2025

Michael Grunwald on How Diet Drives Climate Change Years ago, I visited the Everglades with a group of colleagues and drove everybody crazy with my never-ending questions. Finally, a park ranger handed me a copy of Michael Grunwald’s The Swamp. “Just read this,” he said. I started the book on my flight home and didn’t put […]

The Global Atlas of Underground Fungi is published! It feels very good to have some positive news to report in the world of environmental progress. A few days ago, SPUN, the NGO that I often write about, published a global analysis and data set that maps out underground mycorrhizal biodiversity. And the news got some

How the New Budget Bill Undermines Energy Security, the Economy, and Climate Resilience I hope you’ve noticed by now that at The Instigator, we make a concerted effort to maintain a constructive, non-partisan, and non-alarmist point of view. We want to get as many people on our side as possible. We try to focus on pragmatism over

Let’s Accelerate the Global Energy Transition Are we losing momentum in the race to address the climate challenge? Let’s look at the evidence: Headlines are grim (see here, here, and here), targets are slipping, and with so many major issues competing for our attention, the world’s focus may be drifting away from the environmental emergency we’re in. But

Let’s stop kidding ourselves and do something If you’re in the US this weekend, I bet I know how you’re feeling right now. Hot. Right? Maybe worried too? As I’m writing this (on Friday), forecasters are predicting triple-digit temperatures for what will be the hottest stretch in over a decade from New York City to

Time Travel Improves Thinking Summer is here, and our readers are asking for book recommendations. Not surprisingly, Instigators have a particular interest in CliFi, i.e., novels that help us envision the reality of a climate-stressed world, or—even better—inspire action to address the challenge. I just finished a great novel that fits the bill: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane

Can Trade Negotiations Benefit the Environment? Trade deals are back on the table. And while the commentary seems mostly focused on whether or not the deals will close, or how ambitious they will be, or what can be done with China, let’s consider another angle. Could these deals include provisions that address environmental challenges like

Fungal ecosystem investments promise big returns—maybe even bipartisan cooperation! More than a decade ago, I wrote a book called Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature. Its central thesis was that investing in nature not only protects the environment for us, other species, and future generations, but it also produces enormously useful outcomes

There are Heroes Among Us In this week’s fusillade of crazy headlines, here’s one we shouldn’t forget: Layoffs of 10,000 Government Health Workers Begin. This is . . . not good. What’s worse is how these civil servants are finding out their years of service have come to an end—-with deactivated badges when they try

Let’s keep our focus on the right target. Our heads are spinning. Each day brings a barrage of bad news about the new administration’s haphazard and harmful decisions. As we’ve written, that’s their strategy. You know what else is part of the strategy? Getting us to turn on one another, arguing about direction, while they plow