Approximately 200 people filled the Mill Valley Community Center this week to hear local leaders detail the Trump administration’s “assault on climate” and strategies for countering it.

“We have a bully, and a bully pulpit, spreading lies and denial to undermine climate action,” said Bill Carney, co-chair of Time to Lead on Climate, the local group that organized the event Monday night. “These are huge threats and this event is an attempt to address and discuss what’s going on, those severe challenges to do something about climate change.”

The panel discussion included U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman of San Rafael; Marin County Supervisor Mary Sackett; Kentfield resident Sara Aminzadeh, a deputy secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency; and Colin O’Brien, an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit.

The list of concerns surrounding Trump’s climate policy is long. The administration is hoping to auction off public lands, defund environmental agencies, expedite oil drilling, take away funding created by the bipartisan infrastructure bill, remove green energy initiatives and funding and revive the coal industry.

“He kind of wants the environmental policies of the 1890s, so it’s, ‘Make coal great again,’” Huffman said.

Huffman said when Trump was first elected in 2016, Congress had institutionalists who would stand up against him. Now, he said, Republicans in Congress act as though they work for Trump. With the “three-legged stool” of the constitutional republic missing one of its essential components, the courts and public opinion are the remaining checks on abuses of power, he said.

“This is a cult,” he said. “They are all in. There is no pushback from Congress, and that’s what is so different.”

Sackett said one of the bigger threats from the Trump administration is “the loss” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and funding to address the rising ocean and climate disasters. Sackett said Marin County will continue to focus on green infrastructure initiatives such as electric vehicles and renewable energy.

“There’s a lot at the community level, at the local level, that we can continue to do,” she said. “I think doomscrolling can make us a bit paralyzed.”

“We can’t become numb,” she said. “We can’t stop thinking.”

Aminzadeh saw cause for optimism, noting that California has global economic power and leaders focused on climate progress. She said the state had some of the best climate progress during Trump’s first term, and that the president is overreaching his authority and pushing agendas that are unpopular within the Republican Party.

“One thing we know we need to do is stop doomscrolling on our phones by ourselves and to come together in community and really grapple with what we’re facing, which is what we’re doing here tonight,” Aminzadeh said.

From a legal perspective, O’Brien also offered an optimistic view. In the first Trump term, he said, Earthjustice won 85% of more than 200 lawsuits it filed against the Trump administration.

O’Brien said many environmental protections are “enshrined” in statutory law and regulations, so any efforts to change them require going through the court system. While Trump has “stacked the Supreme Court” with conservative justices, O’Brien said, only 1% of federal cases make it to that level.

O’Brien also noted that President Joe Biden filled many judicial vacancies, giving nonprofits with more progressive interests a “fighting chance.”

“I expect that the courts will be a real obstacle to Trump’s anti-environmental and anti-climate agenda,” O’Brien said. “At the end of the day, our judges take an oath to defend the Constitution.”

San Rafael resident Jessie Rountree said she came to the event to stay plugged into the conversation. She said she appreciates Marin’s support for climate resilience, but wants more discussion of the social justice element of climate change.

“I would have appreciated more conversation about how we are including people that are the most marginalized as part of the solutions so that we truly are creating a more resilient future,” Rountree said

Marin City activist Terri Green said the conversation was interesting but a bit broad. She wished it offered more concrete actions for people to take.

“I was hoping for a bit more specific things we can do to fight back,” Green said.

One key takeaway from the panel discussion was that people need to talk to each other. He encouraged people to show up to events and protests to help create a sense of shared opposition to the direction Trump is leading the country.

“We can’t look away from what we’re seeing,” O’Brien said. “We really need to talk to friends and neighbors and family about what we’re seeing and why it troubles us.”

Sackett pointed out that many Californians — and “not a tiny amount” of people in Marin — voted for Trump. She encouraged people to get out of the Marin “bubble” and find common ground.

“I’m also thinking about, how do we talk to our friends and neighbors and change our voting patterns, and how do we talk about the next election?” Sackett said. “What I find is when we’re righteous and they’re wrong, we don’t have a conversation.”

“We can sit down and look each other in the eyes and realize people want safety, they want good schools, they want clean air,” she said. “How we get there is different, and how do we have that conversation is really the action that I’m thinking about the most.”