In any time of crisis there is a lot of bad news. You have read a lot of it in these pages. However, there is also more and more good news that we must dwell on.
Most major social change movements take centuries, like the slow spread of agriculture throughout the world, the slow decline of the Roman Empire and its replacement by feudalism, the replacement of feudalism by industrial capitalism and socialism, the gradual spread of the Reformation throughout Europe. These big, societal level changes, came with a lot of suffering and death and the new systems evolved only over large blocks of time. The good changes we see now, in the face of the climate and extinction crisis, are proceeding much more rapidly. As the crisis deepens, there is no question but that society is responding and the more evident the crisis comes obvious due to wildfires, hurricanes, extinction rates, hear waves, the more rapidly society is responding. Here are some positive trends.
Coal rapidly on its way out, having become far less of our energy supply in just the last 15 years.
Energy companies are investing in using grease and other fatty wastes to make diesel, a type of fuel that emits 50 to 80 percent less greenhouse gas than biofuel made from plants.
While the global population is still growing, the growth rate is slowing and the UN predicts that it will peak by 2050 and then begin to decline. Good news, fewer hands tearing at Earth’s ecosystems.
Pipelines are being challenged everywhere: Standing Rock, the Straits of Mackinac, the Minnesota-Wisconsin shale oil line, Washington State.
Dams coming down on rivers all over the U.S., returning streams and rivers to their original state of health and freeing up fish migrations
Fourteen nations have just signed a global sustainable fisheries agreement that not only sets limit on catch and by-catch but also places huge areas of the ocean off limits to fishing
Every major automobile maker is now offering electrics, some companies offering more than one model, and this trend is continuing. Furthermore, the range of the newer electrics in increasing.
Large funders such as major banks are pulling out of oil for two reasons: Bloomberg News (a respected, conservative, business-oriented publication), reports this year we achieved peak oil around the globe. (Peak oil is the stage at which it is no longer profitable to drill and harvest even though much oil remains in the ground, since it takes more energy to get it out than is gotten out. And the big banks fear that governments will end their subsidies to oil drilling and close off large areas of oil-rich lands in the name of conservation. Oil is no longer a good investment. The decline of coal and oil make renewable energy more attractive and solar is becoming cheaper than fossil fuels in many areas. Even where it’s not, it is still being installed.
The Army Corps of Engineers, once notorious for permitting mega-projects like big dams and fossil fuel infrastructure, has actually drafted a plan for sustainability in its operations. It has denied a permit for the ecological monster, the Pebble Mine in Alaska.
Here at home hundreds of cities and universities and some businesses have pledged to abide by Paris agreement even though the U.S. has withdrawn it, and many haven set a goal of zero emissions.
In England the national highway department is planning to plant wildflower habitat along 500 miles of new road, adding to the 200 now there, and to go back and plant existing roadsides.
Nation states, including China, have set zero emissions goals.
So called advanced peoples are beginning to recognize the wisdom of traditional indigenous peoples and their way of living to minimally impact Nature
Even U.S. military has a program to cut energy use on its bases
Battery storage technology advancing rapidly. This is important not only for electric cars, but for storing the energy from solar and wind in those times when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, making renewables far more reliable. Wind and solar are now cheaper than coal around the world/rapidly raising the percentage of renewable electric energy used. Energy relies ever more heavily on renewables in places like Texas, Iowa, West Virginia, and many European countries
Environmental sanity has returned to the Whitehouse. While President Trump did rollback many environmental rules, 85 percent of his attempts were defeated in the courts. We can expect the Biden Administration to repair as much of the damage as possible, and that with the help of big business whose leaders just urged him publically to address Climate Change.
The percentage of Americans who believe Climate Change is real and want government to do something continues to rise.
Children and young people have come out onto the streets by the millions to express their anger at the failure of leaders to act, and they support a Green New Deal. What is more, the pandemic has not stopped them and they continue to organize and lobby virtually.
There are many challenges ahead, not the least of which is that we are running out of time, and we must keep them in view if only for the fear they inspire that makes us act, but major social change regarding our species relationship with the environment is underway at and a pace which in historical perspective, is revolutionary. This is not the end of environmental deterioration generated by our industrial civilization, not even the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning
Take hope, and get out on the frontlines.
Peace with each other and the earth 