I had planned to take this weekend off since it’s Labor Day here in the states, but there’s just too much to say…
This week, the UN Environment Programme released its new report: Limiting Overshoot – Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return. The report “examines the implications of entering an era of 1.5°C overshoot and the choices that remain available.” With its publication, the United Nations is officially acknowledging that the Paris Agreement has failed (if you’re interested in understanding more about the failure of the climate regime, check out the COP-Out podcast, which I recorded with top climate thinkers during the climate negotiations in fall 2025 ).
It’s going to be really interesting to watch everyone who has been leaning hard into keeping the Paris Agreement on life support pivot to trying to limit the consequences of our warming world–including extreme heat, drought, floods, and wildfires–which we’re just starting to experience. As I’ve written elsewhere, given our current trajectory, these climate shocks will most definitely get worse. Now that everyone is on the same page and no longer investing time and effort into resuscitating a failing regime, the race is on to lower our risk of crossing irreversible thresholds and surpassing adaptation limits.
The unfettered expansion of capital and concurrent growth in inequality is well documented to be directly linked to the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and the lack of success in limiting the climate crisis. This process has been on overdrive in the US for the past 20 months as the Trump Administration has worked to repeal federal climate policies. While numerous campaigns around the midterm election are heating up, we are starting to see some real push back from Americans in the form of resistance to data centers. In the newest episode of the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast, I speak with AI-ethics expert Alex Hanna. Check out our conversation for details about how big tech, AI, and the data centers they are building are inherently undemocratic, exploiting labor and leading to massive environmental costs.
Dana R Fisher 