Democracy is the way forward.
We are living in challenging times. The Supreme Court's flurry of aggressive activist (conservative) actions overturning decades of precedent on Abortion rights, and now the gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency power to regulate carbon from power plants, are radical decisions.
Like a lot of Americans I am asking what to do with my frustration. Well I have a voice, and as a CleanTech CEO, and leader on solar, storage and renewables policy for the last 15 years, I have an audience that I hope to amplify with my posts.
I will focus on today's ruling for this post; how is it conservative to knowingly support business practices that have higher direct and indirect costs? How is it conservative to waste and destroy the one planet we and future generations must and get to call home? How is it conservative to destroy the hunting, fishing and wild places we all use for recreation and family activities? Our Western US is under massive historic multi-year drought; our rivers and reservoirs are disappearing and wildfires are now raging in populated suburbs. Regulating carbon and using a combination of market based and regulatory tools to innovate and drive new clean businesses in solar, wind, energy storage and electric vehicles is an obvious win. We create the cutting edge jobs we need, we adopt cleaner, modern fuels and start to heal our damaged planet. The solar sector posted a 5.4% growth in employment in 2021 despite the Covid-19 pandemic and federal trade policy and supply chain challenges, easily outpacing gains of 4% in the US energy sector and 2.8% across the wider national economy year-on-year, according to a new report by the Department of Energy (DoE). Moreover, we should stop supporting dangerous regimes like the Petro dictator in Russia. That strikes me as the conservative approach.
So now what, a radical court has ruled. Democracy is the way forward, vote and vote for candidates that support intelligent climate policy, like regulating emissions and carbon from power plants.
Do not resign to defeat
I am channeling my inner optimist and I ask all of you to find candidates (specifically for the US Senate) that support climate science. We need to win Wisconsin, see my amazing friend Sarah Godlewski, current State Treasurer of WI running to be the Democratic nominee in WI. But please get active, join your solar+storage trade (COSSA) associations, support environmental non-profits like Conservation Colorado which I am Treasurer. Do something, but do not sit back and resign yourself to defeat. These are majority views and we can not let a radical tyranny of the minority destroy our only planet and take away rights fought for over 50 years ago!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/30/supreme-court-epa-climate-change/
