Solving climate change will require side effects
We need as much renewable energy as we can get, as fast as possible, despite pain.
When I wrote a column two weeks ago urging the Biden administration to approve a lot more solar and wind farms on Western public lands, I knew I would get flak from critics of largescale renewable energy — and indeed I did.
On social media, conservationists blasted me for what they described as my failure to understand that sprawling solar projects and towering wind turbines tear up wildlife habitat and destroy treasured landscapes. They called me a shill for money-grubbing utility companies and suggested it’s obvious that we should rebuild our energy systems around solar panels on rooftops.
I’m sympathetic to those arguments and want to clarify where I’m coming from.
I’m familiar with the science showing that human survival depends in part on limiting further biodiversity loss and protecting much of the remaining natural world. I feel a deep appreciation for America’s spectacular public lands; I’ve hiked and camped across the West, from the Teton Crest Trail to Mt. San Jacinto. I’d love to see more national monuments created.
In an ideal universe, I’d support building renewable energy exclusively within cities and on previously disturbed lands such as farm fields and irrigation canals. In an ideal universe, I’d support only climate solutions that don’t cause other problems.
But we don’t live in an ideal universe.
We live in a universe where every clean energy technology has drawbacks, whether economic or technical or political. A universe where there aren’t enough rooftops to replace all the fossil fuels we now burn.
Where skeptical farmers are fighting to stop their neighbors from switching to solar energy production. Where building solar on canals is wildly expensive, at least so far.
Just as importantly, we live in a universe where human beings use mindboggling amounts of energy.
Every time we flip a light switch, run the dishwater or take a drive, we’re using energy. Our coffee mugs, our clothes, our homes — they took energy to manufacture. Same with the food we eat, the TV shows we love and our favorite board games.
Even with aggressive energy-efficiency improvements, we’ll need an unprecedented solar and wind building spree to replace all the coal, oil and fossil natural gas boiling the planet and spewing toxic fumes responsible for millions of deaths each year.
So why have we had so much trouble coalescing around the need for a broad range of clean energy technologies?
If you ask me, it’s because it’s so hard to grapple with the enormity of the climate crisis.
Deadlier heat waves, bigger wildfires, shrinking reservoirs, rising oceans — we understand them on paper. But most of the time they’re abstract, lurking in the background. Whereas a wind farm that will kill golden eagles is tangible, easy to grasp. Same with a solar farm that will be visible from Joshua Tree National Park, or an electric line that will cut through ancient burial sites.
It’s not wrong to care about that stuff. It’s not wrong to want to protect the places we know and love.
But too many of us have gotten stuck looking at the world through a narrow defining lens.
Mistrustful of monopoly utility companies? Then you probably see rooftop solar panels as the ideal climate change solution. Live near the coast and love the ocean views? Then solar farms in the desert probably sound better than offshore wind turbines. Find it easier to cope with the idea of climate chaos if you can convince yourself a single technology or policy will fix everything? Then maybe you’re a devotee of nuclear reactors, or a carbon fee, or carbon capture and storage.
If we were having this conversation a few decades ago — say in 1988, after climate scientist James Hansen testified to Congress that global warming had arrived — then debating the best suite of climate solutions might be a good use of time. We could work together to reach consensus on the right path forward and ensure the side effects were as painless as possible.
But this is 2023, not 1988. Largely thanks to the fossil fuel industry’s climate denial and the Republican Party’s continued intransigence, we’re out of time. I keep saying this in my columns, but it bears repeating: Scientists have calculated we need to cut global climate pollution nearly in half by 2030, just seven years from now, to avoid an extremely scary future. Seven years is nothing. This is an emergency.
Much as I hate the idea of paving over desert tortoise habitat with solar panels or refusing to remove dams that have decimated salmon populations, I hate the idea of 3 degrees Celsius of planetary warming a lot more. Much as I sympathize with rural towns that don’t want to live with industrial wind turbines as their neighbors, I sympathize more with my neighbors here in Los Angeles who can’t afford air conditioning and don’t want to die of heatstroke the next time the thermostat hits 121 degrees.
For those of you reading this with frustration — I realize I’m probably not going to convince you. You don’t know why I can’t just understand that your climate solution is the best one, and use my platform as a journalist to help bring it about.
My unsatisfying response is that I’m a realist.
I know that not every proposed clean energy solution is a good idea. But the reality is that solar farms and wind turbines, for all their faults, are some of the most proven, costeffective, politically popular tools for reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
I could spend all my time singing the praises of rooftop solar — which I did last week, by the way — and it wouldn’t change the fact that avoiding the worst consequences of climate change will be a hell of a lot easier if we embrace big solar and wind.
Now, for those of you reading this and nodding in agreement — thanks for your support. But I hope you’ll stop and ask yourself: What are you personally willing to sacrifice to bring about a safe climate future? What changes will you make in your life?
Will you eat less meat, replace your gas stove with an induction cooktop or lease an electric car? Will you make climate change a top priority at the ballot box, and post about it on Instagram, and bring it up at the dinner table?
If you hear about a climate solution that rubs you the wrong way, will you swallow hard and look the other way?
Because that’s what it’s going to take.
To maintain a habitable planet for ourselves and our children and grandchildren, we’ll need to make some compromises. We’ll need to stand by and watch as some pristine ecosystems are razed in the name of renewable energy. We’ll need to learn to live with exorbitantly wealthy investors raking in additional profits at our expense. We’ll need to elect some politicians whose ideas don’t fully line up with our own, because they’re nonetheless our best hope of avoiding planetary collapse.
Above all, we’ll need to stop yelling at each other and start cooperating with people we think are wrong.
That’s the world we live in. Welcome to the Anthropocene.
This story was originally published in Boiling Point, an email newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. Go to latimes.com/boilingpoint to sign up.