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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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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 2h

"Freedom of speech has a point. It is there so people can speak truth to power. Often that truth is spoken first by young people."
snyder.substack.com/p/gaza-and-p...

Gaza and Protest

Why freedom of speech matters

snyder.substack.com

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KedricKillian @kedrickillian.bsky.social · 4h

The idea that there are activists and citizens who attend protests because it’s what they believe in is completely foreign to them. If it isn’t a personal grift, they don’t understand the motivation.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 5h

Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 3h

our current crop of techbros, like despots throughout history, are convinced that they've finally solved the Brutal Peasant Revolt Problem

i think they are absolutely wrong about this, to be clear

Jonathan Pierce @jonathanpierce.bsky.social · 3h

always funny that “hordes of unemployed show up at his gate with a battering ram and guillotine” is never a scenario they consider

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Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 5h

The US federal attack on Portland has resulted in the best advertisement for a city that I have ever seen. Round-the-clock joy, community solidarity and silliness that much of the West has lost and longs for.

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Dr Sea Rotmann @drsearotmann.bsky.social · 8h

As a coral reef ecologist by training, this is the single-greatest heartbreak of my otherwise blessed life: the extinction of the greatest ecosystems on earth, in our lifetime, with full knowledge it would happen, because humans love fascism & tat more than life 💔 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’

Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

www.theguardian.com

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☠️deadward niedermurder☠️ @niedermeyer.online · 1d

I hate how accurate this is

Ryan Broderick @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social · 25d

In the 2010s, this country's elites were thrown onto social platforms with everyone else and could finally read what we all think about them and it caused them so much psychic damage that they decided to destroy both the internet and democracy to make sure nothing like it ever happened again.

Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 25d

If this is what it took for you to be pushed into fascism you were probably already there

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 20h

Put simply: if you do not directly challenge the fossil fuel industry, you cede the policymaking terrain to that industry who will then manipulate politics, media, infrastructure, & markets to their advantage (& the disadvantage of renewables) as they have for more than century.

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 20h

This isn't a one-off comment from @stephenlacey.bsky.social (who I've generally appreciated listening to). Instead, his ill-considered thinking appears part of a pattern. The gravitational pull of centrist mind is evidently a powerful force.

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 3d

This is @stephenlacey.bsky.social's response on LinkedIn, and my own comment (most of the other comments are people with a pretty clear set of their own identity politics....)

You can't insist justice is pointless and then argue to focus on unfair energy bills.....

www.linkedin.com/posts/stephe...

View Stephen Lacey’s graphic link
Stephen LaceyStephen Lacey
• 1stVerified • 1st
Co-founder and Executive Editor, Latitude MediaCo-founder and Executive Editor, Latitude Media
5h • 5 hours ago • Visible to anyone on or off LinkedIn

Signed into bluesky to find this thread from david roberts about our recent Open Circuit episode, which argued for a reset on climate. I think it somewhat misinterprets the purpose/tone of the episode — but I'll take his argument at face value and provide some additional thoughts.

My main critique is of progressive climate groups. I am seeing these groups continue to lean into intersectionality and justice messaging, which clearly does not move public opinion. I tend to agree with Matthew Yglesias' critique of the Sunrise Movement (and other progressive climate groups) that they misread the median voter.

Progressive climate groups assume the electorate is full of latent climate activists who simply needed mobilization and moral clarity. In reality, the median voter tends to accept that climate change is real but prioritizes affordability, reliability, and economic stability above sweeping structural change.

Designing messages and policies for highly engaged progressives — for example, bundling climate action with issues like labor justice, housing, or universal healthcare — does nothing to reach the majority of Americans who are currently worried about the economy, or struggling to pay their bills right now.

The current moment demands a far more pragmatic approach.

Katherine Hamilton and Jigar Shah balanced the conversation very nicely by arguing for the distinct roles of activists and industry in messaging. And I do agree with David here that the Inflation Reduction Act was pragmatic policy — it's literally in the name of bill.

But I also think the president did an absolutely awful job making the case to the American people about what the IRA did. Would that have stopped Trump from dismantling it anyway? Of course not. But po…

View Ketan Joshi’s graphic link
Ketan Joshi
• You
Climate writer, analyst and advocate
7m

"I am seeing these groups continue to lean into intersectionality and justice messaging, which clearly does not move public opinion"

Mate, arguing that we should care about the ability for people to pay for their power bills *is* a justice issue, and environmental and climate justice campaigners have been shouting, fighting, and scrabbling in the dirt for funding on this for decades. By saying we should care about affordability, you are yourself being a woke lefty SJW mired in intersectionality and identity politics.

The second piece of bad news I have is this: if you actually want to fight for affordability, your enemy is not climate campaigners or justice campaigners, it's the right-wing groups who are being shockingly effective in force-feeding fossil fuels onto the power grid, worsening bills stress with data centres, and using a massive national media disinformation machine to help stymie development of grid infrastructure and new clean energy.

Not only are climate and enviro justice groups way ahead of you in your "why don't you try caring about people" idea, they're actively fighting against the actual causes wealth inequality and unreliability.
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Kiran Bhatraju
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CEO at Arcadia
32m

Your first mistake was signing into Bluesky

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View Stephen Lacey’s graphic link
Stephen Lacey

Author
Co-founder and Executive Editor, Latitude Media
23m

Haha, notice the 7 day gap?

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 20h

The notion that those with power and influence should abandon people and places to fossil fuels under the pretext it'll depoliticize the buildout of renewables which will then magically address the climate crisis isn't savvy pragmatism. It is moral and strategic capitulation. Full stop.

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 20h

It is foolish to contend that we can somehow avoid the hard politics of climate action by rendering the challenge into a bloodless infrastructure problem somehow immune to the power & influence of the fossil fuel industry.

Twitter post by Stephen Lacey regarding the cancellation of the 6.2 GW Esmeralda 7 Project stating: "This is also a story about weaponizing veto points. These cancellations are direct retribution for fights over coal, KeystoneXL & LNG exports.

We absolutely need to phase out fossils as fast as possible. But this is the other side of the coin when infrastructure gets political."

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

Takes genuine (if ethically fucked up) skill, tho, to do this so naturally.

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

People have a term for Vance’s response: Dissembling. Or, more technically, bullshit.

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 1d

Vance is having an incredible morning on the Sunday shows doing "oh so now it's illegal to [mundane thing]?"

A real quote when Vance is asked about whether Tom Homan kept the $50,000 he got in a fast food bag: "Is it illegal to take a payment for doing services?"

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 1d

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 1d

Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:

We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly

Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy

steady.page

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 1d

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 2d

New — Video shared with me shows ICE officers in DC detaining a man on Friday.

Bystander filming asks man for his name. ICE agent lies and says he’s not allowed to speak to him “by law” and another says “We’ve arrested American citizens for being too close…If he gets any closer, put him in cuffs.”

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Matthew Stiegler @matthewstiegler.bsky.social · 2d

Roberts is presiding over, and driving, a stunning collapse in faith in the U.S. Supreme Court, not just among the public, but among federal judges.

What a failure. The Titanic captain of chief justices.

Murshed Zaheed @murshedz.bsky.social · 2d

“More than three dozen federal judges have told The New York Times that the Supreme Court’s flurry of brief, opaque emergency orders in cases related to the Trump administration have left them confused about how to proceed in those matters and are hurting the judiciary’s image with the public.”

Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders

www.nytimes.com

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Dustin Mulvaney @dustinmulvaney.bsky.social · 2d

This article explains that what happened to the Esmeralda seven projects: “the proponents and BLM agreed to change their approach for the Esmeralda 7 Solar Project in Nevada,” instead of programmatic review, developers can review individually. 🔌💡
www.reviewjournal.com/business/ene...

Feds cancel review of Vegas-sized solar farm in Nevada desert

Esmeralda 7 in Nevada would have been among the nation’s largest solar projects. The Bureau of Land Management has listed the Nevada project as canceled since Thursday.

www.reviewjournal.com

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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 2d

every single tech idea is like “soon our robots will be capable of playing catch with your kid, freeing you up to spend more time working on your employers’ spreadsheets”

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 2d

At least a dozen times a day I go, "WTF?"

This is Trump's America. And it's a disgrace to everything my family has stood and fought for since we landed on America's shores in the 17th century.

In particular my grandfather, who fought fascists in WWII.

jen sometimes aph 🌻 @bunnibytz.bsky.social · 2d

via @youranonnews.bsky.social

CHICAGO: Trump's lawless goons (ICE) make a U-turn and smash into a woman's car, then proceed to arrest her by dragging her out of the vehicle.

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Leah Greenberg ❌👑 @leahgreenberg.bsky.social · 3d

"After a few moments of laughter, the No Kings Coalition issued the following statement"

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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.bsky.social · 2d

aaand we are officially in the hide-your-neighbors stage

Sophie Sherry @sophiesherry.bsky.social · 2d

During a military-style raid on a building in Chicago’s South Shore, one resident heard a knock on his door.   It wasn’t the feds — it was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for help.

He let them hide in his unit for the next 3 days.

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Neighbor shielded 7-year-old during South Shore federal raid: ‘I didn’t want them to take her’

During the Sept. 30 raid one tenant protected a terrified girl and her mom. Remnants at the complex, including a detailed map of all the units, offer clues to what authorities may have known before th...

chicago.suntimes.com

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Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 2d

Cortez Masto also sided with Republicans on the shutdown.

Some might call this poor judgment.

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 2d

Cortez Masto voted to confirm Doug Burgum, saying she “believe[d] Governor Burgum understands the need for a balanced approach to Nevada’s public land management that safeguards our environment [and] spurs clean-energy development”

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 2d

Nevada Sen. @cortezmasto.senate.gov calls on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to provide more information about the gigantic solar project in her state that just got axed with zero public explanation (via @lasvegassun.bsky.social)

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 2d

*INEFFECTIVE* permitting reform = fixation on agency process rather agency mission + "tech neutral" / "all of the above" energy policy (which serves as an excuse to not challenge fossil fuels) = political ping-pong.

We need to deal with root causes, not just symptoms.

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich @riogranderift.bsky.social · 2d

Correct.

*EFFECTIVE* permitting reform = Directing agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management to leverage their assets in service of a transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

BLM's current "multiple use" mission, as implemented, is a directionless mess enabling Trump regime's behavior.

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 2d

yeah, pretty sure permitting reform and repealing regulations wouldn’t save a solar farm blocked by a government refusing to issue permits

the final approval for esmeralda 7 was locked and loaded to come in july lol

Ben Schifman of IFP: The largest solar project in North America - 6.2 GW Esmeralda 7 project in NV - has been cancelled.

It takes >2 pages just to list the laws, regulations, & policies it had to comply with to be permitted.

Our permitting system is too complex with *far* too many veto points.