Opinion: Some Climate News

Love Justice, and Climate Change

There always seems to be some bad news about how fast the planet is warming and about the catastrophic effects that warming is having. The bad news I’m focused on at the moment, however, is about deliberate actions being taken by President Trump and his administration that will accelerate the warming of the planet and increase the deadly effects of climate change. I hope you will read to the end of this post, though, because there is some quite hopeful news on the global stage that can help balance our perspective.

President Trump has declared an “energy emergency” giving himself the authority to fast-track the construction of oil and gas projects. He also has launched an assault on regulations designed to curb pollution–often ignoring the well–established legal processes for making and revising regulations. He has frozen funds appropriated by Congress for clean energy projects. He has stopped approvals for wind power projects on public lands and in federal waters, and threatened those on private lands, despite the fact that wind energy is the country’s largest source of renewable energy.

Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy in the new Trump administration has pledged “a 180 degree pivot” to promoting fossil fuels and dismantling virtually every national policy designed to curb global warming.

Disastrous Redirection of the EPA
Lee Zeldin, the new head of the EPA, has announced that the mission of the EPA now is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.” The longstanding goals of protecting the environment and protecting public health, are no longer a part of the mission according to Zeldin. Those goals were part of Richard Nixon’s charge to the agency when he created it in 1970 and have guided it ever since, up until the new Trump Administration.

In perhaps his most devastating and far reaching initiative, Zeldin has also committed the EPA to overturning the agency’s legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases “by reconsidering decades of science that show global warming is endangering humanity.”

The EPA has also frozen or cancelled $20 billion in grants for clean energy projects–trying to claw back money from grants that were fully approved before President Biden left office. The climate non-profit groups that were the recipients of the grants have sued in court to get access to the money already granted to them.

Meanwhile, at the moment, tax credits for electric vehicle purchases and for installing solar and heat pumps in your home are still in place. The future of the EV credits is uncertain.

Some More Encouraging News

Historic, But Fragile International Agreement Reached on Biodiversity
Global wildlife populations plunged by more than 70% between 1970 and 2020, according to the most recent assessment. A million of the world’s species are now threatened with extinction. After several UN conferences failed to find agreement on solutions, in February the UN biodiversity conference, following tense and painstaking discussions, reached an agreement outlining a roadmap for nature finance. The United States did not participate in this conference, but the results were taken as proof that international cooperation is still a possibility. One participant said, “We achieved the adoption of the first global plan to finance the conservation of life on Earth.”

Progress in the United Kingdom
In 2024 the greenhouse gas emissions of the UK fell to their lowest level since 1872. Their use of coal dropped to the lowest level since 1666. The UK’s emissions are now 54% below 1990 levels, while GDP has grown by 84%. The drop in emissions is attributable to closing its last coal-fired power plant, closing some blast furnaces at steelworks, a 40% increase in EV’s, and the cleanest electricity ever on the grid. Nonetheless, the UK will need to cut its emissions even more rapidly to meet its 2035 international climate goal and to reach net-zero by 2050.

The Climate Change Committee of the new Labor government in the UK has found that getting the UK to net zero is getting cheaper than ever. It says the UK can reach net-zero emissions by 2050 while spending as little as 0.2% of the country’s gross domestic product (about $5.4 billion) each year on average. That’s a 75% reduction from the committee’s previous estimate in 2020. The reduction is a result primarily of cheaper renewables and electric cars. The price of solar and batteries has fallen by more than 90% since 2010 and wind turbines have become 59% cheaper.

The Global South is Deploying Renewable Energy Faster Than the Global North
According to a new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute, the installation of solar and wind energy is happening at a faster rate in the Global South (without even counting China) than in the Global North. Over the past five years, the solar and wind share of electricity in the Global South has grown twice as fast as in the Global North– by an average annual rate of 23 percent, versus 11 percent in the Global North.

In eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa, solar’s share of the country’s electricity generation is more than twice that of the United States. This explosive growth is happening across the globe. “From Namibia to Barbados, solar panels from China alone have roughly doubled the total capacity of some nations’ electricity systems in just a few years. With panel costs dropping 35 percent in 2024 alone, progress is unlikely to stop soon.” Most of this progress is being seen in middle and higher income Global South countries. The growth of renewables in the low income countries is still very slow and very much in need of help from other nations.

Clearly, the need for a climate movement both in the U.S. and throughout the world, has never been greater. Millions of people around the globe are taking action to limit global warming and preserve a livable climate on the earth. What are you doing, or could you do, this month to help?

Russ Vernon-Jones was principal of Fort River School 1990-2008 and is currently a member of the Steering Committee of Climate Action Now-Western Massachusetts. He blogs regularly on climate justice at www.russvernonjones.org.