Bill McKibben-Environment:Why the Next Presidency is So Important

Why is the next presidency so important?

There are many answers to that question, but one is that the next president will be the first to come to office in a world where solar panels are cheap. That’s potentially a very big deal, if leaders take full advantage of it.

For a quarter century now, scientists have been very worried—scared to death, in fact—about climate change. It’s the biggest thing that’s happened on our planet in the course of human history: the Arctic is melting, the oceans are acidifying, and the weather has turned dangerously weird almost everywhere.

And so we’ve fought at every turn: against tarsands mining (Bernie was the key guy on Capitol Hill in the Keystone fight) and mountaintop removal coal mining, against new coal ports and frack wells, for a serious price on carbon. It’s gone well; we’ve built a real movement, one that drew 400,000 people to New York (including one Vermont senator) for the biggest demonstration about anything in long time in this country.

But the fossil fuel industry, in its endless effort to keep the profitable status quo — even if it destroyed the planet — always had one ace in its hand: the fact that renewable energy remained comparatively expensive. (Not if you factor in the costs of climate change, of course, but the Chevrons of the world were powerful enough to make sure we never did factor in the costs of climate change.) And at least in the U.S. that was enough to make sure solar panels remained rare.

Happily, one large country—Germany—embarked on a full-scale solar conversion even when the price was high. Their huge demand (as of last year there were more solar panels in Bavaria than in the U.S.) drove Chinese manufacturers to learn how to make the panels ever more cheaply. And together they drove the price down to the point where in many states—and most of the world—solar power is now as cheap as anything else for generating electricity. (Well, not as cheap as windpower—that’s really cheap—but as cheap as anything other than that).

Americans are slowly beginning to respond to this new state of affairs. Companies like Solar City are growing 100% a year as they get more efficient at putting solar panels on people’s roofs (though they too are having to fight the fossil fuel industry, which in places like Arizona and Florida is trying to make it hard for homeowners). And now companies like Tesla are pioneering lower-cost storage batteries, and removing one of the last obstacles to full-scale adoption.

All this means that we’re now poised to make transformative change if we want to, not just incremental change. The Stanford scientist Mark Jacobson has produced plans for all 50 states, showing how they could be easily and affordably producing all their power renewably by 2030. That would be fast enough to offer some hope of catching up with the physics of climate change, and some hope of leading the world down a better path.

All it would take is a president who really made it a priority. Who understood that if we approached this crisis with the same energy and resolve that followed our entry into World War II, we could transform the nation with great speed. Yes, it would mean standing up to the fossil fuel interests, and that won’t be easy. But yes, it would also mean mobilizing millions of workers with good-paying jobs (no one is going to send their house to China to get a solar panel put on top). And yes, it would mean a real future for our families.

It’s clearly a scary moment, but it could be a thrilling one too. Depending on who’s next in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.


https://berniesanders.com/why-the-next-presidency-is-so-important/