What should we expose next?
An invitation to shape the future of HEATED's climate coverage.
Good morning and happy Friday, y’all. I’m writing to you from a little vacation I’m taking for my 36th birthday, reflecting on all the climate stories I’ve covered since I started this newsletter when I was 29—and all the stories that are still yet to come.
Lately I’ve been focusing my energies on debunking dangerous misinformation flowing from a federal government captured by Big Oil, and highlighting activism I find thought-provoking, inspiring, and of-the-moment. Here are some of the stories that have resonated most with HEATED readers over the last few months:
These stories were made possible because of you. Your subscriptions are keeping HEATED’s climate journalism truly independent, free from the influence and pressure of corporate, political, and/or billionaire overlords. That’s a rare thing in media these days.
It’s incredibly important to me that this reader-funded journalism actually serves the needs of the community that funds it. So today, I’d like to hear from you. What stories should HEATED focus on in the weeks and months ahead? How do you think HEATED’s coverage can best serve our climate-concerned community?
You can leave your thoughts in the discussion thread linked below, starting now.
Hope you all have a great weekend, and I’ll be back in your inboxes when I return from vacation after October 15th.
Building on Ken's third suggestion, I'd love to see more coverage of inspiring, innovative activism / organizing. It would also be interesting to compare and contrast new tactics/strategies for climate organizing in the US vs. other countries.
One other area where I'd love to see more coverage is the flows of money for lobbying and influence from the O&G players. I think of this as akin to expanding Jane Mayer's "Dark Money" into the present: what are the API, Koch Foundation, IPAA, etc. up to now? Are there new configurations of O&G billionaires gearing up to fund a new generation of misinformation and denial? What channels and people (e.g., TPUSA) are they using? ...etc etc.
All of that said, I've loved your coverage since the beginning; so you could also change nothing and I'd still be satisfied. I also really hope you're enjoying your well-deserved vacation :).
What are you doing up at 4am? Same as me, no doubt: woke up and can't sleep. OK, I'll bite:
1) Go deeper into what Jason Hickel in his Less is More book and other writings has identified: the move away from renewables, energy efficiency and decarbonization of the economy is based on the fact that our economy is blindly wedded to maximizing profits, and in order to maintain its growth imperative, the big investors are putting their money back into the bigger profit margins they find in fossil fuels, AI, weapons industry, simply because the goal is not cheaper, lower carbon, more efficient and ecologically friendly economy, it's a better return on your investment.
2) What is happening to the Chinese economy? They have made it exceedingly clear that they can out-produce ROI-focused hedge funds in the west when it comes to producing renewables because they aren't so obsessed with eternal, limitless growth, but they are so successful that the many, many manufacturers of solar panels, for instance, are facing such a glut that it might not be sustainable. Will this mean massive collapse of the solar panel industry and other renewables in China?
3) The Where Does the Climate Movement Go from Here story is not at all finished: keep covering innovative ways that community and political organizing is happening. It's pretty clear that protests are important but not up to the task of changing the course we're on, and we need to be aware of developing visions that will do just that.
Ooh, it's 4:30am now, so I think I can go back to sleep. I suggest you do the same, if you haven't already! Hopefully these late night thoughts will have some value in the morning.....