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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich

@riogranderift.bsky.social

1.7K followers 1.1K following 2.2K posts

I wield the power of the law to foster thriving, resilient western U.S. lands, waters, wildlife, and communities in the face of a changing climate. Executive Director: @westernlaw.org Thoughts my own.

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · Jan 16

My thoughts on @westernlaw.bsky.social's strategic approach to the Trump 2.0 era.

✅ Hold the line at the federal level
✅ Move in space at the state level
✅ Build power for change

How? With an ecology of kinship.

TO THE WESTERN HORIZONS!

The Western Environmental Law Center’s Strategic Approach to the Confluence of Political, Ecological, and Economic Crises Faced by the…

medium.com

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Reposted by Erik Schlenker-Goodrich

DocDanPgh @docdanpgh.bsky.social · 8h

People keep saying that Trump is prosecuting his political enemies but that’s not what this is.

She’s not a political enemy, she’s a prosecutor who charged and tried a criminal. The criminal got away and now has the power to exact revenge. A mobster ordering a hit. That’s all this is!

Steven Beschloss @stevenbeschloss.bsky.social · 8h

It’s hard to overstate how grotesque is the prosecution of Letitia James. I hope John Roberts—who unleashed this malignant, vengeful career criminal on our beloved country—is enjoying Trump’s utter abuse of power and trashing of justice and the rule of law.

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 10h

Trump *and* Justice Kavanaugh's America.

CollinCountyDems @collincountydems.bsky.social · 13h

This is terrifying!

ICE breaks into this woman’s car in the pick-up line at West Loop Elementary school in Chicago and detains her before she can pick her kids up from school. (They were eventually let go after showing their documents)

This is Trump’s America.

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 16h

As we fight to hold the line in this moment & assess challenges & opportunities that (will) emerge from the Trump 2.0 ruins, I hope demand-side dogmatists abandon this argument.

Too much is on the line. We need both supply & demand side energy strategies. Full stop.

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 16h

...was used to rationalize "deals with the devil" that accommodated rather than challenged fossil fuel power.

E.g., "permitting reform" & false solutions such as fossil methane hydrogen, carbon capture, etc.

In other words, demand-side dogmatists created a permission structure for fossil fuels.

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 16h

Yet this proposition has been contested, often by folks fixated on demand-side strategies.

I perceived this as a pedantic "my demand strategy is better than your supply strategy" (even as folks who fought fossil fuel supply, like me, also worked on demand) but in recent years...

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 16h

Activists & advocates who directly confront the harms caused by fossil fuel production – as well as fossil fuel executives, per below – have long understood an obvious & otherwise unremarkable proposition: Fossil fuel supply creates fossil fuel demand.

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 21h

Please enjoy this executive at one of America's biggest gas companies openly admitting that expanding supply leads to increased demand for fossil fuels

He is not wrong: frantic expansion of fossil fuel supply worsens climate change. Tax it, cut subsidies, wind it down

www.ft.com/content/5ba8...

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https://www.ft.com/content/5ba8caec-61d3-4aa9-a877-9b200ef4b5b0

Will Jordan, chief legal and policy officer at EQT, a leading US gas producer, also thought that any glut would be temporary, and said US demand was also rising on the boom in power-hungry artificial intelligence data centres.

Recommended

Oil & Gas industry
BP’s new chair signals more asset sales and demands faster restructuring

“Supply leads demand — you put the supply on the market and demand gets created.,” he said. “Over the long term we’re very bullish.”

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 18h

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Emily Grubert @gruberte.bsky.social · 2d

At the risk of angry-posting, I hope we learn something from this given the *extensive* environmental justice and environmental concessions that were made to "protect" the programs

Emily Pontecorvo @emilypont.bsky.social · 2d

🚨 Breaking: Heatmap has obtained a new internal DOE grant termination list that includes the two major DAC hub awards — Oxy/1PointFive's South Texas DAC Hub and Heirloom/Climeworks' Project Cypress in Louisiana.
heatmap.news/politics/doe...

Trump to Cancel Direct Air Capture Hubs in Texas, Louisiana

A new list of grant cancellations obtained by Heatmap includes Climeworks and Heirloom projects funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

heatmap.news

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Reposted by Erik Schlenker-Goodrich

K. Liakos @kliakos.com · 1d

America 2025:

The facade of a store in a Delaware strip mall called its fashion but the lights on the o n and exclamation point are out so it says it’s fashi

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Casey Ayers @casey.app · 1d

Violating the rights of a guy named Miranda is simply lazy writing

Patrick De Klotz @patdeklotz.bsky.social · 1d

American citizen, read this. www.koin.com/news/portlan...

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 1d

"We’ve learned, hearteningly, that majorities seem to harbor a deep attachment to liberal rights and liberties, one that instinctively recoils at masked kidnappings, at hypermilitarized vehicles on urban boulevards, at the trappings of totalitarian dictatorship. But this must be activated."

Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule

He wants to supercharge searing civil tensions to get low-information voters to embrace their inner authoritarian. Exactly two Democrats appear to fully grasp this.

newrepublic.com

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 1d

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

genuinely think they are feeding him AI videos

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Trump: "I don't know what could be worse than Portland. You don't even have stores anymore. They don't even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows."

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Micah @rincewind.run · 1d

feels like it should be a big deal that the president is directing the invasion of american cities based on what are almost certainly AI videos shown to him by his staff

maybe one of our ostensible news organizations could track down exactly what it is that he's seeing

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Trump: "I don't know what could be worse than Portland. You don't even have stores anymore. They don't even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows."

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 1d

Republicans 2026: "We took the freedom of speech away."

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Trump: "We took the freedom of speech away because that's been through the courts and the courts said you have freedom of speech, but what has happened is when they burn a flag it agitates and irritates crowds."

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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 1d

The literal reading of this statement is Pam Bondi is planning extrajudicial executions of random protesters.

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 1d

My gosh. After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly "carrying drugs," the US Attorney General says "Just like we did with cartels, we're going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa."

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 1d

My partner saw this on the streets of DC today. Seems right.

Image of street poster noting both the spotted lantern fly and Trump are “not welcome in dc”

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Alan Zibel @alanzibel.bsky.social · 2d

White House offers white glove, concierge service to fossil fuel companies.

Meanwhile, wind and solar aren’t even allowed to check into the Motel 6.

Great scoop from @jakespring.bsky.social

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

White House offers ‘concierge’ service to fossil fuel firms, official says

Brittany Kelm, a senior policy adviser for the National Energy Dominance Council, detailed in a podcast how the council works to advance fossil fuel projects.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 1d

Really critical for political leaders to speak as Pritzker does here directly — not abstractly — to the very real threat presented by the Trump regime’s militarization moves.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Pritzker: "He wants to militarize major cities because he wants us to get used to the idea of troops on the streets. I believe he's gonna post people outside of polling places and if he needs to in order to control those elections, he'll assume control of the ballot boxes & count the votes himself"

Reposted by Erik Schlenker-Goodrich

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) - Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family's food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food.
On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher's little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: "No one has died" because of his government's decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: "No children are dying on my watch."
That, Taher says, "is a lie."

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 1d

Just like the fossil fuel industry, Big Tech, flush with investor money and a rabid desire to build out data centers, cares little about affordability and is more than happy to leverage it's power to have utilities shift the energy costs of AI data centers onto families.

Nick Cunningham @nickcunningham.bsky.social · 3d

“By 2028, an average family in the region will be paying around $70 a month extra on their electricity bills because of forecasted data center growth”

I'm once again asking why ratepayers are subsidizing AI titans?

www.eenews.net/articles/dat...

Data center boom sparks sticker shock for PJM ratepayers

New analyses show that costs passed on to utility customers to guarantee future electricity demand are rising rapidly.

www.eenews.net

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🥈72 dogs 🐝 @careycuprisin.bsky.social · 1d

This is exactly right. Local urban politics terms like YIMBY and NIMBY are actively unhelpful in this context and should not be imported here.

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 1d

The desire to further plunder public lands owned by all Americans (not oil & gas companies) is a key reason why the fossil fuel industry relentlessly pushes for "permitting reform."

Typical API post advocating for permitting reform.

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 1d

Don't think for a second that the fossil fuel industry cares about affordability. They care about profits. And right now, they want to drill, baby, drill to feed the buildout of AI data centers to peddle even more AI slop.

Stand.earth @stand.earth · Sep 3

Even in areas with high amounts of renewable energy already online, data center buildout is leading to plans for new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Big Tech companies have a responsibility to ensure new data centers run on around the clock renewable energy, not dangerous and polluting fossil fuels.

Washington's hydropower has created a data center boom. Some are concerned about its future

In small town Washington — where hydropower is plentiful — data centers are creating jobs and funding amenities. But water and energy aren't unlimited — and some worry about long-term sustainability.

www.kuow.org

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 1d

The desire to further plunder public lands owned by all Americans (not oil & gas companies) is a key reason why the fossil fuel industry relentlessly pushes for "permitting reform."

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