California’s Rising Sun
Like many Americans, since last November’s election I’ve been looking for effective ways to express my opposition to the reckless and illegitimate regime that has seized power in the nation’s capital. I’ve been heartened by the growing resistance from many quarters, but I’m also keenly aware that opposition alone will not turn back this tyranny in the making. We urgently need a shared mission, a positive vision, plan and strategy of our own that is so compelling and attractive that it recaptures the attention of the country and world that the ongoing spectacle of this egomaniacal presence has stolen from us.
The strategy I’ve settled on begins in California but doesn’t end here. Through outreach and networking with cities and states across the country, it grows and spreads to influence the nation and the world. It is designed to simultaneously address the two most urgent challenges facing us today — climate change and economic inequality. These two challenges are inextricably linked, and so are their solutions. As we build a new economy and industrial base powered entirely by renewable sources of energy, we will also generate thousands of well-paid, locally based green-collar jobs manufacturing, installing and maintaining an energy-efficient infrastructure to replace the blue-collar jobs that have gone overseas for decades. California already leads the nation in addressing climate change through the leadership of Gov. Jerry Brown and a strongly supportive Legislature. It is now ideally situated to step up its commitment with a bold acceleration of its transition from fossil fuels from its current pace of 50% of electrical generation by 2030 to 100% renewably sourced in all sectors by 2040 or sooner.
In response to declarations by President Trump that California is “out of control” and threats to cut off the state’s funding for insubordination, leading politicians from Gov. Jerry Brown to Senate ProTem President Kevin de Leon have been looking for ways to express their differences of values and approach from the regime in Washington. In addition to declaring sanctuary cities and refusing to cooperate with federal agents seeking to round up immigrants, many Californians have been seeking a more affirmative vision and strategy to counter the fear and hatred emanating from the White House.
In that spirit, on February 17 Sen. de Leon introduced a bill (SB584) to quicken the pace of the state’s transition to 100% renewable energy by advancing the date by which it is mandated to achieve 50% renewable energy for electrical generation by five years, from 2030 to 2025. Just two years ago DeLeon himself had introduced the bill that set the 2030 date, but speaking to the media soon after the November election he mused that his earlier legislation hadn’t gone far enough. “We should have reached for the stars.”
Of still greater significance, for the first time a leading California politician has staked out a specific target date for the state to achieve 100% reliance on renewable energy — 2045, a full five years sooner than the projections of a highly credentialed team of Stanford engineers headed by Prof. Mark Jacobson. Its 50-state roadmaps to a renewable future are based on a target date of 2050. But these may not be quite comparable targets since the de Leon legislation appears to be limited to electrical generation while the Stanford team encompasses all sectors, including transportation and industry, and excludes only international airliners and interstate trucking, over which the state exercises no control. Only one state, Hawaii, has already set a target date to reach 100% renewable energy for electrical generation, also 2045, a laudable achievement, though the difference in scale between the two states is vast.
The challenges to such an accelerated transition are not primarily technological but political, says Stanford’s Mark Jacobson. The technologies are already good enough to outcompete fossil fuels in the marketplace and they will only get better as demand and deployment grow. But on the national level, facing a fossilized Congress, President Obama was never able to undertake such an ambitious transition plan, and it is hard to envision a Congress where fossil fuel interests and retrograde politicians wouldn’t continue to block decisive action. But the politics of California are far more favorable. Gov. Brown enjoys a climate-friendly supermajority in the Legislature and a high tech business community that is already moving rapidly to adopt solar energy and energy efficiency on the basis of their financial benefits alone. Both politicians and businesspeople in California are keenly aware that China and the European Union are moving aggressively towards renewable energy in order to capitalize on a rapidly emerging “green gold rush” and they are eager to join them.
This is not mere California dreaming. While the White House attempts a counter-revolution, California is poised to launch its own “renewable revolution” — renewable not just in the sense that it will be powered by renewable sources of energy but that among those sources is the creative, innovative, self-renewing energy of the state’s diverse, welcoming, future-facing culture. As the bluest of blue states with the sixth largest economy on earth, it comprises 12% of the U.S. economy and already exercises an outsize influence on standards like auto design and air quality simply by virtue of its population and market share. California also leads not just the country but much of the world in climate change prevention policies. As a state, it has committed itself to energy saving measures that enable it to consume a third less energy per capita than the national average. The state ranks 49th in national energy consumption.
Most of California’s major corporations, including several of the world’s largest (Apple, Facebook, Google) are part of an information economy concentrated in the Bay Area. Information economy companies have generally embraced a climate-friendly stance as part of their business models. Google is poised to reach the benchmark achievement of running entirely on clean energy in 2017, and Apple already generates all the energy it uses for its data centers from renewable sources.
California’s innovation culture is one of its chief assets, and if fully mobilized to meet the challenge Silicon Valley could become an engine of world-serving ingenuity. The confluence of state and city financial support, academic science research facilities, corporate R&D, foundation grantmaking for far-sighted planning and funding of pilot projects, and community ventures, all under the banner, “Everything New Under the Sun,” will produce potent synergies unattainable in the even the most productive dynamics of a competitive marketplace.
Taken together, these advantages enable California to attract many of the best and brightest from around the world, as it always has by virtue of its mild climate, stunning topography, adventurous spirit and diverse culture. Once it proclaims its time-certain commitment to the renewable revolution, its magnetism will increase by an order of magnitude, especially in contrast to the specter of a dying industrial base propped up by the fossilized fools stalking the West Wing and musty halls of Congress. The federal government already has a serious image problem, and under the current regime it is viewed with great wariness by many Americans and much of the rest of the world. By contrast, for all its real and unaddressed problems, California remains a land of dreams and opportunity for many worldwide. And what happens in California, for good or ill, has a way of spreading elsewhere. “History doesn’t repeat itself,” quips Dan Schnur, head of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. “It just moves east.”
“In fact, it is not hyperbolic to argue that California is the key test case not only for the United States but for the entire world,” writes Narda Zacchino in her recent book, California Comeback. “With their eyes turned to California, observers will learn if a multicultural, democratic, and post-industrial society can remain united, functional and progressive in the face of globalized, high-tech capitalism. Is there another political unit on the planet that combines an economy this advanced with a population this large and diverse?”
Of course California can’t go it alone — and fortunately it won’t need to. The move to renewables is already both global and local. It’s occurring in Europe, China, India and, most surprisingly of all, in Arab oil sheikdoms like Dubai and Saudi Arabia. It’s also happening in Republican strongholds like Texas, North Dakota and Oklahoma, where prairie breezes never stop blowing and wind turbines are more profitable than cattle ranching. Mayors of red state cities like Phoenix and Salt Lake City have put the Trump administration on notice that if it pulls the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord they’ll join it in its stead. Behind the irresistible attraction to renewables is a set of increasingly favorable economic metrics as the costs of solar and wind continue to plummet and the true costs of fossil fuels (including environmental destruction and societal disintegration) become ever more apparent.
SolArise, the name I’ve given the grassroots initiative I’m launching, is dedicated to promoting a hands-on, whole state, society-wide transition in California to a new economy and industrial base powered entirely by renewable sources of energy, and a supportive culture that is equally inventive, imaginative, and life-affirming. As a term, SolArise signifies not only the centrality of solar energy to the renewable revolution and the iconic symbolism of the sun as the source of our planetary universe but the dawning of a new era in which we all rise with the rising sun.
In future columns I’ll be delving into the many dimensions of this renewable revolution as it moves forward in California, across the country and around the world. I’ll also be suggesting opportunities and tools to actively participate in it, from mounting your own rooftop solar array to lobbying your city, county and state officials to “go 100” sooner rather than just someday. What better response to the dark matter occupying the White House than to light up our lives with a more compelling vision and strategy, a hands-on common project that mends our broken economy and society? By blazing a pioneering path and rebuilding our collective confidence in a well-grounded future, California can catalyze a tectonic shift — one that leaves fossil fuels in the ground and turns us all towards the endlessly renewable sources of life.
