Russ Feingold’s New Mission: Preserving Nature to Save the Planet
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/ March 17, 2026
Natural Man
Russ Feingold is on a new mission: preserving nature to save the planet.
John Nichols
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This article appears in the
April 2026 issue, with the headline “Natural Man.”
Russ Feingold has seen the headlines about how the Trump administration is abandoning the struggle to save the planet. Each one is more dire than the last: “Trump’s Latest Plan to Undo the ‘Holy Grail’ of Climate Rules: Never Mind the Science”; “Trump’s Anti-Green Agenda Could Lead to 1.3 Million More Climate Deaths”; and “One Year After Trump’s Inauguration, the Damage to Environmental Policy Is Unprecedented.” The former US senator from Wisconsin, who served for almost two decades as one of the chamber’s most ardent advocates for climate action, publicly rebuked Trump’s January 7 withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): “Nothing in the Constitution grants the president any such power.” That cry of frustration echoes the sentiments of many environmentalists in a moment when the Trump administration seems to be reversing all the progress that Feingold and others fought to achieve after the awakening that Americans experienced on the first Earth Day in 1970. Not only has the president distanced the country from global initiatives to battle climate change and other forms of environmental degradation, but politically and economically powerful figures, such as Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, have been sending mixed signals about existential environmental issues. Feingold refers to the current state of affairs as “this horrible nightmare that we’re going through.”
Yet he has not given up on the prospect of building international coalitions to save the planet. In fact, he is actively forging them as a globe-trotting citizen diplomat on behalf of one of the most underreported yet strikingly successful environmental initiatives of our time. As the chair of the global steering committee of the Campaign for Nature—an international effort based on the tenet that “the rapid loss of biodiversity threaten[s] the very existence of humanity on Earth”—Feingold has emerged as a high-profile advocate for the ambitious agenda outlined in the somewhat clumsily named yet vital Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). This framework was agreed to in 2022 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The GBF, which aims to formally protect at least 30 percent of the world’s land and water by 2030, has been described as the “Paris Agreement for nature”—a reference to the better-known 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, the landmark international treaty …
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Current Issue
Feature
/ March 17, 2026
Natural Man
Russ Feingold is on a new mission: preserving nature to save the planet.
John Nichols
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue, with the headline “Natural Man.”
Russ Feingold has seen the headlines about how the Trump administration is abandoning the struggle to save the planet. Each one is more dire than the last: “Trump’s Latest Plan to Undo the ‘Holy Grail’ of Climate Rules: Never Mind the Science”; “Trump’s Anti-Green Agenda Could Lead to 1.3 Million More Climate Deaths”; and “One Year After Trump’s Inauguration, the Damage to Environmental Policy Is Unprecedented.” The former US senator from Wisconsin, who served for almost two decades as one of the chamber’s most ardent advocates for climate action, publicly rebuked Trump’s January 7 withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): “Nothing in the Constitution grants the president any such power.” That cry of frustration echoes the sentiments of many environmentalists in a moment when the Trump administration seems to be reversing all the progress that Feingold and others fought to achieve after the awakening that Americans experienced on the first Earth Day in 1970. Not only has the president distanced the country from global initiatives to battle climate change and other forms of environmental degradation, but politically and economically powerful figures, such as Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, have been sending mixed signals about existential environmental issues. Feingold refers to the current state of affairs as “this horrible nightmare that we’re going through.”
Yet he has not given up on the prospect of building international coalitions to save the planet. In fact, he is actively forging them as a globe-trotting citizen diplomat on behalf of one of the most underreported yet strikingly successful environmental initiatives of our time. As the chair of the global steering committee of the Campaign for Nature—an international effort based on the tenet that “the rapid loss of biodiversity threaten[s] the very existence of humanity on Earth”—Feingold has emerged as a high-profile advocate for the ambitious agenda outlined in the somewhat clumsily named yet vital Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). This framework was agreed to in 2022 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The GBF, which aims to formally protect at least 30 percent of the world’s land and water by 2030, has been described as the “Paris Agreement for nature”—a reference to the better-known 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, the landmark international treaty …
Russ Feingold’s New Mission: Preserving Nature to Save the Planet
Same show, different day.
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Current Issue
Feature
/ March 17, 2026
Natural Man
Russ Feingold is on a new mission: preserving nature to save the planet.
John Nichols
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue, with the headline “Natural Man.”
Russ Feingold has seen the headlines about how the Trump administration is abandoning the struggle to save the planet. Each one is more dire than the last: “Trump’s Latest Plan to Undo the ‘Holy Grail’ of Climate Rules: Never Mind the Science”; “Trump’s Anti-Green Agenda Could Lead to 1.3 Million More Climate Deaths”; and “One Year After Trump’s Inauguration, the Damage to Environmental Policy Is Unprecedented.” The former US senator from Wisconsin, who served for almost two decades as one of the chamber’s most ardent advocates for climate action, publicly rebuked Trump’s January 7 withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): “Nothing in the Constitution grants the president any such power.” That cry of frustration echoes the sentiments of many environmentalists in a moment when the Trump administration seems to be reversing all the progress that Feingold and others fought to achieve after the awakening that Americans experienced on the first Earth Day in 1970. Not only has the president distanced the country from global initiatives to battle climate change and other forms of environmental degradation, but politically and economically powerful figures, such as Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, have been sending mixed signals about existential environmental issues. Feingold refers to the current state of affairs as “this horrible nightmare that we’re going through.”
Yet he has not given up on the prospect of building international coalitions to save the planet. In fact, he is actively forging them as a globe-trotting citizen diplomat on behalf of one of the most underreported yet strikingly successful environmental initiatives of our time. As the chair of the global steering committee of the Campaign for Nature—an international effort based on the tenet that “the rapid loss of biodiversity threaten[s] the very existence of humanity on Earth”—Feingold has emerged as a high-profile advocate for the ambitious agenda outlined in the somewhat clumsily named yet vital Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). This framework was agreed to in 2022 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The GBF, which aims to formally protect at least 30 percent of the world’s land and water by 2030, has been described as the “Paris Agreement for nature”—a reference to the better-known 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, the landmark international treaty …
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