Given the very sleepy lead into 2025, despite the alarms blaring full bore, headwinds for clean energy seem to have roared to the forefront this year.
Tax credits expiring. Wind projects shelved or cancelled, often for extraordinarily petty reasons certainly consistent with the personality of leadership. Domestic US EV sales dipping.
Despite the pettiness and short-sighted backwards-facing outlook, a cultural shift has been been leveraged into place. The ancient kind of leverage – with a rock and an iron bar:
“…as of the last three or four years, we finally have a tool, not at this point to stop global warming — it’s too late for that — but perhaps to at least shave some tenths of a degree off how hot the planet gets. And that tool is cheap energy from the sun and the wind and the batteries to store that power when the sun goes down or the wind drops. Alternative energy is the commonsense, obvious, straightforward way to make power on this planet, which is why 95 percent of new generating capacity around planet Earth last year came from these clean sources.
The authoritarian mindset – which eschews progress on meaningful rights and resources for all in exchange for illusory safety from outside foes and forces – has always protected fossil fuel production by forgiving its destructive effects on people and planet in return for cheap energy. Another instant where the meaning of words carelessly cast aside returns for payment, with interest.
And now, that mindset is suspended over a chasm: destructive effects of global warming, coupled with cheap, clean energy increasingly available everywhere. Incompetent/compromised [let’s be honest] government is a distinct disadvantage. Can capitalism be saved?
Be neither depressed nor overly sanguine, as these were never the options. Instead, mock the laggards incessantly, especially your own. If you don’t know or feel unsure, find out. Use everything you have, make things. Row into the currents. Turn the beat around.
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