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“I love doing it and I’ll be doing it for a while, ’cause we ain’t done yet,” says the legendary lawyer who spurred a global campaign that led to the closing of 390 U.S. coal plants, forever: Bruce Nilles. Live on stage at Climate Curious Live ‘Climate Impossible?’, he shares the story of an epic climate win — combining grassroots grandmas, courtroom clashes, and a $50 million philanthropic gift — igniting an unstoppable movement and delivering one of the largest reductions in climate pollution of any sector, anywhere in the world. And we hear about the next frontier: gas. Recorded live at The Conduit as part of London Climate Action Week, in conversation with Climate Curious co-hosts Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst.
Read the new research on gas: https://www.psehealthyenergy.org/work/gas-stove-benzene-emissions-europe/
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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 Impossible as Fuel
00:09 Meet the Hosts and Guest
01:42 Coal Boom Threat
03:11 Grassroots Wins Inspire
04:10 Beyond Coal Results
05:10 Scaling Up with Bloomberg
07:43 Data Driven Strategy
10:14 Community Tools and Tactics
11:36 Setbacks and Political Shocks
13:41 Global Ripple Effects
14:52 Why Keep Fighting
16:14 The Next Target Gas
18:45 Health Risks in Homes
20:15 What Gas in Buildings Means
22:30 Lessons for the Gas Campaign
24:04 Climate Imperative Philanthropy
25:22 Coalitions and Energy Security
27:50 Closing Thanks and Credits
Impossible as Fuel
[00:00:00] Bruce Nilles: People telling me impossible was like this red flag. You should work out what to do. If they can do that in the heart of coal countries, we can do this anywhere.
Meet the Hosts and Guest
[00:00:09] Ben Hurst: This is Climate Curious, the podcast for people who are bored, scared, or [00:00:15] confused by climate change.
[00:00:16] Maryam Pasha: I’m Maryam Pasha, the director and curator of TEDxLondon and the co-host of this podcast alongside the Amazing Ben.
[00:00:24] Ben Hurst: And I’m Ben Hurst activist. An advocate exploring what positive masculinities can look like and [00:00:30] self-confessed climate norming. Bruce Nilles is renowned for his transformative work in transitioning the United States away from coal and towards clean energy. As the founder and lead strategist of [00:00:45] the Sierra Clubs Beyond Coal Campaign, Bruce led efforts that ultimately secured the retirement of over half the US Coal Fleet.
[00:00:55] Maryam Pasha: He now leads climate imperative, a foundation, essentially making sure [00:01:00] that the people shaping climate policy from policy makers to community groups have everything they need to get it right. And we are excited to chat with him about his next big climate impossible project. Right. Thank you. Thank you for coming [00:01:15] back.
[00:01:17] Maryam Pasha: It’s nice up here. That’s what I’m gonna say is it’s a pleasant experience. People do come back. Um. Right. You did something with others that once seemed impossible. [00:01:30] Um, can you tell us about it?
[00:01:34] Bruce Nilles: Um, what a treat to be here. ’cause it was five years ago in the depths of COVID and, um, uh, it remains one of the highlights during that dark period.
[00:01:41] Bruce Nilles: So what a thrill to be back.
Coal Boom Threat
[00:01:42] Bruce Nilles: So, um, if you can go back 20 years, uh, George Bush is in the White House. Dick Cheney is his, uh, vice president who hails from Wyoming and they unleashed a plan to build more than 200 proposed coal plants in the United States. I was a New Sierra Club staffer in Illinois, in this, in the heartland of the country.
[00:02:01] Bruce Nilles: And, uh, these coal plants started appearing new projects all over the place. So I knew enough about climate change and. Uh, realized if we built these coal plants, it was gonna be game over for the planet [00:02:15] if we locked in for another 50 years. And so put together a rudimentary PowerPoint and traveled around the country talking to donors and um, partners.
[00:02:25] Bruce Nilles: And two fascinating responses. One was a bunch of people saying, Bruce, [00:02:30] it’s half our energy. We can’t get rid of coal. You can’t stop these coal plants. It’s impossible. Uh, and these were the energy experts. And these were the reasonable politicians and these were too many people. But the beautiful thing [00:02:45] was there was a bunch of people who were living where these proposed coal plants were, who had said, hell no, we don’t want these stinking coal plants and we’re gonna do everything we can to stop ’em.
[00:02:54] Bruce Nilles: And so, um, after being told that it’s impossible, it’s um, I have the pleasure of having a 13-year-old [00:03:00] daughter. And when I wanted to do something, I tell her it’s impossible. Uh, and so people telling me impossible was like this red flag, uh, telling me like, you should work out what to do.
Grassroots Wins Inspire
[00:03:11] Bruce Nilles: And I think the most important part was, um, we started, but we also got inspired by two amazing things happening around the world.
[00:03:18] Bruce Nilles: One was right here in England, there was an epic fight to stop the last proposed coal plant in the United Kingdom called Kings North. Um, and the scrappy group of activists. Did what everyone said was [00:03:30] impossible. They stopped it. And then there was an example in the United States. It was a group of volunteers in Kentucky and those of you know the United States, Kentucky is the heart of coal country.
[00:03:38] Bruce Nilles: Think of like the, the place that at one time produced the, the most coal in the United States. And it was the largest coal [00:03:45] mining company in the world at the time, Peabody. And they said, we’re gonna build this giant coal plant. All the policy makers wanted it. And this local group of volunteers held bake sales.
[00:03:53] Bruce Nilles: This was before Jennifer Kid, um, uh, held bake sales to raise enough money for [00:04:00] their lawyers and experts. And they put on an 86 day hearing the longest in state history and stop the coal plan. And we’re like, if they can do that in the heart of coal country, we can do this anywhere.
Beyond Coal Results
[00:04:10] Bruce Nilles: And so we set off to both stop the new coal plants, which we did in about eight years.
[00:04:14] Bruce Nilles: We [00:04:15] stopped 90% of them, but then we turned our attention to the. Bigger part of the question, which was the existing coal plants. ’cause we’d stopped the problem getting worse, but there was still 530 coal plants and that was the next, that’s been the last 15 years and I’m very happy to report. [00:04:30] Um, we’re now at almost three quarters of the coal plants that are done.
[00:04:34] Bruce Nilles: That was 530, 140 left to go. Um, and not only that, we’ve replaced it with record amounts of clean energy. So this past month, it used to be 50% of our [00:04:45] energy was coal. Last month it was 12% and it was exceeded by solo. So, um, we made the impossible possible.[00:05:00]
[00:05:00] Maryam Pasha: I mean, it is kind of incredible. Um, and you say it, so like, so we just did the first thing. We stopped them all and then we moved on to the second thing. We did all of that, uh, you know, just as you do on a Tuesday. Um.
Scaling Up with Bloomberg
[00:05:10] Maryam Pasha: There was a point at which you were a smaller campaign and you were doing this work and there was a transformative moment.
[00:05:18] Maryam Pasha: And I would love for you to tell us a bit about that moment, because I think that, well, it goes to the heart of what Jennifer was speaking about as well. Yeah.
[00:05:26] Bruce Nilles: So we were able to stop the new coal plants on [00:05:30] a fairly shoestring budget, bake sales, and a bunch of um. Uh, others helping to support that work.
[00:05:36] Bruce Nilles: 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 [00:05:45] never existed and there’s 10 permits and if you stop one, you win. An existing coal plant is in a community providing electricity with real workers and keeping the lights on.
[00:05:54] Bruce Nilles: 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. [00:06:00] It’s harder re uh, retiring and replacing existing coal plant. So we started trying to test out could we do it? And the answer was yes. We actually began to have some success, one here and one there.
[00:06:11] Bruce Nilles: And then the question was, how do we scale it? ’cause we have 530, we’ve gotta get going. [00:06:15] This is, uh, an urgent problem. And so, uh, we were casting around for how do we scale this work? And that’s when we met, um, the former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. He had just [00:06:30] launched an environmental program through his philanthropic, um, uh, through his philanthropy and, uh, uh, and, uh, he cared desperately about public health.
[00:06:44] Bruce Nilles: So one of the things [00:06:45] Michael Bloomberg is most famous for is when he was mayor of New York City, he, he wanted to understand why do, why do kids. Uh, who have asthma are concentrated in certain places. So we tested around the city and it turned out they were on the major thoroughfares where all the damn trucks were.
[00:06:59] Bruce Nilles: So it was the [00:07:00] diesel trucks. Uh, same 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. Well, coal plants are just as bad, if not worse. And so [00:07:15] he, um, we approached him. He initially was like, eh, I’m not sure it’s a Sierra Club.
[00:07:19] Bruce Nilles: I’m not doing that kind of stuff. Coal, I don’t know anything about coal. But he’s like, what could you do? But then he asked the most profound question of all, what would it take to win? Which no one had ever asked [00:07:30] us. We’d been like, well, we can get one coal plan for this amount of money and two coal plans for that amount of money.
[00:07:34] Bruce Nilles: 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 Driven Strategy
[00:07:43] 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. 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.
[00:07:58] Bruce Nilles: And not only each of the five 30, but [00:08:00] each of them had two or three boilers. So we analyzed 1,278 coal boilers. How old was it? Particularly dirty. What were these pollution controls? Was it living in a community where people had been complaining about air pollution and the regulators never done anything?
[00:08:13] Bruce Nilles: And so we were able to [00:08:15] assess and we had more data on the coal plant than anybody else in the United States by the time we were done. My head hurt, but it was profound. Uh, and we went back to him and said, all right, Mr. Mayor. You asked us and the answer is, we can. We think [00:08:30] we can get the first third of it shut down over the next four years.
[00:08:33] Bruce Nilles: It will 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. [00:08:45] So we did, and four years later we had got 92% of those coal plants we promised to shut down. Shut down.
[00:08:56] Ben Hurst: I always think, see this is my problem with fundraising. ’cause I [00:09:00] always think I would just be like, give us all of it, then 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. I’m so interested in like, when [00:09:15] you got that, had that conversation, was it a phone call?
[00:09:17] 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?[00:09:30]
[00:09:31] Bruce Nilles: I dunno if it gets on the final tape, but his answer was, and by the way, if I give it to you, don’t fuck it up. I like, okay, well it was noon in New York City. So we walked out of his office, walked to the first bar [00:09:45] and had a couple of shots of tequila and then we 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.
[00:09:58] Bruce Nilles: And now we had the resources to help. [00:10:00] Yeah. And so it was like, oh, we really, like we caught the big fish. Now we need to land it.
[00:10:06] Ben Hurst: Yeah. So what, so what?
[00:10:08] Bruce Nilles: Tell us the rest of the so how, alright, so we landed the fish. So what, what was needed?
Community Tools and Tactics
[00:10:14] Bruce Nilles: Well, what was super interesting as we analyzed these coal plants is there was a ton of places where people actually wanted to do something.
[00:10:20] 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 [00:10:30] wanna cut pollution. Or we wanna invest in the future. We want clean technology in our community, not this outdated 19th century coal plant.
[00:10:37] 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 [00:10:45] in many places it was, well, how bad is the air pollution? So we hired modelers to go out and assess. Where are the, where was the pollution going?
[00:10:52] 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 [00:11:00] engage in e engage in every regulatory proceeding relating to those coal plants. Uh, we went through the compliance record of every coal plant if we found noncompliance.
[00:11:08] Bruce Nilles: We either tried to negotiate before filing a lawsuit if they wouldn’t negotiate. We filed a lawsuit, um, to bring them [00:11:15] into compliance. We hired 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.
[00:11:24] Bruce Nilles: Um, and so it’s that community by community helping support them in whatever way was needed to be able to make the [00:11:30] transition, retire their coplan, um, and invest in a cleaner, safer alternatives.
Setbacks and Political Shocks
[00:11:36] Maryam Pasha: Was there a moment in all of this where it felt, it started to feel like we we’re not gonna be able to do this?
[00:11:42] Maryam Pasha: Or a moment where it just started to get a bit scary [00:11:45] because you’re taking on big companies with very vested interests. I’m sure they weren’t just like, sure, no problem guys. Like we’ll close.
[00:11:52] Ben Hurst: We’ll close them. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:11:54] Bruce Nilles: Well, I had the great privilege of working for a national organization, which was helpful and.[00:12:00]
[00:12:00] Bruce Nilles: With the full faith and credit of Michael Bloomberg behind us. We also were able to deal with some pretty horrendous situations. So for example, we found a coal plan in East Texas, rural east Texas that was violating its permit. We filed in federal court, we were making great [00:12:15] progress. Six months in everything was going great.
[00:12:16] Bruce Nilles: And then one day we get a bunch of rulings from this judge. We are losing on every count. And by the way, we owe the other side $6 million in attorney’s fees. If we’d been a small nonprofit, we’d have been outta business. If we had not [00:12:30] had the backing of Michael Bloomberg, we would’ve gone outta business.
[00:12:32] Bruce Nilles: And so corporations engage in those kind of harassment tactics all the time. But for once, it was a fair fight. Now our CFO was really upset. Our executive director was really upset [00:12:45] and we ultimately negotiated out without paying and agreeing to not to sue them for a a few months. Um, but the risk if we’d been a small group is that we wouldn’t put outta business.
[00:12:54] Bruce Nilles: And I think the other, uh, example I would give is, um, 2016, Donald Trump is [00:13:00] elected. The first time everyone was like, there’s no way you’re gonna keep retiring coal blinds. No way. Uh, his whole campaign was Trump digs coal. Beautiful. We retired more compliance during his first term than we did in the second term of Barack Obama.[00:13:15]
[00:13:15] Bruce Nilles: So the power of community organizing, despite whatever’s happening in Washington, and I think there’s some lessons for that today. Don’t underestimate what we can get done in the States and the local level, despite the madness in Washington DC
[00:13:29] Maryam Pasha: Yeah, I think that [00:13:30] is a clap. I think so. Um, because that was, I was gonna ask you about that.
[00:13:34] Maryam Pasha: Like, are you, you know, is he reversing all the work but. I, I’m not even gonna ask that question ’cause I don’t think we should waste our time.
Global Ripple Effects
[00:13:41] Maryam Pasha: ’cause it’s not, I actually wanna ask you about the influence this has had globally, because I think that’s really a cool unintended, unintended positive consequence.
[00:13:54] Bruce Nilles: Yeah. One of the great, uh, delights of doing this work is obviously the United States is not the [00:14:00] only country emitting carbon emissions, um, around the world. Uh, and as I shared, we learned a lot from, um, what was happening here in the UK when they stopped, when you all stopped the last, uh, new proposed coal plant.
[00:14:12] Bruce Nilles: Uh, as we started, um, [00:14:15] shutting coal plants down in the United States, uh, it inspired similar copycat campaigns in Europe. In South Korea, in Japan, in Australia. And so I’m thrilled to report, um, uh, we are at 75%. Europe’s at 60%. [00:14:30] Europe needs to catch up, by the way. Um, but there are amazing campaigns going on where we’re learning from each other.
[00:14:36] Bruce Nilles: ’cause oftentimes we’re also dealing with international corporations and so we can collaborate across the Atlantic or with our friends in Australia, across the Pacific, um, or in South Korea. [00:14:45] And uh, that has been one of the great joys ’cause we’re actually solving a global problem together.
Why Keep Fighting
[00:14:52] Ben Hurst: Solving a global problem together is a good thing to do, but why are you [00:15:00] not?
[00:15:00] Ben Hurst: On a beach somewhere, you, at 50 million, you could have taken that and run. Do you know what I mean? That’s a lot of money. But why did you not feel like you’re done? Like when or when? When do you think you will feel like you’re done? You’re gonna say in when it’s finished, aren’t you? Yeah. [00:15:15] Yeah. He’s got an actual solid number of coal plants.
[00:15:17] Ben Hurst: Let,
[00:15:19] Bruce Nilles: well, I mean, one of the, you know, uh, we live on an amazing planet. There’s been a hundred billion [00:15:30] people on this planet since first humans showed up. We’re the last generation to solve this problem, and that’s a pretty awesome, terrifying prospect. And I’ve had the good fortune of, um, [00:15:45] I others find their niche, whether it’s in fundraising or communications, um, of helping design and lead campaigns to solve a big piece of the PR puzzle.
[00:15:54] Bruce Nilles: It’s a lot of fun. So I’d get bored on a beach Now I like to go on a beach for a couple of weeks a year. [00:16:00] Um, but in terms of, um, I get to work with amazing people. I get to work, travel around the United States and around the world. Um, that’s a real privilege. So I, I love doing it and I’ll be doing it for a while ’cause we ain’t done yet.
The Next Target Gas
[00:16:14] Maryam Pasha: In that [00:16:15] vein, um, because we knew you weren’t done. Um, this spoiler alert, uh, five years ago, we had you on the podcast. We talked about gas in buildings. I, sorry. I highly recommend you listen to that episode, if nothing for no other [00:16:30] reason than Ben’s reaction to some of what Bruce talks about. But what I wanna ask you is in that time, you, well, since you started working on coal, you’ve now started to work on guests.
[00:16:42] Maryam Pasha: Um, what have we learned in the last five years when it [00:16:45] comes to gas?
[00:16:46] Bruce Nilles: Um, uh, that is a great question. So I, um, uh, I think one of the things that was super interesting about coal, when I started working on coal, a lot of people were like, as I shared earlier, it’s impossible. We can’t get rid of it. It’s an integral part of our system.[00:17:00]
[00:17:00] Bruce Nilles: Um, and. Oftentimes people also didn’t realize where their electricity came from, that it was this filthy coal plant that the mining was blowing up mountains in Appalachia and the coal trains were going through communities dumping coal dust on them and that the coal burning was hurting the local, [00:17:15] um, surrounding neighbors.
[00:17:16] Bruce Nilles: And once they were aware of their system, they were like, Hey, we want change. And we developed a consensus. And largely in the United States today, um, other than our current president, most people recognize that coal has to go. Yeah. And so that was not a consensus 20 [00:17:30] years ago. We’re at the same place on natural gas, right?
[00:17:32] Bruce Nilles: So when you ask people, even in my home state of California, where’s most of the pollution from? I bet you 10 outta 10 answers will not say natural gas. It’s half of our emissions today. So one of the things exciting about London and [00:17:45] Climate Week is, um, so listening and understanding where people are.
[00:17:48] Bruce Nilles: When you think about carbon pollution, at least in the energy sector, it comes from coal, oil, and gas. People understand coal. Now, people largely understand oil has to go and we got electric vehicles, but you get to natural gas and people get [00:18:00] very confused. It’s a bridge fuel, it’s clean, it’s natural. And so what I’m excited about is development consensus.
[00:18:07] Bruce Nilles: If we’re actually gonna solve this problem, we have to get off of gas. And in a city like um, London, in fact, most cities, most of the half the [00:18:15] emissions are from transport, and half are from natural gas. And if you listen to this conversation in London today, no one is talking about natural gas. But it’s half the problem.
[00:18:24] Bruce Nilles: So how, this is very similar to where we were 20 years ago. People were not saying you gotta get off a coal. So [00:18:30] super excited about, um, we have the technology, we have heat pumps to replace to both cool places, um, and heat spaces. And then we have, uh, induction cooking. So what have we learned in the last five years?
[00:18:42] Bruce Nilles: We need to develop this consensus that gas has to go. [00:18:45]
Health Risks in Homes
[00:18:45] Bruce Nilles: Back five years ago there was the emerging research that, uh, gas burning in our homes caused asthma. And that was what we got to talk about. Well, there’s been a bunch, a bunch of research then, and, um, you’ve said back then we don’t like to scare our listeners, so let me just scare them for 30 seconds.
[00:19:01] Bruce Nilles: Um, uh. We’ve been able to quantify that at a population level gas stove are responsible for about 12% of childhood asthma cases, 12% of asthma, which is an epidemic [00:19:15] we think we can trace back to gas stove best science today. Secondly, it’s not just, it causes asthma, it also has benzene in it. Benzene is a carcinogen, and when gas, uh, gas stove is turned on, it releases benzene.
[00:19:28] Bruce Nilles: But we also know that about [00:19:30] 40% of cases. When you turn off your gas stove, it’s still leaking gas and it has benzene in it. So brilliant research by the folks at Stanford, but we have not only does it, it’s a twofer. Not only does it cause asthma, it also causes [00:19:45] cancer. So gets better, but, but anyway, so it just underscores we need to make this transition.
[00:19:51] Bruce Nilles: It’s bad for the climate and it’s bad for our house.
[00:19:54] Maryam Pasha: The heck. I mean, we had
[00:19:56] Ben Hurst: just, I, sorry. I’m just saying, what the heck under my brain. What? Like if we know these [00:20:00] things, why do people keep doing the money? Yeah.
[00:20:03] Maryam Pasha: We had this in the, in the five years ago. Ben, we were gonna ask you, did you manage to get that gas stove out of your house?
[00:20:08] Ben Hurst: No, not my parents house. I don’t have a guest stove in my house, though. We’re making progress. Yeah. Slow progress. Better than no progress. [00:20:15]
What Gas in Buildings Means
[00:20:15] Maryam Pasha: I realize everyone in this room probably knows, but. W when you’re talking about gas and buildings, can you just, for those of those of us who are hearing about this for the first time, what does that look like?
[00:20:26] Maryam Pasha: Where are we? What, what are we actually talking about here? Yeah.
[00:20:29] Bruce Nilles: [00:20:30] Well it’s good you asked. ’cause um, I’d been working on climate and coal plants for almost 15 years when one of my colleagues at the Sierra Club came in and said, you know, we’re burning more gas in buildings in California than in power plants.
[00:20:42] Bruce Nilles: I was like, what are you talking about? She’s like, more [00:20:45] gas is burned in California buildings than in our power plants. I was like, for what? Half of it in California is to heat water for showers and swimming pools. Um, and I was like, this is, this makes no sense. How can this be possible? [00:21:00] California can’t work out how to heat water without frying the planet.
[00:21:03] Bruce Nilles: Uh, and then I went back thinking about my own home. I had four gas appliances. A water heater, a furnace, a dryer, and a stove. And [00:21:15] I did the analysis. It was the biggest piece of my climate footprint, carbon footprint, other than my flying. And I was like, why is no one ever told me why we as an organization had never put out the 10 things you should do?
[00:21:28] Bruce Nilles: Ride your bike, eat [00:21:30] less. Meat number one or two on that list should be ditch your gas appliances. Uh, so that to me was the aha moment. It’s like we have, and that gives us agency. Mm-hmm. One of the super exciting things about this opportunity is coal plant’s yet to find a coal plant. And they’re run, we’re running outta coal [00:21:45] plant targets.
[00:21:45] Bruce Nilles: Um, gas is everywhere. So it’s something we can solve at our home level, at our neighborhood level, at our school. So it’s something that gives you a chance to be a part of something exciting agency to solve this problem. Okay. [00:22:00]
[00:22:00] Maryam Pasha: I mean, one of the things I think that is, I’ve actually never lived somewhere with so much gas stoves, like right in front of your, your face.
[00:22:08] Maryam Pasha: It’s actually quite interesting. I’ve, we’ve had this conversation before about how the, the propaganda is really good, like [00:22:15] around cooking and around, um, how it’s natural and you know, like our confession, I think when we did that episode with you was that we did not know that gas was a fossil fuel. Can we admit that?
[00:22:28] Ben Hurst: I was gonna say that right now. [00:22:30]
Lessons for the Gas Campaign
[00:22:30] Maryam Pasha: Um, and, and then I think it’s part of the, the narrative, but I guess the thing I’m curious about is what you mentioned that like we’re in a similar place now with that campaign as you were when with Cole, what are the [00:22:45] tactics or lessons you can like bring over from the work on coal now that you’re doing this work on gas?
[00:22:51] Bruce Nilles: Well, um. We’re not starting from scratch. And, um, one of the delights of coal is that tapping into people around the United States who wanted to do something or [00:23:00] already doing something but just needed additional help, they needed some, um, uh, either resources or, uh, working with other communities to work out how to do this transition.
[00:23:09] Bruce Nilles: Unnatural gas is a bunch of cool things going on. So, um, uh, in Germany right now, [00:23:15] every community is a part of the climate plans is developing a heating plan for the cities. And that’s opened up this conversation like, how should we heat our city? Should it be with gas or something cleaner? So huge opportunity and there’s tons of people getting engaged in helping manage that transition.
[00:23:29] Bruce Nilles: [00:23:30] In the United States, we have a lot of cities that have, um, begun to realize how do we incentivize people to put in heat pumps, not gas furnaces. And so heat pump sales in the United States last year, and same in Europe. Now are higher than gas furnaces. So the [00:23:45] momentum is moving. Is it fast enough? No. Um, but there’s a lot of stuff to build on to really accelerate this progress.
[00:23:50] Bruce Nilles: So, um, the aperture is opening up to have a conversation about how will we actually gonna get from here to a world where we’re not powering our buildings with an explosive gas. That also [00:24:00] is, um, uh, a leading contributor to climate change.
Climate Imperative Philanthropy
[00:24:04] Maryam Pasha: So we mentioned earlier that you’re now. Leading climate imperative, your in philanthropy.
[00:24:09] Maryam Pasha: And I’m curious to know, like what are you most excited about in the philanthropic part of your [00:24:15] work?
[00:24:16] Bruce Nilles: Um, so I think it goes back to the early lessons from the work on call, which is. There are a ton of people out there trying to do their very best to solve this climate crisis around the world. And [00:24:30] how do we help, what can we bring in terms of resources?
[00:24:33] Bruce Nilles: And oftentimes it’s not just financial resources, it’s how are other communities solving this problem? Um, so I was, um, uh, what’s a good example? So I was recently, um, doing [00:24:45] some work in the United States, and they were, um, in a, in a city. And they were talking about, well, we have these large, um, heating plants that are providing district heating for a downtown area.
[00:24:55] Bruce Nilles: What’s the solution? Well, if you overlook in Germany. They’re already solving [00:25:00] this in a dozen communities. This isn’t like waiting for a satellite on its way to Mars to find some new technology. This is something that’s actually available on the market today. They just didn’t know about it. And so I think, um, having a global perspective, which I’d never had before is super [00:25:15] interesting ’cause you can see cool stuff happening everywhere and then connecting that so we can accelerate our bloody progress.
[00:25:22] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
Coalitions and Energy Security
[00:25:22] Ben Hurst: I guess my question is what now, being on the other side of the philanthropic conversation, what advice, thank you everyone. Uh, what advice would you, would you give to yourself going back, like if you, if you could speak to yourself at the start of this journey, what would you say?
[00:25:43] Bruce Nilles: Mm-hmm. Um, [00:25:45] I think it’s, remember thinking about, um, I.
[00:25:50] Bruce Nilles: We’re up against some really powerful interests, and if we’re not aligned, and that isn’t just with people who agree with us on everything right to to, to [00:26:00] win what we want on coal, we were working with rural farmers in Iowa who they may not agree with us on a bunch of things they agreed with us on, not coal plants in their backyard.
[00:26:10] Bruce Nilles: Um, and so building out a, a coalition. That is big enough and [00:26:15] powerful enough to overcome the inertia and the corporate interests who are slowing down this transition. Um, making sure we don’t lose sight of that because unless we have a broad enough, if we don’t get the politics right, it’s gonna be really hard to sustain progress.
[00:26:27] Bruce Nilles: So just keeping that front and center, like how do you [00:26:30] build the coalition? And right now with the war in Iran, the, uh, Ukraine mess still not resolved. Um, and you look at the amount of money people are spending on fossil fuels. It is insane. We were just working, um, [00:26:45] with some folks in Japan. They import 90% of their energy in the form of coal, oil and gas.
[00:26:50] Bruce Nilles: Every day they spend $400 million to import oil, coal, and gas every day. The bill from the Iran War [00:27:00] increased that by $150 million. So every day they’re sending all this money out to buy fossil fuels when they could be investing in clean energy and their energy security. So it’s not just a climate issue.
[00:27:10] Bruce Nilles: In fact, in Japan you don’t talk about climate by and large. You just talk about do you really [00:27:15] want to be dependent on this fossil fuel that’s weaving its way across the world that’s costing you twice as much as it used to. So I think seizing the moment, building the coalitions, and also, uh, addressing people on the whole range of issues that may bring them into this conversation.[00:27:30]
[00:27:31] Maryam Pasha: You know what my favorite thing is? I’ve heard recently, I’ve heard this from Bill McKibbon and from Tessa Khan, um, that the light from the sun travels 92 million miles to get to Earth, and not a single one of those miles goes through the straits of ous. [00:27:45] I just, it is really good. Every time I hear it, I’m like, that’s true.
Closing Thanks and Credits
[00:27:50] Maryam Pasha: Um, Bruce, thank you so much for sharing this with us. Incredible work.
[00:27:59] Maryam Pasha: [00:28:00] Um,
[00:28:05] Ben Hurst: stay curious.
[00:28:07] Maryam Pasha: Thank you for joining us this week. We really hope you enjoyed this episode.
[00:28:11] Ben Hurst: If you did, please hit the follow button to make sure that you get next [00:28:15] week’s release. While you’re at it, please leave a rating and a review.
[00:28:19] Maryam Pasha: Now let’s shout out to our fabulous team behind the pod
[00:28:22] Ben Hurst: executive, produced by Josie Colter,
[00:28:24] Maryam Pasha: produced by Ben Beheshty.
[00:28:26] Ben Hurst: Music, also by Ben Beheshty,
[00:28:28] Maryam Pasha: communications by Tara [00:28:30] Cooper and Issey Gladston.
[00:28:31] Ben Hurst: Curation by Deesha Chandra,
[00:28:33] Maryam Pasha: hosted by Ben Hurst.
[00:28:35] Ben Hurst: I’m Maryam Pasha,
[00:28:36] Maryam Pasha: and remember,
[00:28:37] Ben Hurst: stay curious.
