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From our bird’s-eye view of the renewable energy industry, we often see positive developments for humanity before they become common knowledge. The purpose of this blog is to highlight the clean energy innovations and sustainability actions that are legitimate cause for optimism despite the very real threats to people and the environment posed by climate damage.
Finding the strength to take better care of ourselves, others, and the natural environment is a quest shared by many this time of year. Despite today’s harsh realities of war, poverty, extremism, and climate damage, there are incredibly powerful humans doing good work, and guiding us in a better direction. Real-life heroes like the folks below provide hope and inspiration in their missions to overcome daunting challenges through community work, activism, and organizing.
Travis Mills
Travis Mills speaks at ReVision’s 2023 Annual Meeting Despite losing his arms and legs to a wartime bomb, Travis Mills continues to live a joyous and uncommonly productive life, profoundly enhancing the lives of everyone in his orbit. Witnessing Travis’ ability to help others while dealing with his own immense physical challenges is a constant reminder that we all have some capacity to lift others.
Loretta J. Ross
Credit: Center for American Progress Loretta J. Ross is another modern-day superhero who tackles issues such as racism, reproductive rights, and violence against women. At one point in her life as an African American activist, intellectual, professor, and author, Loretta worked with incarcerated members of the Ku Klux Klan in the deep South and succeeded in getting some of these men to renounce their deeply held racial prejudices. To witness a contemporary civil rights and social justice warrior like Loretta is to know that positive change is possible even against the greatest odds.
Bill McKibben
Credit: Steve Liptay, 350.org.Many of us feel overwhelmed by the environmental crisis caused by 8 billion people burning fossil fuels in earth’s closed atmosphere. That’s why we need climate superheroes like Bill McKibben, who wrote the world’s first book about climate damage and has been valiantly leading the clean energy transition for 40 years. Bill’s work has spawned highly effective collaborative efforts like 350.org, Third Act, and Citizens Climate Lobby, all of which invite anyone to join the effort to help make life better by building our just and equitable electric future.
All Of You
Every day more people are becoming Solar Champions. In the U.S. and around the world people are investing in renewable energy, battery storage, electric vehicles, and heat pumps at record-breaking speed. The recent 28th edition of the Conference of Parties (COP) in Dubai resulted in worldwide commitments for countries to gradually transition away from coal, oil, and gas.
Unfortunately, during the past 50 years the fossil fuel industry has metastasized into a multi-trillion-dollar colossus that is arguably the most powerful global entity in history.
Because the clean energy transition represents an existential threat to coal, oil, and gas, the fossil fuel industry continues to invest heavily in misinformation campaigns to sow doubt and confusion in the minds of consumers about whether renewable energy, battery storage, and efficient non-combustion technologies are viable. In 2024 we need to be more vigilant than ever about countering this misinformation because it is predicted that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will make it harder for people to discern fact from fiction.
The Good News
Now that solar electricity is the cheapest form of energy ever known to humankind, and the cost of battery technology is rapidly declining, and heat pumps and electric vehicles are technologically superior to the internal combustion engine, it is clear that electrifying everything is far better for people and the environment than finite, polluting, single-use fossil fuels.
2023 was a record-shattering year for America and the rest of the world in terms of renewable energy, battery storage, electric vehicle and heat pump adoption. We think it’s rational cause for optimism that the forecast for 2024 is continued clean energy growth. The success of this outcome depends on everyone who wants to help make life better by building our just and equitable electric future.
