Where are the climate positives? 8 areas I think offer real hope for the future

We all know there are some negative trends and news on climate, but there is always hope and it is important to acknowledge it!

So here’s the list of areas I’m currently tracking for this newsletter!

• The huge growth of renewable technologies - this means that transition to these technologies (wind & solar for example) is now not about spending more money, but more about stopping subsidising fossil fuels and letting this lower cost, lower carbon solution really bloom!

  

• The youth - I wish it was not down to the youth to have to fix this, but sadly the other generations have failed here. However the youth understand the issue and are prepared to vote, organise and protest! The kids are alright.

• New Technologies - There’s a host of upcoming technologies like fusion & superconductors that offer us some really potent future energy options that are gaining momentum fast! It is not only the direct technologies of energy that offer hope, but other ones like quantum computing and other growths in the power of computing interact and boost energy and climate technologies so that they develop faster and offer more potent deployments of them.

• World population is slowing and will soon reverse - While this tend offers some issues too, it also does create some space for us to rethink how we want to be on the planet as there will be less of us so needing to use less resources.

• Public attitudes - Despite billions spent by polluting industries trying to stop the public-at-large from understanding the reality of climate change, people are getting it and the issue is rising in voters' minds. I think a large part of this is that our lived experience of the climate means it is harder and harder to ignore. For example in the UK in 2022 it was 74% of the population this climate is very or somewhat serious issue. Below is the average of 17 countires from 1998 to 2021 and while is has moved around a lot, the clear trend is upwards as it goes from around 47% to 62%.

  

• The carbon bubble is brittle - Vested interests like the fossil fuel lobby are very well funded and spend vast sums to keep their businesses viable at the expense of all of us having a livable climate. However the power they have comes from the money they have which is based on the assumption we’ll keep using what they are selling. This is a brittle connection and as we transition away, their power dramatically drops.

• Climate legal battles - There are a host of legal battles going on over the world where, basically the government has a ‘duty of care’ to its citizens and their future and that by not acting on climate change, the government is breaking the law. It will be interesting to see how these play out. Examples can be found here, here and here.

• Human ingenuity - One of the areas I’ve studied a lot is how we create and deploy technology, as a species, over time. As we’ve become more interconnected the page of technology change has grown more than exponentially - for the first 100,000 years of Homo sapien existence it changed very slowly yet for the last 100 years of our history we’ve gone from the first powered flight at all, to power flight on the surface of Mars. We are constantly under-estimating what we are able to create.

On this substack I plan to cover each of these in more detail over the coming weeks and months. I also suspect that I’ll be adding more to the list too!

(Image credit for closed pretrol state is here & turbines is via here)