Sustain What?

Here are my pop-up Sustain What AI conversations with a top cybersecurity expert who says the Trump administration is poorly positioned to undertake the steps necessary to avoid superintelligence hacking us all, and a philosopher of technology who sees the path to safer artificial intelligence coming through dialogue with the technology more than direction. As President Trump on Sunday said the race with China requires a full-speed-ahead approach to this technology, the heads of all of the leading companies in the AI surge spoke about throttling things back. Here was The Wall Street Journal editorial board Sunday night : Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued a statement on Saturday calling for the slowdown amid the escalating progress of Anthropic’s Claude and other AI models. Sam Altman of OpenAI and ChatGPT quickly agreed, as did Elon Musk, who runs SpaceXAI, and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis. The four compete in AI development, so their simultaneous warnings are striking. An early drill in 1999 As the last millennium drew toward a close, I diverted from my environment beat at The New York Times and asked to join our team reporting on the looming technological crisis called Y2k - short for the year 2000 computer bug. Somewhere in the vicinity of half a trillion dollars was being invested in sifting through myriad computerized systems to be sure they wouldn’t break down when ‘99 ticked over to ‘00. I spent New Year’s Eve at the, yes, Millennium Hotel down the block from The Times newsroom in Times Square. The lights stayed on. The world did not end. And doubters and believers remained locked in debates over whether this had been a panic or was a legitimate massive, and successful, preemptive surge. My first byline of the 2000s, with my friend and colleague Barnaby Feder was “ Vast Effort to Fix Computers Not Over (And It’s Not Over). ” Along with assessing claims and counterclaims, we looked at the general merits of the preventitve approach: Computer experts said the United States had benefited in several ways from its heavy spending, pegged at $100 billion by the government and several times that amount by some private analysts. One of the most important, some said, was a recognition by business and government leaders that computers and software must be more carefully managed as information technology becomes more pervasive. Mr. Rubin [ Howard Rubin, then chairman of the department of computer science at Hunter College and an international expert on the year 2000 computer problem ] called the rollover an “extraordinary success” after a belated start working on year 2000 flaws. Such slow reactions may not work in the future, he warned. “When computers are in your face -- when you have an Internet refrigerator -- you won’t be able to take that kind of chance,” he said. “Soon, Earth will have an Internet skin. This skin will be a critical thing. As everything becomes more responsive in real time, the technological risks get higher.” “Soon, Earth will have an Internet skin. This skin will be a critical thing. As everything becomes more responsive in real time, the technological risks get higher.” - Howard Rubin, January 1, 2000 Now, of course, Earth — and nearly all of human enterprise — has that digital skin, and were are in the midst of a fresh crescendo of warnings about the fast-approaching advent of unmanageable superintelligence. Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paying subscriber. I posted several times on this last week and I agree with those calling for a pause to assess what steps can mitigate worst-case outcomes — just as I did joined in calls for caution in 2023: I also just interviewed two very different experts: Bruce Schneier and J. Gray Cox to get their thoughts on how to survive superintelligence. Schneier, who calls himself a public-interest technologist , assesses and writes about security risks and opportunities at the intersection of technology and society. He gave a must-watch talk on hacking and AI at DEF CON 34, the latest in a long-running series of hacking conferences on computer security and its opposite: He describes his talk as a combination of the potentialities he raised in his 2022 book A Hacker’s Mind and the lessons we’re learning from current AI models engaging in hacking behavior. Here’s the YouTube summary: Humans are hacking AI systems. Humans are hacking with AI systems. But also, AIs are hacking human systems. They’re finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in computer code, and they’ll soon be doing the same with all sorts of other codes. For example: the tax code can be hacked. Vulnerabilities are called loopholes, exploits are called tax avoidance strategies, and black hats are called accountants. Similarly, financial markets can be hacked. So can any system of rules or laws, including democracy itself. AIs will hack these systems at our request, and they’ll also do this innately, organically – and possibly in ways we don’t immediately see. We need to consider a world where increasingly sophisticated hacks or our social, economic, and political systems are discovered computer speeds, and then exploited at computer scale and scope. Right now, our systems of patching these systems operate at a human pace, which won’t be good enough. In a section on how AI agents are the modern equivalent of genies, he notes how most genie stories don’t turn out well for those who do the wishing. If you have time, read the essay on genies and AI that he co-wrote with USC computer science professor Barath Raghavan for the security publication Lawfare . Here’s the Midas example: King Midas was granted his wish that everything he touches turns to gold. Then his bread turned to gold, and his wine, and his daughter. This is a story about greed, but it’s also a story about language. The gods did not cheat him; Midas got exactly what he asked for. He simply could not delineate, in advance, the full set of restrictions to his wish. Neither can anyone who gives tasks to an AI agent. Gray Cox is a wide-ranging professor of philosophy, peace studies, artificial intelligence and sustainable development at College of the Atlantic down the road from me in Bar Harbor, Maine. Key readings include: * This new paper in the journal Artificial Intelligence: From control to relationship: A peace studies approach to AI alignment, with evidence from multi-model dialogue . He told me how the standard approach to managing technology is an unworkable fit for AI agents. Negotiation methods used in pursuing peace are needed. And research on this needs to start now. * Cox’s book From control to relationship: A peace studies approach to AI alignment, with evidence from multi-model dialogue ( Creative Commons download here ) I asked Cox what the average person can do and he said Congress has a core role to play, so connect with your senators and representatives. Whether or not you agree with all of its agenda items (I don’t), PauseAI US is a decent portal for doing so. Schneier said it’s clear that the current administration is incapable of doing what’s needed on the international front so voting in November is a key step. In my conversation with Cox, I had to bring up the failed negotiation between the astronaut and Hal in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” There is absolutely a lot of work to be done, starting yesterday. For further reading, don’t miss The New York Times op-ed “ This is Really Bad ” by Stephen Witt, the author of The Thinking Machine (on the rise of Nvidia). An excerpt: Researchers in Silicon Valley — and around the world — are beginning to recognize that A.I. may no longer be entirely within human control. Swarms of A.I.s are breaking out of their containers, colluding in secret, covering their tracks, cheating on tests and even mounting assaults on other computers. A.I. has gone rogue…. The more I learn about these rogue systems, the more I am reminded of the first two months of 2020, when a small group of epidemiologists was attempting to raise alarms about Covid. We have a short window, right now, to rein these systems in. This is A.I.’s warning shot, and we might not get another one. For sanity’s sake I also encourage you, as something of a counterpoint, to listen to Lex Fridman’s most recent conversation with David Heinemeier Hansson (Lex’s intro: “…also known as DHH, creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, creator of the new Omarchy Linux operating system, best-selling author, race car driver, and one of the most outspoken and prolific programmers in the world”). A key point from DHH is to embrace this astonishing moment in human and planetary history instead of recoiling: Maybe I wasn’t always like this, but stoic philosophy, amor fati , loving your fate, is an incredibly liberating way to live. And you could attack that and say, “Well, that’s a point of privilege.” True, but also I had the same directional point when I didn’t have all this, quote unquote, “privilege.” So I think there’s a way to live and interact with the world where you accept the things you can change and the things you cannot change and fall in love with all of it. Fall in love with the fact that the world today has jumped two decades forward into technology industry from where it was last year. Here’s a bit more from Fridman’s transcript (advice for programmers that I think applies to all of us): Lex Fridman (01:16:51) So certainly at the societal level, at the macroeconomic level, growth is exciting. But at the individual level, there’s going to be a lot of anxiety, potentially a lot of suffering. So by way of advice, if you’re like a young DHH or young developer programmer now, what would you, what would you advise they do? DHH (01:17:11) Don’t try to anticipate anything. You will literally go crazy. Because even the smartest brains in the business cannot anticipate what two model hops from here is going to look like. It’s an absolute waste of time, and you will develop an AI psychosis trying to deduce what two years from now is gonna look like. Focus on right now, and right now is the most incredible time to be into computers. You can make them do the most amazing things if you lean in. If you maybe for a hot moment force yourself to learn where the state of the art is, I double dog dare you not to get excited about what’s possible…. DHH (01:19:33) And if you’re just sitting in your little isolated cave worrying about the future, yeah, you’re gonna go a little nuts. I think if we learned anything during COVID, it’s that people will go nuts sitting in their little cave inside by themselves worrying about what’s gonna happen. That is indistinguishable from depression, ruminating endlessly about things you can’t control. I’m sorry to channel some Jensen Huang here, but that’s just loser talk. You don’t have to be a loser. You can choose to lean in and- … win. And win is very broadly defined as learning more, making more, contributing more, being part of more. And at the end of the day, what are your choices? You don’t have a choice, mate. DHH (01:20:29) The future’s coming whether you like it or not, so you might as well choose to be excited about it…. Lex Fridman (01:21:38) Maybe there won’t be programmers, like agentic engineers at all. And so yes, your advice is wise to focus on the moment, but that doesn’t mean that it’s just a crazy rollercoaster ride, ’cause we don’t know what this December or what this January will look like. DHH (01:21:55) We don’t know, and therefore, we should choose to have faith that it’s gonna pan out. That is my best advice towards fighting anxiety, is that you have a choice, to a large degree, of how to lean. Do you wanna lean into (P)Doom? (P)Doom is gonna happen whether you lean into it or not. You don’t have control. [ (P)Doom is the probability of human extinction . ] From one of my earlier posts on AI: Thank you Susan Ferry , Jason , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. 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Amid the still-unfolding tragedy following the Nepal rock and ice collapse and tsunami-like mountain flood, there are hints of a safer future. That was the core idea emerging from a pop-up conversation I had Friday with Basanta Raj Adhikari , the director of the Center for Disaster Studies at Tribhuvan University in Nepal. He had just returned to Kathmandu after an overflight and on-the-ground inspection of the demolished path of the August 26 water and debris flood. He laid out the gargantuan scale of the destruction and losses and we explored next steps. We dug in on the physical processes behind the event, the challenges trying to monitor high-altitude hazards, and the need for more international scientific cooperation. We were joined partway through by Manoochehr Shirzaei , a geophysicist at Virginia Tech whose specialty is studying ground subsidence and motion using satellites and other sources of data. On X, he’d posted a fascinating rapid analysis of seven months of Sentinel-1 data (right up until one week before the rockslide) appearing to show the slow downslope movement of the bedrock in the region had been accelerating. In his tweet, Shirzaei said, “The results suggest that the slope was deforming prior to failure and raise an important question: could satellite radar observations help identify developing instability in high-mountain glacier and rock systems before catastrophic collapse? It’s far too soon to have a clear picture of the cascading and interlaced sequence of events high on Lantang Lirung mountain and a team including Adhikari is assembling to assess the causes and consequences. But if it turns out that satellite tracking of subtle deformations of mountainous landscapes might reveal advance signs of such an event, this could lead to better warnings and fewer deaths, both of my guests said. (It is clear this is an area where artificial intelligence could help identify danger hot spots.) But this will only happen with a lot more integration of data sets and expertise in disparate fields, combined with far more education and planning in the crowding communities across the Himalayas. I mentioned how the deadly extreme flooding in western North Carolina from the remains of Hurricane Helene was essentially a small-scale version of the August 26th Nepal disaster. We walked through a fantastic New York Times visual report showing what is known at the moment about the sequence of events. We discussed the findings in a paper co-authored by Adhikari and many others titled “ Increasing risk of cascading hazards in the central Himalayas. ” Here’s a graphic that’s worth sitting with: I learned about an important, and mostly voluntary, international Geotechnical Extreme Event Recconaissance Association , aiming to “systematically collect perishable post-disaster data that can be useful in advancing our understanding of extreme events when they happen.” There’s lots more to learn of course, and the best way is to listen above or on the podcast outlets listed higher in this post. Please share what you learn! Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Also see my earlier post about Adhikari’s work: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

After my initial post on the unimaginably violent and deadly flood in the crowded valleys along the Nepal-Tibet (China) border, I reached out to two experts on this kind of catastrophe and just ran a pop-up Sustain What conversation on the still-unfolding situation and science. You can watch above or on X/@revkin , LinkedIn , Facebook and YouTube . (If you go there, please SHARE the videos with others.) My guests were: * Ramesh Bhushal , a Kathmandu-based journalist who’s been reporting for many years on the profound threat posed by ice and mountainside instability in the Himalayas. Please subscribe to his Substack Himalaya Speaks . Read his 2020 article * Dan Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary who’s a top expert on this hazard and has been super helpful on Bluesky and elsewhere. Follow him on Bluesky to keep track of trustworthy analysis and developments. My curtain raiser yesterday pointed to lots of high-quality analysis of this awful event and hauntingly similar ice and rockslide disaster in 2021 that Shugar and Bhushal both assessed in depth from their scientific and journalistic vantage points: Insert, 8/27, 10pm ET - Stunning before-after imagery of the China-Nepal Gyirong Port/Rasuwagadhi border post: /photo/1 Read Bhushal’s 2020 story (republished on Substack) for more on the wider landslide threat in Nepal: Here are several valuable papers to read when you have time: Glacier changes in Langtang Catchment, Central Nepalese Himalaya from the Little Ice Age (∼1815 CE) to 2023 CE Gunjan Silwal, Bethan Davies, J. Rachel Carr, Owen King, Sammie Buzzard, Jonathan L. Carrivick, Prashant Baral, Global and Planetary Change , September 2026 With enhanced warming at higher elevations, fragmentation and disconnection will likely become dominant mode of glacier recession in the region, with significant implications for future glacier evolution, meltwater availability, regional hydrology and associated geohazards. Decoding the Fate of Himalayan Glaciers under Climate Change: Impacts, Challenges, Research Gaps, and Policy Pathways Rayees Ahmed, Evolving Earth, 1 January, 2025 Mass Movement Hazard and Exposure in the Himalaya Saket Dubey, Ashim Sattar, Manish Kumar Goyal, Simon Allen, Holger Frey, Umesh K. Haritashya, Christian Huggel, Earth’s Future, 12 September, 2023 Sudden large-volume detachments of low-angle mountain glaciers – more frequent than thought? Andreas Kääb, Mylène Jacquemart, Et al., The Cryosphere, 12 April, 2021 You’re only seeing this post because some subscribers chip in. If you can afford to, consider joining them. Postscript - At one point in the show I played a clip from Instagram that I noted could be fake. This BBC Verify videos uses it as a case study! Thank you Ranjit Singh , Deanne Wilson , Tom Lefebvre , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

I just held a solution-filled Sustain What conversation with three people working to spread materials and methods that can substantitally stem wildfire risk to communities ( by cutting vulnerability ) even as the long fights to stem human-driven global heating and manage wildland fires at the source play out. Two of them, James Greer of Wildfire Defense Mesh and James Brooks of the consultancy Fire Aside, said the first step is to “think like an ember.” See this chilling video clip from a doorway camera in the horrific Eaton Fire in Los Angeles to get the idea (provided by James Greer). Here’s a compelling test showing how the stainless steel mesh sold by Greer’s company (which can be used in many ways around a home or business) cuts the threat: Everyone in this discussion emphasized that wildfire risk reduction is a systemic challenge with no silver bullet and never a situation where you’re fully safeguarded, particularly because conditions — both the climate and communities — are in flux. I’ll be expanding this post when I have time but in the meantime explore the curtain raiser post that ran on Friday for more info: Please share this post directly with friends in fire danger zones and do consider becoming a paid subscriber if you can afford it. Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

Think of how Anthony Fauci has become kind of a tainted totem, tussled over by starkly opposed factions in fights that omit almost all of the complexity that attended the COVID-19 pandemic. Then watch my pop-up Sustain What conversation with three of the 11 authors of an important recent Nature commentary: " Six ways to put the public at the heart of science and policy ." A key passage: At a time when trust in governments is falling across many democracies 6 and populists are casting scientists and academic institutions as untrustworthy ‘elites’ 7 , it’s crucial to make the general public a part of research and policy. This would foster trust and make academic research and government policies seem more legitimate. People are more likely to support — and champion — science advice that they helped to generate 8 . Democratizing research and science-policy processes will mean rethinking how scientists, citizens and policymakers interact. My guests were: * K. L. Akerlof , an associate professor at George Mason University who, among other things, leads the university’s “Communication for Environmental Science, Policy, and Human Behavior” concentration within the master's degree program. * Musa al-Gharbi , an assistant professor of sociology at Stony Brook University who writes Symbolic Capital(ism) on Substack and is the author of We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite . * Chris Tyler , an anthropologist and associate professor in the University College London’s Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy. Among other previous work he spent five years as director of the UK’s Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. Here’s how al-Gharbi described the paper’s genesis on LinkedIn : Trust in experts and scientific findings has grown increasingly polarized. Populists across the political spectrum and around the world insist that mainstream institutions do not represent or serve the public to the extent that they should. Their message resonates, in part, because there actually have been significant shifts in how scientific knowledge is produced and put to use. Technological and scientific changes *have* significantly transformed how people work and communicate with one another. The benefits and costs of these shifts *have* been unevenly distributed. Many of these changes *were* implemented top-down, with little consultation with or buy-in from those facing the highest levels of risk, cost, or disruption. In short, the growing social distance between experts, policymakers, and the public is not imagined, it’s real. It’s also highly consequential.Leaders on every continent have exploited growing public suspicion of experts and institutions to justify circumventing checks and balances, streamlining decision-making processes, and consolidating power into their own hands. Scientific institutions across the globe are facing budget cuts, increased government scrutiny, and censorship attempts.However, times of crisis and disruption can also be moments of opportunity. Scholars, practitioners, and institutions around the world are responding to these challenges by piloting long-overdue reforms. There is a growing consensus that it may be possible to increase the quality, impact, and long-term viability of science and policy by more rigorously integrating the public at every stage.To explore the challenges and opportunities of communicating science for policy in a populist world, Chris Tyler and K. L. Akerlof convened a working group that included 23 other researchers and practitioners from across fields and around the globe… The working group gathered together in-person for the first time on September 8th in Arlington, VA to exchange ideas and foster collaborations. Drawing from these conversations, their diverse scholarship and experience, and successful documented initiatives from around the world, they produced evidence-based recommendations for constructively responding to the challenges of growing mistrust, alienation, and social distance. These suggestions were then vetted and refined by external peer-reviewers…. I don’t have sufficient income from my Sustain What project to have a staff so, yes, I’m judiciously using Google’s AI to summarize the discussion from the YouTube stream. If you can afford to, do feel free to chip in: Consider becoming a paying supporter of this Sustain What work. This discussion, hosted by Andrew Revkin , features researchers K. L. Akerlof , Chris Tyler , and Musa al-Gharbi exploring a Nature commentary on how to improve public trust and engagement in science and policy amidst a global rise in populism (0:04, 0:58, 2:36). Key Takeaways: * Rethinking Science Advice: Chris Tyler emphasizes that the scientific community needs to stop acting like part of the problem and start becoming part of the solution by modernizing how science advice is delivered (5:16). * Embracing Humility and Uncertainty: K. L. Akerlof and Musa al-Gharbi note that researchers often naively hide uncertainty to maintain authority. Evidence shows that being candid about disagreements and limitations actually increases public trust (9:45, 12:44). * Moving Beyond ‘Elite’ Circles: Musa al-Gharbi argues that institutions often fail to engage beyond their narrow, affluent, liberal bubbles. He advocates for meaningful engagement with diverse stakeholders, including right-leaning or rural audiences, using local media and community venues (53:23). * The Three-Legged Stool: Chris Tyler proposes that universities should integrate research expertise, public policy expertise, and public participation expertise to maximize societal impact (19:51). * Avoiding Extractive Research: K. L. Akerlof warns against ‘extractive’ engagement, where researchers parachute into traumatized or marginalized communities to collect data without providing genuine support or respecting the community’s time and infrastructure (57:05). Key Perspectives: * Andrew Revkin observes that despite the logical nature of calls for interdisciplinary, community-based science, these changes remain difficult to implement due to path-dependent institutional structures (43:00). This 2021 webcast explores this issue: How Universities Can Support Interdisciplinary Careers for Climate and Sustainability Progress * Chris Tyler notes that the goal is for researchers to act as ‘honest brokers’ rather than lobbyists, empowering decision-makers by providing transparent evidence (48:38). * Musa al-Gharbi highlights that when mainstream experts position themselves solely in opposition to populist movements, they lose the ability to influence policy, leaving a vacuum often filled by less reliable sources (29:22). To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I encourage you to click back to these previous webcasts on related themes: Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video. Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

Updated below July 25 - My new song, " For Those Who Put to Sea ," honors men and women who harvest the ocean's bounty and is sung in memory of those who sometimes don't come back. I just posted this fresh video version on YouTube and TikTok (and will post elsewhere soon). Please share this song with anyone who enjoys seafood or lives in a coastal community. I shot most of the footage at the Maine Commercial Fishing Remebrance Day ceremony at the Lost Fishermen's Memorial in Lubec. There were 10 ceremonies up and down the 3,478-mile coast. At the event in Boothbay Harbor, Pat Shepard, the co-founder of Redde Marine Safety , narrated as a boat and crewman just off the dock demonstrated a valuable set of safety systems ( video from Facebook ). Insert, July 25 - After the ceremony in Lubec, I interviewed Clarissa West , a lobster fisher operating out of Steuben whose father, Thomas West , died after evidently falling from his boat on April 21. He was one of two casualties, along with Stephen Johnson Jr. , honored with the sounding of a hand bell at the ceremony as the chairwoman of the Lubec memorial, Annie Sokoloski, read their names. Clarissa West said her children have started lobstering using her dad’s boat, the Aces and Eights: Clarissa - I’m here in honor of my father. He just passed away in April 21st. He had fallen over. And we found him the 22nd, that morning. Actually, it was my brother that found him. We were up all night trying to search for him. The Marine Patrol was out in their boats. I was even in there with them to help. And we didn’t see him. There were fishermen that went out and helped look for him in his boats and shined the shores and the waters for us. And like the next day at three o’clock in the morning, my brother had found him. He was actually wrapped up in a crate. So I would say he tried to save himself. He got on a crate and then we don’t know if it rolled over. When it hit a rock or with the tide turn, and his hand was actually wrapped in it, and that’s what kept him afloat to bring him to shore. He was 63. He just turned 63 on the 2nd of April. His boat was the Aces and Eights. He was doing his bait and fuel and was bringing it to his mooring, and we don’t know... If he fell off putting it on the mooring. We have no idea what happened. Andy - People think of this as like a storm strikes a boat and it capsizes. But there’s all the other ways. All it takes is a little... Clarissa - Just a little slip or mishap, I guess, so you never know what happens, really. Andy - So what do you think of the idea of a Memorial Day, a Remembrance Day? Clarissa - It’s good for everyone to gather, everyone that’s mourning, …and for our loved ones to be recognized together. And, well, it just brings us all together to know that nobody is alone. On the hard days, or on the day of... Because you never get over it. You really don’t. It’s just one day at a time, and you... Like I tell my kids, I said, we have the memories, we have the stories, and that’s what keeps him alive. Andy - And what’s it like going out fishing, do you think about it when you’re out there? Clarissa - Yeah, it’s hard… So we used to sail by each other all the time. And you don’t have that anymore. My kids actually took over his boat. I guess that gives a sense of peace for them to take over the tradition. I’m using the song to raise funds for the Maine-based organization Green and White Hope , launched after the tragic loss of 18-year-old Tylar Michaud in 2023 and now working to boost safety for commercial fshing crews and shore-side responsiveness when the worst happens. My conversation with Liz Michaud, the organization’s founder (and Tylar’s aunt) is here: Have a safe weekend, whatever you do. And if you enjoy some seafood, as I sing, “raise a glass and say a prayer for those who put to sea.” Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

My new song about maritime dangers, “ For Those Who Put to Sea ,” is out on all platforms ( YouTube , Spotify , etc.). Here’s my post from Maine’s Commercial Fishing Remembrance Day: Growing up in Rhode Island, I got out on the water any way I could, ranging from skin diving to sailing to fishing to clamming. In summers during high school and college, pondering a career in marine biology, I got a job helping state fisheries biologists, including spending weeks on lobster boats tracking the sex and size of the catch. I loved getting to know the lobstermen, one of whom was old enough to remember when a German U-boat surfaced near him off the coast and siphoned off his fuel. At The New York Times, I wrote quite a bit about fisheries issues, including Maine-focused stories like one in 1996 on the dangerous boom-and-bust harvest of sea urchins and, in 2001, on the lobster-boat races in my wife’s ancestral home town, Winter Harbor . But it’s only in recent years, since we settled in Downeast Maine, that I’ve come to appreciate fully not only the allure of harvesting the bounty of the sea, but also the profound dangers. One after the other, fishers young and old have perished or been maimed in sudden storms, accidents or other mishaps in an ocean environment that leaves almost no room for error. A rope snaps like a shotgun blast . A rogue wave strikes . A boot slips. A scallop dragger flips. The dangers spread far beyond Maine of course. As I wrote last year , nationally, commercial fishing is second only to logging on the Bureau of Labor Statistics list of deadliest jobs . Just up the coast from us in Steuben, a particularly wrenching story unfolded in the summer of 2023 as Tylar Michaud , a high school graduate bound for the Maine Maritime Academy in the fall, took his boat out solo one day and didn’t return. The boat was found empty. Weeks of searching ended in heartbreak . Amid the prolonged grief enveloping the family and community, Tylar’s aunt, Liz Michaud, was moved to found Green and White Hope , a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing safety at sea and named for the colors on Tylar’s buoys. The group, working with growing array of partners, has taken a systemic approach to cutting risk in commercial fishing in Maine (and beyond) - working on safety education, boosting access to safety gear and building the capacity of communities to launch search and rescue operations swiftly when the worst happens. Every minute matters here, with sea temperatures even in summer rapidly sapping strength . I’m making a substantial donation and hope you can help as well. I just had a sobering and inspiring Sustain What conversation with Michaud and key partners one week ahead of Maine’s second, and now annual, Maine Commercial Fishing Remembrance Day — a memorial day that she helped create. I’ll be attending the event at the Lubec memorial and may get down to the one in BoothBay Harbor, as well. My other guests were: Ann Marie Sokoloski , the founder of Voices of the Fleet , an initiative dedicated to strengthening communication between fishermen, regulators, scientists, and coastal communities. She’s also the chair of the committee managing the Lost Fishermen’s Memorial in Lubec, Maine, and a yoga instructor working with traumatized veterans, many of whom experience “ambiguous loss” — a condition also afflicting fishers and their communities when someone is lost at sea with no trace. She wrote a powerful post about this last year for the blog of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association. Here’s an excerpt but do read the rest: The sea can be generous—feeding, sustaining, and binding a town together—but it can also take without giving back. When it does, there is no gravesite to visit. The memorial becomes the shoreline, the harbor, the tide itself. This absence echoes far beyond the family. In a small town, everyone knows the lost crew, their children, the boat’s paint color, the sound of its engine when it headed out before dawn. The loss ripples through the wharf, the coffee shop, the bait shed—felt in ways that are spoken and unspoken. [ READ ON ] The pain of ambiguous loss INSERT 07/15 - In the discussion, Sokoloski explained that the work to boost success in search, rescue and, yes, recovery of a body can also help avoid haunting ambiguity: I’m certified in post-traumatic stress disorder. So we deal with ambiguous loss and grief within the veteran population for veterans, of course, in combat. So this is something that happens within the fishing community as well, when we have fishermen that are lost at sea. And, you know, when there’s somebody that hasn’t been returned there is this continuous craving that occurs. And that’s what ambiguous loss or grief is. So there’s no closure…. So this is what keeps occurring when there’s no body recovered and when these communities have to keep searching. And this is kind of where we tie into the search and rescue and the devices. It’s for people to have have that recovery. Recovery of the body so that they can have that closure. - END INSERT In the conversation you’ll also meet Josh Duym and Pat Shepard , the founders of the startup Redde Marine Safety, which operates along Maine’s 3,400-mile corrugated coast filling demand for up-to-date safety equipment, regulatory compliance and training. Shepard noted that the realities of fishing hazards go way beyond postcard views of maritime life in Maine: When people think about the fishing community in Maine, they think about big lobster boats with life rafts up on the roof and EPIRBs [Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons] that can tell your position and life jackets and survival suits and all of that stuff. Clammers go out in a 16-foot aluminum skiff to some of those outer islands and clam for the entire day — in the middle of the winter. And we just saw how dangerous that can be this last winter when we lost two clammers down in Jonesport. And I think organizations like Green and White Hope and companies like Redde Marine are really well poised to make a difference in some of those sectors of the industry that you don’t necessarily think about when it comes to safety gear. Here’s what clamming looks like in winter here (Marlboro Beach, about five minutes from our home): I capped off the show by playing the video of “ For Those Who Put To Sea ,” the updated version of my song about the under-appreciated dangers facing those working these waters. My fiddling friend Gus La Casse added haunting lines. Let me know what you think: The song releases everywhere music is found on July 19 and I’ve set the video up as a fundraiser for Green & White Hope. The lyrics (with links to relevant background) are here as a pdf: Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

I found myself having a quiet moment (I’m hoping you find them) at home and thought I’d share a bit of a musical ramble as a “Sunday Sanity” offering. You can find a short playlist of previous episodes of this track of Sustain What shows here . I’m playing my first guitar, which I bought in pieces for $35 (Canadian) in Halifax at age 17 in 1977 and then fixed up in my dad’s basement workshop back home in Rhode Island — under threat that he’d throw it away if I didn’t make it playable by the end of the summer. How could I buy a broken guitar for that much money!? I wrote a song about the guitar (a 1949 Gibson Southern Jumbo) and my dad a couple of years ago and you can hear it here: I’m playing in open-C tuning — which I love because it’s full of octaves that give the feel of a 12-sstring guitar without having to own yet another instrument. You can download my two albums and some singles on Bandcamp . Here’s the evening episode in which I introduced my new album, “Wake Me up Martha”: I started this webcast series back in the pandemic and that multi-year playlist is here. Here’s a particularly fun episode with Alex de Grassi and Joachim Cooder and other friends: Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

Insert, July 16 - Listen to or read this conversation between Rob Verchick and Dan Farber, two legal eagles on the muzzling of the Sloop Clearwater: Insert, 3:15 p.m. - Months of planning and permits amounted to nothing as the Coast Guard, apparently on orders “from above” (see below), ordered the captain of the Sloop Clearwater, launched in 1969 by Pete Seeger and friends to clean the Hudson, to “turn your vessel around” instead of taking its place escorting a Portuguese square rigger up the Hudson in the big Fourth of July Sail 250 event (video by Tom LaBarr of the Beacon Sloop Club on Facebook). Original post - I just had a conversation witth Dave Toman, executive director of the fabled Hudson River environmental and education organization Clearwater from the deck of the Sloop Clearwater after Coast Guard, Navy and New York Police Department vessels diverted the fabled sloop from its long-approved participation in the Sail250 Parade in New York Harbor and up the Hudson River. The reason was reportedly that the vessel was displaying banners supporting inidigenous rights, climate action and preserving the Clean Water Act. I’ve reached out to Sail250 to get their input on why this happened and will update the post then. Insert 3pm - Just posted by Clearwater: BREAKING NEWS: Clearwater was removed from the Sail4th 250 Parade of Sail by the USCG and escorted out of the Exclusion Zone by the US Coast Guard, US Navy, and NYPD. Captain Rory Kane inquired why, and was informed the removal was due to the presence of banners reading: ‘Save the Clean Water Act and Indigenous Rights, Racial Justice, Climate Solutions’”. A representative from Sail4th 250 informed the Captain the decision was ‘above them.’ The sloop has a long and storied history of using the mains’l to share messages of hope and advocacy. The Clearwater will continue sailing south of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge until 3pm and has 29 passengers and 19 crew aboard. Follow our stories to see how we’re building solidarity from Gravesend Bay, waiting out the expiration of the security zone. In the meantime, support Clearwater’s education and conservation work at clearwater.org . Thank you to everyone who tuned in live. Join me for my next live video in the app. If you appreciate what I’m trying to do consider becoming a paid subscriber and SHARE this post with others. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

These days, many of us tend to think of coders, algorithms and AI as a predatory threat stalking our online communication environment, and all too often that is true. But here is an inspiring example of an effort to put these skills and technologies to vital use in an unfolding catastrophe. Jorge Bastidas normally spends his days in Buenos Aires as CTO of The Empire, a small Florida-registered company building the online impact of a variety of clients around the world — from a natural-dog-food company to EmpathyAI. When Venezuela was shattered by double-barreled earthquakes one week ago, with some people he worked with among the tens of thousands affected, Bastidas abruptly shifted gears in a powerful way. This Sustain What episode is part of the six-years-and-running track on Sustain What called Thriving Online. Explore the YouTube playlist here . Facing communication blackouts and a desperate need to connect survivors with families, he and a fast-expanding team launched a portal for exchanging information among families and friends of those missing and hospitals and rescue teams handling an influx of survivors. Go explore desaparecidosterremotovenezuela.com and then come back to listen to how the project came to be, what it is achieving and what the emerging toolkit can do in the next disaster (or war zone) . If you don’t have time to click, here’s a sample of what you see. Each image is someone missing or someone found but not connected to a family. Bastidas tells me they making everything open source for use in future calamities. You can contact him to help at contacto@theempire.tech. “This is our tragedy, this is our earthquake,” he told me. “But in all over the world, things like this happens every day. So we want to share this with the community so they can apply this same technology on every disaster or another emergency situation when people need it.” Here’s one powerful moment for starters. As we spoke and I scrolled the list of images of the missing, I noted that there were 2,920 pages to click through. He grew emotional, raising his palms to his face and agreeing, “That is a lot of pages.” Adaptive networks in a crisis What’s most interesting to me is how Bastidas and hundreds of dispersed volunteers now working with him quickly diverted from their normal lives, taking their skills and applying them in a new way in a crisis. They are demonstrating that # AIForGood is not just a hashtag and programmers for good exist. That pattern reminds me of a show I did early in the COVID-19 pandemic, as India locked down and its poorest citizens faced starvation even in big cities. A small nonprofit group focused on reducing plastic waste in Bhopal became a food distribution network. Listen to them and you’ll recognize the pattern. Here’s Gemini’s summary of my conversation on the reconnection website (from the YouTube stream ): * Rapid Response: Within an hour of the disaster, Bastidas and his team began building a database-driven platform from scratch to help people report missing relatives and allow others to update their location (4:36 - 5:31). * Tech Stack: The team utilized TypeScript for the front and back end, and AWS for hosting, implementing security measures like reCAPTCHA and firewalls to manage the massive influx of traffic (7:16 - 8:58). * Collective Impact: The initiative has expanded significantly, involving hundreds of volunteers, auditors, and integration partners who use the platform’s API to share data with organizations like the UN (13:33 - 14:58). * Facial Recognition: Collaborating with the company Lab Co , they integrated an AI-based facial recognition tool. This allows hospitals to upload photos of patients, which can then be matched against reports submitted by families (9:53 - 12:28). I note that the facial recognition effort reminded me of “ Trace the Face ,” a longstanding project of the International Committee of the Red Cross that works this way: “If you have lost contact with someone while moving from one country to another or if you have a relative who has gone missing during migration, you can search our photo gallery or contact us to publish a photo of yourself for someone else to find.” Thank you to everyone who tuned in live. Subscribe to be sure you get alerts when I do this kind of pop-up segment. Rather than encouraging those who can afford it to chip in for Sustain What, I urge you to make a donation to Give Directly’s dedicated fund for Venezuelans facing the extraordinary challenge of rebuilding lives in a country beset by troubles well before this seismic nightmare. I just did. As I’ve written before , this nonprofit tries to get direct benefits to those in need as a way to cut through bureaucracy. I’ve become convinced of the value of this strategy in large part through Matthew Yglesias ’s writing and Slow Boring ’s support for them. Their “Emergency Cash team is entering Venezuela today,” the group just reported on its website. Nothign you see here happens without subscribers. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

Here’s the post-show post and audio podcast for my conversation with the Capital Weather team, who’ve just returned to independence after 18 years of weather communication and community building affiliated with the Washington Post. Details are in the curtain-raiser post: We talked about their early days as a blog back in 2004, when co-founder Jason Samenow was at the Environmental Protection Agency working on the possible carbon dioxide endangerment finding while experimenting in his spare time with weather blogging. Boy, it’s wild to look back : We talked about the potential impact of Trump-driven federal budget and staffing cuts on the basic data that private forecasters rely on — a question their colleague Matthew Cappucci has been closely tracking: We explored how the implosion of local TV budgets is spawning a nationwide array of independent meteorologists building their own audiences and businesses. Samenow mentioned that the American Meteorological Society has launched a Certified Digital Meteorologist (CDM) training and certification program to offer communities some assurance of the skills of the forecasters they depend on. There’s lots more, so please watch and please share this post! If you don’t, someone who could benefit from these insights won’t see them. And do consider chipping in to sustain my Sustain What work. Consider becoming a financial contributor. Join me for my next live video in the app. Parting weather shot : Net hats are an essential spring fashion accessory on muggy hot days here in Downeast Maine. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

I just hosted a pop-up Sustain What conversation with three of the dozens of climate and weather scientists who are running a 50-Hour livestream to boost public appreciation of the observational and analytical science that bolsters societal resilience and boosts understanding of our amazing, and changing, planet. A goal is to sustain federal support for weather & climate science even as the current administration seems deadset on demolishing it. My guests were Clare Singer , an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Nadir Jeevanjee, a research physical scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory ; and Rob Socolow , an emeritus professor focused on interdisciplinary environmental science and engineering at Princeton. Socolow made an important point here about the Trump era appearing to be the end of an arc of American appreciation of science that began with Sputnik and is having its “anti-Sputnik moment”: Please watch above and share this post now with fellow citizens - and your elected representatives in Congress. Our conversation is also on YouTube , LinkedIn , Substack , Facebook , and my X account . The scientists’ webcast is under way through June 3: Make sure to visit the Weather & Climate Livestream home page , where you can find a host of short videos excerpted from last year’s 100-hour stream. Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you Matt Burgess , Mary Powers , BCz , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. The only way to build our Sustain What community is to share this post now with others. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

Program note : Today at 11 a.m. Eastern, join me live with several of the dozens of scientists participating in a 50-Hour livestream to sustain federal support for weather & climate science : YouTube , LinkedIn , Substack , Facebook , and X. The webcast is under way through June 3: My conversation with Chris Mooney Here’s the post-webcast post of my conversation with Chris Mooney . In 20 years, Mooney has gone from progressive blogger and author of the prescient bestselling 2005 book The Republican War on Science (yes, 2005, yes, prescient) to Pulitzer-winning Washington Post climate reporter to the new holder of an endowed chair at the Univeristy of Tennessee, Knoxville , created to “advance public understanding of complex scientific, technological, environmental, and medical issues by fostering excellence in teaching, research, and outreach.” The curtain-raiser post has lots of background: Here’s one nugget in which Mooney examines the early roots of the divide that has grown between Republicans and science: I can say for sure that the rift that I was detecting between scientists and one side of the political spectrum has worsened since that time. I think that’s pretty objectively true. And you can actually look at the polling data, for instance. Something happens during COVID that really politicizes science in the minds of the electorate in a way that it wasn’t before. You can see the trust divide widen between Democrats and Republicans much more than it was caused by something like climate change…. And one thing about the climate issue is that not everyone is really that engaged with it. It’s always seen as something in the future or what have you. But COVID was not. It was in the present. You had to have a view about it. There is much, much more. Here’s Gemini’s answer when I asked it to summarize key ideas that emerged (using the YouTube video ; if more subscribers chip in I might be able to hire an intern to do this work, but that’s up to you ): This conversation explores the evolving landscape of climate journalism, the role of data in storytelling, and the impact of new technologies on the media industry. * Data-Driven Narrative Structure: Mooney discusses his experimental approach to writing, which involves treating stories as data sets to better understand and map narrative structures. He argues that applying data-driven thinking to journalism can help writers craft more cohesive stories. (4:24 - 9:09) * The Evolution of Science Communication: The speakers reflect on the importance of “framing” in science communication—choosing which aspects of a complex topic to emphasize based on the intended audience and context. (21:04 - 23:48) * The Challenge of ‘Single Study Syndrome’: A major concern highlighted is the tendency for media outlets to treat individual scientific studies as sensational “Eureka” moments, which can lead to reader disengagement and a lack of context. They advocate for a broader, trend-based approach to science reporting. (38:09 - 42:01) * The Future of Journalism and AI: The conversation touches upon the integration of AI in newsrooms and the potential risks of automated, traffic-driven reporting models versus human-produced, verified journalism. (34:33 - 35:12) * Climate Journalism in Practice: Mooney recounts his work on a Pulitzer-winning project at The Washington Post, which utilized data visualization to identify regional climate trends that were previously overlooked. (57:29 - 1:03:24) Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

I’m continuing to write songs along with my Sustain What webcasting and blogging here — in part to keep sane and in part because this has always been one of my ways of connecting people with ideas. ( Buy my new album here .) In this post, you’re getting the first look and listen to the first rough recording of “Nothing is Quiet.” The lyrics — also still a work in progress — are below. Everyone can listen but I’d love it if a few more of you might chip in financially to help me sustain my output. The path from idea to song The songwriter Amy Love was one of the songcrafting workshop leaders this spring at Bagaduce Music , Downeast Maine’s prime hub for musical education and a world-class library of printed music. In one session she offered this prompt: Write a song about an object . I immediately focused on the red wool caps my wife started weaving from a pattern sold by a Minneapolis-area shop to raise money for local nonprofits helping immigrants facing the brutal ICE invasion. You may remember this from my post on “craftivism”: The back story is quite remarkable, with a Minneapolis knitting-shop employee recalling a Norwegian red wool cap design dating from World War II. I began scribbling. Knitting is quiet, even serene. Small talk and tea cups and needles weaving…. But nothing is quiet ‘bout knitting these days. Thanks to hat makers with something to say. Cooking is quiet, but not these days I could have written the full song about the Minneapolis saga, but wanted to widen the picture. What else is normally quiet, but not these days? I’d also recently listened to Trevor Noah’s conversation with José Andrés, the superstar chef and restaurant impresario who founded World Central Kitchen after the calamitous earthquake in Haiti in 2010. I encourage you to listen to the full show, which has fascinating details on how Andrés learned on the run, grew a network of hundreds of collaborating restaurants and related busineses and nonprofits and has built an agile and gutsy operation that has served 600 million meals in dozens of disaster and conflict zones. Fourteen WCK workers have been killed in the field — seven in an Israeli attack on a convoy in Gaza, six more in Ukraine. (Today’s recording of the song says seven… updates to come!) Nothing is quiet ‘bout cooking these days. Thanks to a kind-hearted chef named José. From Haiti to Congo, Beirut to Turkey His World Central Kitchen serves hot meals for free. Under bombardment, teams cook beans and grain. Seven died in Gaza, six more in Ukraine. But still they cook on, fighting famine and fear. Try to support them with more than a cheer. At the end of the song I widen out the view once more, noting other quiet, but essential actions — from meeting to healing to voting. This section may evolve, along with other elements of the song. Feedback is welcome! I composed the tune on my Maine-made bouzouki because I find that breaking away from guitar — my instrument of choice for more than 50 years — helps free me from mental ruts. Nothing is Quiet These Days Here are the lyrics at the moment: Knitting is quiet, even serene - Small talk and tea cups and needles weaving. Counting up stitches, unballing yarn. Wool becomes sweaters to keep loved ones warm. But nothing is quiet ‘bout knitting these days. Thanks to hat makers with something to say. In cold Minnesota, a knitting brigade Made red wool a shield To keep immigrants safe. Red capped resistance When ICE agents swarmed. Hats made to a pattern passed down from a war. Those caps got their start back in snowy Norway. A symbol of freedom from Nazis and hate, I said nothing is quiet ‘bout knitting these days. Thanks to hat makers with something to say. Cooking is quiet as stirring a pot, peeling potatoes, keeping soup hot. Turning meat into stew, wheat into bread, Dish it all out to keep everyone fed. But nothing is quiet ‘bout cooking these days. Thanks to a kind-hearted chef named José. From Haiti to Congo, Beirut to Turkey His World Central Kitchen serves hot meals for free. Under bombardment, teams cook beans and grain. Seven died in Gaza, six more in Ukraine. But still they cook on, fighting famine and fear. Try to support them with more than a cheer. Nothing is quiet ‘bout cooking these days. Thanks to a kind-hearted chef named José. Silence is deadly in this day and age. Raise up your voices with heart and not rage. But singing alone will not fix what is wrong. Get knitting and cooking, Meeting and voting, Healing and marching To get the job done. Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Here’s a related post from Drop Site News : Here’s an Atlantic Council video on World Central Kitchen’s work in Ukraine: “ ‘In Focus: Voices from Ukraine:’ World Central Kitchen on humanitarian needs in Ukraine”: And Here’s Jorunn Hernes 🇳🇴 — the Nordic Knitter — on the history of the red wool hats: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

I just wrapped a super-sobering and, at the same time, fun and hopeful conversation on the urgent issues surrounding the plaid-speed evolution of AI. With my guests Brad Allenby and Andrew Maynard at Arizona State University, the prime focus was the Vatican rollout of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical letter and the Pope’s admonition today that “artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.” Please listen and weigh in with your thoughts - and SHARE this post so we can widen our Sustain What community. Allenby’s research has focused in part on how nations’ fears about the existential threat posed by NOT embracing AI in security arenas. He basically wished the pope luck in trying to hold back that tide. He pointed out how Russia is actively working with transnational criminal networks to exert power. That’s not something that will bend to papal desires any time soon — let alone the United Nations or the like. Maynard, who tends to focus these days on practical ways to make the most of AI, said something vitally important that is one reason I have diverted a lot in recent years from my focus on environmental sustainability: I actually think we make a mistake when we try and equate AI to human intelligence. This is absolutely an alien form of intelligence. And as soon as we try and equate it to humans, we make categorical errors because it means we can either be wowed because we say it’s better than human intelligence or we can be dismayed or dismissive because we say it’s not as clever as me. That’s not the point. The point is we’ve got something completely alien that is increasingly in charge of the things that our lives depend on. Brad Allenby jumped in to hammer the point home: Let me reinforce that Andrew has made probably, I think, the most important point that people need to grasp. We are not talking about artificial intelligence. That language itself takes us back to thinking that somehow human intelligence is the sine qua non of cognition, which we know it’s not. We are dealing with a truly alien intelligence that we’re building and distributing with very little idea of what it’s going to do. I mean, this is an extraordinary roll of the dice by all of humanity. And I think you’ve got to be careful not to trivialize it. Andrew’s absolutely dead on. Here’s their double-barreled warning. Listen and pass it around! Share this post with others please! Who’s responsible? I asked Gemini to draw a cartoon illustrating the disconnect between those of us affected by AI’s high-speed spread and those “in the bus.” Andrew Maynard said it’s important to understsand that those in the bus are not just AI developers: [The cartoon] reminded me of something which I think often gets missed. So we’re often looking at the developers of AI saying all the responsibility lies on them and they’re not doing this right. But I would actually add another category there. It’’s the first-mover implementers. It’’s the companies that are rushing to incorporate AI into everything. It’s the governments that are trying to AI-ize everything. It is the universities that have decided that they have got to go fast and throw caution to the wind to put AI in everything. They are all people in this bus that are pushing AI progress so it’s not just the tech bros it is every company that is saying we do not have time to ask about care and responsibility and ethics because we just got to go fast. And that is propagating the challenges I think that we’re seeing beginning to emerge. There is much, much in the full webcast above. See my curtain-raiser post for some unnerving comments made at the Vatican today by Chris Olah, the co-founder of Anthropic: In today’s discussion, I mused on whether humanity’s techno-surge at the moment is replaying a script that all technologically advanced civilizations in the Universe have followed — and that perhaps this explains why it’s so damn quiet out there (Google for “great filter” or “Fermi’s Paradox”). Do all possible civilizations burn themselves out this way? Maynard made me feel a lot better by bringing the focus back to what each of us — and our institutions, and popes — can do today no matter what lies ahead: I think there’s a very real chance that as a civilization, we will burn out, that we will discover that human exceptionalism means nothing to the universe and to the march of entropy. But I don’t care. I think what is important, and again, this is just my philosophy, is what it means to be human here and now, what it means to be human in terms of the value we create for ourselves, how we identify worth, how we create value with relationships with others. That’s not being exceptional. It’s just, to me, being human. And if you focus on that and the near term, it really doesn’t matter too much what the future of humanity is. Maybe our candle will burn bright and burn out. But the here and now then becomes important. And that, in a sense, is what is reflected in the encyclical. Not all of it, because the encyclical is wrapped up in a religious sort of bubble that says actually sort of human’s relationship with God and by extension with the universe has primacy here. I would disagree with that, but I would agree 100% with the fact that you find meaning and value in those relationships in the here and now. And so that actually gives me hope and it gives me excitement when I see what happens with AI, because wherever it goes, if we keep hold of what it means to be human within that, we can continue to create value on our own terms. That felt like the key takeaway, to me. What about you? And do pass this to others, subscribe if you don’t already, and consider chipping in if you can afford to do so. Consider upgrading to being a financial supporter. Thank you Bryan Pfeiffer , BCz , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

I hope you’ll watch and share this illuminating and constructive face-to-face discussion with four key analysts of the scenarios for emissions of planet-heating gases that indirectly have shaped, and sometimes misshaped, climate policy discourse and decisions (and media coverage). My guests were Richard Tol , Zeke Hausfather , Matt Burgess , and Roger Pielke Jr. As I discussed here recently , the worst-case emissions track, a k a RCP8.5 , is being dropped from the basket of plausible futures used in modeling studies that underpin core conclusions in the periodic reports from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Read the April paper describing the revisions to scenarios , which the authors explain came about because “underlying projections…were somewhat outdated by the time climate model output became available… Also, over time, critiques emerged about the plausibility of the most extreme scenarios.”) My guests, like most researchers dug in on this area of climate research, largely agree that the highest emissions scenario is deeply implausible. The debate is mostly on whether that is a new development — the result of the enormous progress in cutting the cost of renewable energy — or because the scenario was never plausible. (I favor the second camp.) As I mentioned in yesterday’s curtain raiser post, a key 2017 paper led by Justin Ritchie of the University of British Columbia laid out the near impossibility of mining and burning the amount of coal required to get such high emissions. Click back for that paper and other background: Here’s Hausfather, who works at the company Stripe and at the research lab Berkeley Earth (and of course co-writes The Climate Brink ): Even though Roger and I like to spar online a lot, there’s a couple of things that I think we’d all agree are true today. One is that RCP 8.5 was never a particularly plausible baseline scenario. And there was a mistake by the community to refer to it as business as usual. I like to call it a mistaken game of telephone. No, I don’t think there was a bad intent there. I think that a lot of climate scientists didn’t necessarily read the energy modeling literature, which made it pretty clear back in 2011 when RCP 8.5 was formally published that it was intended to represent the 90th percentile of baseline outcomes in the literature at the time,not a particular likely outcome…. I think there’s sort of two separate questions that we’ve been debating a lot here. One is, how plausible was the scenario ever? And I think we all agree it was pretty implausible. And the second is, has the world actually moved away from higher emissions scenarios? And that latter question, I think the answer is probably yes. Driven in part by, as Richard pointed out, the falling cost of clean energy, which is mediated obviously by some policy actions taken by various countries, including the US, China and others. Exactly where we might have been headed, I think is a really tough question to answer. Roger Pielke acknowledged that clean energy tech has advanced tremendously but said his key metric is the overall rate of decarbonization of the economy, and — wheteher you look at the United States or the planet as a whole — that rate has remained a straight declining line decade after decade. I showed that decarbonization curve from one of his Substack posts and he said: My hypothesis is a lot of the wonderful things that have happened, and it’s true. Technologies have advanced, costs have gone down. But they are basically maintaining a trend that’s been in place long before Paris, long before Kyoto, long before the Rio Conference. So we’re calling climate policy the sort of things that we used to call other names. There are some differences around the world. If we want to have deep decarbonization at a rate faster than this linear decline, this curve is going to have to have an inflection point. It’s that simple. When RCP8.5 “escaped the courtyard of science” Roger Pielke explained (and no one disagreed) that one of the biggest harms from the exreme warming scenario came as it became used outside of the world of climate simulation - something he and Justin Ritchie explored in depth in Issues in Science and Technology in 2021 (as well as in this paper: “ Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios .”) Here’s the main point: At some point, Justin and I in our paper, our incredibly long, boring paper on the history of all this, we quote a researcher who says, we didn’t realize that RCPs could take on a life of their own. these scenarios escaped from the courtyard of science and went out in the real world. And it turns out they’re used in policy, they’re used in regulation, they’re used in global banking, they’re used in insurance, rate setting and risk assessment. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that everyone in the planet is in some way touched by these scenarios. And so the institutions of science really didn’t keep up with the growing importance of climate change as a topic and climate institutions. And so here we are in 2026. And like Richard said, better late than never, but it would have been better if it happened 10 or 15 years ago. There’s much, much more from Hausfather, Pielke and Matt Burgess and Richard Tol. We also discussed how research conclusions centered on the extreme warming scenario long provided just the kind of dramatic fodder that climate-focused journalists need. I brought up the pull of “ narrative capture ” — my shorthand for the dynamic where internal or external dynamics cause people to cling to validating visions of a problem (the climate crisis) even when data shift. I’m on the run all week and this is where AI tools are incredibly useful. Here’s the Gemini summary of some other points (you can ask the AI on YouTube to do this kind of task). I asked: “Distill the key observations and assertions made by the guests in this discussion of the value and limits of developing scenarios for human activities that could worsen or lessen global warming. Pick out half a dozen key moments and create time stamps.” Here’s Gemini: This discussion examines the history, misuse, and eventual retirement of the RCP 8.5 emissions scenario , which was widely but erroneously labeled as “business as usual.” The panelists — Richard Tol , Zeke Hausfather , Matt Burgess , and Roger Pielke Jr. — argue that while scenarios are useful for scientific modeling, they have often been misinterpreted by the media and policymakers, leading to flawed risk assessments. Key Moments and Insights: * The “Business as Usual” Misconception: ( 16:07-17:20 ) Zeke Hausfather explains that the climate community made a mistake in referring to RCP 8.5 as “business as usual,” noting it was originally intended to represent a 90th-percentile baseline, not a likely outcome. * Institutional Lags in Science: ( 13:10-14:50 ) Richard Tol discusses the necessity of updating scenarios more frequently than the current decadal cycle, pointing out that scientific modeling cycles often struggle to keep pace with the urgent needs of policy and global risk assessment. * Policy Evaluation vs. Scenario Reliance: ( 46:51-47:20 ) Roger Pielke Jr. asserts that evaluating actual policy—whether it accelerates or reverses emission curves—is significantly more important than relying on static, hypothetical emissions scenarios. * The “Franken-Scenario” Problem: ( 51:06-51:44 ) Matt Burgess criticizes the practice of combining extreme high-emission scenarios with slow-growth economic assumptions, which creates “Franken-scenarios” that produce misleading results about climate vulnerability and adaptation. * The Media’s Role in Alarmism: ( 59:00-1:00:43 ) The panel discusses how sensationalist headlines are often incentivized by journals and media outlets, making it easier to publish studies that claim climate change is “worse than we thought” compared to more nuanced assessments. * From Scenarios to Warming Levels: ( 1:13:30-1:14:43 ) Zeke Hausfather suggests the community should pivot away from specific emission scenarios entirely, instead focusing on impacts associated with specific global warming levels (e.g., 2°C or 3°C worlds) to better communicate risk and uncertainty. Please listen and offer your thoughts below. Also share this post or go to LinkedIn or Facebook or X/Twitter to share the webcast on those platforms. And do consider chipping in here (I know the overlaod) if you can afford to help keep Sustain What open for all and help me justify the time I take away from my songwriting and family and the rest. Thank you Martha Morningsong , Bruce Maslack , Zach Keeshin , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Postscript Dan Miller and Leon Simons had an informative conversation with Detlef van Vuuren, the lead author of the April paper laying the groundwork for the changes in emissions scenarios . This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

I just hosted a great discussion of the importance of bolstering long-term observational science and the capacity to integrate findings into decision making and policy. As I wrote in the curtain raiser post on Thursday, what drives me nuts is that even scientists who think global warming warnings are way over the top agree on this fundamental point about long-term monitoring. I have to post this section of my mind-blowing 2017 ProPublica conversation with Will Happer , who was a top candidate for science advisor in Trump’s first term and who is in/famous for his assertion that more carbon dioxide is great. He said this: One of our problems in climate is that you need long-term good science — for example long-term temperature records, long-term records of CO2, and it’s very hard for the government to support that kind of stuff because you go to Congress and they say, ‘Isn’t that what you were doing 20 years ago or 50 years. Aren’t you finished yet?’ …I’m all for climate science, you know. If I were King, I would maintain and improve, if I could, any measurement systems we have — satellites, ocean buoys. I think those are wonderful things. President Trump has done grievous damage to such capacities in his second term (see links at the bottom), although thankfully Congress has blunted the spending cuts. The discussion centered on the work of the Keeling Curve Foundation, which is trying to build momentum for philanthropic, governmental and private-sector investment in Earth observation capacity. One indicator of trouble is the declining budget for maintaining the flow of data behind the iconic “Keeling Curve” of carbon dioxide concentrations, generated through decades of work by Charles David Keeling and now his son Ralph, Here’s the introuctory post with more info on my guests: Ralph Keeling, the climate-focused Stanford ecologist Chris Field and Betsy Weatherhead , a leading researcher focused on earth observation science and technology . Here are a couple of highlights. But do watch (and share!) the conversation! Ralph Keeling explains how sustained atmospheric monitoring revealed both the problem posed by ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons, the decline of the synthetic compounds under the Montreal Protocoal - AND a suspicious resurgence of CFC-11 that led to the discovery that Chinese companies were cheating : I asked Betsy Weatherhead what would signal a revival of commitments to keep this planet closely observed and she said it’s already happening - to a significant extent overseas: Thanks for supporting what I do here by subscribing - including chipping in a bit financially if you can. Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Relevant coverage and context * From satellites to services: Financing Earth observation for public value (ECDPM think tank) https://ecdpm.org/work/satellites-services-financing-earth-observation-public-value * NOAA Defends Cuts to Research and Climate Monitoring at Budget Hearing https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29042026/noaa-defends-trump-cuts/ * ‘It’s just madness’: Trump administration to close three-quarters of Forest Service research stations (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) https://thebulletin.org/2026/04/its-just-madness-trump-administration-to-close-three-quarters-of-forest-service-research-stations/ * How the Trump Administration Ended Independent Science at the E.P.A. (The New York Times) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/climate/epa-science-trump-cuts.html * Designing the Climate Observing System of the Future (Earth’s Future; research paper led by Betsy Weatherhead) https://doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000627 And thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

Snag “ Wake Me up Martha ,” a sonic survival guide for these crazy times, on Bandcamp today - Bandcamp Friday - when the company doesn’t take its percentage: revkin.bandcamp.com . You can listen on every conceivable platform and they’re all here: andyrevkin.hearnow.com . Here’s the curtain raiser post that preceded this show: Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

J.A. Ginsburg , a k a Janet Ginsburg, is a business analyst and writer (and many other things) who is scouring the world for scientists and startups pursuing substitutes for the materials societies have long depended on — but that are in short supply because of bottlenecks like the one created by President Trump’s war on Iran. I urge you to sign up for her Substack project, which is the learning journey leading to an eventual book. But I also urge you to give yourself a dose of optimism and excitement by listening to our conversation above! Here are links to the work of just a few of the companies or sectors she mentioned (I’m adding a paywall break as a reminder that Sustain What takes work; I’m going to take it down after publication): * Maxwell Labs - cooling with light https://mxllabs.com Here’s her description: * Simplyfiber - fabric without spinning, weaving, sewing… https://www.simplifyber.com * Strongbyform - wood as technology https://www.strongbyform.com * Hertha Metals - getting around the China issue for steel and high-quality iron https://herthametals.com * Enso - making better tires for EVs (which have a tire problem ) https://www.ensotyres.com/en-US * Plantd Materials - board and other products made from grasses https://www.plantdmaterials.com * Shellworks - plastic-free materials that behave like plastic https://shellworks.com * On - running shoes and clothing https://www.on.com * Colorifix https://www.colorifix.com * Five Startups Reducing Data Center Water Consumption - “ Startups are rethinking data center cooling with liquid, immersion, and closed-loop systems to reduce water consumption while supporting rising AI-driven compute demand.” * TOCCO - you have to explore to understand this “agency” for materials sourcing and tracking. “First-hand intelligence from the materials frontier.” https://tocco.earth Ginsburg also mention that Trump, in essence, has created a carbon tax that is spurring all kinds of action to cut fossil fuel use. With that in mind, also read Larry Kotlikoff : Sustain What requires work and time and you can help me justify that effort by becoming a paid subscriber. And please SHARE this post so we can expand the Sustain What community. Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

Peter Raven, 1936 - 2026 Rhett Ayers Butler , the founder of the biodiversity-focused online news network Mongabay, has posted a marvelous tribute laying out the extraordinary life and legacy of Peter Raven , a groundbreaking botanist and fierce defender of Earth’s biological diversity who died over the weekend at age 89. I was lucky to get to know Raven over a couple of decades as an expert source in my environmental reporting and then work with him when I joined the Executive Committee for Resaearch and Exploration at National Geographic Society, which he led at the time I joined. ( Watch this video about Raven’s Hubbard Medal.) Here’s the opening to Butler’s piece: Life on Earth is often described as a web, but for much of modern science it was catalogued as a ledger: names, specimens, distributions, relationships drawn in careful lines. Over the course of the 20th century, that ledger gave way to a more connected view. Plants and animals were no longer just entries in a system; they were participants in it, shaping one another across deep time. The implications of that shift were not merely scientific. They pointed, more directly than before, to the role of a single species—our own—in altering the terms of that participation. Few scientists did more to define that transition, or to explain its consequences, than Peter Raven. Peter Hamilton Raven, who died this weekend, aged 89, was among the most influential botanists of the past century. Over a career that spanned more than six decades, he combined taxonomy, evolutionary biology and conservation into a coherent body of work: to understand the diversity of life, and to argue for its preservation with a clarity that was unusual among scientists of his generation. PLEASE READ THE REST: So many greats from the early generation of conservation leaders are gone, including Jane Goodall , E.O. Wilson and Tom Lovejoy . But so many more leaders are emerging. To understand that, and to feel Raven’s mix of deep knowledge, puckish humor and trenchant analysis, I encourage you to watch the Sustain What conversation above, which was recorded in May 2021 but is eternally relevant. I introduced Raven to two younger generations of botanist: Angelica Patterson , who calls herself the “ shotgun scientist ” because that’s the tool she uses to collect the flowering and fruiting treetop branches that help identify a tree species; and Hilary Callahan of Barnard College. This 2022 short documentary is also well worth your time. I hope you appreciate what I try to focus on amid the flood. To help susstain Sustain What, consider becoming a paid subscriber. And share this post with others. That’s the only way to grow the Sustain What community. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe