Advocates and researchers of the energy transition are woefully ill-equipped to do battle with the fossil fuel industry. In this monologue, Chris identifies what’s needed and what’s missing, then reinforces those points with excerpts from a recent conversation with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).   Sources Steve McBee, “Straight-talk with Senator Whitehouse,” Amped, October 1, 2026.   Jigar Shah, “Senator Whitehouse on Why Democrats Need a Climate Villain,” Energy Empire Podcast, October 5, 2026.   Mirian Vilela, “Gus Speth -- A New Consciousness and the Eight-fold Way towards Sustainability,” Interview with James Gustave Speth, Earth Charter Podcast: Turning Conscience Into Action, Earth Charter International, January 13, 2021.    Elie Wiesel’s Acceptance Speech on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1986.   George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant, Chelsea Green, September 16, 2014.

In NN#9, we welcome Steve McBee, founder of AMPED, “the political and cultural infrastructure the clean energy industry never built.” We discuss how the clean energy industry needs to organize to do battle with the fossil fuel industry and win on every level—from popular opinion to federal policy.    Bio   Steve McBee is a longtime energy strategist who previously served as CEO of NRG Home, which was a consumer product arm of NRG, a large utility serving the northeastern US. It included one of the largest retail energy providers in the US deregulated energy market and a portfolio of green growth distributed energy businesses serving solar, EV, and energy efficiency markets. Since then, he has been the founder and CEO of Huck Capital, a San Francisco-based investment platform financing and building sustainable energy businesses that accelerate the energy transition. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of McBee Strategic Consulting, an advisory platform based in Washington, DC.   Sources   AMPED   Steve McBee’s profile page at Huck Capital   Steve McBee, “Paying Our Way,” Amped, September 10, 2026.    Steve McBee, “Building Clean Energy’s Powerbase,” Amped, September 8, 2026.    Steve McBee, “The Messaging Gap: Building the Machine to Win,” Amped, August 26, 2026.    Steve McBee, “Stuck in the Queue: Why Cheap Power Can’t Get Onto the Grid,” Amped, August 13, 2026.    Steve McBee, “Clean Energy’s Missing Powerbase,” Amped, August 7, 2026.    Steve McBee, “The Messaging Gap: Why Clean Energy Is Losing the Narrative It Should Be Winning,” Amped, August 3, 2026.    Steve McBee’s post about launching AMPED, LinkedIn, May 19, 2026.    Ingmar Rentzhog, “Why The 89% Climate Majority Keeps Losing,” Forbes, August 16, 2026.    Debra Kahn, “New clean energy advocacy firm mounts ‘challenge to the groups in Washington’,” PoliticoPro, May 19, 2026.   Debra Kahn, Jacob Wendler and Daniel Barnes, “A new player in clean energy advocacy,” Politico, May 19, 2026.    Julian Spector, “Meet the super PAC working to crush clean energy’s political foes,” Canary Media, September 1, 2026.   Anthony Leiserowitz’ research at the Yale School of the Environment    

In NN#8, Chris finally invites a guest to join the podcast rather than just sharing his own views. He cordially welcomes Dr. Emily Grubert to the show to discuss their respective complaints about deficiencies in energy and climate modeling, and how they might be cured. Sources   Emily Grubert’s personal website   Emily Grubert, “The state of energy transition research and the need for fossil phase-out: evidence from Environmental Research Letters,” Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 21, No. 14, July 20, 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae8610.     Joshua Lappen and Emily Grubert, “Fossil Energy Minimum Viable Scale,” Science, Vol. 386, No. 6734, January 29, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/science.aea0972.    TT#8: Fixing Climate Communications, Transition Times, June 19, 2026.   NN#6: Backsliding on Climate, Transition Times, July 2, 2026.   TT#10: The Heat is On, Transition Times, July 7, 2026.   TT#12: A Failure to Communicate, Transition Times, July 31, 2026.   TT#5: CCS in the spotlight (again), Transition Times, May 29, 2026.   NN#4: Carbon Capture Follies, Transition Times, May 29, 2026.   Van Vuuren, D. P., O'Neill, B. C., Tebaldi, C., Sanderson, B. M., Chini, L. P., Friedlingstein, P., Hasegawa, T., Riahi, K., Govindasamy, B., Bauer, N., Eyring, V., Fall, C. M. N., Frieler, K., Gidden, M. J., Gohar, L. K., Högner, A., Jones, A. D., Kikstra, J., King, A., Knutti, R., Kriegler, E., Lawrence, P., Lennard, C., Lowe, J., Mathison, C., Mehmood, S., Nicholls, Z., Prado, L. F., Zhang, Q., Rose, S. K., Ruane, A. C., Sandstad, M., Schleussner, C.-F., Seferian, R., Sillmann, J., Smith, C., Sörensson, A. A., Panickal, S., Tachiiri, K., Vaughan, N., Vishwanathan, S. S., Yokohata, T., Zecchetto, M., and Ziehn, T.: The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP7 (ScenarioMIP-CMIP7), Geosci. Model Dev., 19, 2627–2656, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-2627-2026, 2026.   Zeke Hausfather, Glen Peters, and Piers Forster, “On the death of RCP8.5,” The Climate Brink, May 18, 2026.   Robert McSweeney, Cecilia Keating, Zeke Hausfather, “Factcheck: Trump’s false claims about the IPCC and ‘RCP8.5’ climate scenario,” Carbon Brief, May 19, 2026.            

It’s time for energy and climate modelers to start trying to tell the world what’s likely to happen, and show them how to phase out fossil fuels completely. Sources   Emily Grubert’s personal website   Emily Grubert, “The state of energy transition research and the need for fossil phase-out: evidence from Environmental Research Letters,” Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 21, No. 14, July 20, 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae8610.     Van Vuuren, D. P., O'Neill, B. C., Tebaldi, C., Sanderson, B. M., Chini, L. P., Friedlingstein, P., Hasegawa, T., Riahi, K., Govindasamy, B., Bauer, N., Eyring, V., Fall, C. M. N., Frieler, K., Gidden, M. J., Gohar, L. K., Högner, A., Jones, A. D., Kikstra, J., King, A., Knutti, R., Kriegler, E., Lawrence, P., Lennard, C., Lowe, J., Mathison, C., Mehmood, S., Nicholls, Z., Prado, L. F., Zhang, Q., Rose, S. K., Ruane, A. C., Sandstad, M., Schleussner, C.-F., Seferian, R., Sillmann, J., Smith, C., Sörensson, A. A., Panickal, S., Tachiiri, K., Vaughan, N., Vishwanathan, S. S., Yokohata, T., Zecchetto, M., and Ziehn, T.: The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP7 (ScenarioMIP-CMIP7), Geosci. Model Dev., 19, 2627–2656, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-2627-2026, 2026.   Zeke Hausfather, Glen Peters, and Piers Forster, “On the death of RCP8.5,” The Climate Brink, May 18, 2026.   Robert McSweeney, Cecilia Keating, Zeke Hausfather, “Factcheck: Trump’s false claims about the IPCC and ‘RCP8.5’ climate scenario,” Carbon Brief, May 19, 2026.    

Much of the world is backsliding on their climate commitments just when we need them to be increasing their ambition, but taking action when it’s difficult is the name of the game. Sources   Jan Rosenow, “Is electrification happening fast enough?” Bright Spots, June 14, 2026.   Valerie Volcovici, “Gas plants for US data centers to be major source of climate change-linked emissions, report says,” Reuters, July 1, 2026.   Olivia Raimonde and Spencer Soper, “Big Tech’s Carbon Emissions Spike With Runaway Growth of AI,” Bloomberg, July 1, 2026.   Episode #135 – Internalizing Climate Risk (with Bob Litterman), Energy Transition Show, November 25, 2020.   David Gelles, “How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change,” The New York Times, January 17, 2026.   Lisa Friedman and Maxine Joselow, “Trump Allies Near ‘Total Victory’ in Wiping Out U.S. Climate Regulation,” The New York Times, February 9, 2026.   David Lawder, “World Bank to abandon goal to devote 45% of lending resources to climate change projects,” Reuters, June 29, 2026.   Jano Gibson, “US accused of trying to 'edit out' climate change in Antarctic report,” ABC News, June 18, 2026.   Ysabelle Kempe, “New York state gives up on its most ambitious climate targets,” Canary Media,  May 27, 2026.   Ryan Cooper, “Better Affordability Through Climate Policy,” The American Prospect, June 22, 2026.   Hans Nicholas Jong, “Indonesia backs away from coal exit test case amid financial and political pushback,” Mongabay, January 15, 2026.   Janet Wood, “Ministers scrap proposal to require solar photovoltaic canopies on public car parks after industry consultation raises cost concerns,” Freight Carbon Zero, May 28, 206.    Simon Evans, “Factcheck: Why Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is wrong about UK’s net-zero goal,” Carbon Brief, March 18, 2025.    Elena Giordano, “Europe must choose between AI and climate goals, data center lobby says,” PoliticoPro, June 17, 2026.   Mike Scott, “Big Tech splits over proposed shake up of clean energy accounting,” Reuters, May 26, 2026.   John Ainger, “Trump’s White House Takes Aim at EU Emissions Law,” Bloomberg, July 1, 2026.   Episode #269 – Trump’s War on the Energy Transition, Energy Transition Show, Februrary 11, 2026.   Jennifer McDermott, “Trump administration to buy back another energy company’s offshore wind leases for 4 more projects,” Associated Press, June 17, 2026.   Jennifer McDermott, “Federal judge strikes down some Trump administration actions that have slowed clean energy projects,” Associated Press, April 21, 2026.   Leah Stokes, Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States, Oxford University Press, 2020.   Episode #121 – Winning and Losing the Policy Game, Energy Transition Show, February 11, 2026.   Susan Lamontagne, “This is the wrong time for major media to shut down environmental coverage,” The New Lede, June 22, 206.    Eric Roston, “What Americans Who Worry About Climate Change Are Getting Wrong,” Bloomberg, June 25, 2026.   Energy Transition Index 2026, World Economic Forum, June 2026.    “Response to Parliament passing the Seventh Carbon Budget into law,” Climate Change Committee, June 24, 2026.   Simon Evans, “Q&A: How UK’s seventh carbon budget will deliver ‘£865bn’ in economic benefits,” Carbon Brief, June 3, 2026.   Electrify Now   Press release: “Governments' Joint Statement on the launch of Electrify Now,” European Union, June 22, 2026.   Press release: “The age of electricity has arrived,” Electrify Now, June 23, 2026.