Regarding the catastrophic feedback loop forming as we lose the Ponderosa pines: would massively replanting Redwoods along the California coastline help? I’m thinking along the lines of transpiration of the coastal fog…. And grazing buffalo on the grasslands rather than cows for their benefit to those ecosystems…. Obviously we’re not going to get any help from the federal government anytime soon enough, but California, being the world’s fourth (?) largest economy, ought to ever more boldly lead the way in implementing as many creative solutions to the climate crisis as possible! Did everyone see the recent PBS New Hour segment about the project using sound engineering to help revive dead and dying coral reefs? As one of the scientists in that project said, we need to be trying everything now!
I am Canadian. What I think we are witnessing is the decline of the American Empire and the rise, for better or worse, of China of the next global power. Smarter people than me can comment if this decline was historically inevitable. However, without doubt, this sea-change has been accelerated by the Idiot in Chief. Canada looks for new trading partners, and our equation with the USA will nevee go back to what it was. CF climate unfortunately Carney is petro postive more that he is on renewables, which is ass backwards.
Ken, smarter people than me will have to answer your question. All I can say is that it is a transition and while this might be overly simplified, one hopes that renewables increase as they are doing in Europe and Asia while the reliance on FF drops.
Fair enough. But don't expect all these calls for urgent reductions in CO2 emissions to be helpful. That can only make the transition take longer and be more expensive while having no impact on the amount of CO2 already added. We can't attempt to make the all-electric world using electric transportation. That means more oil will be needed and used and atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise. No way around this dilemma.
Ken, as I said, I have nothing more than concerned citizen’s knowledge of these matters. We agree that the Transition is inevitable, and I think it’s fair to say that Canada lags behind other countries in these efforts. Do we have enough current capacity in FF to meets today’s needs, as we transition away from the fuels? I’ve not read anything about new pipelines being essential, other than for non-fuel reasons, placating D Smith, nation building (whatever that means), a carrot for Trump, and so on.
Concerning your question “That means more oil will be needed and used and atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise." Let me answer your question with a question: “Don’t we have enough in production already”?
And I am confident that tRumpf in his love for SMRs will never decide to undo the Price Anderson Act....this longstanding regulation indemnifies nuke power plants. If they are so safe let the free, I said:"FREE" market handle the risk!
Great piece! Love the focus on differentiated wind speeds that work at night, in winter, after a cold front - basically whenever. That's what's always struck me as so odd about the "what about when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow" argument. Ignoring the incredible rise in batteries, it doesn't actually follow logically that the wind for sure won't blow when the sun isn't shining. And then there's the "aesthetics objection." I personally think wind turbines look really cool! I see a ton of them every summer driving up 127 in Michigan, and they're borderline majestic.
In Massachusetts we have a beautiful set of wind turbines--around eight of them--at the top of the Berkshires, which I enjoy seeing when I drive the back roads between my home near Boston, and my best friend's, near Albany NY.
Anyway, does aesthetics over rule survival? How about all those tar sands in Canada? Quite ugly indeed. And if a few "ugly" wind turbines help us to survive this crisis, then so be it.
I've enjoyed, for several decades, the immense wind farm north and west of Palm Springs along I-10, in Banning Pass. I also enjoy seeing a line of maybe a dozen wind turbines on the high point just before San Diego County drops downhill to the Imperial Valley. I think those turbines are on one or the other of the two Kumeyaay reservations in that area.
This post brilliantly highlights that the renewable transition is no longer a mere engineering challenge of "installing turbines." It has evolved into a complex upstream supply chain and logistical struggle.
From a systems theory perspective, China currently holds a "thermodynamic" advantage over the West. While Western democracies face significant socio-political friction—manifesting as NIMBYism and regulatory bottlenecks—China’s centralized model minimizes this entropy of implementation. By suppressing public dissent, they reduce the internal resistance of the system, allowing for a much faster throughput of energy infrastructure.
The real question for the West is: can we achieve the necessary speed of transition without sacrificing the democratic feedback loops that, while slow, serve as essential safety valves for the system? We are no longer just fighting carbon; we are fighting the "social friction" of our own institutional complexity.
The US is a crumbling empire. While our fossil fuel companies give lip service to the free market, they LOVE corporate welfare. RMI reports that fossil fuel subsidies are $1.3 trillion and with implicit subsidies, $7 trillion. That's more than they net from selling fuel. See page 41 of their free download, Cleantech Revolution. https://rmi.org/insight/the-cleantech-revolution/
Yes, true. I was responding to what Bill wrote about hoping Trump would be seeing all of the progress China has made with wind and solar as a reality check on his trip there. I was simply agreeing with him.
In your book on page 55, you ask us for "sheer ebullience". Bill, do you practice what you preach? Yes, old habits die hard, but ... we are in a hinge moment.
The biggest polluter, China, with 30% of global emissions is working hard on reducing them. https://archive.is/GdUIL We are #2, with just 15%.
I wrote a thank you note to Mr. Trump for disrupting the globe's comfortable dependence on fossil fuels with the chaos at Hormuz.
Who is better at rolling with the punches, you or Donald Trump? A word for that is zanshin. In the Tao of Personal Leadership Diane Dreher says "...zanshin is the ability to recognize and flow with change. ... leaders who believe a static condition is normal feel unsettled and victimized by change..." (p 17). "Flowing with zanshin, we become part of the process..... We improvise, combining different energies, reaching out courageously to produce new harmonies. The act of creation requires us to take chances, to risk making mistakes." (p 19)
I continue to be shocked by not just Americans but everyone seems blind how existential climate change is rapidly unfolding. In the Pacific Northwest it seems like spring as a season is gone, or maybe down to a few weeks. Rain is now as rare in Seattle as it is in Los Angeles. I cannot hike anywhere without morning the trees that have or are dying…burning up, not by fire but by heat and sunlight that they are not adapted for. It is like a real-life version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The number of people responsible for this are so few it is shocking. They will come to be known in the same way as the totalitarians of the 20th century—evil, destructive, inhumane, power-hungry. I see them every time I look up at a sky peppered with foreign, thin, striated clouds that never used to show up here.
Nice to focus on wind. But you do not mention "rooftop" wind: small modern propellors with turbine that generate 1 or 2 kW of energy, easily mounted on a pole. Could feed the energy directly into hot water cylinder to heat water, or connect to your power.
It wasn't "so many years ago" that the eight wind turbines of Kirk Hill Wind Farm in Ayrshire started to give outrageous offence to Donald Trump on his Turnberry golf course.
After construction from late 2023-early 2024, Kirk Hill's first wind turbine was commissioned in April 2024: with the remaining seven turbines commissioned by the end of May 2024.
However Trump's furious resentment almost certainly dates from earlier refusal of his appeal against planning approval of Kirk Hill wind farm--which he lost.
And malignant narcissists make VERY bad losers.
Especially as a former US president who feels entitled to get his own way in everything...
An early email I received on 20 Feb 2022 from Ripple Energy:
"Congratulations! You have successfully converted your reservation into ownership shares in our Kirk Hill wind farm.
"You’re now officially part of a very special community: as Ripple members you are amongst the first customers in the UK to be supplied by a wind farm they collectively own!
"You are joining thousands of people who own part of our second wind farm, Kirk Hill, in the south west of Scotland. Being part of this renewable energy ownership revolution is something truly unique. Here's how you have chosen to play your part:
"Your Kirk Hill wind farm ownership:
Your wind farm: Kirk Hill
Your co-operative: Kirk Hill Co-operative
Watts owned: 1418.397
Expected output (kwh): 4500
Equal to your electricity usage (%): 120%
"You have chosen to pay for your wind farm ownership by instalments. Please remember that all payments must be completed by the time your wind farm is operational."
Thank you so much for your work in keeping us informed. I love the optimistic attitude you have in this writing. It encourages me to believe science will win out in the long run. DJT cannot stop the incredible tide moving in our direction.
The coastal mountains from BC through Alaska are losing their glaciers at a rapid rate with serious consequences even though the area is sparsely occupied by people. The Nov. 28, 2020 massive landslide on Elliot Creek and finally into Bute Inlet in BC is another such destructive event. It crushed the rich salmon spawning beds under 7.7 million cubic meters of debris. Hakai Institute continues their analysis and research on the effects: https://catalogue.hakai.org/dataset/ca-cioos_189dd319-d5ef-4f2a-a060-df8d47628b86
Regarding the catastrophic feedback loop forming as we lose the Ponderosa pines: would massively replanting Redwoods along the California coastline help? I’m thinking along the lines of transpiration of the coastal fog…. And grazing buffalo on the grasslands rather than cows for their benefit to those ecosystems…. Obviously we’re not going to get any help from the federal government anytime soon enough, but California, being the world’s fourth (?) largest economy, ought to ever more boldly lead the way in implementing as many creative solutions to the climate crisis as possible! Did everyone see the recent PBS New Hour segment about the project using sound engineering to help revive dead and dying coral reefs? As one of the scientists in that project said, we need to be trying everything now!
What an informative and excellent essay! Thank you for pulling all this together and writing so well.
I am Canadian. What I think we are witnessing is the decline of the American Empire and the rise, for better or worse, of China of the next global power. Smarter people than me can comment if this decline was historically inevitable. However, without doubt, this sea-change has been accelerated by the Idiot in Chief. Canada looks for new trading partners, and our equation with the USA will nevee go back to what it was. CF climate unfortunately Carney is petro postive more that he is on renewables, which is ass backwards.
Yes, our US president is making China great again. https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Slide4.png
What is Canada doing about its use of fossil fuels for all the transportation required to transition to renewables like wind and solar?
Ken, smarter people than me will have to answer your question. All I can say is that it is a transition and while this might be overly simplified, one hopes that renewables increase as they are doing in Europe and Asia while the reliance on FF drops.
Fair enough. But don't expect all these calls for urgent reductions in CO2 emissions to be helpful. That can only make the transition take longer and be more expensive while having no impact on the amount of CO2 already added. We can't attempt to make the all-electric world using electric transportation. That means more oil will be needed and used and atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise. No way around this dilemma.
Ken, as I said, I have nothing more than concerned citizen’s knowledge of these matters. We agree that the Transition is inevitable, and I think it’s fair to say that Canada lags behind other countries in these efforts. Do we have enough current capacity in FF to meets today’s needs, as we transition away from the fuels? I’ve not read anything about new pipelines being essential, other than for non-fuel reasons, placating D Smith, nation building (whatever that means), a carrot for Trump, and so on.
Concerning your question “That means more oil will be needed and used and atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise." Let me answer your question with a question: “Don’t we have enough in production already”?
And I am confident that tRumpf in his love for SMRs will never decide to undo the Price Anderson Act....this longstanding regulation indemnifies nuke power plants. If they are so safe let the free, I said:"FREE" market handle the risk!
Great piece! Love the focus on differentiated wind speeds that work at night, in winter, after a cold front - basically whenever. That's what's always struck me as so odd about the "what about when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow" argument. Ignoring the incredible rise in batteries, it doesn't actually follow logically that the wind for sure won't blow when the sun isn't shining. And then there's the "aesthetics objection." I personally think wind turbines look really cool! I see a ton of them every summer driving up 127 in Michigan, and they're borderline majestic.
In Massachusetts we have a beautiful set of wind turbines--around eight of them--at the top of the Berkshires, which I enjoy seeing when I drive the back roads between my home near Boston, and my best friend's, near Albany NY.
Anyway, does aesthetics over rule survival? How about all those tar sands in Canada? Quite ugly indeed. And if a few "ugly" wind turbines help us to survive this crisis, then so be it.
I've enjoyed, for several decades, the immense wind farm north and west of Palm Springs along I-10, in Banning Pass. I also enjoy seeing a line of maybe a dozen wind turbines on the high point just before San Diego County drops downhill to the Imperial Valley. I think those turbines are on one or the other of the two Kumeyaay reservations in that area.
Yesterday i learned from Persuasion Francis Fukuyama substack of the two critical types of Trust.
I am reminded of it by your post today.
Thanks for your excellence.
This post brilliantly highlights that the renewable transition is no longer a mere engineering challenge of "installing turbines." It has evolved into a complex upstream supply chain and logistical struggle.
From a systems theory perspective, China currently holds a "thermodynamic" advantage over the West. While Western democracies face significant socio-political friction—manifesting as NIMBYism and regulatory bottlenecks—China’s centralized model minimizes this entropy of implementation. By suppressing public dissent, they reduce the internal resistance of the system, allowing for a much faster throughput of energy infrastructure.
The real question for the West is: can we achieve the necessary speed of transition without sacrificing the democratic feedback loops that, while slow, serve as essential safety valves for the system? We are no longer just fighting carbon; we are fighting the "social friction" of our own institutional complexity.
The US is a crumbling empire. While our fossil fuel companies give lip service to the free market, they LOVE corporate welfare. RMI reports that fossil fuel subsidies are $1.3 trillion and with implicit subsidies, $7 trillion. That's more than they net from selling fuel. See page 41 of their free download, Cleantech Revolution. https://rmi.org/insight/the-cleantech-revolution/
I think we are all on the verge of a good rant.
Thus, this turned out to be a need vicarious catharsis.
I feel much better now, thanks!
It seems you do too as this ended on such a positive note.
Congratulations on your book, as well.
Yes, it also crossed my mind that Trump needs to be taken on a field trip in China.
One can dream that it could actually work as an inspiration. Wishful thinking, perhaps.
Trump needs to be ousted in the next election, by a Democrat.
Yes, true. I was responding to what Bill wrote about hoping Trump would be seeing all of the progress China has made with wind and solar as a reality check on his trip there. I was simply agreeing with him.
can you turn it into a plain spoken haiku that the non voters might hear?
Great post, Bill-- thanks!
In your book on page 55, you ask us for "sheer ebullience". Bill, do you practice what you preach? Yes, old habits die hard, but ... we are in a hinge moment.
The biggest polluter, China, with 30% of global emissions is working hard on reducing them. https://archive.is/GdUIL We are #2, with just 15%.
#3 polluter, India, is skipping coal and going straight to clean tech. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nicolas-fulghum_india-will-not-be-the-next-china-for-coal-share-7453406683105632256-Tc6u/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAB7sz4BQ6-xp9PSYQS5pJyLjOpKblARfPU
I wrote a thank you note to Mr. Trump for disrupting the globe's comfortable dependence on fossil fuels with the chaos at Hormuz.
Who is better at rolling with the punches, you or Donald Trump? A word for that is zanshin. In the Tao of Personal Leadership Diane Dreher says "...zanshin is the ability to recognize and flow with change. ... leaders who believe a static condition is normal feel unsettled and victimized by change..." (p 17). "Flowing with zanshin, we become part of the process..... We improvise, combining different energies, reaching out courageously to produce new harmonies. The act of creation requires us to take chances, to risk making mistakes." (p 19)
I continue to be shocked by not just Americans but everyone seems blind how existential climate change is rapidly unfolding. In the Pacific Northwest it seems like spring as a season is gone, or maybe down to a few weeks. Rain is now as rare in Seattle as it is in Los Angeles. I cannot hike anywhere without morning the trees that have or are dying…burning up, not by fire but by heat and sunlight that they are not adapted for. It is like a real-life version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The number of people responsible for this are so few it is shocking. They will come to be known in the same way as the totalitarians of the 20th century—evil, destructive, inhumane, power-hungry. I see them every time I look up at a sky peppered with foreign, thin, striated clouds that never used to show up here.
Nice to focus on wind. But you do not mention "rooftop" wind: small modern propellors with turbine that generate 1 or 2 kW of energy, easily mounted on a pole. Could feed the energy directly into hot water cylinder to heat water, or connect to your power.
see https://myskywind.shop/en/
It wasn't "so many years ago" that the eight wind turbines of Kirk Hill Wind Farm in Ayrshire started to give outrageous offence to Donald Trump on his Turnberry golf course.
After construction from late 2023-early 2024, Kirk Hill's first wind turbine was commissioned in April 2024: with the remaining seven turbines commissioned by the end of May 2024.
https://youtube.com/shorts/0c0RaqPOOzQ?si=CqYYFVPUYQB1go52
However Trump's furious resentment almost certainly dates from earlier refusal of his appeal against planning approval of Kirk Hill wind farm--which he lost.
And malignant narcissists make VERY bad losers.
Especially as a former US president who feels entitled to get his own way in everything...
An early email I received on 20 Feb 2022 from Ripple Energy:
"Congratulations! You have successfully converted your reservation into ownership shares in our Kirk Hill wind farm.
"You’re now officially part of a very special community: as Ripple members you are amongst the first customers in the UK to be supplied by a wind farm they collectively own!
"You are joining thousands of people who own part of our second wind farm, Kirk Hill, in the south west of Scotland. Being part of this renewable energy ownership revolution is something truly unique. Here's how you have chosen to play your part:
"Your Kirk Hill wind farm ownership:
Your wind farm: Kirk Hill
Your co-operative: Kirk Hill Co-operative
Watts owned: 1418.397
Expected output (kwh): 4500
Equal to your electricity usage (%): 120%
"You have chosen to pay for your wind farm ownership by instalments. Please remember that all payments must be completed by the time your wind farm is operational."
Thank you so much for your work in keeping us informed. I love the optimistic attitude you have in this writing. It encourages me to believe science will win out in the long run. DJT cannot stop the incredible tide moving in our direction.
The coastal mountains from BC through Alaska are losing their glaciers at a rapid rate with serious consequences even though the area is sparsely occupied by people. The Nov. 28, 2020 massive landslide on Elliot Creek and finally into Bute Inlet in BC is another such destructive event. It crushed the rich salmon spawning beds under 7.7 million cubic meters of debris. Hakai Institute continues their analysis and research on the effects: https://catalogue.hakai.org/dataset/ca-cioos_189dd319-d5ef-4f2a-a060-df8d47628b86