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The IRA won’t last a decade. Its funding starts running out at the end of September. So here is what individual Americans might want to do over the 165 days.
You may recall the amount of sweat, anguish, and resolve it took to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. There were the amazing young people of the Sunrise Movement, who channeled the energy of Greta’s worldwide outburst into the offices of Nancy Pelosi, energizing the 2020 primary race and then—in a remarkable display of political maturity—turning that energy into legislative sausage making. There was the steady morphing of the Build Back Better bill into ever-more compromised climate legislation, and then the widespread conviction that even that would not pass. Until at the last minute Joe Manchin agreed, as long as it was larded with yet more gifts for the fossil fuel industry. And with that Congress took its first real action on climate in the 35 years it’s been an issue.
It was supposed to be a steady source of funding that would last a decade, giving this energy transition time to find its feet, and giving the U.S. a foothold in the fight with China to determine the future. But in the course of a few months the White House and the fossil-funded GOP Congress have overturned all that except the extra gifts to the fossil fuel industry. (Antonia Juhasz provides the best account yet of all the excruciating details in Rolling Stone.)
The IRA won’t last a decade. Its funding starts running out at the end of September—if you’re in the market for an electric vehicle, that has to be done now. (And there may be some excellent lease deals). And if you’re even considering getting solar on your home, that needs to happen by the end of the year if you want the tax credit.
Normally we talk about these things as political questions—but today I asked a few experts to share their take on what individual Americans might want to do over the 165 days.
This summer and this fall are the right times to work with a trusted local provider to get your project up. If nothing else, it’s a good way to disappoint the GOP and their fossil fuel friend group.
Here’s Cindy del Rosario-Tapan, from the very experienced Solar United Neighbors (who are sponsoring a webinar later this week to go over the same ground and more)
My old 350.org colleague Phil Aroneanu has been hard at work at Climate United trying to protect what they can of the IRA funding. He breaks it down a little further:
If you're hoping to put solar on the roof of your home, and you want to own the system (not lease it), the 30% residential clean energy tax credit (25D) will sunset at the end of 2025, 10 years sooner than what was written into the Inflation Reduction Act.
If you own a business or nonprofit, or work at a school or city government agency and want to install solar OR you want to lease a solar array for your home rather than own it outright, you'll need to get started as soon as possible to qualify for the up to 60% investment tax credit (48E) and bonuses available. Onerous restrictions will kick in by the end of 2025 making it more difficult to claim the tax credits for projects that aren't yet under construction—and the Trump administration just released an Executive Order that will add even more red tape to these tax credits.
If you're hoping to buy and electric vehicle, the tax credits expire on September 30, and if you're planning to install heat pumps, windows, or take other energy efficiency measures, most of those tax credits expire at the end of the year.
And here’s Andrea Karelas from RE-Volv, a group that helps nonprofits go solar. (He’s also the author of the excellent Climate Courage), who analyzes it from the point of view of an average homeowner or project sponsor
So basically, before the big terrible bill, thanks to the IRA, if you went solar in the U.S., you got an Investment Tax Credit for your system worth 30% of the value (for storage as well) as a base amount and that credit would have been in place through 2032. So if your solar system cost $10K, you'll have $3K less taxes to pay next April, so essentially your system is only $7K. Then there are bonus adders that stack based on certain criteria. If your project is in an "energy community" (which basically is a place that has been historically impacted by fossil fuel production, or has many people working in energy production), you get an extra 10%. If you are in a low to moderate income community you are eligible for a 10-20% adder (but those are first come first serve). And if your equipment is made using majority domestic content (which is basically impossible) you'd get another 10%. So the solar ITC for residences (25d) or non-residential (48e) start at a minimum of 30% savings. If someone qualified for all the bonus adders, it would be 70% covered by the ITC. Many of our projects, for example, get 40 or 50% because they are in an energy community and serve an LMI population.
Now, thanks to the big terrible bill, the residential credit (25d) will expire Dec 31 2025. So basically your system price goes up by a minimum of 30% if you don't have it fully installed before January 1 2026. (And you could be missing out on up to 70% of the system cost covered if you qualify for the bonus adders.)
Now, the nonresidential credit (48e) on paper looks like it gets a better deal because you can theoretically get project construction started a year from when the bill was signed (so July 4 2026) or get it completed by the end of 2027. BUT they also added requirements regarding Foreign Entities of Concern to limit the use of Chinese parts or equipment that are so unworkable that it makes the ITC unusable, even with these extended timelines. The FEOC requirements kick in January 1 2026. So in essence, nonresidential projects now also have a December 31 2025 deadline.
All of this would be easier to navigate with devoted help from blue state officials: Here, for instance, is some good advice from NYSFocus on how New York Gov. Kathy Hochul could help, and some excellent analysis along the same lines from Noah Ginsburg. But I think the bottom line is clear—this summer and this fall are the right times to work with a trusted local provider to get your project up. If nothing else, it’s a good way to disappoint the GOP and their fossil fuel friend group.
While you’re doing that, of course, we also need to be standing up for clean energy in general. That’s why we’re hard at work on SunDay.
Part of that work involves the solar industry reinventing itself for the world past subsidies—which is not impossible. Its old model won’t work without federal support, but that’s not necessarily the end: Solar flourishes without much in the way of subsidy elsewhere, in places like Australia, because they’ve evolved a lower-cost business plan. Permitting reform is key (and a key focus of SunDay), as Ryan Kennedy makes clear in this piece from PV Magazine just yesterday:
Permit applications can cause delays of two to six weeks or more, causing a poor customer experience and higher project cancellation rates. Permitting also drives up costs. In New Jersey, for example, permit approvals and related barriers add an estimated $3,800 to $4,500 to average project costs. The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) said the cost could be in excess of $6,000 to $7,000 for an average project.
New Jersey regulators, among other states, recently passed legislation to require automated permitting for residential solar, cutting timelines and costs. Tools like the Department of Energy’s (DOE) SolarApp+ can facilitate permitting in your jurisdiction, and DOE provides technical assistance for implementing the tool.
Birch estimates an average U.S. installation could shed $0.98 per W from automated permitting fixes alone.
Since that hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t make the immediate blow any easier. As Aroneanu says:
Multiple recent analyses of the budget bill estimated that cutting clean energy and manufacturing tax credits will scale back solar and other renewable generation capacity by up to 72% in the next decade, raise household electricity prices up to $290, trigger the closure or cancellation of 331 solar and storage factories, and erase $286 billion in local investment in American communities, killing 760,000 jobs in the process.
Make no mistake: The Trump administration is doing everything in its power to try to kill clean energy.
Still, it seems impossible that American ingenuity won’t start to figure out some ways, especially since the rest of the world is surging confidently ahead. (Here, somewhat randomly, are updates from Turkey, Africa, and of course China). As Karelas says:
We know solar is the cheapest form of electrons ever created. Last year 90% of new generation built in the U.S. was clean energy, 78% of it solar. (No wonder they're coming after it this hard.) There are some in the residential space who are trying to make the most of the situation by saying, “Look, the industry had a nice cushion with these tax credits for many years.” Tax credits also made project financing more complicated—there's a world where the solar industry bounces back from this after cutting costs, streamlining various processes, and will be stronger than ever… So, light at the end of the tunnel, but definitely a terrible blow.
Our job is to magnify that (sun)light, shorten that tunnel, and not fall any further behind the rest of the world than we have to. So, to work on all fronts!
"It's a job killer, a planet killer, and an economy killer," Sen. Ed Markey said of Republicans' so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
While welcoming that U.S. Senate Republicans are removing a provision that would have forced the sale of public lands from their budget reconciliation package, Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists this weekend condemned other attacks on the planet that are part of the megabill making its way through the upper chamber.
After Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough blocked Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) initial public land sale policy earlier this week, the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources chair tried to sneak in an amended version late Friday. However, as the chamber's Republicans scrambled to generate enough support for a procedural vote Saturday night, Lee announced the withdrawal of his provision from the package.
"This is a momentous win for conservation and a powerful reminder that Americans deeply value our public lands and waters. That was made crystal clear by the remarkable, bipartisan outcry opposing the liquidation of our natural heritage," said Tom Kiernan, president and CEO of American Rivers. "Future generations should be able to continue to use these lands for fishing, rafting, hiking, and swimming, and to enjoy the clean water that begins in these priceless places. It is our responsibility to protect that legacy."
Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, said that "from the moment Mike Lee first introduced this proposal, Americans across the political spectrum have made it clear they oppose selling off the natural heritage of our public lands to fund tax cuts for billionaires—not now, not ever. This is a victory for everyone who hikes, hunts, explores, and cherishes these places, but it's not the end of the threats to our public lands."
U.S. President Donald Trump "and his allies in Congress have made it clear they will use every tool at their disposal to give away our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters, whether it's Mike Lee's fire sale, leasing them to Big Oil CEOs for pennies on the dollar, or gutting the permitting and oversight process for industrial development," Manuel warned. "This fight isn't over, and we are going to keep working to keep the 'public' in public lands."
We won this battle, but no doubt Republicans are going to keep trying to sell off your public lands any chance they get. Our public lands are worth fighting for, and as long as I have the honor of representing Oregon in the Senate that's what I'll be doing.
— Senator Ron Wyden (@wyden.senate.gov) June 28, 2025 at 11:08 PM
Anna Peterson, executive director of the Mountain Pact, which works with over 100 communities on climate, outdoor recreation, and public lands policy, said that "as millions of Americans and western communities have reminded people again and again over the past few weeks, public lands are bipartisan, deeply revered, sustain our communities, power our economies, and serve as the cornerstone of our outdoor way of life. We must remain steadfast in our commitment to defending public lands, and continue to fight to make sure they remain where they belong forever: in public hands."
The Natural Resources Defense Council had criticized both the axed public land sale provision and attacks on renewable energy, which remain in the megabill. NRDC executive director Christy Goldfuss said that "the new budget reconciliation bill text is a shocking fossil fuels industry fever dream come to life. The corruption on display is galling."
"The bill has gone from fossil fuels boosterism to an active effort from Congress to kill wind and solar energy in the United States. This cannot be viewed as anything other than a 'Trump energy tax,'" Goldfuss said, blasting Republican plans to not only end incentives for renewable energy, but also impose new taxes on wind and solar generation.
"This bill was already going to force the biggest utility bill increase in history, but the new language can only be interpreted as a corrupt effort to advance oil, gas, and coal on the backs of everyday Americans," she continued. "This is a shocking effort to manipulate energy markets, siphon money from every household in the country, kill jobs, and shut down the fastest growing segment of the energy economy--all to enrich the barons at the helm of the most profitable enterprise in history."
Referencing one of Trump's early executive orders, Goldfuss added that "the administration claims that we are in an energy emergency, making it the wrong time to choke off the cheapest and fastest-to-deploy sources of energy."
Adrian Deveny, founder and president of policy advisory firm Climate Vision and a former policy director to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), told Politico: "It's a kill shot. This new excise tax on wind and solar is designed to fully kill the industry."
Costa Samaras, a clean energy leader in former Democratic President Joe Biden's White House, also warned on the social media network Bluesky on Saturday that the policy would kill Americans.
"The new bill in Congress puts a new tax on wind and solar. They're taxing clean energy to give your money to billionaires," Samaras said. "Taxing clean energy and making it harder for new clean energy to be built in the U.S. at a time when the grid is under increasing stress from extreme weather, will lead to people dying in heatwaves."
"They are taxing wind and solar power. Not just taking away the credits in Biden's climate law. But actively taxing wind and solar. My god this bill is terrible," he continued. "If you have a [Republican] representative, call and leave a message saying you don't want to raise taxes on clean energy... If you're a reporter, there's a story here. Why is the Senate putting the grid and Americans' lives at risk?"
Senate Democrats are also speaking out about the GOP assault on renewable energy. Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) are among those sounding the alarm.
"Big Oil has been getting tax breaks for more than a century," noted Markey. "Trump's big billionaire bill doesn't just cut clean energy incentives, it RAISES TAXES on wind and solar. It's a job killer, a planet killer, and an economy killer."
If financiers can’t bring themselves to think about more than the next quarter, Republican politicians can’t bring themselves to think about more than the next round of donations. Together, they threaten our future.
People often ask me why I give away this newsletter for free. After explaining that I’m able to because some kind people take out a voluntary subscription, I give the noble answer: This is the most important topic on Earth, and so people need to know about it. The less noble answer is, sometimes I wonder if I’m really able to capture what’s going on, or if there are simply too many moving parts for anyone (me anyway) to write coherently about “climate change.”
That’s because it’s simultaneously the most important scientific story on the planet (in terms of physics and chemistry, but also everything from meteorology and agriculture to public health) with the largest imaginable economic effects, which should mean (but doesn’t) that it should dominate our political life. Understanding how those three spheres interact means trying to figure out everything from human psychology to geopolitics, and much in between. So I thought I’d try to give just a tiny sense this week of how, even in the course of a few days time, all these things bump up against each other.
Let’s start by looking at the science, of which there’s been a lot this week. Because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change takes five years or more to issue its massive assessments, a somewhat smaller and nimbler group of 60 international experts has been assembled to issue interim annual updates, and this year’s is a doozy. Let’s let Zeke Hausfather sum it up:
“Things aren’t just getting worse. They’re getting worse faster,” said study coauthor Zeke Hausfather of the tech firm Stripe and the climate monitoring group Berkeley Earth. “We’re actively moving in the wrong direction in a critical period of time that we would need to meet our most ambitious climate goals. Some reports, there’s a silver lining. I don’t think there really is one in this one.”
The headline here is that we’ll pass the 1.5°C mark within a few years, but that’s long been obvious to anyone paying attention. The scary part is about the constantly growing energy imbalance on our planet, as more and more of the sun’s heat is held here instead of radiating out to space—this imbalance is up by about 25% over the last decade. Air temperatures are hitting new records almost every month, of course, (and if you want to read about the human damage that is causing, this new report from Pakistan is utterly typical) but most of the heat is pouring into the planet’s oceans. This makes oceans rise faster because warm water takes up more space than cold, and because ice is melting—the rate of sea-level rise has doubled in the past 10 years compared with the period from 1971-2018.
This kind of news is not producing the kind of reaction any normal person would reasonably expect.
I think the important thing to take away from this is that everything is now happening in very real time—forget 1.5°C, we’ll pour enough carbon into the air at our current pace to lock in 1.7°C within nine years. And that two-tenths of a degree, which sounds like so little? That’s enough to move 200 million human souls out of the comfortable climate zone they currently inhabit. (Nine years is the Trump term, and then assuming he leaves the next one).
But we’re already in the white water above the waterfall. New NASA data (and by the way it wouldn’t surprise me if these kinds of reports start to dwindle dramatically) this week showed an extraordinary increase in extreme weather events like droughts and floods around the world. Here’s how Roger Harrabin of The Guardian explained the findings:
The study shows that such extreme events are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting, and more severe, with last year’s figures reaching twice that of the 2003-2020 average.
The steepness of the rise was not foreseen. The researchers say they are amazed and alarmed by the latest figures from the watchful eye of NASA’s Grace satellite, which tracks environmental changes in the planet. They say climate change is the most likely cause of the apparent trend, even though the intensity of extremes appears to have soared even faster than global temperatures.
The closest thing we have to an explanation may have appeared in another new study, this one from the dauntless climate scientist Michael Mann and others, which found, as Seth Borenstein explained in The Associated Press, that climate change has tripled the number of “atmospheric wave events linked to extreme weather in the last 75 years.”
Planetary waves flow across Earth all the time, but sometimes they get amplified, becoming stronger, and the jet stream gets wavier with bigger hills and valleys, Mann said. It’s called quasi-resonant amplification or QRA.
This essentially means the wave gets stuck for weeks on end, locked in place. As a result, some places get seemingly endless rain while others endure oppressive heat with no relief.
“A classic pattern would be like a high pressure out West (in the United States) and a low pressure back East and in summer 2018, that’s exactly what we had,” Mann said. “We had that configuration locked in place for like a month. So they (in the West) got the heat, the drought, and the wildfires. We (in the East) got the excessive rainfall.”
The reason for the stuckness? We’ve melted much of the sea ice in the Arctic, reducing the temperature difference with the equator, and
that weakens the jet streams and the waves, making them more likely to get locked in place, Mann said.
“This study shines a light on yet another way human activities are disrupting the climate system that will come back to bite us all with more unprecedented and destructive summer weather events,” said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center who wasn’t involved in the research.
The effects as this plays out will be—well, horrific. An eight-year study study of six key crops—corn, soybeans, rice, wheat, cassava, and sorghum—in the premier scientific journal Nature on Wednesday predicted that each degree Celsius increase in temperature will lower global food production by an average of 120 calories per person per day. Solomon Hsiang, who led the study at Stanford’s Doerr School for Suystainability, helpfully summed up the findings for CNN:
“If the climate warms by 3°C, that’s basically like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast,” he said. The world is currently on track for around 3°Celsius of warming by the end of the century.
America would be hit particularly hard, because we have the best grain-growing soil and climate on Earth—but it’s in a vast continental interior susceptible to drought in the new world:
If humans keep burning large amounts of fossil fuels, corn production could fall by 40% in the grain belt of the U.S., eastern China, central Asia, southern Africa, and the Middle East; wheat production could fall by 40% in the U.S., China, Russia, and Canada; and soybean yields could fall 50% in the U.S.
Again, this is not far away—remember that we learned in one of those other studies that the global carbon budget for staying below 2°C will be exhausted by the mid-2040s on our current trajectory.
So—you would think this would be the biggest story on planet Earth, and by several orders of magnitude. After all, “What’s for breakfast?” is one of the four most important questions on Earth, along with “What’s for lunch,” “What’s for dinner,” and “Do you think you could love me too?”
I don’t think it’s climate alarmism that’s going to end up on the ash heap of history—I think it’s pretty clearly humanity, not to mention the rest of the planet’s biology.
And at some level our leaders understand this. Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve and hence arguably the most important figure in the world economy, told the Senate Banking Committee this week that “banks and insurance companies are pulling out of coastal areas and… areas where there a lot of fires. So what that’s going to mean is that if you fast-forward 10 or 15 years there are going to be regions of the country where you can’t get a mortgage.” America’s wealth is largely stored in its houses—perhaps you remember the global financial crisis of 2008 when that wealth started to evaporate? This is that, but on steroids. Indeed, a new analysis from the entirely credible people at Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that the U.S. alone is already spending a trillion dollars a year on climate damage. “That’s 3% of GDP that people likely would have spent on goods and services they’d prefer to have, and amounts to “a stealth tariff on consumer spending,” the analysts write. (And it’s not just the U.S.—a new study found that climate-caused subsidence in soils is now a multi-trillion dollar risk for insurers across the E.U.)
And yet—and here we are definitively switching from science to politics and economics—this kind of news is not producing the kind of reaction any normal person would reasonably expect. It’s not even producing it at the Treasury Department, which you think might pay some small attention to the Fed Chairman. Instead, check out this description of events from intrepid reporters Alastair Marsh and Laura Noonan:
At a June 11 gathering of the Financial Stability Board, officials from France, the Netherlands, and Canada voiced dismay after Michael Kaplan, the Treasury’s interim undersecretary for international affairs, said climate should only be a focus if there’s proof of an imminent financial stability risk, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private talks.
The comments drew instant pushback, with some officials raising their voices, the people said. That led FSB Chair Klaas Knot from the Netherlands to briefly suspend the meeting until those present had cooled down, the people said.
That’s right, they had to stop the meeting for a while so that financial regulators didn’t—I don’t know, beat up?—the American representative. And of course America is where most of the world’s capital hangs out. The new edition of the now-venerable Banking on Climate Chaos report came out this week, and it was as big a doozy as the various scientific studies. After making endless pledges to help decarbonize the planet, the big banks—led of course by Chase, Citi, and Bank of America—”walked back many of those climate pledges and significantly increased their fossil fuel financing, including ramping up finance for fossil fuel expansion.” This is a gold-standard report—it found the banks, after four years of decreasing their funding to the fossil fuel industry, had increased it by $162.5 billion between 2023 and 2024, which were also the two hottest years we’ve ever recorded on this Earth.
Probably the best account of the folly of our financial system comes from the Sierra Club’s Ben Cushing, who last week put out a crucial paper calling on the planet’s investors to weigh systemic climate risks: “The greatest threat to long-term portfolios isn’t from holding particular stocks—it’s the continued rise in global emissions. And unless those emissions are reduced in the real world—not just in investors’ accounting systems—the damage will continue, and portfolios will bear the cost.”
But if financiers can’t bring themselves to think about more than the next quarter, Republican politicians can’t bring themselves to think about more than the next round of donations. The Senate this week decided to back up the House, and continued the job of gutting support for clean energy in the Big Beautiful Bill. As Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) explained, “The legislation achieves significant savings by slashing Green New Deal spending.” Instead, the Senate decided to reward oil drillers with new subsidies. For instance, as Evan Halper reports:
Several firms, including Occidental Petroleum, which is completing a large carbon-capture plant in the West Texas oil fields, sought expanded subsidies for using captured carbon dioxide to pressurize wells and draw more oil from the ground. The carbon-capture subsidy would push up the tax legislation’s price tag by what experts forecast will be billions of dollars.
It emerged after Occidental’s CEO said she personally lobbied President Donald Trump… The CEO said subsidizing the technology will enable oil companies to pull 50 billion to 70 billion additional barrels of oil out of the ground that they would not otherwise be able to get at.
Trump’s team was also busy arresting the public official who has done the most to stand up to the financial system’s insane greed, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who spent the afternoon in the hoosegow for the other crime in our current regime, helping immigrants. Meanwhile, remember those NASA satellites showing us the increase in extreme weather events? That’s the kind of thing the administration is busily shutting down. Scott Waldman in Politico reported that
All told, it’s an unprecedented assault on humanity’s understanding of how global warming is transforming the planet, scientists say. And they warn that Trump’s actions will blind the United States and the world to the ways people are rapidly heating the planet by burning fossil fuels.
As Energy Secretary, and former fracking exec, Christopher Wright put it on Twitter last week:
Climate alarmism has had a terrible impact on human lives and freedom. It belongs in the ash heap of history.
Given the science above, I don’t think it’s climate alarmism that’s going to end up on the ash heap of history—I think it’s pretty clearly humanity, not to mention the rest of the planet’s biology. All of this would be stupid enough if we had no alternative to fossil fuels. But of course this week, like every week, there was more and more news of precisely how well those alternatives were working. To give just the smallest sampling:
The world’s first large-scale sand battery went into operation in Finland:
The new 1 MW sand battery has a precursor. In May 2022, Polar Night Energy rigged a smaller design to a power station in Kankaanpää town.
Launched just as Russia cut off gas supplies in retaliation for Finland joining NATO, the project was a timely example of how renewable energy could be harnessed in a new way.
It’s quite a simple structure to begin with, Polar Night Energy said of its prototype. A tall tower is filled with low-grade sand and charged up with the heat from excess solar and wind electricity.
The sand can store heat at around 500C for several days to even months, providing a valuable store of cheaper energy during the winter. When needed, the battery discharges the hot air—warming water in the district heating network. Homes, offices, and even the local swimming pool all benefit in Kankaanpää, for example.
And in Japan, a new fleet of solar cars was unveiled, designed especially for small island nations that don’t have great distances to drive. As The Japan Times reported:
The electrification of transport, a potent strategy to address climate change, is gaining momentum, with over 38 countries committing to no less than 30% zero-emission newly sold medium- and heavy-duty trucks by 2030. For LDCs and SIDS, harnessing the drive for electrification using what is often their richest natural endowment—sunshine—could represent a breakthrough.
These seem small and niche to you? Then consider the ongoing miracle in China, where new data shows that the world’s largest economy generated more solar power through May of this year than it did in all of 2022. As industry watcher Felix Hamer said, “This is what a 30% annual growth rate can look like.” Just as an example, China leads the world in converting old coal mines into solar farms—90 projects so far, with 46 more in the works according to new data this week from Global Energy Monitor.
That’s all good news. To go back to the top of this account—those vast scientific studies showing the breakdown of the planet’s climate system—there are only two things that can conceivably scale fast enough to make a real difference. One is some kind of as-yet-undeveloped carbon sequestration scheme. The other—now fully available to us everywhere—is the rapid buildout of clean energy across the Earth. If we were functioning effectively as a species, spreading solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries would be job one, two, and three on this planet—especially since if we were successful at it we could stop fighting wars at least partly about oil, wars which this week, of course, threaten to escalate into something far worse.
So as I bring this tour to an end, let me remind you to figure out something to do for SunDay. The first events are appearing already on the map. From Julie Williams comes the sun of the week:
I hope this tour through science and economics and politics has been helpful in some way—you can see why I sometimes despair, not just of the future but even of my own ability to get across what’s happening in the present. I think I’ve been at this so long that I have a better sense than most of how all those moving pieces interact, but there are so many pieces and they’re now moving so fast.
Which is why we need to be moving some of them ourselves—the stakes of this wager are so ominous that anything we can do to change the odds we must; it is the greatest of all the challenges we face on this anxious planet. Thank you, immensely, for being a part of this fight.