Earth Equity News

By 2030, Only Renewable Energy. Si, Se Puede! Posted by Ted Glick, Climateimc.org, June 1, 2008. "The possibility of the [Climate Security Act] being... [enacted] this year is basically zero. That is why a significant number of groups are orienting toward the first 100 days of the new administration and new Congress in 2009 as the time to go all out to get a stronger bill... One thing we can do is adopt the approach articulated by United Steelworkers president Leo Girard... At [a labor/climate conference in NYC last year] he said we shouldn't be talking about '2050'... [but]... about solving this problem... within our generation, by 2030. He was right. A number of prominent and knowledgeable people, including Lester Brown, James Hansen and Al Gore, have called for us to take up this issue in a way similar to how the U.S. responded after Pearl Harbor... This 'war on climate change' will be a net positive. Millions of green jobs will be created, and it is our responsibility to demand that many of them provide pathways out of poverty for those who have been locked out of our dirty fossil fuel economy... The quality of our air and water will improve. Communities will benefit from the economic development... Decentralized wind, solar and geothermal energy will lessen the power of huge, corporate energy companies, thus strengthening democracy and popular sovereignty. Here is how Herman Scheer, a German Social Democratic MP and renewable energy leader for years, put it in an interview published in the May 21, 2008 issue of New Scientist: 'I see the opportunities for renewables. I see that they can provide 100 per cent of our energy, and they can be introduced very fast. All the great technological revolutions happen much more quickly than even the experts and enthusiasts guess... The IT and mobile phone revolutions were also the first technological revolutions in modern times that were not about centralising power. They were about decentralising. And this will happen to energy from renewables. The big old-fashioned power stations and long supply chains will be replaced by local supplies for local markets. This is changing the tide of history.' Let's take up the challenge of this generation and organize not for '80% by 2050,' but, instead, a renewable energy economy by 2030. By 2030, only renewable energy. Si, se puede! Yes, we can!" Ted Glick is coordinator of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council, a co-founder of CCC and a member of the CCC steering committee.