Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | RSS | Android
“We walked out of his office, to the first bar, had a couple shots of tequila, and then got to work”, says environmental lawyer Bruce Nilles on stage as our guest at ‘Climate Curious Live: Climate Impossible?’ in London, June 2026. In conversation with co-hosts Ben Hurst and Maryam Pasha, Bruce shares the surreal situation he found himself in when shutting down coal plants with the ex-mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. Tune in to learn how a bake-sale funded, grassroots movement was given the guidance and capital to scale up; eventually shuttering 92% of coal plants across the US, in one of the most effective and durable climate actions of our time.
Enjoyed this short? Listen to the full conversation with Bruce Nilles on Climate Curious: https://tedxlondon.com/podcasts/what-the-end-of-king-coal-means-for-big-oil-gas-with-bruce-nilles/
Join the Climate Curious conversation on socials:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/climatecuriouspod/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@climatecuriouspod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtF6xzNkVIczlDmVcH8FCMA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10996041/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TEDxLondon
Website: https://tedxlondon.com/podcast/
All other links: https://linktr.ee/climatecuriouspod
Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Campaign Behind the Scenes
00:54 From New Builds to Retirements
01:51 Meeting Michael Bloomberg
02:52 What Would It Take to Win
03:10 Data Deep Dive on Coal
03:49 The Big Bet Funding Deal
04:40 Noon Tequila and Reality Check
05:36 Landing the Fish Nationwide
06:04 How the Money Powered Communities
07:02 Wrap Up and Stay Curious
Campaign Behind the Scenes
[00:00:00] Ben Hurst: Welcome to Climate Curious Quickies, bite-sized Nuggets of Climate Goodness from our TEDx experts in under 10 minutes
[00:00:11] Maryam Pasha: in this week’s climate, curious, we’re going behind the scenes on one of the [00:00:15] most wildly successful climate campaigns in history. We ask the question, how do you help a grassroots movement scale up?
[00:00:22] Maryam Pasha: Into an operation capable of taking on big coal. Our guest this week is Powerhouse lawyer Bruce Nellis at our [00:00:30] recent Climate Curious Live. He tells the story of meeting former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who asked him one simple question that changed everything. What would it take to win on the power of big bets and how they help shutter 390 coal plants [00:00:45] across the United States and keep them shut?
[00:00:47] Maryam Pasha: Here’s Bruce Nilles. Stay curious.
From New Builds to Retirements
[00:00:54] Bruce Nilles: So we were able to stop the new coal plants on a fairly shoestring budget, bake [00:01:00] sales, and a bunch of um, uh, others helping to support that work. But when we turned our attention to the existing coal plants, it was a whole different kettle of fish. People told us again, it’s impossible. Stopping new coal plants is one thing ’cause they’ve never existed and there’s 10 permits and if you stop one, [00:01:15] you win.
[00:01:15] Bruce Nilles: An existing coal plant is in a community. Providing electricity with real workers and keeping the lights on. Uh, and so we had a lot of people say, well that’s fundamentally different and it is harder. I don’t wanna minimize for a second. It’s harder re uh, retiring and replacing [00:01:30] existing coal plant. So we started trying to test out could we do it?
[00:01:33] Bruce Nilles: And the answer was yes. We actually began to have some success, one here and one there. And then the question was, how do we scale it? ’cause we have 530, we’ve gotta get going. This is, uh, an urgent problem. [00:01:45] And so, uh, we were casting around for how do we scale this work?
Meeting Michael Bloomberg
[00:01:51] Bruce Nilles: And that’s when we met, um, the former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg.
[00:01:56] Bruce Nilles: He had just launched an environmental program through his [00:02:00] philanthropic, um, uh, through his philanthropy and, uh, uh. And, uh, he cared desperately about public health. So one of the things Michael Bloomberg is most famous for is when he was mayor of New [00:02:15] York City, he, he wanted to understand why, why do kids, uh, who have asthma are concentrated in certain places?
[00:02:21] Bruce Nilles: So he tested around the city and it turned out they were on the major thorough affairs where all the damn trucks were. So it was the diesel trucks. Uh, same [00:02:30] in many, uh, most every city. Uh, and so he did amazing work and cared lots about and understood the impacts of health, um, from burning of fossil fuels.
[00:02:39] Bruce Nilles: Well, coal plants are just as bad, if not worse. And so he, um, we approached him. He initially [00:02:45] was like, eh, I’m not sure it’s a Sierra Club. I’m not doing that kind of stuff. Coal, I don’t know anything about coal. But he’s like, what could you do?
What Would It Take to Win
[00:02:52] Bruce Nilles: But then he asked the most profound question of all, what would it take to win?
[00:02:56] Bruce Nilles: Which no one had ever asked us. We’d been like, well, we can get one coal plan for [00:03:00] this amount of money and two coal plans for that amount of money. He was like, no, no, no. What would it take to win? And that was just like this moment. Like what? Like really like, like get rid of coal.
Data Deep Dive on Coal
[00:03:10] Bruce Nilles: And so, um, then the hard part started, ’cause we had to answer that question from a guy who started a data company.
[00:03:17] Bruce Nilles: And we spent nine months, and to his credit, he sent over one of his top data analysts who sat down with us and analyzed every single coal plant in the United States. And not only each of the five 30, but each of them had two or three boilers. So we analyzed [00:03:30] 1,278 coal boilers. How old was it?
[00:03:34] Bruce Nilles: Particularly dirty. What were these pollution controls? Was it living in a community where people had been complaining about air pollution and the regulators than never done anything? And so we were able to assess and we had more data on the coal plant than anybody else [00:03:45] in the United States by the time we were done.
[00:03:46] Bruce Nilles: My head hurt, but it was profound.
The Big Bet Funding Deal
[00:03:49] Bruce Nilles: Uh, and we went back to him and said, all right, Mr. Mayor. You asked us and the answer is, we can. We think we can get the first third of it shut down over the next four years. It’ll cost us $147 million. And he looked at us and said, okay, I’ll give you 50. I’ll help you raise 50 and you raise 47.
[00:04:13] Bruce Nilles: So we did, and four years [00:04:15] later we had gotten 92% of those coal plants. We promised to shut down. Shut down.
[00:04:23] Ben Hurst: I always think, see this is my problem with fundraising. ’cause I always think I would just be like, give us all of it, then [00:04:30] you’ve got it. It’s not like you don’t have it, but fair, fair, good strategy. Well done. Um, and what an incredible, what an incredible situation to find yourself in.
Noon Tequila and Reality Check
[00:04:40] Ben Hurst: I’m so interested in like, when you got that, had that conversation, was it a phone call?
[00:04:45] Ben Hurst: Was it a, a email? Like how did that happen? Face to face. So you sit face to face with this guy, the former mayor, and he says he’ll give you 50 million. How drunk did you get?
[00:04:59] Bruce Nilles: I dunno if it [00:05:00] gets on the final tape, but his answer was, and by the way, if I give it to you, don’t fuck it up. Oh. Like, okay. Well it was noon in New York City. So we walked out of his office, walked to the first bar and had a couple of shots of tequila and then we [00:05:15] got to work. Um, but it was also a profound moment because we were standing on the shoulders of all these people across the country who were super excited about doing something about these filthy Copeland.
[00:05:25] Bruce Nilles: And now we had the resources to help. Yeah. And so it was like, oh, we [00:05:30] really, like we caught the big fish. Now we need to land it.
[00:05:33] Ben Hurst: Yeah. So what, so what?
Landing the Fish Nationwide
[00:05:36] Bruce Nilles: Tell us the rest of the so how, alright, so we landed the fish. So what, what was needed? Well, what was super interesting as we analyzed these coal plants [00:05:45] is there was a ton of places where people actually wanted to do something.
[00:05:47] Bruce Nilles: These were mares in cities. These were neighbors living next to a coal plant and they said, we wanna do something about replacing this coal plant. It’s been polluting our neighborhood too much, or we have climate goals and we wanna cut pollution. Or we wanna invest in the [00:06:00] future. We want clean technology in our community, not this outdated 19th century coal plant.
How the Money Powered Communities
[00:06:04] Bruce Nilles: And so the money was used for a variety of things needed to help them, empower them to get the, the things they needed in order to retire the coal plant. So in many places it was, well, how bad is the air [00:06:15] pollution? So we hired modelers to go out and assess. Uh, where are the, where was the pollution going?
[00:06:20] Bruce Nilles: Where are the schools? Where’s the hospital? Can we analyze the number of premature deaths from that coal plant? Um, we hired lawyers and experts to eng engage in e engage in every regulatory proceeding [00:06:30] relating to those coal plants. Uh, we went through the compliance record of every coal plant if we found noncompliance.
[00:06:36] Bruce Nilles: We either tried to negotiate before filing a lawsuit. If they wouldn’t negotiate, we filed a lawsuit, um, to bring them into compliance. We hired [00:06:45] organizers to help educate the community about you don’t have to tolerate this filthy Copeland. There’s a better future. Look what’s happening around the country and around the world.
[00:06:51] Bruce Nilles: Um, and so it’s that community by community helping support them in whatever way was. To be able to make the transition, retire their coal plant, um, and [00:07:00] invest in cleaner, safer alternatives.
Wrap Up and Stay Curious
[00:07:02] Ben Hurst: Thanks for listening to this quickie.
[00:07:04] Maryam Pasha: This episode was created by our superstar podcast team at TEDxLondon. Until next time,
[00:07:09] Ben Hurst: stay [00:07:15] curious.
