Everything the climate movement has accomplished over the past decade is on the chopping block, or so it seems lately. In less than three months, President Donald Trump has reopened coal mining on federal lands and begun unraveling America’s regulations to slow global warming, thereby endangering the country’s climate commitments in the Paris Agreement. He put climate change denier Scott Pruitt in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency—then proposed slashing the agency’s budget and eliminating federal climate change research altogether. Trump is expected soon to reopen portions of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans to oil drilling. What’s an environmentalist to do?

Some have turned to despair. There are even support groups, modeled after Alcoholic Anonymous, for those who worry about the fate of the planet under Trump. Since his election, I’ve heard experienced climate activists utter questions that a year ago would have been unthinkable: Have we lost? Should we give up?



CLIMATE OF HOPE: HOW CITIES, BUSINESSES, AND CITIZENS CAN SAVE THE PLANET by Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope St. Martin’s, 288 pp.

Absolutely not, Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope argue in their new book, Climate of Hope. As they did in a recent New York Times op-ed, “Climate Progress, With or Without Trump,” the former New York City mayor and former Sierra Club director make a tempting case: We don’t need the president, or even the federal government, to win the climate fight. “Cities are actually the key to saving the planet,” Bloomberg writes. In another chapter, he argues, “The more that business leaders and political leaders see climate change as an economic issue, not just an environmental one, the more progress we’ll make—and the better off our economy will be.” His thesis: “America’s ability to meet our climate pledge doesn’t depend on Washington.”

Bloomberg and Pope’s timing is impeccable, as environmentalists are in desperate need of this book’s optimism. It’s reassuring to imagine that, although the president believes global warming is a “hoax” created by the Chinese, cities and businesses alone can help America meet its climate obligations. And Bloomberg speaks from a position of authority. Not only was he a successful mayor of America’s largest city, but he’s also a plutocrat—just like the president, except vastly richer. Bloomberg understands both local government and big business, and thus, he can make a far more convincing case for the economic benefits of green policies than an environmentalist can.

But for all these positives, Climate of Hope falls short. Under President Barack Obama, despite his aggressive approach to climate change, the U.S. still wasn’t doing enough to meet its emissions reductions targets; Trump is pushing those targets further out of reach. While Climate of Hope lists various initiatives that cities and businesses can take, it doesn’t explain how these ideas comprise a comprehensive plan to reduce global warming before it’s too late.