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Suited twentysomethings queue outside an indoor-outdoor bar near the thrum of Dupont Circle. One glance at chalkboards pedaling ‘Blue Wave’ and ‘Red State’ shooters (for one night only!) and I feel sufficiently reassured I was right to flee D.C. five years ago. This Tuesday night cocktail of political theater and cheap alcohol is exactly what drove me away in the first place.

I walk down dim streets with some international acquaintances, an unpleasant twinge of cigarette smoke hitting the air as we stop on 14th Street, just outside another politicized patio.

It’s debate night in America.

I squat on a windowsill and take in the scene. People are wearing a mix of Carhartt jeans and pastel button-downs. The bar is packed. Projectors flash between Harris’s self-assured smirk and Trump’s erratic fury. I sit silently, waiting for a single question, while political wonks chatter on around me, their conversations mixing with the occasional boo or cheer as zingers are landed and takedowns are made.

At the last minute it arrives, as the throwaway it is¹:

Moderator: The question to you both tonight is what would you do to fight climate change?

Harris: Well, the former president had said that climate change is a hoax. And what we know is that it is very real.

* Talks about the clean energy economy, increasing domestic gas production, and her UAW endorsement*

Trump: *Doesn’t say a word about climate*

I’m long past the point of experiencing surprise.

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August 2024 in Monroe County, Wisconsin —

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“Whatever you do, don’t talk to me about politics!”

Swing-state ad campaigns have clearly exasperated this elderly co-pilot somewhere along the small-town Sparta-Elroy trail in Wisconsin. Mary is excited to meet a fellow cyclist — but doesn’t want to talk about my ‘vote climate’ bike stickers. Fair enough. She lives in a district that’s undoubtedly the target of million-dollar attack ad spend.

In a moment of true serendipity, we’ve stumbled into Mary and Gary, two locals who’ve just arrived to take their Frankenstein surrey out for a spin. Their trike is the only other solar-powered vehicle we’ll see on a 4,000-mile trip across the country.

Couple goals?

Gary, the husband, has been fiddling around with electric bicycles since before I was born. His first creation was a cargo bike made of scrap metal and lead-acid batteries.

“Oh, lead-acid, how cool!” I say, with the naive self-assuredness of someone who knows just enough about battery chemistry to be dangerous in a roomful of people who know nothing about battery chemistry.

Beat.

Gary raises his eyebrows. “Lead-acid is NOT cool,” he replies. “Heavy, leaky, car-engine crap.” He pats the bicycle like it’s a well-behaved border collie. “This machine, way better. We can go forever on this thing.”

He then explains they’ve added on solar to extend their bike’s range. Where the couple used to turn around during daily rides before getting tired, the addition of a top panel keeps them going for longer — and has the added benefit of saving them a few dollars on electricity, which is kind to a retiree’s pocketbook during inflationary times.

Can you really make progress without involving politics?

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December 2023, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean

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Somewhere along the 15th parallel, I realize that I’m crossing the ocean with a climate denier.

Let’s call him Captain Carlos. He’s a Cuban-American in his mid-sixties with a generous heart and a sharp mind. The generous heart is what led to him taking me and Polo onboard his luxury racing catamaran, free of charge, on a four-hour notice after we decided to (literally) jump ship on a difficult captain relationship on Polo’s previous vessel.

The sharp mind is what led to him making a few cool millions on POS software and retiring to Florida in his 40s.

I discover that Captain Carlos doesn’t believe in human-caused climate change during dinner one night. As Polo talks about his previous life as a decarbonization consultant, Captain Carlos starts launching into colorful tangents and physics calculations that somehow, definitively, disprove a lifetime of peer-reviewed work by career oceanographer and climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf.²

After a few heated exchanges, we agree to disagree. At this point, I had sailed enough miles to know that in the middle of the ocean, the captain is always right.

But here’s the thing about Captain Carlos. He was a strict vegetarian — as part of his personal quest to live a long and healthy life, he’d sworn on to tofu and tempeh. And instead of spending his millions on private jetting and helicoptering, there he was, in the middle of the ocean, making power with solar and wind, rationing water and power with climate-activist levels of dedication.

Do your intentions really matter if the end results are good?

Vegetarian chili, wind power, solar power

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New York City, Climate Week —

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“I’m so BUSY!”

Yet another youth activist / venture capitalist / founder has stumbled into this overused talk track at a breakfast event. I listen politely before excusing myself. After two months of battling through physical fatigue and mind-numbing boredom to bike across the country, I don’t have much patience for this particular strain of coffee chatter.³ The professional-set Busy Olympics lacks meaning for me after meeting so many Americans who are bone-tired, spending lifetimes working with their hands.

From a personal standpoint, Climate Week was fun. I reconnected with old friends, made new ones, and got to share the crazy solar-trike prototype with the Manhattanite audience. But at the end of it, I found myself swearing off of climate conferences for a while.

Because I really felt like the whole week was a version of this:

I’ve written previously about how I’m starting to feel that climate conference talk tracks are reaching the wrong audiences. After Climate Week 2024, where I witnessed the massive schism between the for-profit and non-profit worlds, where I saw the same people and heard the same speeches, and browsed $600-a-night hotel rooms on Booking⁴, I can definitively say there’s something I find deeply problematic about the exclusivity and exclusion engaged in this particular circuit of events.

Philip-Michael Weiner said it best in a viral LinkedIn post.

… the industries that need to change and the people that will be affected by those changes the most aren’t in the room—they’re not being invited.

Take Tulsa, Oklahoma. Did you know the energy grid there is around 60% renewable? In a state that’s known for oil and gas, that’s huge. But barely anyone, even in Oklahoma knows about it. Imagine what we could do if we built on that momentum.

Arkansas is one of the sunniest states in the U.S., yet there’s barely any solar. These are the places where the real climate impact needs to happen, but they’re being left out of the conversation.

…

I’m seeing the same faces—just with different company name tags, all pitching variations of VC-backed software products trying to broker carbon credits to companies that can’t afford them.

We shouldn’t be seeing the same people, and Climate Week shouldn’t be in NYC, SF, or London anymore.

We need to bring the conversation to other places, where the farms, industries, and communities we are talking about changing can be part of the conversation.

Very few of the people I met over the summer’s bike ride knew what NY Climate Week was. Very few of the people I met at Climate Week had ever been to South Dakota, or Indiana, or West Virginia.

What are the ways we’re still a country when we struggle so much to find a common identity?

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Houston, Today —

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When I started travelling just over a year ago, I expected that, by default, long-term travel would change me.⁵

But as the months progressed, I realized that while I could control the pace of change by exposing myself to new environments and situations, I had limited control over how these experiences would shape and reshape my worldview. For a while, meeting with climate solutionists around the world had an optimism-inducing, buoying effect. The world was full of regeneration and wind power! Surely, if we all did our part, we could tackle the climate crisis!

But then I biked across America, and I started to grapple with just how big this country is, and how many people live in it. Some unwelcome cynicism crept in. I started to understand, at new and very personal levels, the structural nature of the problems this country faces on the road to net-zero.

And the United States is just one country. Add the other 7.8-odd billion people in the world to the equation, and it gets infinitely more complicated. So if the tone of this piece is a little more cynical and skeptical than usual, it’s because, in this moment, things look murky.

So:

I’m going to stop talking about climate change for a while.

Over the last year, I’ve met hundreds of ‘climate people’ — but I’ve met hundreds more who aren’t in the ‘space.’ A hypothesis has been brewing: you don’t need care about, or even recognize, the problem of global warming to care about, promote, or personally benefit from the solutions.

My work / college / coliving friend Jordan wrote about it best in a piece on neighborly environmentalism, positing a theory of change that puts climate SECOND to the ways action can improve people’s lives.

In today's politicized culture, the best climate storytellers (whether they be journalists, advocates, or entrepreneurs) DON'T pitch environmentalism. Instead, they...

• Inspire people with potential for the future (healthier, more resilient, lower cost, etc.), rather than shaming them for lifestyles of carbon-addiction;

• Focus on what makes clean products BETTER than fossil fuel alternatives, for individuals and communities

Neighborly Environmentalism

I have a lot of stories left to tell from my time on the road. But the ones that I grapple with on the daily, the puzzles that give me the most energy, the relationships that have the most meaning, aren’t really the ones from my climate echo chambers. They’re the ones that come from meeting e-bikers in Amish country, Russian truck drivers, Finnish plastic surgeons, and more — a menagerie of humans, living their lives across the world.

I might change the name of this blog — I might not. I might resume travelling — I might not. I’ll still probably write about things (like the cost of bike infrastructure and Houston’s lack of zoning) that have at least something to do with climate. But I also might start writing more about the books I love to read and the friendships that have changed me and the experiences I had while hitchhiking through El Salvador.

All I can say to you, dear readers, is thank you for sticking with me so far, for The Green Journey. The only constant is change, so chin chin to the next one.

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1. Paraphrased slightly. You can read the whole thing here.

2. Also, for a period of time, Europe’s most-followed climate scientist on Twitter.

3. Readjusting to society, as my mother puts it, is going to take me time, apparently.

4. Which, because I’m privileged enough to have a great network of climate compatriots and personal friends who either hosted me or hustled me a free hotel room, I did not have to pay. But

5. An assumption that I fully admit, was at least somewhat based on reading books like Wild, To Shake The Sleeping Self, and bashfully, Eat Pray Love.