Issue 79 — Climate Positivity
This newsletter was written by a human.
TOP OF MIND
Have you heard that climate change is your fault? It’s your fault that you drive a gas-guzzling car, overheat your home, run your air conditioner, travel by air, and make scrambled eggs on your gas-fired stove top. That’s why we’re in a climate crisis now. It’s all you.
But that’s not true. The real evildoers are the fossil fuel companies.
In the 1920s, most Americans took public transportation to work. There were 17,000 miles of streetcar tracks in American cities, including Los Angeles. Gas was a by-product of oil refining. Steam was the go-to transportation power source.
Then a group made up of General Motors, Firestone, Standard Oil, and Phillips Petroleum decided to work to change that. Henry Ford’s mass-produced automobile was the future, they decided, and so popular that it was already causing gridlock in cities. The market for gasoline was growing. So the group decided to help that along. They bought up the streetcar systems and shut them down. Some historians say the streetcar system was already on the way out, but the fossil fuel group certainly gave them a kick out of the door.
Let me save you a few years of business school. Markets aren’t magic. They are created and nurtured by the companies that profit by them. Example: When I wanted to get a new Prius to replace my old one, Toyota steered me toward their gas vehicles. They said they were short on hybrid inventory and their EV production was delayed. No Prius for me. I eventually figured out they were manipulating the market. They didn’t want me to buy a Prius because they wanted a few more years of profit out of fossil fuels.
It was a little desperate of Toyota to do that, but for good reason. A report from the Rocky Mountain Institute shows a major reversal underway in our energy sources. We will see our energy mostly provided by renewables, with minimal dependence on fossil fuels.
As novelist and essayist Cory Doctorow wrote in his newsletter:
China is leading the world in a cleantech transition, with the EU in close second. Cleantech is surging in places where energy demand is also still growing, like India and Vietnam. Fossil fuel use has already peaked in Thailand, South Africa and every country in Latin America.
When I wrote TV news, we had an expression: Numbers are our adjectives. In the past decade, solar capacity has increased by a factor of twelve and battery storage by a factor of 180. EV sales have increased by a factor of 100.
In time, the market just won’t support fossil fuels. But that doesn’t mean the path to a green future is clear. As fossil fuel companies become more desperate, they will work to slow technological progress. A few weeks ago, the nation’s largest oil trade group, which includes ExxonMobil and Chevron, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the Biden administration’s efforts to encourage electric vehicle manufacturing.
Yes, fossil fuel companies want to stop technological progress, because they want to keep the market for their product strong. But they’re running out of time, because in the next year or so, we will hit peak demand for fossil fuels, and it’s all downhill from there. More renewable energy production is on the way, with solar in the lead. Electric vehicles convert electricity into motion at 80% efficiency. Driving a gas-powered car will be a waste of money.
Doctorow again:
This is exactly what happened with previous iterations of tech. The material, energy and labor budgets of cars, buildings, furniture, etc all fell precipitously every time there was a new technique for manufacturing them.
Unlike in the stories told in novels, our climate story won’t resolve seamlessly. But climate optimism is warranted. You can leave it to me to work on a neat novelistic climax to solve the problem. Which brings me to:
NEXT WEEK
Sunday is the official publication date of my new book, Resist. Resist is part of a trilogy of novels that follows characters who are trying to work out the climate emergency on their own terms. You can preorder it as an e-book, and it will magically show up on your e-reader on Sunday. Here’s the link.
Although it will take me three books to get there, the characters in the trilogy are aiming toward utopia. In fact, the final book in the series, which I’m working on now, is called Liberation.
There’s an old story in science fiction circles that someone saw an episode of Star Trek with Captain Kirk holding a communicator and said to themselves, “What if there were a phone like that that could flip open?” That’s why it’s worth it to craft novelistic solutions to present-day problems.
Thanks for your support!
Lee
Sources
The real story behind the demise of America’s once-mighty streetcars
Why did cars become the dominant form of transportation in the United States?
An end to the climate emergency is in our grasp
Renewables are now way cheaper than coal
Cheap renewable vs. Fossil Fuels
Climate Doom Is Out. ‘Apocalyptic Optimism’ Is In
