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The climate movement needs lawyers. This ‘pro bono bootcamp’ helps connect the dots.

News Feed
Wednesday, April 2, 2025

The vision “Every lawyer has skills that can help the climate. We’ve just gotta make the connections.” — Environmental lawyer and advocate Matthew Karmel The spotlight “How many lawyers does it take to break a Guinness World Record?” Matthew Karmel posed this question on LinkedIn in February, adding, “No, this isn’t a bad lawyer joke; it’s a reason for climate optimism.” Karmel, a principal at the law firm Offit Kurman and the chair of its environmental and sustainability law practice group, is one of the organizers of the Climate Pro Bono Bootcamp, a two-day virtual conference dedicated to helping more lawyers and legal professionals figure out how to donate their time and skills to advance climate work. When people — including lawyers themselves — think of the intersection between climate and law, their minds may go straight to high-profile climate lawsuits or other legal action aimed at holding big polluters and inactive governments accountable. But there are many other forms of legal support that climate causes might need, from simple contracts to forming a new business or nonprofit to legal defense. “There are so many attorneys working at large law firms, small law firms — attorneys everywhere who just don’t do litigation, but are still very passionate about climate change and want to apply their skills in that way,” said Stephanie Demetry, the executive director of Green Pro Bono, an organization that matches attorneys with companies, nonprofits, grassroots leaders, and others who need legal assistance to advance climate solutions. Karmel had the idea for the conference in late 2023, after he had been working with Green Pro Bono for a few years. “I was sitting there thinking, Why isn’t everyone doing this?” he recalled. “The things I’m doing aren’t unique. It doesn’t require specialized legal skills. It requires passion, and the general legal knowledge that every lawyer has.” He approached Demetry with the idea of hosting a training to help demystify what climate-related pro bono work can entail and build up the network of attorneys interested in offering it. They held the first bootcamp in January of 2024 and had around 700 attendees — far exceeding their expectations. After the event, Demetry said, Green Pro Bono more than doubled the number of attorneys in its network and also saw a 53 percent increase in the number of projects that got picked up. But for this year’s bootcamp, planned for late April, they’re aiming to increase that attendance — and setting the ambitious goal of growing it a hundredfold. That’s the number that would break a Guinness World Record for the largest attendance at a virtual law conference in one week (yes, this entry truly does exist). It might be a longer-term goal, but it’s one they’re serious about. Breaking the record, Karmel said, would be a powerful way to demonstrate the growing interest in climate action among the legal community, and also an opportunity to reach thousands more attorneys, students, and others with the event’s key message: that you don’t have to choose between your day job and working for the causes you care about. I spoke with Karmel and Demetry about the goals of the conference, the wide array of skills and expertise that legal professionals have to offer to climate solutions, and the value of having pro bono work built into a career. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Q. Would you say that there is a growing appetite among legal professionals to volunteer their time and skills for the climate cause? Demetry: From our organizational perspective, absolutely. I joined [Green Pro Bono] three years ago, and every year since I’ve been there, there has been huge percentage growth in our network of attorneys who want to take on cases — but there’s also a huge increase in the amount of clients and work that we actually have. So it’s growing in a proportional rate, which is great. We’re seeing a lot of interest from younger people, from students, too. Even within the last couple of months, I would say we’ve gotten a lot of attorney volunteer requests, but also organizational volunteer requests — people who are just trying to get involved in this space in some way, at a time where it’s quite pivotal. Karmel: The legal industry has a tremendous history of pro bono. That volunteerism is something that’s baked into the legal industry. When I started as a junior lawyer, my firm encouraged it. I got credit at the firm for doing pro bono. This is something that the legal community recognizes as something we have a responsibility to do, and that benefits the rule of law. Lawyers see themselves in this white-knight sort of way, and I do, too. The access to justice — we facilitate the movings of policy and of everything through law. That gives a tremendous opportunity for lawyers. Q. Like you mentioned, this isn’t just about environmental law or high-profile climate lawsuits. What are some of the other ways that lawyers might help facilitate climate solutions? Karmel: I’m an environmental lawyer. That’s what I do. But the pro bono work I do isn’t even limited to environment — it’s oftentimes even the reverse of what people think. There is some, but the majority of the climate pro bono requests are not environmental requests. That first thing is almost a misnomer. I’ve done a software licensing agreement for a software-as-a-service sustainability platform for art galleries. The idea was, art galleries don’t have enough of their own resources to hire sustainability coordinators, so let’s have this software that takes in inputs of what you’re doing at the gallery and outputs sustainability recommendations. They needed a simple agreement — that was just a very simple licensing and funding agreement, and had nothing to do with environmental law. Just a basic contract. And anyone with basic contracting skills and access to a couple of CLE [Continuing Legal Education] online videos could have done this. There’s lots of things like that. Basic corporate contracts, basic corporate formation, that’s a huge part of it. There’s also lots of policy-based things which aren’t purely environmental. Demetry: I see a lot of intellectual property requests that are very, very pivotal to these organizations. Recently, we helped a medical organization that was developing a compactable syringe to get a patent on that technology. And their projected environmental impact was a 40 percent reduction in the carbon emissions from shipping syringes to rural and remote medical settings around the world. We try at Green Pro Bono to be as expansive and as non-gatekeeping as possible with the clients that we accept. We also get a lot of nonprofits that are looking for advice on, “Hey, we wanna start maybe some sort of community thrift store to bring in additional income to the nonprofit. Is that appropriate? Can a nonprofit do that?” The simple questions that can make a big difference to those organizations, and help them to reinvest the money they would be spending on legal services into their actual innovations and the services they’re providing in their communities — it’s kind of a backdoor way to use the lawyering skills that you have to expedite those innovations and make sure those organizations can continue to carry out their mission. So you’re maybe not directly involved in anything that looks climate-like at all on the backend, but the impact of what you’re doing is actually moving that needle forward a lot. Q. How does all of that inform your curriculum for the bootcamp? What are you planning to cover this year? Karmel: This second year, we’ve really grouped around two topics. One is the master topic of litigation and advocacy, and two is the master topic of corporate work or transactional work. We have one day devoted to each of those pillars. So in the first day, we’re gonna focus on litigation and advocacy and talk about creating policy, advocating for policy, what those skills look like, how that gets done. Then also: What litigation is happening right now? How is litigation that’s happening, matters before the Supreme Court, how do those things impact pro bono that is getting done, and how is it going to continue to impact it? On day two, we’re going to dive deeper than we did last year on specific transactional-related issues and give people skills and give them perspectives on using those. Q. I know that you all are going for a Guinness World Record. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Karmel: We’re thinking about transformation constantly. That’s why we created this. We’re looking at the world, seeing how it can be different — seeing this untapped resource and saying, What can we do to crack this thing open? What can we do that is going to excite people, energize them? And honestly, I was just randomly brainstorming and someone posted online about a Guinness World Record they had seen and how weird it was. So I just went online, and they have a Guinness World Record for the largest online virtual law conference, and I did not know that such a world record existed. It was [in 2020], about 66,000 people on legal impacts relating to COVID and pandemic-time issues — which were huge, hot issues. And we thought, Geez, how impactful would it be to break that record? For climate, for lawyers, for the country where it is now — it would be such a statement to break that record this year, to say no matter what is going on, we did that. We know that people are coming to this to be part of a community, to be part of a movement that’s trying to do this work. And so it was a way to try to make it even more meaningful, to take it up to the next level. It is partially a cheeky idea: 700 was beyond our concept last year — 66,000, frankly, we haven’t even figured out how we’re gonna pay for the Zoom if we get 66,000 people on there. But we will! If we can do that, we will. Stephanie, what did you think when I came to you with this idea? Demetry: Yeah, I thought it was wild. And exciting, though. I think it’s good to shoot for the moon in these situations. It’s what the moment demands, so why not try? Last year we only had a month or two to prepare, and we really weren’t even sure if we’d get a hundred people. So we were very invigorated coming off of that. Karmel: We’re gonna break it one year. My goal is to have this conference be something that happens every year until forever. I was going to say until it’s not needed anymore, but the fact is, this will always be needed because this is about showing people that they can craft careers that matter to them. You don’t have to choose between a soulless job and a soulful job. Any job can be something that you bring your heart and soul to. — Claire Elise Thompson More exposure Read: an opinion piece by Karmel about the importance of pro bono work (Grist) Read: about the end of the youth climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States — and the movement it ignited (Grist) Read: an interview with legal scholar Carol Liao about how climate change will impact different areas of law, and why “all lawyers will need to be climate lawyers” (Canadian Lawyer) Read: a profile of Julian Aguon, an attorney from Guam fighting for climate justice on a global stage (Grist) A parting shot Another example of a group of professionals with special skills and resources, who have often rallied to support causes and communities, is chefs. In the aftermath of the L.A. fires earlier this year, a number of chefs and restauranteurs offered free meals to those affected by the fires and to first responders. Here, a taco truck contracted by the food-aid organization World Central Kitchen set up shop to feed emergency and utility workers. IMAGE CREDITS Vision: Mia Torres / Grist Parting shot: Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The climate movement needs lawyers. This ‘pro bono bootcamp’ helps connect the dots. on Apr 2, 2025.

It's not just high-profile lawsuits — climate solutions need contracts, corporate advice, and IP filings.

Illustration of scales of justice with earth weighing it down on one side

The vision

“Every lawyer has skills that can help the climate. We’ve just gotta make the connections.”

— Environmental lawyer and advocate Matthew Karmel

The spotlight

“How many lawyers does it take to break a Guinness World Record?”

Matthew Karmel posed this question on LinkedIn in February, adding, “No, this isn’t a bad lawyer joke; it’s a reason for climate optimism.”

Karmel, a principal at the law firm Offit Kurman and the chair of its environmental and sustainability law practice group, is one of the organizers of the Climate Pro Bono Bootcamp, a two-day virtual conference dedicated to helping more lawyers and legal professionals figure out how to donate their time and skills to advance climate work.

When people — including lawyers themselves — think of the intersection between climate and law, their minds may go straight to high-profile climate lawsuits or other legal action aimed at holding big polluters and inactive governments accountable. But there are many other forms of legal support that climate causes might need, from simple contracts to forming a new business or nonprofit to legal defense. “There are so many attorneys working at large law firms, small law firms — attorneys everywhere who just don’t do litigation, but are still very passionate about climate change and want to apply their skills in that way,” said Stephanie Demetry, the executive director of Green Pro Bono, an organization that matches attorneys with companies, nonprofits, grassroots leaders, and others who need legal assistance to advance climate solutions.

Karmel had the idea for the conference in late 2023, after he had been working with Green Pro Bono for a few years. “I was sitting there thinking, Why isn’t everyone doing this?” he recalled. “The things I’m doing aren’t unique. It doesn’t require specialized legal skills. It requires passion, and the general legal knowledge that every lawyer has.” He approached Demetry with the idea of hosting a training to help demystify what climate-related pro bono work can entail and build up the network of attorneys interested in offering it.

They held the first bootcamp in January of 2024 and had around 700 attendees — far exceeding their expectations. After the event, Demetry said, Green Pro Bono more than doubled the number of attorneys in its network and also saw a 53 percent increase in the number of projects that got picked up.

But for this year’s bootcamp, planned for late April, they’re aiming to increase that attendance — and setting the ambitious goal of growing it a hundredfold. That’s the number that would break a Guinness World Record for the largest attendance at a virtual law conference in one week (yes, this entry truly does exist). It might be a longer-term goal, but it’s one they’re serious about. Breaking the record, Karmel said, would be a powerful way to demonstrate the growing interest in climate action among the legal community, and also an opportunity to reach thousands more attorneys, students, and others with the event’s key message: that you don’t have to choose between your day job and working for the causes you care about.

I spoke with Karmel and Demetry about the goals of the conference, the wide array of skills and expertise that legal professionals have to offer to climate solutions, and the value of having pro bono work built into a career. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

. . .

Q. Would you say that there is a growing appetite among legal professionals to volunteer their time and skills for the climate cause?

Demetry: From our organizational perspective, absolutely. I joined [Green Pro Bono] three years ago, and every year since I’ve been there, there has been huge percentage growth in our network of attorneys who want to take on cases — but there’s also a huge increase in the amount of clients and work that we actually have. So it’s growing in a proportional rate, which is great. We’re seeing a lot of interest from younger people, from students, too.

Even within the last couple of months, I would say we’ve gotten a lot of attorney volunteer requests, but also organizational volunteer requests — people who are just trying to get involved in this space in some way, at a time where it’s quite pivotal.

Karmel: The legal industry has a tremendous history of pro bono. That volunteerism is something that’s baked into the legal industry. When I started as a junior lawyer, my firm encouraged it. I got credit at the firm for doing pro bono. This is something that the legal community recognizes as something we have a responsibility to do, and that benefits the rule of law.

Lawyers see themselves in this white-knight sort of way, and I do, too. The access to justice — we facilitate the movings of policy and of everything through law. That gives a tremendous opportunity for lawyers.

Q. Like you mentioned, this isn’t just about environmental law or high-profile climate lawsuits. What are some of the other ways that lawyers might help facilitate climate solutions?

Karmel: I’m an environmental lawyer. That’s what I do. But the pro bono work I do isn’t even limited to environment — it’s oftentimes even the reverse of what people think. There is some, but the majority of the climate pro bono requests are not environmental requests. That first thing is almost a misnomer.

I’ve done a software licensing agreement for a software-as-a-service sustainability platform for art galleries. The idea was, art galleries don’t have enough of their own resources to hire sustainability coordinators, so let’s have this software that takes in inputs of what you’re doing at the gallery and outputs sustainability recommendations. They needed a simple agreement — that was just a very simple licensing and funding agreement, and had nothing to do with environmental law. Just a basic contract. And anyone with basic contracting skills and access to a couple of CLE [Continuing Legal Education] online videos could have done this.

There’s lots of things like that. Basic corporate contracts, basic corporate formation, that’s a huge part of it. There’s also lots of policy-based things which aren’t purely environmental.

Demetry: I see a lot of intellectual property requests that are very, very pivotal to these organizations. Recently, we helped a medical organization that was developing a compactable syringe to get a patent on that technology. And their projected environmental impact was a 40 percent reduction in the carbon emissions from shipping syringes to rural and remote medical settings around the world. We try at Green Pro Bono to be as expansive and as non-gatekeeping as possible with the clients that we accept.

We also get a lot of nonprofits that are looking for advice on, “Hey, we wanna start maybe some sort of community thrift store to bring in additional income to the nonprofit. Is that appropriate? Can a nonprofit do that?” The simple questions that can make a big difference to those organizations, and help them to reinvest the money they would be spending on legal services into their actual innovations and the services they’re providing in their communities — it’s kind of a backdoor way to use the lawyering skills that you have to expedite those innovations and make sure those organizations can continue to carry out their mission. So you’re maybe not directly involved in anything that looks climate-like at all on the backend, but the impact of what you’re doing is actually moving that needle forward a lot.

Q. How does all of that inform your curriculum for the bootcamp? What are you planning to cover this year?

Karmel: This second year, we’ve really grouped around two topics. One is the master topic of litigation and advocacy, and two is the master topic of corporate work or transactional work. We have one day devoted to each of those pillars.

So in the first day, we’re gonna focus on litigation and advocacy and talk about creating policy, advocating for policy, what those skills look like, how that gets done. Then also: What litigation is happening right now? How is litigation that’s happening, matters before the Supreme Court, how do those things impact pro bono that is getting done, and how is it going to continue to impact it? On day two, we’re going to dive deeper than we did last year on specific transactional-related issues and give people skills and give them perspectives on using those.

Q. I know that you all are going for a Guinness World Record. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Karmel: We’re thinking about transformation constantly. That’s why we created this. We’re looking at the world, seeing how it can be different — seeing this untapped resource and saying, What can we do to crack this thing open? What can we do that is going to excite people, energize them? And honestly, I was just randomly brainstorming and someone posted online about a Guinness World Record they had seen and how weird it was. So I just went online, and they have a Guinness World Record for the largest online virtual law conference, and I did not know that such a world record existed. It was [in 2020], about 66,000 people on legal impacts relating to COVID and pandemic-time issues — which were huge, hot issues.

And we thought, Geez, how impactful would it be to break that record? For climate, for lawyers, for the country where it is now — it would be such a statement to break that record this year, to say no matter what is going on, we did that. We know that people are coming to this to be part of a community, to be part of a movement that’s trying to do this work. And so it was a way to try to make it even more meaningful, to take it up to the next level.

It is partially a cheeky idea: 700 was beyond our concept last year — 66,000, frankly, we haven’t even figured out how we’re gonna pay for the Zoom if we get 66,000 people on there. But we will! If we can do that, we will.

Stephanie, what did you think when I came to you with this idea?

Demetry: Yeah, I thought it was wild. And exciting, though. I think it’s good to shoot for the moon in these situations. It’s what the moment demands, so why not try? Last year we only had a month or two to prepare, and we really weren’t even sure if we’d get a hundred people. So we were very invigorated coming off of that.

Karmel: We’re gonna break it one year. My goal is to have this conference be something that happens every year until forever. I was going to say until it’s not needed anymore, but the fact is, this will always be needed because this is about showing people that they can craft careers that matter to them. You don’t have to choose between a soulless job and a soulful job. Any job can be something that you bring your heart and soul to.

— Claire Elise Thompson

More exposure

A parting shot

Another example of a group of professionals with special skills and resources, who have often rallied to support causes and communities, is chefs. In the aftermath of the L.A. fires earlier this year, a number of chefs and restauranteurs offered free meals to those affected by the fires and to first responders. Here, a taco truck contracted by the food-aid organization World Central Kitchen set up shop to feed emergency and utility workers.

A photo of people lined up in front of a taco truck, with the ruins of burned buildings in the background

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Mia Torres / Grist

Parting shot: Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The climate movement needs lawyers. This ‘pro bono bootcamp’ helps connect the dots. on Apr 2, 2025.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

The World's Biggest Companies Have Caused $28 Trillion in Climate Damage, a New Study Estimates

A new study estimates that the world’s biggest corporations have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, which is a shade less than the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States last year

WASHINGTON (AP) — The world's biggest corporations have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, a new study estimates as part of an effort to make it easier for people and governments to hold companies financially accountable, like the tobacco giants have been.A Dartmouth College research team came up with the estimated pollution caused by 111 companies, with more than half of the total dollar figure coming from 10 fossil fuel providers: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India and the British Coal Corporation.For comparison, $28 trillion is a shade less than the sum of all goods and services produced in the United States last year.At the top of the list, Saudi Aramco and Gazprom have each caused a bit more than $2 trillion in heat damage over the decades, the team calculated in a study published in Wednesday's journal Nature. The researchers figured that every 1% of greenhouse gas put into the atmosphere since 1990 has caused $502 billion in damage from heat alone, which doesn't include the costs incurred by other extreme weather such as hurricanes, droughts and floods.The study is an attempt to determine “the causal linkages that underlie many of these theories of accountability,” said its lead author, Christopher Callahan, who did the work at Dartmouth but is now an Earth systems scientist at Stanford University. The research firm Zero Carbon Analytics counts 68 lawsuits filed globally about climate change damage, with more than half of them in the United States.“Everybody’s asking the same question: What can we actually claim about who has caused this?” said Dartmouth climate scientist Justin Mankin, co-author of the study. “And that really comes down to a thermodynamic question of can we trace climate hazards and/or their damages back to particular emitters?”The answer is yes, Callahan and Mankin said.The researchers started with known final emissions of the products — such as gasoline or electricity from coal-fired power plants — produced by the 111 biggest carbon-oriented companies going as far back as 137 years, because that's as far back as any of the companies' emissions data go and carbon dioxide stays in the air for much longer than that. They used 1,000 different computer simulations to translate those emissions into changes for Earth's global average surface temperature by comparing it to a world without that company's emissions.Using this approach, they determined that pollution from Chevron, for example, has raised the Earth’s temperature by .045 degrees Fahrenheit (.025 degrees Celsius).The researchers also calculated how much each company's pollution contributed to the five hottest days of the year using 80 more computer simulations and then applying a formula that connects extreme heat intensity to changes in economic output. Mankin said that in the past, there was an argument of, “Who's to say that it's my molecule of CO2 that's contributed to these damages versus any other one?” He said his study “really laid clear how the veil of plausible deniability doesn't exist anymore scientifically. We can actually trace harms back to major emitters.”Shell declined to comment. Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and BP did not respond to requests for comment.“All methods they use are quite robust,” said Imperial College London climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads World Weather Attribution, a collection of scientists who try rapid attribution studies to see if specific extreme weather events are worsened by climate change and, if so, by how much. She didn't take part in the study. “It would be good in my view if this approach would be taken up more by different groups. As with event attribution, the more groups do it, the better the science gets and the better we know what makes a difference and what does not,” Otto said. So far, no climate liability lawsuit against a major carbon emitter has been successful, but maybe showing “how overwhelmingly strong the scientific evidence” is can change that, she said.In the past, damage caused by individual companies were lost in the noise of data, so it couldn't be calculated, Callahan said. “We have now reached a point in the climate crisis where the total damages are so immense that the contributions of a single company's product can amount to tens of billions of dollars a year,” said Chris Field, a Stanford University climate scientist who didn't take part in the research.This is a good exercise and proof of concept, but there are so many other climate variables that the numbers that Callahan and Mankin came up with are probably a vast underestimate of the damage the companies have really caused, said Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania climate scientist who wasn't involved in the study.Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Vineyards in NY Wine Country Push Sustainability as They Adapt to Climate Change

The Finger Lakes are home to New York’s largest wine-producing region, but vineyards there are struggling with the impacts of climate change

PENN YAN, N.Y. (AP) — A decade ago, Scott Osborn would have eagerly told prospective vineyard owners looking to join the wine industry to “jump into it.”Now, his message is different.“You’re crazy,” said Osborn, who owns Fox Run Vineyards, a sprawling 50-acre (20-hectare) farm on Seneca Lake, the largest of New York’s Finger Lakes.Despite the challenges, however, many winegrowers are embracing sustainable practices, wanting to be part of the solution to global warming while hoping they can adapt to changing times. EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a collaboration between Rochester Institute of Technology and The Associated Press. The Finger Lakes, which span a large area of western New York, have water that can sparkle and give off a sapphire hue on sunny days. More than 130 wineries dot the shorelines and offer some of America’s most famous white wines. At Fox Run, visitors step inside to sip wines and bring a bottle — or two — home. Many are longtime customers, like Michele Magda and her husband, who have frequently made the trip from Pennsylvania.“This is like a little escape, a little getaway,” she said.Traditionally, the plants’ buds break out in spring, emerging with colorful grapes that range from the cabernet franc’s deep blues to the soft greens of the region’s most popular grape, riesling. However, a warming world is making that happen earlier, adding to uncertainty and potential risks for farmers. If a frost comes after the buds have broken, growers can lose much of the harvest. Year-round rain and warmer night temperatures differentiate the Finger Lakes from its West Coast competitors, said Paul Brock, a viticulture and wine technology professor at Finger Lakes Community College. Learning to adapt to those fluctuations has given local winemakers a competitive advantage, he said. Winegrowers as part of the solution Many winegrowers say they are working to make their operations more sustainable, wanting to help solve climate change caused by the burning of fuels like gasoline, coal and natural gas.Farms can become certified under initiatives such as the New York Sustainable Winegrowing program. Fox Run and more than 50 others are certified, which requires that growers improve practices like bettering soil health and protecting water quality of nearby lakes. Beyond the rustic metal gate featuring the titular foxes, some of Osborn’s sustainability initiatives come into view.Hundreds of solar panels powering 90% of the farm’s electricity are the most obvious feature. Other initiatives are more subtle, like underground webs of fungi used to insulate crops from drought and disease.“We all have to do something,” Osborn said. One winegrower's sustainability push — and struggle to stay in business For Suzanne Hunt and her family’s 7th-generation vineyard, doing something about climate change means devoting much of their efforts to sustainability. Hunt Country Vineyards, along Keuka Lake, took on initiatives like using underground geothermal pipelines for heating and cooling, along with composting. Despite the forward-looking actions, climate change is one of the factors forcing the family to make tough decisions about their future.Devastating frosts in recent years have caused “catastrophic” crop loss. They’ve also had to reconcile with changing consumer attitudes, as U.S. consumption of wine fell over the past few years, according to wine industry advocacy group Wine Institute.By this year’s end, the vineyard will stop producing wine and instead will hold community workshops and sell certain grape varieties.“The farm and the vineyard, you know, it’s part of me,” Hunt said. “I’ll let the people whose dream and life is to make wine do that part, and I’ll happily support them.” Tariffs and US policy changes loom Vinny Aliperti, owner of Billsboro Winery along Seneca Lake, is working to improve the wine industry’s environmental footprint. In the past year, he’s helped establish communal wine bottle dumpsters that divert the glass from entering landfills and reuse it for construction materials.But Aliperti said he’d like to see more nearby wineries and vineyards in sustainability efforts. The wine industry’s longevity depends on it, especially under a presidential administration that doesn’t seem to have sustainability at top of mind, he said. “I think we’re all a bit scared, frankly, a bit, I mean, depressed,” he said. “I don’t see very good things coming out of the next four years in terms of the environment.”Osborn is bracing for sweeping cuts to federal environmental policies that previously made it easier to fund sustainability initiatives. Tax credits for Osborn’s solar panels made up about half of over $400,000 in upfront costs, in addition to some state and federal grants. Osborn wants to increase his solar production, but he said he won’t have enough money without those programs.Fox Run could also lose thousands of dollars from retaliatory tariffs and boycotts of American wine from his Canadian customers. In March, Canada introduced 25% tariffs on $30 billion worth of U.S. goods — including wine.Osborn fears he can’t compete with larger wine-growing states like California, which may flood the American market to make up for lost customers abroad. Smaller vineyards in the Finger Lakes might not survive these economic pressures, he said.Back at Fox Run's barrel room, Aric Bryant, a decade-long patron, says all the challenges make him even more supportive of New York wines. “I have this, like, fierce loyalty,” he said. "I go to restaurants around here and if they don’t have Finger Lakes wines on their menu, I’m like, ‘What are you even doing serving wine?’”The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Climate Change Has a Joe Rogan Problem

If you’re reading this, chances are good that you read other stories about climate change too. Looking around at the news yesterday, you may well have stumbled onto any number of Earth Day–inspired cases for optimism: “tiny climate actions” like adjusting the thermostat and propagating your plants, profiles of environmental do-gooders, steps to becoming the “best planetary citizen possible.” Those kinds of cheery spreads are standard fare for Earth Day. But they feel more than a little discordant with the drumbeat of decidedly awful climate news coming from both the planet itself and a White House attempting to dismantle clean air regulations, defund scientific research, claw back climate funds approved by Congress, and potentially even strip environmental groups of their nonprofit status.Many people, though, are hearing less about all of the above. Media Matters recently found that corporate broadcast news coverage of climate change fell by 25 percent last year compared to 2023. While climate coverage at national outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post has surged by as much as 300 percent since 2012, according to one recent academic study, smaller outlets around the country haven’t kept pace; smaller, predominantly state and local outlets expanded their climate coverage by about half as much over the same time period. The growing numbers of people who tend to get their news from other sources, meanwhile—including social media platforms—are hearing a lot of nonsense. An analysis published this week by Yale Climate Connections found that eight of the 10 most popular online shows—including those hosted by Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson—have “spread false or misleading information about climate change.” A report from the British news site Tortoise Media—analyzing the climate-related output of more than 300 influencers—likewise shows that climate-skeptic posts on YouTube grew by 43 percent between 2021 and 2024. On X (formerly Twitter), such content ballooned by 82 percent over the same time period. As much as 40 percent of it posits that climate change is merely an excuse for some shadowy network of conspirators to control the population and/or bring about “communism.”Given that one in five people in the United States regularly get their news from social media, that means a lot of people are getting bad information about the climate crisis. That’s especially true of young people. A Pew poll released late last year found that 37 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds here regularly get news from “news influencers,” who tend to lean right if they have any obvious political affiliations. Survey results released in early 2024 by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that nearly a third of U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 view climate change as “harmless,” including 39 percent of teen boys. The same poll found 33 percent of teenagers—and 40 percent of teen boys—said climate change policies “do more harm than good.”Academics and philanthropists have spent more than a decade theorizing about the best ways to convey information about climate change to the general public: the merits of projecting hope instead of “doomerism” and of showcasing actually existing climate solutions. Nobody seems to have cracked the code, though. Growing awareness of the climate crisis—and consistently positive polling about how many people want their governments to do more about it—still hasn’t translated into many governments actually taking said action, at least not at anywhere near the scale the crisis requires. Big national outlets have invested in telling more good-news stories to readers who already care about climate change, while right-wing YouTubers broadcast lies and conspiracy theories to huge audiences. If you’ve made it this far, you can count yourself among the relatively small number of people who regularly read climate coverage beyond the headlines. Thank you! Accordingly, you probably don’t need me to sugarcoat the conclusion with a half-baked case for optimism: This isn’t good.

If you’re reading this, chances are good that you read other stories about climate change too. Looking around at the news yesterday, you may well have stumbled onto any number of Earth Day–inspired cases for optimism: “tiny climate actions” like adjusting the thermostat and propagating your plants, profiles of environmental do-gooders, steps to becoming the “best planetary citizen possible.” Those kinds of cheery spreads are standard fare for Earth Day. But they feel more than a little discordant with the drumbeat of decidedly awful climate news coming from both the planet itself and a White House attempting to dismantle clean air regulations, defund scientific research, claw back climate funds approved by Congress, and potentially even strip environmental groups of their nonprofit status.Many people, though, are hearing less about all of the above. Media Matters recently found that corporate broadcast news coverage of climate change fell by 25 percent last year compared to 2023. While climate coverage at national outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post has surged by as much as 300 percent since 2012, according to one recent academic study, smaller outlets around the country haven’t kept pace; smaller, predominantly state and local outlets expanded their climate coverage by about half as much over the same time period. The growing numbers of people who tend to get their news from other sources, meanwhile—including social media platforms—are hearing a lot of nonsense. An analysis published this week by Yale Climate Connections found that eight of the 10 most popular online shows—including those hosted by Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson—have “spread false or misleading information about climate change.” A report from the British news site Tortoise Media—analyzing the climate-related output of more than 300 influencers—likewise shows that climate-skeptic posts on YouTube grew by 43 percent between 2021 and 2024. On X (formerly Twitter), such content ballooned by 82 percent over the same time period. As much as 40 percent of it posits that climate change is merely an excuse for some shadowy network of conspirators to control the population and/or bring about “communism.”Given that one in five people in the United States regularly get their news from social media, that means a lot of people are getting bad information about the climate crisis. That’s especially true of young people. A Pew poll released late last year found that 37 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds here regularly get news from “news influencers,” who tend to lean right if they have any obvious political affiliations. Survey results released in early 2024 by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that nearly a third of U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 view climate change as “harmless,” including 39 percent of teen boys. The same poll found 33 percent of teenagers—and 40 percent of teen boys—said climate change policies “do more harm than good.”Academics and philanthropists have spent more than a decade theorizing about the best ways to convey information about climate change to the general public: the merits of projecting hope instead of “doomerism” and of showcasing actually existing climate solutions. Nobody seems to have cracked the code, though. Growing awareness of the climate crisis—and consistently positive polling about how many people want their governments to do more about it—still hasn’t translated into many governments actually taking said action, at least not at anywhere near the scale the crisis requires. Big national outlets have invested in telling more good-news stories to readers who already care about climate change, while right-wing YouTubers broadcast lies and conspiracy theories to huge audiences. If you’ve made it this far, you can count yourself among the relatively small number of people who regularly read climate coverage beyond the headlines. Thank you! Accordingly, you probably don’t need me to sugarcoat the conclusion with a half-baked case for optimism: This isn’t good.

Portland Youth Climate Strike rally at Portland City Hall

A little over 100 high school students rallied at Portland City Hall, calling attention more aggressive climate policy on federal, state and local level

High school students representing a handful of Portland schools formed a modest presence in front of Portland City Hall Tuesday morning, where they marked Earth Day by demanding more aggressive federal, state and local policy to halt climate change.The Portland Youth Climate Strike attracted more than 100 students, who carried signs and gave speeches before marching to Pioneer Courthouse Square, where more speeches were briefly given before the event reached its close. Rally organizer Jorge Sanchez Bautista, 18, said he first got involved in climate activism when he noticed freight trains that sometimes carried fuel come through his neighborhood. The Franklin High School senior, who is running for the Portland school board to represent Zone 5, lives in Cully.“As youth, over time we are the ones who are going to have to deal with all the issues that go with the planet, our animals and the environment,” he said. “We’re inheriting a planet that will be based on how we care for it,” he said. Portland Youth Climate Strikers gather on Earth Day at Portland City Hall. From there, the group marched to Pioneer Courthouse Square. April 22, 2025.Beth NakamuraJacob Apenes, 26, was among the speakers at Pioneer Courthouse Square. Apenes, who is an organizer with youth climate group Sunrise PDX, said he’s been afraid about environmental changes for a long time. “When I was 11, I learned about this world-ending crisis in my 6th-grade science class,” he told the crowd.“I learned that ... climate change is a huge threat, but people are working hard to stop it,” he said. “Fifteen years later, and have we stopped anything?” he asked.--Beth NakamuraInstagram: @bethnakamura

Progressive Christianity’s Bleak Future

Pope Francis leaves behind a Church that is moving away from the faith he championed.

In his final Easter address, Pope Francis touched on one of the major themes of his 12-year papacy, that love, hope, and peace are possible amid a rising tide of violence and extremism: “What a great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day in the many conflicts raging in different parts of our world!” Archbishop Diego Ravelli read the prepared text aloud to crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, because Francis was by then too ill to deliver his remarks himself: “How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and migrants!” The hallmark of a truly Christian sentiment is its radicalism, how deeply it subverts systems of worldly power and domination. Francis understood that.Accordingly, his observations about the revolutionary truth of Christianity with respect to global political affairs were often rejected, sometimes bitterly, by the world leaders he meant to exhort. His opponents were mainly conservatives of various stripes—some traditionalists upset by his relative coldness toward older liturgies, some members of the political right frustrated with his unwillingness to spiritually cooperate in their sociopolitical projects. Thus some conservatives were positively delighted by Francis’s death. The risible Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted, “Today there were major shifts in global leaderships. Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.” Greene’s own Christianity was evidently insufficient to discourage such profound judgment, and hers may unfortunately be the way of the future.[Read: The papacy is forever changed]To what evil might Greene refer? Perhaps Francis’s embrace of philosophical concerns associated with politically progressive causes—such as climate change, as addressed in his landmark encyclical Laudato Si’ (“Praised Be”). Francis wrote that “the earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” an epiphenomenon of what he called “throwaway culture,” which encourages not only waste and environmental degradation but also a cavalier disinterest in the lives of the poor in favor of wanton consumption. “We fail to see that some are mired in desperate and degrading poverty,” he wrote, “with no way out, while others have not the faintest idea what to do with their possessions, vainly showing off their supposed superiority and leaving behind them so much waste which, if it were the case everywhere, would destroy the planet.” The pope had a keen sense of class consciousness, which he pointedly expressed in a speech last year to leaders of global popular movements: “It is often precisely the wealthiest who oppose the realization of social justice or integral ecology out of sheer greed,” he said, adding that humanity’s future may well depend “on the community action of the poor of the Earth.” The marginalized people of the world were always Francis’s beloved, a Christian principle that led him to intervene on behalf of migrants, documented and undocumented, whenever he could.In fact, it was the pope’s efforts to quell growing Western hostility toward migrants that recently put him directly at odds with the Trump administration. After Vice President J. D. Vance had a public spat with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops over the rollback of a Biden-era law preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from apprehending undocumented migrants in schools and churches, Francis wrote a letter that seemed to chastise Vance directly. “The true ordo amoris,” Francis wrote, citing a Catholic term Vance had invoked to defend the proposition that love of kin and countryman should reign supreme, “is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘good Samaritan.’” That is, he continued, “by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”Admirers of Francis’s papacy have reason to worry for the Christianity that lies ahead. I had presumed with some sorrow, tracking long trends of vanishing American religion, that Christianity’s days here were numbered, and perhaps they still are. The country has long been headed in a secular direction. But that seems to be changing now—the decline is on pause, and another shift is under way, from a politically varied multitude to a more decidedly right-wing bloc.A recent study from Pew Research Center documented the pause. “For the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable,” the study’s authors wrote—hovering just below two-thirds of the population. The reasons for this stabilization are undoubtedly complex, and I was heartened by these numbers—but they may well spell doom for the kind of progressive Christianity that Francis evidently hoped to shore up. In particular, it’s possible that the much-discussed departure of young, progressive people from the faith is almost complete: Virtually everyone who was going to leave has left. And now that the young progressives are nearly all gone, the overall decline has ceased, leaving behind a more solid—and conservative—core of believers. Meanwhile, it also seems that new conservative converts are joining the faith, and bringing their politics with them. The result will be a much more conservative American Christianity.[Read: What border-hawk catholics don’t get]Which isn’t to say that American Christianity has generally been associated with progressivism; it hasn’t, but the two weren’t always as opposed as they seem now. Over the past decade, most Christian traditions in America have shifted rightward politically: Ryan P. Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University who studies religion, found that from 2008 to 2018, 27 out of 34 Christian traditions surveyed became more conservative, judging by changes in congregants’ party affiliations. Burge alluded to the reason in a social-media post earlier this month, noting that although 42 percent of very liberal survey respondents identified as nonreligious in 2008, by 2024 the number had skyrocketed to 62 percent, meaning that progressives have left religion in droves. Accordingly, the Gallup senior scientist Frank Newport wrote in 2023, “everything else being equal, the more religious the individual in the U.S. today, the higher the probability that the individual identifies with or leans toward the Republican party.”Today’s American Christianity, therefore, is a good fit for young men of the right. “As pastor of a parish in South Carolina, I am witnessing a remarkable trend,” Father Dwight Longenecker, a conservative priest, wrote in a 2024 article for National Catholic Register: “Almost every week I receive a call, email or visit from at least one young man interested in learning more about the Catholic religion.” These new converts are undoubtedly somewhat diverse in their interests and beliefs, but a common theme in their conversion stories is disillusionment with modernity, and attraction to Catholicism as a source of stability, tradition, and ethics that transcend time and place. “I felt like the modern world was constantly in flux,” Vance, one such young convert, said of his own recent entry into Catholicism at a 2021 conference. “The things that you believed 10 years ago were no longer even acceptable to believe 10 years later.” This is conservatism in the classical sense, and like Vance, young men journeying into Christianity for conservative reasons typically have conservative politics.  Conservative Christian politics are not everywhere and always destructive, but today’s right is more extreme than its recent predecessors. I fear that the next era of American Christianity will be about conquest and triumph rather than peace and humility, and will profligately lend its imprimatur to nationalist agendas that are hostile to the weak and the marginalized. (Vance’s invocation of the ordo amoris to justify the Trump administration’s extreme anti-immigrant politics is perhaps a preview of things to come.) And that would be a devastating development, not just because of the predictable political consequences of such an alignment, but also because the Christianity Francis represented really is loyal to the Gospels in its devotion to the people Jesus loved so much, whose fortunes are rarely of interest to people in power: the poor, the sick, the oppressed and exploited, the displaced and rejected. It was for those that Francis prayed, wrote, and spoke, and to them that he dedicated his time on the chair of St. Peter. And theirs will be the kingdom of heaven.

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