McKibben: Our “spiral of trouble” will deepen

Environmental activist Bill McKibben, speaking at a recent news briefing, warned that new domestic policy legislation will likely increase problems faced by cities like Chico that are already struggling with the effects of wildfire.

The Trump Administration’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill “will help deepen the spiral of trouble that you’re already in,” McKibben said in responding to a ChicoSol reporter at the briefing. Semi-rural cities like Chico are dealing with larger and hotter wildfires, rising temperatures and poor air quality during increasingly long fire seasons.

“Among other things, the Trump Administration has instructed the National Forest [Service] to greatly increase the timber cut at the expense of all the other kind of planning and work that we should be doing, especially in an era of wildfires,” McKibben said.

McKibben spoke at an American Community Media July 11 briefing, “Unpacking the New ‘One Big, Beautiful’ Law,” that dealt with the ramifications of President Trump’s 987-page budget bill signed into law July 4. McKibben was one of the earliest environmentalists to become outspoken about the dangers of global warming more than three decades ago, and is a founder of the climate campaign organization 350.org.

Other briefing panelists were health policy expert Larry Levitt, Yale professor Natasha Sarin and Yale policy analyst Richard Prisinzano, who discusssed how the country’s social safety net is being gutted.

McKibben said there’s “overlap” between the climate crisis and concerns over the future of Medicaid and rural hospitals. “Climate disasters of all kinds, including wildfires, quickly become medical disasters as people need to go to emergency rooms,” he said. “If that emergency room isn’t there anymore, God knows where people will go.” 

McKibben predicted massive layoffs in green industries, high energy bills for consumers and accelerated inflation for the nation’s economy.

McKibben said the fossil fuel industry “helped game the political system” with huge contributions to candidate Trump. Although the industry only gave Trump half of what he requested, “it turned out to be enough, because the Big, Beautiful Bill is absolutely stuffed with provisions that are designed quite clearly to slow the transition to renewable energy,” he added.

“These include the cessation of tax breaks for sun, wind and batteries that were a big part of the tax reduction act passed in the Biden years. Those provisions, supposed to last a decade, now mostly phase out by the end of this year.

“We’re very much on a timetable to limit the damage from climate change, which would require a very fast phaseout of coal and gas and oil,” he said. 

While his analysis was often grim, he beamed a positive light on global trends.

“The phaseout of coal, gas and oil is starting to happen quite dramatically in other parts of the world,” McKibben said. “We’re now building renewable energy at a breakneck pace. The planet is producing about a third more power from the sun this summer than it did last summer, and it will probably be about the same increase next year. This is being led by China.”

Positive trends also exist in parts of the United States. McKibben said California, for example, is using 40 percent less natural gas this year to generate electricity than it did two years ago.

McKibben issued two calls to action: Vote and protest. Mid-year elections could give the electorate a chance to change the balance of power in Congress, he said. He also urged reporters attending the ACoM panel to spread the word about an action planned by 350.org.

That action is called SunDay and will be held on the fall equinox Sept 21.

Nationwide SunDay festivities and protests, he said, are “designed to drive home the important fact that sun and wind are no longer alternative energy, they are the straightforward and cheap way to produce energy in this world.”

Lindajoy Fenley is a contributing writer to ChicoSol.