Flood Tide for the Climate Movement

Washington headlines bickering about the Keystone XL Pipeline, and acrimonious Republican sniping at EPA's proposed initiatives to clean up US power plant carbon pollution shouldn't obscure the exhilarating new reality:  the climate battle has moved to a new phase, one in which the scale of the solutions being debated is, for the first time, approaching the scale of the problem.

Look at two events 12,000 miles and two days apart.  On January 3, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had already pledged rooftop solar for 40 million off-grid houses in five years, and quintupled India's renewable energy program, tripled those goals again. By 2022 India intends to construct 100 GW of solar generating capacity, the largest fleet in the world.

Two days later, here in Sacramento, California Governor Jerry Brown committed the world's seventh largest economy to the world's boldest clean energy goals yet:  going from 25% to 50% renewable electricity by 2030, and -- stunningly in the state which birthed the freeway culture -- cutting oil consumption by 50% by the same date.

So shocked was the oil industry that all they commented was that they would work with the governor for "solutions that will sustain today's energy and economic realities while protecting both our environment and future energy needs."  (Don't hold your breath.)

Brown's and Modi's electricity goals are bold, ambitious, and exciting.  They will be attacked as expensive and unwise.  But they cannot be dismissed as impossible --- California has already reached 25% renewable electricity, India is producing the world's cheapest solar power, and other countries like Portugal and Denmark have demonstrated that renewable electricity is ready to carry more than half of their power load.

Read more at Flood Tide for the Climate Movement