These Climate Activists Make People Uncomfortable — And It’s Working

NEW YORK — Activists and donors, young and old, packed into a luxury co-op on the Upper West Side last Wednesday to celebrate the one-year birthday of Climate Defiance, a disruptive climate action group that is quite good at making powerful politicians, government officials, and corporate executives uncomfortable — with the goal of trying to end our reliance on fossil fuels.

Climate Defiance Executive Director Michael Greenberg put this power on full display at the event, as he gave supporters an excruciatingly hard sell, for what felt like an eternity, asking them to fund the organization’s in-your-face climate activism — and help take it national. 

“In one year, we’ve reached 70 million people on Twitter, with $0 in paid ads,” said Greenberg, noting his organization’s activism has been covered in The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and by this reporter in Rolling Stone. “This is absolutely having an impact,” he said. “And if we can do this in one year, on pretty much just the East Coast, imagine what we could do if we had twice the budget. We could be doing this in Chicago, L.A., and Houston — in the belly of the beast of the oil industry. Imagine what we could do if we had a real vibrant, distributed organizing program, so that people in small cities and [in] Omaha, Denver, and Minneapolis have the support they need to start their own chapters.”

Greenberg said that in just one year, Climate Defiance hounded several prominent officials so badly they quit their jobs. He noted the group protested Interior Department official Tommy Beaudreau, or “the climate criminal who personally signed off on the Willow Project, [and] 15 days later he resigned.” 

“We protested Jody Freeman, who’s a member — was a member — of the board of directors at ConocoPhillips,” he continued. “We gave her the ‘Big Oil Bestie’ award, we shut down the whole Harvard climate change conference where she’s affiliated.” She resigned from ConocoPhillips and kept her role at Harvard University.

Outside of the Climate Emergency Fund, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that funds organizations that lead disruptive climate actions, Greenberg told the crowd, there are few foundations willing to finance his group’s work, which has included bird-dogging politicians like coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) or ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods. 

“If we are to keep doing this work, it will be because people in this room give us money,” he said, calling on one donor in the room to give $20,000. His rationale for that number was a bit convoluted — honestly, it was a lot to follow — yet powerful nonetheless. 

Climate Defiance’s targeted, disruptive activism played a key role in convincing the Biden administration to pause a decision on whether to approve CP2, a liquefied natural-gas (LNG) export terminal that would be the largest in the United States — and also temporarily pause all pending decisions on new LNG export projects. As Greenberg noted at the event, the White House specifically included a quote from Climate Defiance in a press release about its decision to pause new LNG decisions. 

“If you stopped all proposed LNG build-out, that’s the equivalent of stopping 500 coal plants,” Greenberg said, extrapolating from there to suggest his group’s activities last year ultimately “had the impact of shutting down 25 coal plants.”

He continued: “Our annual budget is about $500,000 per year. So $500,000, divided by the 25 coal plant equivalents we’ve shut down, shows that for every $20,000, you have the impact of shutting down the equivalent of one coal plant.”

When he finally made the ask, it worked almost immediately: A man pledged $20,000 on the spot. 

“That is incredible. I am blown away,” Greenberg said, before asking if anyone else was ready to give $20,000. It worked, again, as a foundation executive pledged to give that much, too. 

Greenberg asked again: “Is there one more person ready to make a $20,000 commitment to Climate Defiance?”

After some awkward silence, Steven Donziger — an environmental justice lawyer who was imprisoned and held under house arrest for nearly three years due to his role in a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron — stepped in and joked, “The discomfort is part of the strategy.”

“The New Republic ran a piece on Climate Defiance, which was otherwise a very nice piece,” Greenberg said, “but they said that I am ‘lanky and awkward.’ So then I quote tweeted [them] and said, ‘Nobody has ever called me ‘lanky.’” He explained, “I think part of why I’m able to do this is that I don’t always get too concerned about social norms.”

After lowering the ask to $10,000, Greenberg joked that Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) “once told me that I take things too far — but tonight, I am ready to prove her absolutely right.” 

Later, as Greenberg asked for $5,000, he noted the group may have spent that much on tickets to attend the event with ExxonMobil’s CEO, where the organization unfurled a banner proclaiming, “Eat shit Darren.” Greenberg noted that the video got more than 5 million views on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. 

As the total haul eclipsed $60,000, Greenberg said that raising $70,000 “will be enough to make Joe Manchin crawl into a cave, and place a giant boulder in front, and hide out there in shame for the rest of his life.”

By the end, after roughly 30 exhausting minutes of hard selling, Greenberg reached that $70,000 goal — which was far more than anyone in the room could have expected. 

Margaret Klein Salamon, executive director at the Climate Emergency Fund — which has financially supported Climate Defiance from the start — was stunned. Afterwards, she tells Rolling Stone she’s going to use Greenberg’s strategy to raise money herself: Discomfort works.