Two years of Quitting Carbon

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Today marks two years since I launched this newsletter.

First, a big thanks to all of you who have supported Quitting Carbon by signing up for the newsletter, sharing a story on social media, or paying for a monthly or annual subscription.

In a mix of original reporting, commentary, Q&As with policy and business leaders, and roundups of what I’ve been reading, my goal over the past two years has been to explain the unfolding energy transition.

It is humbling that readers from across the globe make time each week for stories in this newsletter about repowering a wind farm in California, decarbonizing homes for low-income households, scaling up virtual power plants, and winning the legal fight against the Trump administration's war on clean energy – to cite some of your favorites from this year.

I am immensely grateful to everyone who has invested in this newsletter with a paid subscription, even though the stories were free to read.     

But now – more than ever – journalism depends on readers’ willingness to pay for the stories that really matter to them.

Most of the energy and climate journalism I value most is published either under a nonprofit model (Canary Media, Inside Climate News), or via newsletters like this one (Volts, Cold Eye Earth, Climate-Colored Goggles, and Transition Times). With legacy media unwilling to reliably support journalism on the climate crisis and energy transition over the long term, journalists have turned to other models to keep doing the work we love.

During Quitting Carbon’s first two years, everything I published was free and open to the public because I want these stories to reach as many people as possible.

But the unavoidable truth is that unless more readers are willing to pay for journalism, this newsletter and many others won't survive.

So, grudgingly, I've decided that beginning in this newsletter's third year, some stories will be for paid subscribers only.

Why a paywall and why now?

As the journalism legend James Fallows put it recently in his own newsletter, Breaking the News:

“In essence it’s because reporting and writing are work, and journalism as a whole made a grave mistake by offering so much of its work for free, back at the dawn of the internet. This made publications too reliant on the 'attention economy,' which in turn meant clickbait and ads. It also conditioned readers to think that journalism was a mere loss-leader commodity, without value in its own right.”

“Of course some writing needs to be made as broadly available as inexpensively as possible. But overall I believe in paying to support the writing and investigation that I value, and I appreciate those doing so here. This is my journalistic home.”   

Quitting Carbon is my journalistic home. But I need your support to keep it going.

In return for your generosity, I make this promise: You’ll never read a story published at Quitting Carbon with the first draft generated by AI. All the work in this newsletter is – and always will be – my own, informed by my more than two decades of experience as a reporter and editor covering climate solutions and clean energy.

So, please consider becoming a monthly or annual subscriber, gifting a paid subscription, or making a one-time contribution of whatever you can afford, so I can continue bringing you my reporting and analysis on the world’s most important story.

With gratitude,

Justin

P.S. You can find me on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Mastodon and reach me at justingerdes@gmail.com or at Signal: JustinGerdes.85 to share feedback, tips, and story ideas.