Good news on climate change
This is our last good-news Friday before Thanksgiving, so I again want to express my gratitude for Fix the News, which alerts us weekly to the many positive developments around the world.
It looks as though Fix the News has removed its usual paywall for this edition, so I hope you’ll have a minute to at least scroll through the roughly 50 items.
Among them:
“We’ve been writing about China’s renewable energy revolution here for years, so we know it’s not news to you,” says Fix the News. “But it does feel like something has shifted in the last few weeks; that mainstream outlets seem to have finally woken up to what’s actually happening and more importantly, what it means. It’s not just that China is building lots of solar and wind. It’s that China might actually be the country that saves us from climate catastrophe.”
Fix the News quotes an Economist article saying China is “a new type of superpower: one which deploys clean electricity on a planetary scale.”
“China is now the main engine of the global clean energy transition,” says Yang Muyi, an analyst at Ember, a British-based energy think tank, in a Reuters article.
“Try not to worry too much about the climate summits,” Fix the News says. “What matters far more is that China is now playing midwife to a clean energy transition that makes economic sense for the 80 percent of humanity that lives in countries that import fossil fuels. Those 6.4 billion people have no reason to stay dependent on shipments from petrostates anymore, when they can import solar panels made by the world’s first electrostate.”
“This doesn’t mean the problem is solved, energy is too big and complicated for that,” Fix the News says. “China and India are still building coal plants. Almost every country is building fossil gas. But the trajectory has changed. And it’s changed not because of international agreements or appeals to the better angels of our nature, but because national self-interest is finally aligning with climate action.”
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‘Remove the Regime’ protests being held this weekend in D.C.
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ProPublica: ‘How the Trump administration abandoned plans for a major cut in disability benefits for older workers’