Earth Day 2025 is the first anniversary of my release of Rear-View Reflections on Radical Change: A Green Grandma’s Memoir and Call for Climate Action.This book expressed my hope that a divided USA could come together to address what I see as the most serious existential crisis that we face as a human species – climate change.
Sadly, the last national election has resulted in a misguided and disturbing effort to deal with only one symptom of climate change and other serious crises in many nations – the migration of populations and the resulting influx of immigrants into the USA. What we really need is a laser focus on the underlying cause of climate change –our national and global addiction to burning fossil fuels.
In addition to the harm this disinvestment in renewable energy will cause to conditions needed for life on planet earth, we are witnessing a dramatic, horrifying erosion of civil liberties, the rule of law, and scientific progress within the United States. As I watched TrumpTariff, MuskDOGE, and Project 2025 assume their monstrous shapes, I took a two-month break from blogging but continued expressing my outrage to elected representatives. Now, I return to blogging, with a break in June planned.
Let us look forward, despite the turbulent political and economic environment that today’s U.S. administration has set in chaotic motion.
The Status of Climate Action in the USA
From Inside Clean Energy: EV Sales Are Up in the US, But Tariffs Are a Storm Cloud for an Industry That Craves Stability “Some of the strength in the EV market was likely because customers were trying to buy before tariffs took effect.”
From Climate Reality: Want to save the US auto industry? Keep clean energy investments. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed early in the Biden administration, “has become a cornerstone of the American manufacturing renaissance. The IRA has set off billion in investments across a range of clean energy sectors, from manufacturing to, importantly, automaking. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been created or advanced– with more on the horizon. Some have forecast that the IRA could create up to 1.3 million jobs and a nearly 1% higher GDP by 2030 alone. Clean energy made up 10% of global GDP growth in 2023, with investments hitting $1.8 trillion the same year. Now is the time to jump on this quickly growing bandwagon. Tell Congress to fight for working families and protect the IRA’s clean energy credits and investments that make energy more affordable for all of us. Join us in standing up for the IRA today.”
From Bill McKibben: “E&E News was reportingon widespread rumors that the administration planned (on Earth Day no less!) to cancel the tax-exempt status of many green groups…The threat comes amidst the ongoing decimation of federally-funded climate science. In the last few days, for instance, NOAA has announced it will no longer be maintaining its remarkable map of sea-surface temperatures, while the NIH said it was no longer gathering information on the health impacts of global warming.”
Promising Climate Solutions
From Anthropocene: Clearly cool: A transparent paper-based material could replace single-use plastics. “The millimeter-thick paperboard behaves just like plastic; it’s strong, transparent, shapeable—and can hold boiling water. But it degrades within a year on the ocean floor.”
What if we turned the food waste problem on its head—and made it a climate solution?
A new study finds that each ton of food waste recycled, with existing technologies, would reduce carbon emissions by roughly a corresponding ton.
From the MCJ Newsletter: The Other Power Source: How Community Organizing Can Accelerate the Energy Transition. The author “points to the ways we can shift the conversation from chaos to meaningful, community-driven solutions that push for more renewable energy, protect public lands, and foster real human connections.”
From The New York Times, Climate Forward: Ann Arbor Wants to Build Its Own Renewable-Energy Grid– “Ann Arbor, Mich., moved forward with an ambitious plan to build its own utility that aims to provide clean power outside the grid.”
Climate Work Opportunities
From the California-China Climate Institute: Summer 2025 U.S.-China Climate Leadership Program – Apply Here by May 2, 2025.
My Green Grandma Hopes
I hope my memoirs can provide some insights into surviving and thriving in the current environment. I have shared my own tools for recovery from traumas. I have also portrayed my life journey which required speaking truth to power and overcoming fear when situations demand resistance, not compliance.
If you use bookbaby to purchase either the paperback or e-book version of Rear-View Reflections, or the ebook version of Unearthing the Ghosts, between April 20 and May 31, 2025, you will get a 25% discount when you check out with this code: EarthDay2025.
