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Members of the press wait for the arrival of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Bozeman, Montana on August 9, 2024.
"It's critically important to understand the issues confronting the news media in the places that are most pivotal in American presidential elections," said the head of Reporters Without Borders.
Known for its World Press Freedom Index, the global advocacy group Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday turned its attention to four U.S. states that are expected to be crucial in deciding the winner of the presidential election next week—and found that journalism is grappling with numerous crises in states where voters are especially reliant on the media in the last days of the campaign.
The group, also known by its French name, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), focused on Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada in the report, titled Press Freedom in the Swing States: The Climate for U.S. Journalism Ahead of the 2024 Election, and found that journalists they surveyed were concerned about hostility from local and state officials as well as the "economic viability" of local newsrooms and individual reporters.
"There can be no democracy without press freedom, so it's critically important to understand the issues confronting the news media in the places that are most pivotal in American presidential elections," said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF USA.
Across the swing states, 94% of respondents said they have found that public officials ignore public records requests or stall in providing records, making reporting difficult and robbing news consumers of information. Arizona officials were found to be the most "egregious offenders," and the state had the lowest overall political score in the report.
The report comes days after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said at a rally in Arizona that the press is "the enemy of the people"—recycling comments he frequently made during his presidential term.
Eighty-five percent of journalists in Arizona reported that "leading politicians and political party leaders explicitly insult, threaten, or incite hatred against journalists" and "act in an antagonistic manner towards the media."
"The hostile political environment for the press exacerbates the economic pressures facing media outlets."
But Arizona was one of the swing states surveyed that has made an effort to protect journalistic sources, through a shield law that ensures reporters can protect their sources' identities; the Arizona Media Subpoena Law, which restricts subpoenas against journalists; and a recently strengthened anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) law, which now protects free speech and press freedom.
The same cannot be said for Florida, which does not have a shield law and has only a "vaguely worded" anti-SLAPP measure.
Under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida's government has become increasingly hostile to journalists, with DeSantis championing bills to make it easier to sue media outlets.
"The state is withholding public records about the governor's travel," said an anonymous news director interviewed by RSF. "Violent threats to journalists from the public is a weekly regularity."
The report points to attacks on the media by a number of Florida agencies under DeSantis, including a letter from the state health department to a Tampa TV station that threatened the general manager with jail time if the station aired an ad promoting an abortion rights-focused ballot initiative.
"The hostile political environment for the press exacerbates the economic pressures facing media outlets," said RSF. "It likely also contributes to Florida's serious news desert problem. Over 300,000 Floridians have no local news source, the third highest figure of any U.S. state."
Annual wage data for Florida was not available to RSF, but reporters in Pennsylvania told the group that their biggest concerns are economic and center on whether journalists in the state will be able to continue providing their audiences with news that could affect their lives.
Eight-one percent of respondents in Pennsylvania said that "the average media outlet struggles economically and that journalists are generally unable to earn a living wage." The median wage for journalists in the state is barely half Pennsylvania's living wage, according to the report.
Ninety-four percent of journalists and media experts in the Keystone State also said they were concerned about animosity from politicians and the public, with reporters facing "persistent online harassment" and some reporting a bomb threat that targeted a newsroom, "being followed by unknown agitators," and one incident in which journalists were "in the sights" of a rooftop militiaman with a rifle.
"County commissioners and much of the GOP establishment will not speak with us because they believe we are biased against them, mainly because we reported on local [January 6 rioters], on our congressman voting against certifying Pennsylvania electoral votes in 2020, and our continued reporting on religious and right-wing groups inciting hate against LGBTQ people and all the associated campaigns, such as banning books from school libraries and changing school curricula," one editor told RSF.
Nevada had the highest overall press freedom score, with strong anti-SLAPP laws, widespread news distribution and few news deserts, and a median reporter salary slightly exceeding the state's living wage.
But 80% of respondents in the state said officials stall or ignore public records requests all or most of the time.
Several of RSF's recommendations for legislators centered on increasing government transparency to better allow journalists to do their jobs and to serve the public interest. The group called on legislators to:
To help newsrooms cope with volatile economic conditions and dwindling resources, RSF said state legislatures should "innovate new models" including increased public funding, tax rebates for news subscriptions, and policies requiring social media companies to compensate the news media for using their content.
"RSF," said Weimers, "hopes that this report will provide a starting point for all Americans to demand improvements in their states' media ecosystems: greater transparency, better access to information, and a marketplace that enables journalism to thrive."
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
Known for its World Press Freedom Index, the global advocacy group Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday turned its attention to four U.S. states that are expected to be crucial in deciding the winner of the presidential election next week—and found that journalism is grappling with numerous crises in states where voters are especially reliant on the media in the last days of the campaign.
The group, also known by its French name, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), focused on Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada in the report, titled Press Freedom in the Swing States: The Climate for U.S. Journalism Ahead of the 2024 Election, and found that journalists they surveyed were concerned about hostility from local and state officials as well as the "economic viability" of local newsrooms and individual reporters.
"There can be no democracy without press freedom, so it's critically important to understand the issues confronting the news media in the places that are most pivotal in American presidential elections," said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF USA.
Across the swing states, 94% of respondents said they have found that public officials ignore public records requests or stall in providing records, making reporting difficult and robbing news consumers of information. Arizona officials were found to be the most "egregious offenders," and the state had the lowest overall political score in the report.
The report comes days after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said at a rally in Arizona that the press is "the enemy of the people"—recycling comments he frequently made during his presidential term.
Eighty-five percent of journalists in Arizona reported that "leading politicians and political party leaders explicitly insult, threaten, or incite hatred against journalists" and "act in an antagonistic manner towards the media."
"The hostile political environment for the press exacerbates the economic pressures facing media outlets."
But Arizona was one of the swing states surveyed that has made an effort to protect journalistic sources, through a shield law that ensures reporters can protect their sources' identities; the Arizona Media Subpoena Law, which restricts subpoenas against journalists; and a recently strengthened anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) law, which now protects free speech and press freedom.
The same cannot be said for Florida, which does not have a shield law and has only a "vaguely worded" anti-SLAPP measure.
Under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida's government has become increasingly hostile to journalists, with DeSantis championing bills to make it easier to sue media outlets.
"The state is withholding public records about the governor's travel," said an anonymous news director interviewed by RSF. "Violent threats to journalists from the public is a weekly regularity."
The report points to attacks on the media by a number of Florida agencies under DeSantis, including a letter from the state health department to a Tampa TV station that threatened the general manager with jail time if the station aired an ad promoting an abortion rights-focused ballot initiative.
"The hostile political environment for the press exacerbates the economic pressures facing media outlets," said RSF. "It likely also contributes to Florida's serious news desert problem. Over 300,000 Floridians have no local news source, the third highest figure of any U.S. state."
Annual wage data for Florida was not available to RSF, but reporters in Pennsylvania told the group that their biggest concerns are economic and center on whether journalists in the state will be able to continue providing their audiences with news that could affect their lives.
Eight-one percent of respondents in Pennsylvania said that "the average media outlet struggles economically and that journalists are generally unable to earn a living wage." The median wage for journalists in the state is barely half Pennsylvania's living wage, according to the report.
Ninety-four percent of journalists and media experts in the Keystone State also said they were concerned about animosity from politicians and the public, with reporters facing "persistent online harassment" and some reporting a bomb threat that targeted a newsroom, "being followed by unknown agitators," and one incident in which journalists were "in the sights" of a rooftop militiaman with a rifle.
"County commissioners and much of the GOP establishment will not speak with us because they believe we are biased against them, mainly because we reported on local [January 6 rioters], on our congressman voting against certifying Pennsylvania electoral votes in 2020, and our continued reporting on religious and right-wing groups inciting hate against LGBTQ people and all the associated campaigns, such as banning books from school libraries and changing school curricula," one editor told RSF.
Nevada had the highest overall press freedom score, with strong anti-SLAPP laws, widespread news distribution and few news deserts, and a median reporter salary slightly exceeding the state's living wage.
But 80% of respondents in the state said officials stall or ignore public records requests all or most of the time.
Several of RSF's recommendations for legislators centered on increasing government transparency to better allow journalists to do their jobs and to serve the public interest. The group called on legislators to:
To help newsrooms cope with volatile economic conditions and dwindling resources, RSF said state legislatures should "innovate new models" including increased public funding, tax rebates for news subscriptions, and policies requiring social media companies to compensate the news media for using their content.
"RSF," said Weimers, "hopes that this report will provide a starting point for all Americans to demand improvements in their states' media ecosystems: greater transparency, better access to information, and a marketplace that enables journalism to thrive."
Known for its World Press Freedom Index, the global advocacy group Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday turned its attention to four U.S. states that are expected to be crucial in deciding the winner of the presidential election next week—and found that journalism is grappling with numerous crises in states where voters are especially reliant on the media in the last days of the campaign.
The group, also known by its French name, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), focused on Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada in the report, titled Press Freedom in the Swing States: The Climate for U.S. Journalism Ahead of the 2024 Election, and found that journalists they surveyed were concerned about hostility from local and state officials as well as the "economic viability" of local newsrooms and individual reporters.
"There can be no democracy without press freedom, so it's critically important to understand the issues confronting the news media in the places that are most pivotal in American presidential elections," said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF USA.
Across the swing states, 94% of respondents said they have found that public officials ignore public records requests or stall in providing records, making reporting difficult and robbing news consumers of information. Arizona officials were found to be the most "egregious offenders," and the state had the lowest overall political score in the report.
The report comes days after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said at a rally in Arizona that the press is "the enemy of the people"—recycling comments he frequently made during his presidential term.
Eighty-five percent of journalists in Arizona reported that "leading politicians and political party leaders explicitly insult, threaten, or incite hatred against journalists" and "act in an antagonistic manner towards the media."
"The hostile political environment for the press exacerbates the economic pressures facing media outlets."
But Arizona was one of the swing states surveyed that has made an effort to protect journalistic sources, through a shield law that ensures reporters can protect their sources' identities; the Arizona Media Subpoena Law, which restricts subpoenas against journalists; and a recently strengthened anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) law, which now protects free speech and press freedom.
The same cannot be said for Florida, which does not have a shield law and has only a "vaguely worded" anti-SLAPP measure.
Under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida's government has become increasingly hostile to journalists, with DeSantis championing bills to make it easier to sue media outlets.
"The state is withholding public records about the governor's travel," said an anonymous news director interviewed by RSF. "Violent threats to journalists from the public is a weekly regularity."
The report points to attacks on the media by a number of Florida agencies under DeSantis, including a letter from the state health department to a Tampa TV station that threatened the general manager with jail time if the station aired an ad promoting an abortion rights-focused ballot initiative.
"The hostile political environment for the press exacerbates the economic pressures facing media outlets," said RSF. "It likely also contributes to Florida's serious news desert problem. Over 300,000 Floridians have no local news source, the third highest figure of any U.S. state."
Annual wage data for Florida was not available to RSF, but reporters in Pennsylvania told the group that their biggest concerns are economic and center on whether journalists in the state will be able to continue providing their audiences with news that could affect their lives.
Eight-one percent of respondents in Pennsylvania said that "the average media outlet struggles economically and that journalists are generally unable to earn a living wage." The median wage for journalists in the state is barely half Pennsylvania's living wage, according to the report.
Ninety-four percent of journalists and media experts in the Keystone State also said they were concerned about animosity from politicians and the public, with reporters facing "persistent online harassment" and some reporting a bomb threat that targeted a newsroom, "being followed by unknown agitators," and one incident in which journalists were "in the sights" of a rooftop militiaman with a rifle.
"County commissioners and much of the GOP establishment will not speak with us because they believe we are biased against them, mainly because we reported on local [January 6 rioters], on our congressman voting against certifying Pennsylvania electoral votes in 2020, and our continued reporting on religious and right-wing groups inciting hate against LGBTQ people and all the associated campaigns, such as banning books from school libraries and changing school curricula," one editor told RSF.
Nevada had the highest overall press freedom score, with strong anti-SLAPP laws, widespread news distribution and few news deserts, and a median reporter salary slightly exceeding the state's living wage.
But 80% of respondents in the state said officials stall or ignore public records requests all or most of the time.
Several of RSF's recommendations for legislators centered on increasing government transparency to better allow journalists to do their jobs and to serve the public interest. The group called on legislators to:
To help newsrooms cope with volatile economic conditions and dwindling resources, RSF said state legislatures should "innovate new models" including increased public funding, tax rebates for news subscriptions, and policies requiring social media companies to compensate the news media for using their content.
"RSF," said Weimers, "hopes that this report will provide a starting point for all Americans to demand improvements in their states' media ecosystems: greater transparency, better access to information, and a marketplace that enables journalism to thrive."
"If you're a corporation in a favored industry, you can break the law. You can get caught. You can be prosecuted and sentenced with a $100 million fine, and it doesn't matter," said one consumer advocate.
In what could be a U.S. first, President Donald Trump last week pardoned a criminal corporation, a move that largely flew under the proverbial radar amid his pardon spree for white-collar criminals including at least one of his supporters.
On March 28, Trump pardoned HDR Global Trading, the owner and operator of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX; company co-founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed; and former business development chief Gregory Dwyer.
The company and the four men hads each pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act "by willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an adequate" anti-money laundering program, as required by law. In January, the U.S. Department of Justice sentenced BitMEX to a fine of $100 million, while the executives were sentenced to criminal probation and ordered to pay civil fines.
While experts noted that Trump acted within his rights to pardon the corporation, there is no known precedent for a president taking such action.
Trump's corporate pardon sends a clear message: “If you’re a corporation in a favored industry, you can break the law. You can get caught. You can be prosecuted and sentenced with a $100 million fine, and it doesn’t matter”
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— Rick Claypool (@rickclaypool.bsky.social) April 2, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Noting the U.S. Supreme Court's highly controversial 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling—which affirmed corporate personhood and the dubious notion that unlimited outside spending on political campaigns is free speech—Stanford Law School professor Bernadette Meyler told The Intercept that "while we have seen the rise of a trend of treating corporations as persons in other areas of law, we haven't seen that so far in the area of pardoning."
Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and preeminent pardons expert, wrote for The Hill on Tuesday that the BitMEX pardons send the message that "companies involved in financial crimes don't have to worry about accountability under this president, as least when it comes to crypto, for reasons that he has no incentive to ever make known."
"BitMEX can continue its prior criminal practices with federal impunity, and maybe even rely on the pardon to thwart future investigations into related conduct by federal lawmakers or state prosecutors," Wehle added. "The biggest losers in this deal are, once again, the American people, including the more than 77 million who might finally be realizing that they voted for lawlessness last November."
"The biggest losers in this deal are, once again, the American people."
Brandon Garrett, a Duke University law professor specializing in corporate crime and punishment, told The Intercept that the BitMEX pardons are part of a wider pattern of impunity under Trump, who "now seems to be systematically pardoning corporate malefactors left and right without respect, really, to any real serious consideration about the merits of the cases [or] the larger policy implications of issuing these pardons."
As the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen recently noted, "The Trump administration has dropped, withdrawn, or halted investigations and enforcement actions against over 100 corporations in its first two months in office."
Beneficiaries include companies owned or led by Trump donors or allies, including private prison giant GEO Group; Zelle network banks JPMorgan and Bank of America; crypto firms Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, OpenSea, Ripple, and Robinhood; and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
"Trump's corporate pardons show the president's true base is the billionaire executives and corporate elites lining up to indulge their greed at the trough of Trump's corruption," Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool said last week. "Trump's soft-on-corporate crime approach invites a corporate crime spree and potentially catastrophic abuses for America's consumers, workers, and communities."
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman added that the Trump administration's "effective no-enforcement policy against corporations virtually guarantees more financial scams, more workplace discrimination, more poisoning of the air and water, more food contamination, more fraud, more disease, and more preventable death."
"No parliamentary tricks will change the fact that Trump, Musk, and his allies in Congress are trying to give a huge handout to the ultrawealthy while forcing the rest of us to foot the bill," wrote one watchdog.
Watchdogs and other critics swiftly denounced a budget blueprint unveiled by Senate Republicans on Wednesday that endeavors to get the GOP one step closer to delivering additional spending and trillions in tax cuts desired by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Observers are also condemning Republicans' plans to skirt the Senate parliamentarian and use a controversial gimmick to make an extension of provisions from Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act look "free"—even the cost of extending those cuts would be nearly $4 trillion over 10 years, and the Senate proposal includes a total of $5.3 trillion in tax cuts.
"Let's be clear: Trump and his allies in Congress are cooking the books in broad daylight. They don't want Americans to know that their scam of a tax bill, which gives trillions in giveaways to their billionaire and corporate donors, costs over $5 trillion," said David Kass, the executive director of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), in a statement on Wednesday.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, referenced Trump's billionaire adviser Elon Musk when declaring that "Republicans have chosen to prioritize the Trump-Musk agenda of picking the pockets of everyday people to shower billionaires with tax giveaways."
The Senate budget blueprint would increase the country's debt limit by $5 trillion and permanently extend tax cuts passed through Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, according to NPR.
Extending those tax cuts would primarily benefit the wealthy. According to a 2024 analysis from the Tax Policy Center, households making about $450,000 or more a year would receive nearly half of the benefits of extending key provisions of Trump's 2017 tax cuts.
According to a February report from ATF, the wealthiest Republicans on tax writing panels could save themselves millions through extending these cuts, particularly by keeping in place a higher estate tax exemption.
The Senate budget blueprint includes the $4.5 trillion tax plan passed by the House of Representatives in February, according to NPR. The House plan is crafted so the only way to achieve the requirements of the budget resolution is to enact steep cuts to Medicaid. The budget resolution also makes cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) all but certain.
Sharon Parrott, the president of the nonpartisan research organization the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, framed the Senate budget plan like this: "Congress is speeding down a path to a deeply harmful budget and tax 'reconciliation' bill that showers tax cuts on millionaires, billionaires, and corporations—and pays for it in part by raising healthcare and food costs through cuts in Medicaid and SNAP, increasing hardship and leaving millions without health coverage."
In order to move the legislation forward, Senate Republicans are planning on bypassing the Senate parliamentarian—who has sway over whether legislation can be sped up through the filibuster-free reconciliation process—on a crucial budgeting matter, according to Wednesday reporting from The New York Times.
By asserting that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, can decide the cost of legislation Republicans are angling not to get the parliamentarian's sign-off on their claim that extending the tax cuts will be free, per the Times.
The GOP is attempting to make the tax cut extension appear free by using the "current policy" baseline rather than the "current law" baseline. One expert who spoke to the Times compared it to "taking an expensive weeklong vacation and then assuming you can spend an extra $1,000 per day forever since you are no longer staying at the Plaza."
A trio of experts writing for the Center for American Progress wrote that the approach is unprecedented in the past five decades since the Congressional Budget Office was formed and lawmakers acted within the current budget framework.
"Don't be fooled: the only way Senate Republicans can pay for their tax cuts to the wealthy is by taking a chainsaw to Medicaid, school lunches for kids, and driving up the cost of groceries and housing," said the executive director of the watchdog Accoutable.US, Tony Carrk, on Wednesday. "The math doesn't add up, and no parliamentary tricks will change the fact that Trump, Musk, and his allies in Congress are trying to give a huge handout to the ultrawealthy while forcing the rest of us to foot the bill."
Republicans narrowly control both chambers of Congress. According to Politico, the Senate will vote as soon as Thursday to consider the blueprint, which if adopted, would allow the House to try to adopt it before breaking for a two week recess.
If humanity stays on current course, warns top insurer, the "financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable."
A veteran financial consultant and insurance executive is warning his fellow capitalists that their commitment to profits and market supremacy is endangering the economic system to which they adhere and that if corrective actions are not taken capitalism itself will soon be consumed by the financial and social costs of a planet being cooked by the burning of fossil fuels.
According to Günther Thallinger, a former top executive at Germany's branch of the consulting giant McKinsey & Company and currently a board member of Allianz SE, one of the largest insurance companies in the world, the climate crisis is on a path to destroy capitalism as we know it.
"We are fast approaching temperature levels—1.5C, 2C, 3C—where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many" of the risks associated with the climate crisis, Thallinger writes in a recent post highlighted Thursday by The Guardian.
"Meanwhile in the real world—a capitalist declares that capitalism is no longer sustainable..."
With "entire regions becoming uninsurable," he continues, the soaring costs of rebuilding and the insecurity of investments "threaten the very foundation of the financial sector," which he describes as " a climate-induced credit crunch" that will reverberate across national economies and globally.
"This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry," he warns. "The economic value of entire regions—coastal, arid, wildfire-prone—will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like."
Commenting on the Guardian's coverage of Thallinger's declaration, Dan Taylor, a senior lecturer in social and political thought at the Open University, said, "Meanwhile in the real world—a capitalist declares that capitalism is no longer sustainable..."
While climate scientists, experts, and activists for decades have issued warning after warning of the threats posed by the burning of coal, oil, and gas and humanity's consumption of products derived from fossil fuels, the insurance industry has been the arm of capitalism most attuned to the lurking dangers.
"Here go the radical leftist insurance companies again," said David Abernathy, professor of global studies at Warren Wilson College, in a caustic response to Thallinger's latest warnings.
Despite their understanding of the threat, however, the world's insurers have primarily aimed to have it both ways, participating in the carnage by continuing to insure fossil fuel projects and underwriting expansion of the industry while increasingly attempting to offset their exposure to financial losses by changing policy agreements and lobbying governments for ever-increasing protections and preferable regulatory conditions.
In the post, self-published to LinkedIn last week, Thallinger—who has over many years lobbied for a more sustainable form of capitalism and led calls for a net-zero framework for corporations and industries—warned of the growing stress put on the insurance market worldwide by extreme weather events—including storms, floods, and fires—that ultimately will undermine the ability of markets to function or governments to keep pace with the costs:
There is no way to "adapt" to temperatures beyond human tolerance. There is limited adaptation to megafires, other than not building near forests. Whole cities built on flood plains cannot simply pick up and move uphill. And as temperatures continue to rise, adaptation itself becomes economically unviable.
Once we reach 3°C of warming, the situation locks in. Atmospheric energy at this level will persist for 100+ years due to carbon cycle inertia and the absence of scalable industrial carbon removal technologies. There is no known pathway to return to pre-2°C conditions. (See: IPCC AR6, 2023; NASA Earth Observatory: "The Long-Term Warming Commitment")
At that point, risk cannot be transferred (no insurance), risk cannot be absorbed (no public capacity), and risk cannot be adapted to (physical limits exceeded). That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.
In an interview earlier this year, Thallinger explained that failure to act on the crisis of a rapidly warming planet is not just perilous for humanity and natural systems but doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint.
"The cost of inaction is higher than the cost of transformation and adaptation," Thallinger said in February. "Extreme heat, storms, wildfires, floods, and billions in economic damage occur each year. In 2024, insured natural catastrophe losses surpassed $140 billion, marking the fifth straight year above $100 billion."
"Transitioning to a net-zero economy is not just about sustainability," he continued, "it is a financial and operational necessity to avoid a future where climate shocks outpace our ability to recover, straining governments, businesses, and households. Without decisive action, we risk crossing a threshold where adaptation is no longer possible, and the costs—human and financial—become unimaginable."
Thallinger's solution to the crisis is not to subvert the capitalist system by transitioning the world to an economic system based on shared resources, communal ownership, or a more enlightened egalitarian response. Instead, he proposes that a "reformed" capitalism is the solution, writing, "Capitalism must now solve this existential threat."
Calling for a reduction of emissions and a rapid scale-up of green energy technologies is the path forward, he argues, asking readers to understand "this is not about saving the planet," but rather "saving the conditions under which markets, finance, and civilization itself can continue to operate."
This disconnect was not lost on astute observers, including Antía Casted, a senior researcher at the Sir Michael Marmot Institute of Health Equity, who suggested concern over Thallinger's prescription.
"It would be fine if [the climate crisis] destroyed civilization and maintained capitalism," Casted noted. "They just need to find a way for capitalism to work without people."