Concerned About Government Dismantling Of Environmental Protections? Join 50501!

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Fox News seems worried. One of the biggest promulgators of climate mis- and disinformation in the US is warning its readers of a movement to oppose the early actions of President Donald Trump’s administration — there are plans to protest across the US today, it says. Efforts are coalescing under the 50501 movement and its hashtags #buildtheresistance and #50501 — all of which stand for 50 protests, 50 states, one day. Many of the protests are planned at state capitols, with some in other cities. (Political Revolution has a list of 50501 state protest sites at https://events.pol-rev.com.)

“Flyers circulating online decry Project 2025, a hard-right playbook for American government and society,” the Fox News story says, drawing on an earlier AP press release and adding that slogans “reject fascism” and “defend our democracy” are prominent. Government dismantling of environmental protections, Constitutional rights, and representation by three branches of government have many US citizens worried — call it what you will.

I’m worried about our democracy and all it embraces. Yes, there often are reasonable disagreements about an issue, and fairness requires presenting these disagreements in an evenhanded manner. I’m with you so far. But that is not the case when covering a topic that can scientifically be proven true or false. “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts,” former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said.

Were people who voted for Trump and his surrogates listening when Project 2025 proposed drastic cuts for funding climate research?

In his first few weeks in office, President Donald Trump has pulled out of the Paris agreement, increased oil and gas production, weakened the Endangered Species Act, opened up areas in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, promised to eliminate electric vehicle incentives, and eliminated environmental justice from new building considerations, among others.

Reuters states, “We’re entering a four year period where partisanship assures us that the US will remain a global laggard on climate policy.”

It’s been a long two months where we climate activists have been mourning. Now we’re rising again. Let’s contradict the lies issued by AI bots. Let’s join in 50501 and repost their accomplishments today on our social media networks. Let’s make transparent loss of habitat, Big Oil pollution, plastics entering human bodies, drilling for oil in pristine wilderness, global action to keep emissions at 1.5 degrees C, and so many other issues — it is imperative that we stand up and let our voices be heard.

Let’s publicize the work that’s being done in small gatherings and large protests, today with the 50501 movement and beyond.

Climate Action 2025: Alive and Well

Third Act is a community of Americans over sixty determined to change the world for the better. Third Act harnesses an unparalleled generational power to safeguard our climate and democracy. Their national campaigns are geared towards collective action and moving the needle towards a sustainable, joyous, and equitable future for everyone. Explore their actions here.

350.org focuses on bold climate action by working with people across the world to oppose those wrecking our climate and to fight for a sustainable future. At every step of the way they are driven by the knowledge that every voice makes a difference, and every battle won is another step towards a safe, liveable planet. They believe in the collective power of ordinary people taking action for climate justice. Through online campaigns, grassroots organizing and mass public actions, our movement is rising up all over the world. Join them!

Each month, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law collects and summarizes developments in climate related litigation, which we also add to their US and global climate litigation charts.

The US Climate Action Summit 2025 will launch on April 21 and run until April 27 with a week of engaging events across Washington, DC. These include Climate and Health Day on April 22, and their flagship event, The Leaders’ Forum on April 24. The Leaders’ Forum brings together the largest and most prominent coalition of subnational, federal, private sector and NGO decision makers committed to addressing climate change through a series of public events and dealmaking sessions.

Paul Krugman on False Equivalence

Last month Paul Krugman retired from his position as an opinion writer at the New York Times—a job he had done for 25 years. He says he did so because the editing of his regular columns went from light touch to extremely intrusive. “These rewrites,” he explains, “almost invariably involved toning down, introducing unnecessary qualifiers, and, as I saw it, false equivalence.”

It became clear to the Nobel Prize winning economist that the Times management he was dealing with “didn’t understand the difference between having an opinion and having an informed, factually sourced opinion.”

False equivalence isn’t new in climate narratives. While it is not uncommon for media outlets to interview climate change scientists and climate change deniers in the same interviews, the effort to offer a 360-degree view has created a false balance between trained climate scientists and those who lack scientific training, such as politicians. Data shows that about half the mainstream media visibility goes to climate change deniers, many of whom are not climate scientists. This proportion increases significantly when blogs and other social media spaces are included — pointing to the constantly increasing role of customized media in spreading disinformation.

False equivalence in Big Media has forced climate scientists to exert their authority in scientific and public discourse and for some professional journalists and editors to adjust the disproportionate attention given to contrarians.

Fascists: We See You and Will Continue to Speak Truth to Power

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley has called Trump a “fascist to the core.”

Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly said the president “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist.”

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s heil hand gesture during a speech on US President Donald Trump’s inauguration day is a signifier of fascism.

Timothy Snyder writes in the New Yorker that today’s fascism “is nestled between the digital oligarchy (Musk) and the hydrocarbon oligarchy (Putin).” With Trump a sycophant to hydrocarbon oligarchs, the nation is destined for even more climate disaster, suffering, immigration, and division. Unlike fascists of the past who sought a return for nature, foreseeing ecological disaster. Now we have internal combustion engines (ICEs) — “archaic technologies” that have unalterably changed the climate.

When such disasters occur, Synder points out how fascists like Trump and Vance blame the victims and the immigrants — they invent conspiracy theories to divert blame. On Sunday, thousands of people marched against Trump’s plan for large scale deportations in Southern California, including in downtown Los Angeles, where protests shut down a major freeway for hours.

Might the Biden-Harris administration have anticipated that an election loss might have ushered in fascism? Might the administration have declared an official climate emergency (as over 2,364 jurisdictions in 40 different countries, including 18 national governments and the EU, have done)? Yes, absolutely, but we can’t look back. As Ilana Cohen states eloquently in The Nation today:

“It’s still not too late for climate action. The prospects for a more just and sustainable future may seem bleak, but we can’t give up. If we do, then we have not only sealed the fate of those most vulnerable and least responsible for this crisis, but we have also abdicated something fundamental: our shared humanity, and our responsibility to love and care for each other and for our planet. As harms magnify, the need to scale up equitable responses that put human life and dignity first become more essential than ever before.”