Even 72% of Republican voters want to "accelerate the development of clean energy" in the United States. That helps explain why, say, the Sierra Club is finding dramatic success with its Ready for 100 campaign. Sure, Berkeley was quick to sign on, and Madison, Wisconsin. But by the early summer of 2017 the U.S. Conference of Mayors had endorsed the drive, and leaders were popping up in unexpected places.
Columbia South Carolina mayor Steve Benjamin even said, "It's not an option. It's an imperative." Environmental groups from Climate Mobilization to Greenpeace to Food and Water Watch are backing the 100% target, differing mainly on how quickly we must achieve the transition, with answers ranging from 2028 to 2050. (The right answer, given the state of the planet, is 25 years ago. The second best response: as fast as is humanly possible.)
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders joined with Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley in the spring of 2017 to propose the first federal 100 percent bill. It won't pass Congress any time soon, but Congress is not the only legislative body that matters in America -- you could make an argument that in the Trump era capitals like Sacramento are just as important
In a conscious bid to recreate the spirit of the Paris climate talks, California governor Jerry Brown summoned the world's "sub-national" leaders -- governors, mayors, regional administrators -- to a giant San Francisco conference in September of 2017:
"Look, it's up to you, and it's up to me and tens of millions of other people to get it together to roll back the forces of carbonization and join together to combat the existential threat of climate change," said Brown, as he invited the world to his gathering. If activists have their way over the next few months, many of those cities and states will arrive in the Bay bearing pledges to take their places totally renewable.
That's not to say that this fight is going to be easy. The fossil fuel industry is well aware that they're not the future, yet they're determined to keep us stuck in the past as long as possible. Every year they can drag out the transition means billions of dollars in revenue.
The arguments against renewables has always been: the sun goes down, the wind ceases to blow. Indeed, one group of academics challenged Jacobson's calculations last spring partly on these grounds. But technology marches on: Elon Musk's batteries work in Tesla cars, but scaled up they also make it possible, and economic, for utilities to store the afternoon's sun for the evening's electric demand. As one California utility executive said at an industry meeting in May 2017, "The technology has been resolved. How fast do you want to get to 100 percent? That can be done today."
The trouble, however, is that most utility executives think in very different ways. The growth in new rooftop solar installations has come to what the New York Times called "a shuddering halt," largely because of "a concerted and well-funded lobbying campaign by traditional utilities, which have been working in state capitals across the country to reverse incentives for homeowners." Instead of cutting residents a break for helping solve the climate crisis, the utilities -- led by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Edison Electric Institute (whose lobbying efforts ratepayers actually underwrite) -- are eager to end "net-metering" laws that let customers sell excess power they generate back to the grid. That's pretty much the law that Germany used to make itself a renewable energy powerhouse -- and in the process caused huge losses for its utilities.
Rather than trying to adapt to renewable energy, says industry observer Nancy LaPlaca, "utilities have a great monopoly going and they want to keep it." They use their political clout to make sure that state regulators roll over. Sometimes the results are truly ludicrous -- Arizona, for instance, whose capital lies in the "Valley of the Sun" and whose sports fans root for the Suns and the Sun Devils, produces only about 4% of its power from solar energy. Its biggest utility has showered state regulators with dark money to keep it that way -- in fact, in the spring of 2017 a former utility commissioner and his wife were indicted by the feds, along with an industry lobbyist, for their role in anti-solar shenanigans.
And it's not just right-wing Republicans who want to keep business as usual chugging along. Democrats have often found themselves supporting new fossil fuel plans because they are beholden to the building trades unions for campaign support. That was the case last fall when the AFL-CIO, reflecting those building trades members, released a statement supporting the Dakota Access pipeline days after the security companies hired by the oil industry had sicced German Shepherds on indigenous protesters:
"The AFL-CIO supports pipeline construction as part of a comprehensive energy policy," labor chief Richard Trumka said in a statement. "Pipeline construction and maintenance provides quality jobs." And of course Donald Trump approved the project early in his presidency, shortly after a cheerful meeting with the heads of the building trades unions. The first oil flowed through it the same afternoon that he pulled America out of the Paris climate accords.
That means, of course, that renewables advocates need to emphasize the jobs that will be created as we move towards sun and wind -- and since those jobs aren't always going to be in the same places as the fossil fuel ones they replace, a just transition for displaced workers is needed. There are already far more Americans employed in the solar industry than in the coal fields, and we're still near the start of the conversion: Sanders and Merkley produced studies to show their federal 100 percent bill, beyond its generous transition benefits, would produce three million net new jobs over the coming decades.
Environmental justice advocates, who have been at the front of the climate fight, are quick to point out that a push for renewables needs to means more than EV charging stations and solar panels on the roofs of people who can afford big roofs. If a city announces it's going 100% renewable and then keeps buying diesel buses (or stops buying buses altogether, relying on Lyft and Uber to create an alternate transit system), then it would be an empty boast.
There are signs that's starting to happen. When Sanders and Merkley announced their federal legislation in April of 2017, leaders of groups like Green for All and Brooklyn's feisty UPROSE were featured speakers; one of the most impassioned endorsements came from Mustafa Ali of the Hip Hop Caucus: "This act gives our country an opportunity to embrace a just transition, honor the innovation and hard work that exists in communities that are often overlooked and forgotten, and revitalize communities of color, low income communities and indigenous populations," he said.
Meanwhile, renters need ways to join the renewable revolution, just like homeowners. None of it's easy. As Jacqui Patterson, who heads the NAACP's environmental justice work, says: "people now lose their lives for not being able to pay for electricity -- they're burning down their houses by using candlelight, or because their oil has run out and they have to use heaters, or they're on respirators and their electricity goes out. So as we're transitioning to renewables, we need to make sure there are not unintended consequences in term of rate increases -- for those communities 'just transition' means their bills don't fluctuate upwards. Ideally their bills would go down." In the best of worlds, she adds, "just transition means they're owning part of the energy infrastructure. They're not just a consumer writing a check every month, but they see now a chance to own part of that infrastructure."
In May of 2017, the Wallace Global Fund, one of the big environmental philanthropies, pointedly awarded the Standing Rock Sioux a million dollars to build renewable energy on the reservation, a fitting commemoration to the bravery of protesters who tried to hold the Dakota pipeline at bay and a reminder that private charities will need to play a role in this transition as well. But the political battle will be hard-fought: the New York Times reported last year that the Koch Brothers have begun to aggressively (and cynically) court minority communities, arguing that they "benefit the most from cheap and abundant fossil fuels."
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