A Clean Energy Future Is Unstoppable 

This year’s national election results present us with a mind-boggling disconnect when it comes to climate change. Global carbon emissions — predominantly from burning coal, oil and gas — are reaching record highs. The year newly past, 2024, is expected to be the hottest in recorded history. A warmer planet ensures more deadly and destructive heat waves, storms, floods and droughts unless we quickly transition away from fossil fuels. Yet voters just elected leaders who deny the reality of climate science and plan to ramp up fossil fuel production and use for years to come.Santa Barbara County stands out against the national results. Here voters elected leaders who are actively working to transition us from fossil fuels to clean energy. By significant margins we re-elected climate activists like Salud Carbajal to represent us in Congress, and Gregg Hart and Monique Limon to represent us in state legislatures. Our city and county governments have adopted Climate Action Plans that are effectively moving our communities towards a clean energy future. So, for us, the disappoint and frustration are even more deeply felt.It may seem that political forces have rendered the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy insurmountable. However, much stronger economic forces and, indeed, our own local experiences, are showing that a clean energy future is unstoppable.Worldwide, within five years, the International Energy Agency, estimates there will be10 times as many electric cars on the road; the share of global electricity generated by renewables will reach 50 percent; electric heat pumps will be outselling fossil fuel boilers globally; and three times as much investment will be going into new offshore wind projects than into new coal- and gas-fired power plants.Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of energy in the world. Even in China and India they are cheaper than coal.President-elect Trump and Republican leaders in Congress and around the nation have made their intentions clear. They have allied themselves with the fossil fuel industry. “Drill, baby, drill” is now a Republican Party mantra. Trump has a long history of making false statements about climate science and renewable energy. He has announced a series of Cabinet choices who have misrepresented the reality of climate change. His pick for Energy secretary, oil and gas services executive Chris Wright, has falsely asserted that “there is no climate crisis” and “there is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy.”Although its decline is on the horizon, the fossil fuel industry continues to be a powerful financial and political force. Its alliance with right-wing governments will temporarily delay the transition to clean energy. But economics is proving to be more powerful than politics.Our world is in the early stages of a generational shift toward a new and better energy system.