WASHINGTON, December 22, 2025 — This is the last time I’ll be in your inbox during 2025. This has been a difficult year for all who care about progress on climate and the environment, but having the opportunity to make a difference is a tremendous honor and a privilege, and I want to start by thanking you for all that you do to support EDF Action. Without it, none of our work would be possible.
I like coming to the office because I value collaborating with my colleagues in person, and I often return to many of my water-cooler conversations to sharpen my thinking. Although I got a little wound up earlier today, and my colleague Tomas characterized it as a “hallway harangue,” which was clever, but made me think that I may have gone on a bit too long and should have let him get back to work sooner. Much has been made about where voters rank climate among their own priorities. It is not most voters’ top concern, and that’s okay. Jack Pratt, whose capacity for absorbing polling information exceeds that of anyone I’ve ever worked with, and I have spent a lot of time discussing this dynamic. He recently told me that if a pollster called and asked him what his top priority was, he would probably answer “the economy.” Rather than being dismayed that he wasn’t really a “climate person,” I lit up and said, “Same here!”
My work is not about trying to make climate every voters’ top concern. It is about doing a better job connecting the dots between what voters tell us they care about most and the outcomes we care about. And there are a lot of dots to connect. This week, I spent some time with the New York Times profile of Harold Hamm, almost certainly the most influential oilman in the Trump orbit. It is a fascinating read, and I recommend reading it. Two sentences jumped out at me (emphasis added): “At the same time, the Trump administration and Congress have moved to undo or weaken policies that threatened oil and gas, including fuel-efficiency standards, methane emissions regulations, and tax credits for electric vehicles and renewable power. Such rollbacks have helped offset the industry’s frustration with low oil prices and higher tariffs, which have squeezed profits this year.”
It would be hard to name an industry that has received more favorable treatment than oil and gas during the second Trump presidency. That even this industry is struggling financially under the administration’s economic management is a sign of just how erratic that management has been. The cheerleading for pollution has seemingly been for its own sake – it’s not benefiting anyone, and we are all going to have to live with the costs, including significant health impacts.
During the fight to preserve the clean energy tax credits earlier this year, we checked in with lobbyists from a major manufacturer. They told us that they had broken ground on one of the largest manufacturing projects in the history of a particular state, and that the simple, powerful message they were carrying to congressional offices was: “We have already broken ground on the largest manufacturing project in the history of your state. The choices you make over the coming months are going to determine whether you have a giant hole in the ground, or a buzzing factory that serves as the lifeblood of your community.” Too many members of Congress made the wrong choice because that’s what President Trump wanted. This week, Ford announced that it will take a loss of nearly $20 billion and retreat from the EV market, and the news that all 1,600 workers at the BlueOval facility in Kentucky are losing their jobs is heartbreaking. If a pollster were to call any of those 1,600 households today and ask them what their top concern is, I doubt that a single one would say “climate change,” and I wouldn’t expect them to. They are all worried about their economic future – how they’ll provide for their families and where their next paycheck will come from. Yet anti-climate policies are deeply entwined with the hardships that they are now acutely experiencing.
I’m sorry if my last note of the year is somewhat of a downer, but I am excited to close the book on 2025 and enter 2026 with the confidence that the arguments we are making are sound — and that we can do an even better job explaining both the benefits these policies deliver to American communities and the real costs of the anti-environment actions we have seen consistently from the Trump administration over the past year.
Thank you for your time, and for your support for our work, and best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season.