The Day In History When The US Turns Its Back On Fossil Fuels Is Almost Here

Last Updated on: 30th July 2024, 10:29 am

I know many of you don’t approve when we mix news about clean technologies with news about politics, but the truth is that policies play a critical role in determining whether those clean technologies gain acceptance and how quickly that acceptance leads to them replacing the old polluting technologies that have made the Earth less habitable for humans. The gates of history turn on tiny hinges, my high school history teacher always said. In the past month, two of those tiny hinges have operated to upend the political process in America.

The first tiny hinge was the so-called debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump at the end of June. Millions watched as Biden appeared to be suffering a series of mini-strokes live and on camera. As an result of that debacle, many believed Trump had become the presumptive victor in the November presidential election. The gloom among progressives in the US was palpable.

Then just over a week ago, Joe Biden did something he swore he would never do. He stepped aside so that Kamala Harris could become the Democratic nominee for president. In that instant, the second tiny hinge turned, and when it did, it unleashed a tidal wave of pent up energy, one that those who support the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy welcomed with gusto.

Heather Cox Richardson is an historian who strives to connect the events of the day to their historical precedents. In doing so, she often puts a spotlight on the tiny hinges of history that helped shape the course of American history. She wrote recently about the latest shift in the political winds in America. I found it interesting reading because it connects what is happening today to what has happened before. Here’s a taste of what she had to say:

“When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. He passed it to us. It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.

“It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.”

Read the rest here:

The Takeaway

It is said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. History is replete with mistakes. Learning from those mistakes is how we grow as a civilization. But repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different results is a form of collective dysfunction. America is now at an inflection point, one that could lead the country to a brighter future. The momentum is flowing toward a government that continues to put key policies in place that support the transition away from fossil fuels.

Let’s keep that momentum going so that this moment in history becomes the point our children, and our children’s children, look back on as the time when America turned the page and embraced the idea of a sustainable planet. We may never get such a chance again.

The key to that sustainable world is an understanding that all the energy locked away in fossil fuels is nothing more than stored sunshine. It took millions and millions of years to create — one leaf, one plankton at a time. We humans have made the mistake of thinking we could release all that stored energy in what — from the point of view of history — is little more than the blink of an eye. That outpouring has upset the delicate balance of the Earth’s ecosystem, sending it careening off in unknown and unknowable directions.

All the energy we need is not beneath our feet, but above us. Sunlight is the sine qua non of life, a gift we can harvest freely and in perpetuity, if we choose wisely. Extracting fossil fuels is a losing game. Eventually we will have used them all up and turned the Earth into a baked potato in the process. Sunlight will go on forever. It’s free and we are learning more about how to harvest it every day. Enough sunlight falls on the Earth every day to power all of human civilization for a year. Why are we obsessed with depleting all available fossil fuels when we have access to a limitless supply of energy?

November 5, 2024, may be the most important day in human history, a tiny hinge in the arc of time that defines whether we humans go forward into a sustainable future powered by renewable energy or backward into a fossil fuel death spiral that dooms us all to extinction. American voters have a stark choice. If you are one of them, please vote wisely.