Since NY has banned fracking, a lot of people are working to try and develop clean energy at the state, county, and local levels. These efforts together are known as “fractivism 2.0.” “They’re trying to prevent the country and the planet from digging their own graves by committing ourselves to another 50 or 100 years of burning fossil fuels.”
2015 can be viewed as the year in which the epochal transition from one set of fuels to another took off, with renewables making such significant strides that, for the first time in centuries, the beginning of the end of the Fossil Fuel Era has come into sight. This shift will take place no matter how well or poorly the deal just achieved at the U.N. climate summit in Paris is carried out.
That would be enough electricity to power nearly 100 million homes. As wind grows, investments in wind energy would reach as much as $70 billion annually by 2050, according to a new report, at which point the industry would support 600,000 jobs.
Two U.S. initiatives to provide Africans with electricity seem likely to lead to large, climate-polluting projects rather than the locally sourced renewable energy rural Africa needs.
Fifty or a hundred years from now, the fiscal cliff, the current tensions with Russia, and many other issues that now seem pressing will be remembered dimly, if at all. What will be remembered is whether, as then-Senator Obama said in June of 2008, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” It was an inspiring call to action then; in the wake of the droughts, the wildfires, and hurricane Sandy, it’s even more so now.
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