2100, and before.

Thoughts on the birth of my first grandchild

Asa Caleb Crane was born over the weekend; he came into the world with a full head of hair, and on first impression an undeniable charisma, a full array of important moral virtues, and a calm but determined approach to the new world in which he found himself.

And I found myself both entirely agog at his general niftiness, and bowled over by the fact that I now know, very intimately, someone who God willing is going to exist in the 22nd century.

I can compass the passage of time; my grandmother, who I knew well, was born in the latter part of the 19th century, and I can imagine most of the changes of her life—feel in some visceral way the increase in mobility, in communication, in opportunity, in ease. My parents were born in the Depression and came of age in the great postwar boom; my daughter was born just as the internet was getting off the ground. It all makes more or less sense to me; but of course the future is harder, and the future now is harder than ever. In fact, there have been a spate of stories this week pointing out that even our greatest climate scientists are having a hard time explaining the rapid rise in global temperature over the last 12 months—and others explaining just how hot it has become. Here’s a compelling Guardian account of the record heat across much of Africa in recent weeks.

Tarly in Ivory Coast explained: “All I can do is open the windows and the door to let the air flow, but even the air doesn’t move.”

He lives with a one-year-old child, who cries at night because he is hot, and his two teenage daughters, who wake up in the middle of the night to shower before returning to bed where they lie in front of the fan. Still, the heat clings; it does not go away.

“At four in the morning, it’s when it’s least hot and you can sleep better, but I have to wake up to go to work,” Tarly said. “When it’s this hot, mixed with humidity, time stands still.”

Of course time in the larger sense, rushes on—and right now the very real-time acceleration of warming scares me more than I want to admit. It also makes me think—as you might guess from the title of this newsletter—that the next few years may be the crucial ones between now and 2100, maybe even between now and 5100. Because if we don’t break the momentum of the warming then it will build unstoppably on itself—and that will foreclose all kinds of options.

It’s keeping those options open that matters to me. I don’t think we can reasonably plan all that far into the future—new technologies, new politics, new attitudes will inevitably shape how things happen twenty or sixty years from now. But I do think we can see the outline of our politics through the end of the decade, and I think it basically involves a single choice: do we go all-in on the energy transition as the world pledged in December at the last global climate talks, or do we back off, following the advice of, say, the (wildly applauded) Saudi Aramco CEO who said last week at a Houston energy conference that “we should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them.”

The first option—going all-in on the energy transition—doesn’t get us where we need to go, and certainly not by 2030. I don’t see any chance that the temperature won’t still be rising then. But done with vigor it keeps possibilities open: Politico this week reported, for instance, on the growing competition among blue-state governors to come up with more renewables and more efficiency, and the remarkable Kingsmill Bond at the Rocky Mountain Institute reported on the growing competition between the superpower blocs for green energy supremacy.

China, Europe, and the United States make up 80%–90% of deployment of key clean technologies.

China dominates the supply chain, but change is happening. China has outspent the United States and Europe 10-fold in the past five years to achieve market share in manufacturing of over 90% in solar and 70% in batteries. But United States and European capital expenditure is set to increase 16-fold by 2025, and opportunities for leadership abound; only 20% of final energy demand has been electrified; and technologies to enhance flexibility are still in the early stages.

Europe leads in solar and wind share of generation. Europe has the largest share of electricity from solar and wind,  and all three regions are moving rapidly up the S-curve towards solar and wind dominance.

What I’m trying to say is, we have the chance to move over the next five years to establish a counter-momentum to the rising temperature. If we do, by 2030 we’ll be in a place to weigh the options going forward; if we don’t then nature will be making decisions for us, and we’ll be reacting.

For those like me of a certain age we have no real business telling young people what kind of world to build—that will be their opportunity and their responsibility, and my sense is that they have the savvy to do a good job of it. But our job—everyone’s job these next five years—is to arrest the sudden and sickening lurch upwards in temperature, so that there’s somewhere at least a little stable for those young people to stand as they build that new world that must come. The best proxy for that stability is the number of solar panels and wind turbines and batteries we install between now and the end of the decade.

I’ve always thought this to be true; it’s why this newsletter is called what it is, and it’s why I do the work I do at places like Third Act. It’s just that all of a sudden I take it even more personally. Hi Asa!

In other climate and energy news:

+Jeff Jones and Eleanor Stein have an important piece in the Nation on the climate impacts of the Gaza war, arguing that

“it is clear to us that the single most important thing President Biden could do to for the climate today is to enforce an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza and end the war against the Palestinian people.

The Israeli campaign against Gaza, with US political complicity and military support, and both governments’ contravention of the order by the International Court of Justice to prevent the killing, stop the destruction of the means of life and the interference with humanitarian aid, has ripped the fragile fabric of international cooperation.

Yet that is exactly the fabric on which any hope for mitigating the climate catastrophe rests.”

Their essay links back to my November argument for a ceasefire in this newsletter; if you want more information on how climate change is deepening the troubles for that part of the globe, there’s some on offer there. For what it’s worth, I think their conclusion is absolutely right: “As we near Earth Day 2024, let’s make an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza a point of global unity.”

+I’ve written here before about the powerful argument from Brett Christophers that Big Oil won’t invest in renewables because it doesn’t return as much profit—mostly because the sun insists on delivering the energy for free. I was glad to see Time magazine running an essay of his this week, spreading this insight more widely.

The world is failing on the energy transition for reasons that strike at the heart of capitalist economies, and which will therefore be very difficult to surmount. The core issue here is easy to state. Most countries are relying predominantly on the private sector to drive faster renewables investment; private firms invest on the basis of expected profits; but profitability in renewables is rarely attractive.

Stick with an approach to climate change mitigation in which the private sector continues to be seen as the savior, and we are setting ourselves up to continue to fail.

+The American Prospect has a sickening account of the former Democratic officials who have been scooped up by the fossil fuel industry to make the case for natural gas. “Natural Allies” (get it? I suppose it’s better than “Fracking Sellouts”) is

chaired by former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who lost his Senate bid to J.D. Vance in 2022; former Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who lost her Senate seat to Bill Cassidy in 2014; former Florida Rep. Kendrick Meek, who lost his Senate bid to Marco Rubio in 2010; and former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter. The co-chairs, all moderate to conservative Democrats, wield their status as former public servants to lend credence to the policy arguments they’re paid by private interests to make. Natural Allies paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Landrieu and her colleague, former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), in 2022 for their natural gas PR work. We’ll have to wait for the release of the group’s 2023 tax filings to know how handsomely Ryan, Meek, and Nutter are being paid.

The group has come out loudly against the LNG pause. This should be unsurprising, as every single one of the group’s fossil fuel company funders, from Williams and EQT to TC Energy and Enbridge, is involved in the LNG industry. But the sinister effectiveness of these types of organizations’ advocacy work comes from the former politicians they hire to make their case. By stacking their leadership council with former elected officials, the narrative can be spun as “Democratic leaders raise alarm” about the LNG pause, and not “advocacy group funded by LNG industry players calls for expanding LNG.”

After the Biden administration implemented the pause, Tim Ryan wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal calling the pause “atrocious politics for Democrats,” framing it as “a political challenge I know personally.” The Wall Street Journal identified Ryan as a Democrat and former U.S. representative from Ohio, as well as a senior adviser to the incongruously named Progressive Policy Institute’s Campaign for Working Americans. There was no mention of his role as co-chair for a natural gas advocacy group funded by natural gas companies. This is why the revolving-door phenomenon is so pernicious; people still associate Ryan with his previous job as a former representative from Ohio even though his job now is “industry hired gun.”

Meanwhile, a new report from Clean Energy Canada makes clear that the LNG export business is as risky for our northern neighbors as it is for America

Specifically, it is unclear who will be buying B.C. LNG in the coming years and decades as forecasts for future LNG demand vary significantly. Japan's LNG imports, for one, have steadily declined over the last decade and fallen to their lowest level in 14 years as the country restarts nuclear power plants and builds out renewables. Meanwhile, global LNG export capacity is anticipated to increase by 43% by the end of the decade, just as many of B.C.’s export projects are planned to come online, with LNG oversupply set to be most pronounced in B.C.’s intended export markets.

+Fossil fuel subsidies don’t just come from the federal government. The New York State legislature may be about to pass a bill that would end state tax breaks for things like commercial airline fuel. Politico reports (scroll down) on the Stop Climate Polluter Handouts Act, which could raise the state $256 million

“We’re working very hard on the Assembly side to get this to the table to ensure that, as this is being discussed in the negotiations, that the Assembly is open and having those conversations,” Assembly member Jo Ann Simon said. “They’ve indicated to me that they’re willing to do that.”

Ending the exemptions is supported by a coalition of groups dubbed the “Stop Climate Polluter Handouts Act Coalition” including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Climate Reality Project and NYPIRG.

“The current bill really touches on some of the worst greenhouse gas emitting fuels,” said NRDC director of New York State government affairs Rich Schrader.

+If there was ever a company that deserved to go bankrupt its wood-pellet giant Enviva. And indeed they are now in financial trouble. The Biden administration should not, under any circumstances, use public money to help bail them out, as the stalwart executive director of the Dogwood Alliance reiterated in the Washington Post this week

Danna Smith urged the Biden Administration this fall to prevent wood pellet producers from accessing a tax credit that received additional funding under the Inflation Reduction Act, which marked the most substantial federal investment to date in the fight against climate change.

“Our government must not give one more dime to this failing, dirty industry,” Smith said in a Wednesday statement. “Instead, we need to focus on recovery and transition.”

If you have any doubts about the damage this industry does both to the planet and to the communities in which it operates, check out this short video.

+It’s slightly old news by this point (grandparenthood has slowed my reaction time a bit) but the decision two weeks ago by the Securities and Exchange Commission pass a new climate disclosure rule, but also to weaken that rule to exempt Scope 3 emissions (the biggest source for many businesses), continues to reverberate. Heated, the pioneering Substack climate newsletter, had the backstory

The changes are the result of a two-year pressure campaign by corporations, anti-climate conservative foundations, anti-ESG lawmakers, and the agriculture lobby. These well-funded groups met with the SEC, wrote letters, and submitted some of the 24,000 comments on the climate rule—the most comments the SEC has ever gotten.

The Sierra Club and others announced plans to sue the SEC, arguing

investors cannot adequately manage their investments without complete information on publicly-traded companies’ vulnerability to climate-related risks, including greenhouse gas emissions profiles. By allowing companies to selectively report their emissions, the SEC has fallen short of its statutory mandate to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and promote capital formation.

The key takeaway, I think, is that the outcome of this argument now hinges on California, where a law requiring Scope 3 emission reporting was adopted last year. Since California is the world’s fifth largest economy, and every major company is represented there, this would have much the same effect as SEC action. And the good news is, we all can help: at the moment, funding for actually carrying out this crucial mission has been omitted from next year’s budget, but there’s a big movement building to stick it back in. Join here!

+Meanwhile in California, my amazing Third Act colleagues are doing lots of what’s called “deep canvassing” with voters in the run up to this year’s election. This means long, real talks at the doorstep; watch this remarkable video with Martha Sellers and this equally engaging one with Maureen Forney to get a sense of how dynamic this can be. And if you want to try it out, we have lots of opportunities for this kind of work at ThirdAct.org

+For faith groups: a useful new curriculum called Wake Up the World! It includes videos from so many old friends, from Katherine Hayhoe and Ayana Johnson to Robert Krulwich!

+A team led by the senior forest restoration scientist at the Nature Conservancy has published an important paper that helps map the places where tree planting programs will do the most climate good—and where, by darkening the planet’s albedo or reflectivity, they might actually not make much sense.

In essence, brighter surfaces – such as a large snowy expanse or a grassland – will generally reflect a high proportion of sunlight back into space. Trees, meanwhile, tend to be darker coloured and absorb more sunlight, keeping it on Earth – usually in the form of excess heat. 

Because restoring tree cover often involves replacing brighter land covers – such as grasslands – with darker ones – namely, trees – this can lead to some degree of global warming. 

In some locations, this warming can partially or even completely outweigh the benefit of increased carbon uptake by the trees. Many know of this problem, but it has been difficult to quantify the impact of albedo in specific locations. 

In our new study, published in Nature Communications, we map albedo change from restoring tree cover and show that carbon-only estimates of the global climate benefits of tree-planting may be 20-81% too high.

+Powerful coverage in South Carolina’s premier newspaper, the Post and Courier, about plans to soak ratepayers for a big new gas power plant.

Conservation groups and public watchdogs are challenging the utilities’ plans and their cheerleading legislators. They say that utilities are gambling with ratepayers’ money by making billion-dollar bets on climate-harming fossil fuels while dishing out discounts to manufacturers and data centers — discounts unavailable to the public.

They say a large new pipeline project through the state carries its own set of risks, especially if it runs into opposition from landowners or cuts through environmentally sensitive areas.

And they say that the recent past is a powerful reminder about the consequences of bad choices and poor scrutiny, and how ratepayers often end up stuck paying for those mistakes.

This new push is "the most significant threat to energy bills, our environment and public participation that we’ve seen in over 25 years," said John Tynan, president of Conservation Voters of South Carolina. The group on March 20 launched a $150,000 ad campaign to oppose a bill Tynan said would "hand billion-dollar power companies a blank check.”

+And finally, an important Blimp update: Hybrid Air Vehicles has announced plans to base its manufacturing facility in South Yorkshire UK. They also helpfully sent along a drawing of what the base will someday (soon!?) look like. A guy can dream!