So how do we fund climate defenses now?
It’s not hard to find moments to lobby lawmakers, join protests, and wave posters for the climate actions and policies we favor. The Take Action Network (TAN), Mobilize.us, and other protest calendars link us to these opportunities. It’s a time-saving way to push the political world toward what we yearn for - like boosting our climate protections and emission reductions.
Of course, such political efforts can also support access to abortion, gun rights, reducing homelessness, building affordable housing, feeding the poor, gun control, and an extensive mixture of Americans’ goals.
It’s that mixture that’s hurting us
There is a new awareness of how many of these progressive causes interfere with each other, slowing or preventing actual progress. An example of this self-interference:
US legislation in 2021 provided $42bn to expand broadband internet in rural America. As of last December, the program had yet to connect a single household. The project has been slowed to a halt because of federal conditions that require states to assure their projects contain plans for climate change, reach out to unionized workforces, and hire locally. [Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson]
Trying to help humanity in multiple ways tangled and stymied this broadband project.
On the other hand, consider a different project, freed from extra do-gooder requirements, whose progress was spectacular:
A bridge collapsed in Pennsylvania in 2023, crippling an essential highway. To fix it would typically take months of planning, consultation and reviews; Governor Josh Shapiro instead declared a state of emergency that allowed the reconstruction of the bridge with union labor but free from many normal processes. The highway reopened in 12 days, instead of the 12 to 24 months that it might have taken. [Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson]
Klein, Thompson and others point out that decades of progressive policies have been aimed at protecting against government abuses - but that many of them are preventing governments, at every level, from building quickly or affordably. Their research and theory is set forth in their new book Abundance.
How to prevent saddling one issue with others
It’s easy to see how a project aimed at, say local flood control, can treat residents in uncaring ways. If we hire a non-local contractor we forgo local jobs. If we avoid input from farmers, abutters, boaters, indigenous neighbors, fishermen, and anyone who likes the view as it is, we stonewall their diverse needs.
But that’s the point. Needs can be so diverse that the project can’t meet them all. It stumbles. And most lawmakers, regulators, and other elected officials cannot eschew these goals. So how can we prevent conflicting goals from holding a project back?
An unlikely possibility is to get the government to declare a state of emergency, as Josh Shapiro did. Locally, many counties do have the right to declare a state of emergency, but it usually requires a ‘threat of widespread damage, injury, or loss of life or property,’ and is not usually applicable to forward-looking adaptation projects like flood control.
An approach that’s having success is to leave government out of the project. A striking instance is the discovery of how to build new supportive housing in San Francisco. It seems to depend on forgoing all government funding and relying instead on private philanthropy to get it done.
The increasing privatization of affordable housing may be leading the way. The San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund has recruited Apple and other San Jose-based companies to back the Bay Area Housing Innovation Fund.
‘Getting projects financed through the state has been creating both long delays and massive funding escalations,’ said Jennifer Loving, CEO of Destination: Home, one of the beneficiary organizations.
The $50 million pilot fund will help finance at least four projects, with nearly half the homes for extremely low-income households for formerly homeless residents. The fund offers favorable loans to projects that can build affordable homes faster and more cost effectively to achieve a cost and time savings of 40 percent. [San Francisco Herald]
As the new Administration dries up funding for our climate adaptation projects from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), we might find a way to get help from one of the large national or regional philanthropies engaged in building climate defenses - groups like
The McKnight Foundation’s Climate & Energy Program which funds grassroots climate adaptation initiatives in the Midwest, including urban tree planting to combat rising temperatures.
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation which invests in watershed conservation to ensure long-term water security for cities and agricultural regions.
The Bezos Earth Fund which has supported projects in coastal cities to restore wetlands and mangroves, which act as natural buffers against sea-level rise.
More likely we can find - or help create - local philanthropies to fund our climate-change projects, organizations like
The Central Texas Community Foundation which funds local flood prevention, drought resilience, and wildfire mitigation projects in and near Austin, such as restoring buffers along the Colorado River to prevent erosion and flooding.
The East Bay Community Foundation in Oakland, CA which funds disaster prevention for vulnerable populations, including tree-planting and cooling strategies.
And if we want our donations and actions to combine climate action with another social goal (e.g. the East Bay Foundation combining support for vulnerable populations), there are organizations that can help us do that.
Want to identify county- and municipal-level philanthropies funding local climate adaptation projects? Check these directories.
Candid (Formerly GuideStar)
Community Foundation Locator (Council on Foundations)
The ClimateWorks Foundation – Funding Partners List
The Funders Network – Climate Resilience & Sustainability Program
The Solutions Project – 100% Community-Led Climate Funders
Local community foundation Networks, such as the League of California Community Foundation, and the New England Grassroots Environment Fund
Despite donating 3 - 15 times more money to charity than other wealthy nations, Americans are unlikely to find enough foundation money to revive the really big climate projects that are being strangled under the IRA. But foundation money brings two advantages over government money. First, grant committees, unlike government legislatures and administrators, need not satisfy multiple, perhaps conflicting, constituencies in a single grant. Second, the costs can be lower.
It remains to be seen whether Washington’s funding for climate actions has dropped permanently but, even if it hasn’t, an effort to interest foundations in filling the gap could pay off long-term.
And of course, in addition to seeking climate-oriented foundation grants for our favorite adaptation projects, we can help by contributing to those organizations, maybe even specifying how we want our donation to be used.
We can read a deeper dive into philanthropies’ attitudes toward climate change in this article in Hothouse, a multi-author newsletter from my fellow Substack writers.