Climate Action...It's Now On Us

V.3, N.27

Mar 06, 2025

There are two ways of looking at the climate-denying extremists in the Trump Administration.

The first is that the world has already crossed a threshold of carbon dioxide buildup, horrendous weather disruption, and ecosystem collapse, and the election of fossil-fuel addicts to lead the world’s most powerful country means we’re doomed. Forget international agreements, forget renewable energy, forget adaptation. It’s every country for itself in this new Mad Max world. Last summer, where I live in Palm Springs, the temperature topped 124 degrees, and it was hard not to conclude on that day that we as a species are, metaphorically and literally, cooked.

The second is to awaken to a political reality we should have seen years ago but didn’t. National governments were and are never going to save us from the climate crisis. Even the most celebrated accomplishments like the Paris Treaty were in fact unenforceable declarations of questionable intentions. And they covered up the deeper reality that national policies are still largely controlled by oil giants, gaslighting gullible customers. Remember when BP rebranded as “Beyond Petroleum,” before nearly destroying the Gulf of Mexico with its Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010?

This week, we’re pleased to feature an interview with one of the clearest voices in the second camp, Hunter Lovins. Hunter currently runs a nonprofit called Natural Capitalism Solution and is now launching an important new project called COPx, which aims to become a global compendium of climate solutions. She was also co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, co-founder of the Bard Green MBA Program (where I teach), and author of more than a dozen books (the most recent is A Finer Future: Creating an Economy in Service to Life).

Hunter’s thesis, which I agree with, is that we—you, me, and everyone else at the grassroots level—are now responsible for developing, sharing, and spreading climate solutions. In our roles as citizens, community residents, entrepreneurs, and local government leaders, we have the power to do what our national governments won’t. And in our role as local investors, we have the power to accelerate these solutions.

Hunter’s ideas are so important that I’m sharing them with our entire audience (not just paying subscribers). If you are inspired by what you read, please share the interview with others—and consider becoming a paying subscriber to The Main Street Journal yourself by clicking one of the two buttons below. You’ll also find our latest listings of local investment opportunities, so that you can become the change we’re looking for.

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MS: Hunter, in fairness to our readers, I’ll confess that I’ve known you for about 45 years. When I was a law student at Stanford in 1982, I even had the privilege of driving you around campus on my moped. At the time you and your then partner, Amory, were trying to help the world avoid the calamities of nuclear weapons proliferation and global climate catastrophe, by promoting energy efficiency and renewables. How do you think we’re doing? What kind of grade would you give the planet?

HL: Ah, Moose. (And for those of you who don’t know, Michael’s mascot, totem, and nickname is Moose. Back then there was Little Moose and Big Moose. I’ve no idea what became of Little Moose, but this Moose and I have been friends ever since.) I remember that moped!

How’re we doing? Not well. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists just set the Doomsday Clock one second closer to midnight. The Science and Security Board stated “this is a stark signal: the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”

Short answer: we need to do a lot better and goddamn fast. What is frustrating is that we know what to do to solve most of the challenges facing humanity. We’re just not doing it yet.

MS: You’ve attended more than your fair share of annual “Conference of the Parties” (COP) meetings under the auspices of the UN Convention Framework for Climate Change. Lots of proclamations were issued from these meetings, and presumably the assemblies facilitated lots of helpful working relationships. But at the end of the day, what have these confabs really amounted to as global temperatures move dangerously upward?

HL: In 1992, at the Rio Earth Convention, the nations of the world agreed on the necessity of keeping global warming within “safe levels.” They created the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Since then, the “parties” who agreed to the Convention—that is, national governments—meet in an annual exercise of frustration. And in those 30 years, emissions have doubled. Despite global leaders’ solemn pronouncements of the necessity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded in human history. Scientists warn that we have exceeded the planetary boundaries, that nine of the fifteen known tipping points may be beyond recovery.

MS: What are those tipping points?

HL: They include melting polar ice caps, loss of coral reefs, acidification of the oceans, loss of the Amazon, and shifting monsoons. Last month, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries warned that the risk to global economic well-being from climate change impacts such as fires, flooding, droughts, temperature rises, and the breakdown of natural systems could lead to the loss of 50% of global GDP by 2050 or earlier. Late last year the International Chamber of Commerce estimated that climate-related extreme weather events have cost the global economy more than $2 trillion over the past decade. As I write, The National Weather Service just issued an advisory: “Much of eastern US is under increased risk of wildfires.” In March.

MS: These are grim statistics.

HL: Whatever it was that the nations of the world have been negotiating, they have clearly failed. Nature does not negotiate. Part of the problem is that the original UN Convention, at the insistence of Saudi Arabia, allowed any one nation to veto any agreement. Given this, it is a small miracle that any action has resulted. COP3 in Kyoto, in 1997, agreed to create a global carbon trading scheme, and COP21 in Paris reaffirmed the need to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably 1.5 degrees. And yes, I was at both of these. And I was at Dubai in 2023 when more than 100,000 people showed up to demand action, and at the most recent debacle in Baku last year, the third COP hosted by a petro-state.

This year the planet will breach the 1.5 degree threshold. And Saudi Arabia makes a billion dollars every day that it delays action on climate change. The Secretary General of the United Nations has pronounced climate change “code red for humanity.”

MS: I share your pessimism about what national governments can accomplish. But you haven’t given up. Instead, you have started putting together a global network of citizens, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and local governments that can share their best solutions with one another. The idea is to run circles around global and national bureaucrats, which I love. The name you’ve given to this is COPx. Why that name? And tell us more about its mission.

HL: I just about gave up. I had decided to hang up my spurs. Then I’d asked myself, “you add up everything I’ve ever done, is it enough?”

No. We’re losing.

But then I asked, “Do I really know what enough is?” …well, no.

“Then why go down the road? Why burn carbon? I live on a beautiful ranch in Colorado. Stay home, ride my horse, watch an eagle fly.”

I went on one last trip. A very senior UN official pitched me the idea of COPx. He laid out the arguments above as to why the UN, the nations, can never solve the problem. In international jurisprudence (his doctorate is in that, and yes, both you and I are lawyers, so this sort of stuff means something to us), and how, when nation states fail, power reverts to the people. After the failure of the Copenhagen COP in 2009, he concluded that the COP system could never work; that the only hope would be if ordinary people took charge. What we need, he said, is to create a global citizens’ movement to empower people everywhere to implement the known solutions, in their own communities in their own ways. Not top down through regulations and directives, but by providing people everywhere with an online community where they can share ideas, successes, ask the dumb questions like “how does a heat pump work? Do you like it?” (Yes—even my skeptical husband is now a heat pump evangelist. And it’s basically your refrigerator backwards.)

My UN colleague suggested we call it COPx: Conferences of People, independently organized. Then he asked: “Would I join him?”

My first thought was, Whoa! That would be enough.

Then I thought: It’s too big. I’ve no earthly idea how to do it. I flew back to my ranch. He persevered. “Why me?” I asked. He answered, “You fight hard, but you fight fair.” I answered, “I will ride for your brand. You have no earthly idea what I just said, but you’ll figure it out.”

Initially, we reckoned if we could raise enough money to bring COPx to main stages everywhere, with celebrities and musicians celebrating the work of everyday people in communities, that would kick it off in the right way. So I set out to raise what it would take. Over the last two years, something like $10.5 billion was ratholed into the election. And while I’ve raised enough to create a website and build a small team, the catalytic funding never showed up. So right now we’re going on guts.

After the election my partner said, “We have to launch.”

So last month, we did. I put a letter out to the roughly 500 people around the world who had heard about COPx saying, “Let’s do it.” Then a letter went out to my 10,000+ mailing list at Natural Capitalism Solutions, saying, “I’ve been hinting for two years that I was working on something big, and here it is. Please join us.”

Since then our numbers have doubled. We are evaluating communication platforms, and have likely settled on one that will launch in two weeks. We’re going to grow this from the bottom up.

MS: The COPx website includes a beautiful introductory film, and invites people to sign up. Once they sign up, what happens next?

HL: Check out the website, especially scroll through the graphic novel that a friend gifted to us. Then register to be a COPx organizer. Put your community on the map. You will start to get regular mailings from us, beginning the conversation. Find your DOT. Which means DO ONE THING. Every day, look yourself in the mirror and ask: “What’s my DOT? What can I do today to be part of the solution?” No action is too small.

“But what can I do, I’m just one person…said eight billion people.” Of course, no one of us can solve this on our own, but collectively we can. Your one act may not be enough, but it’s not nothing. It will do three things: others will notice, it will relieve the feeling of helplessness and despair, and it WILL be a part of ensuring that we leave a world of possibility to all who come after us. You will learn how to be a good ancestor.

MS: When can we start posting our solutions, and in what format?

HL: Oh good question. In two weeks our platform will be fully functional. You will be able to post up to 1,000 words about what you are doing, questions you have, solutions you’ve found, and soon videos. For example, a few days ago, a woman who has been a fan of COPx sent me a video that her children did. They found out that leaving a car idling for a minute puts out the pollution of three packs of cigarettes. They brought this information to their school’s green clubs. Together they went to the school district and got signs posted and fliers distributed, asking parents to shut off their cars.

The website and the platform will become a global database of solutions, brought to you by the people doing them. It will offer all sorts of helpful support material there. How do I speak about climate change to somebody who has all the wrong arguments? COPx will not replace the wonderful diversity of climate action groups that already exist; it will magnify them, support them, and enable them to become a global voice. We will link to other organizations around the world who are together creating a finer future.

The website will get better and better, offering simple tools, including a logo generator, so you type in the name of your COPx, and it will generate a logo that looks professional for you.

A toolkit will also enable anyone to do their own basic website on the COPx community.

MS: Give us another example of what some of the users might exchange, and how this could be useful?

HL: A woman came up to me at a local event and asked if she could talk. Did I know about the big cement plant up the road from us? Yes, it’s mighty hard to miss. Did I know that it was the biggest polluter in the county, emitting 473,000 tons of CO2 every year? Whoa. No. Did I know that its permit to operate was up for renewal in a few weeks? No. Would I help? Yes. This was COPx on the hoof.

Would I speak at a rally a few days hence? Yes. To, count em, nine people. Would I then speak at a community gathering a few days on? Yes. To 45 people. Would I testify to the local commission? Seventy-five of us spoke. And the permit was denied. Of course, appeals and lawsuits followed, but the damn plant is scheduled to shut down this month.

This woman had never organized anything. A mother, concerned about her son’s health, is now part of our COPx team, and has set her sights on shutting down the state’s largest polluter.

MS: What’s the role of local investing here? I assume that if we’re going to spread a million inventions, we will need a billion investments to spread and grow them quickly. What do you see as the intersection?

HL: We know how to solve the climate crisis profitably. Two big things:

First, stop fossil emissions by switching to renewable energy, which is now cheaper than fossil fuels everywhere on earth. Also, of course, use all energy and materials cost effectively, efficiently, and in a circular economy. Want proof? See the work of Dr. Mark Jacobson of Stanford, your old stomping ground.

Second, remove the excess carbon in the atmosphere using regenerative agriculture.

Then there are all the other solutions: End single use plastics (plastics are responsible for about a sixth of global emissions. They are also the oil companies’ vision of their future once we all switch to electric vehicles, given that the use of internal combustion engines peaked in 2017. Eliminate food waste through composting. Food waste causes about half of food system emissions. Industrial agriculture emits about 30% of global greenhouse gases. Buy from local, regenerative farmers, and ensure whatever waste remains becomes the nutrition for your garden, can collectively eliminate about as much as humans emit every year.

To your question: every purchase you make locally is an investment in your community. Heck, you and I started arguing for this way back, for the strength of local economic multipliers in the early 80s when we created the Economic Renewal Project back at the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). Implementing renewable energy in your home puts money into your community. Ensuring that your town has genuine homeland security because it has created a microgrid to power local schools, offices, homes, all puts money where it should be going: to real people doing the work we need now.

And as you have so brilliantly shown, you can invest in all of this, by investing locally. So the big investors are now getting into it. Brookfield Asset Management recently spent more than $10 billion on various renewable energy projects. But the best investment you can make is in your own home, making it efficient, renewable, and more secure. The ranch has solar. It fuels my EV, and when the utility has outages, we don’t.

MS: The same is true here in the California desert. Our investment in rooftop solar is already paying back double-digit returns in the form of avoided utility bills.

HL: I know of four different impact funds created just to target regenerative agriculture. And this can get very big. A wonderful man named Vijay Kumar now helps over a million smallholder farmers in India implement what he calls Community Managed Natural Farming. Through NOW Partners, we are helping spread this work to Zambia, Brazil, and Indonesia. There are 40 countries wanting to help their smallholder farmers learn this approach, which uses no poisons, no artificial fertilizers (whose price has now soared) to triple productivity and double profitability.

MS: So, speaking of money, let’s get serious. How do you plan on financing COPx?

HL: Oh…that. Hell, I don’t know. The old-fashioned nonprofit way, I guess: beg for it. It’s been hard until now saying I have this really big idea but I can’t tell you what it is. I am amazed that enough visionary donors did step up to make sure we’re still here. Half my work now is turning out proposals, talking to high net worth folks, and asking them to believe in us. The other half is working with the team building the platform, evaluating others, giving podcasts and webinars about COPx, inviting partners, and paddling hard enough to get ahead of this rapidly rising wave.

MS: Many people who know of you don’t know that you spend a lot of your time ranching in Colorado. What are some of the inventions from your own farm and community that you’ll be spreading through COPx?

HL: A lot of time…? I wish. And have I invented anything? We ranch regeneratively, which means that we use Allan Savory’s Holistic Planned Grazing to move animals around so that their “mobbing, mowing and manuring” puts carbon into the soil. When a grazing animal eats grass, the roots slough polysaccharides—sugar—which feeds the microbiological community in the soil. This is what mineralizes carbon in the soil.

Sixty million years ago the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 1,000 parts per million. Yes, the earth has been hotter than it is now. But there were no humans. When humans evolved, CO2 was 280 ppm. Where’d the carbon go?

Professor Greg Retallack showed that it was the evolution of little grazing animals that enabled the earth to decarbonize itself. This is what created the 10 feet of thick black soil that the pioneers found when they came west across the Great Plains. It got there by the co-evolution of grazing animals and grasslands. We’re just replicating that. And I guess it’s working. We won the Humongous Fungus award for the highest concentration of mycorrhizal fungi (the supply chain of the soil). We use electric fencing to replicate how nature sequesters carbon. You can too, by buying your meat from local regenerative ranchers.

MS: Given that our country is now led by a nutty team of climate deniers, what gives you hope and energizes you to keep going?

HL: COPx. Remember, I was going to quit. Nothing I could think of could counter the growing influence of the autocrats, the oligarchs, the techno-bros, the fossil and big ag conglomerates. COPx is not only the answer to the climate crisis, it is a foundation on which to build a real democracy.

By joining COPx, we are creating a global community to empower people everywhere. We have the solutions. We just need to put them in place.

Globally representative surveys show that almost three-quarters of people (especially young people) believe that climate change is real and will harm them personally. Eighty percent are willing to change their lives to do something about it. Less than half believe that actions taken by the international community will reduce the effects of global warming. At the same time, studies show that people believe only a few others share their concerns. People who believe no one else cares, say the researchers, are far less likely to act. “Social norms (what we believe others are doing and thinking) are important and powerful determinants of behavior.”

By implementing the solutions everywhere, we create waves of bottom-up action that aggregate into political will.

MS: I’m sold.

From the graphic novel by Juan Echanove

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