September 2022

Day by day, sector by sector, and nation by nation the world is changing how it prepares for and reacts to the climate crisis. Take a look at some of these important shifts:
 
For the first time, more people work in clean energy than in fossil fuel energy, according to the first comprehensive global inventory of energy jobs, World Energy Employment. This is true in the U.S. and even in coal-dominant countries like India and China. Importantly, the report also projects even bigger shifts toward clean energy. If the world continues its push toward a net-zero scenario, 14 million new clean energy jobs could be created by 2030, and an additional 16 million fossil fuel workers could switch over to clean energy jobs.
 
Economic shifts aren’t the only big transitions underway. Here in the U.S., one of the nation’s most influential evangelical groups has declared it sees climate action as a Christian responsibility. A report by the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 45,000 evangelical churches, cites a ‘biblical basis’ for issuing a call to action for its membership. Since recent polling suggests that white evangelicals are more skeptical about the issue than other religious groups, a shift in this demographic is profound.
 
Nationally, another new study shows American climate skeptics are changing their minds about global warming for very pragmatic reasons: they are either personally experiencing the effects of climate change or they’re seeing and hearing more about its effects. The takeaway for the C-Change team is that your conversations matter. Keep connecting the dots. Thoughtful skeptics are listening and adjusting their views.
 
Turning to cool ideas that could really move the needle, in yet another example of simple, smart ways to get a two-fer, California is putting solar panels over aqueducts. The panels provide shade that stops water evaporation while generating electricity for the grid without taking up any new land.
 
Another solar application with enormous potential is also smart – but far from simple. A team of scientists in Australia has demonstrated that they can make clean, hydrogen fuel, which can be burned much like fossil fuels, with nothing but solar energy and air. Clean, green hydrogen usually requires huge amounts of water. The new technique uses humidity in the air, which means clean hydrogen could be created in many more places. These include some of the earth’s driest climates (where, paradoxically, there is a lot of moisture in the air) where the sun and wind provide the most energy.
 
Carbon-free fuels are the ultimate goal, but fossil fuels still provide around 80% of all energy globally. Until clean energy alternatives are developed and distributed enough to supplant coal, oil, and gas, fossil fuels will continue putting carbon into the atmosphere (2021 was the highest emissions year yet). That’s why there’s much excitement about a new project in Wyoming, accelerated by the IRA climate legislation, that is scaling up innovative technology to suck five million tons of carbon directly out of the air each year. It’s a milestone in the development of ‘Direct Air Capture’ technologies and a promising contribution to the carbon problem.
 
Here’s a final bit of hopeful news, about hydrofluorocarbons – a category of gases that are about a thousand times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide. The U.S. Senate has finally ratified a treaty to drastically reduce usage of the chemicals, which are heavily used for air conditioning and refrigeration. The bill’s passage with support across party lines shows that when climate action aligns with job creation (which, as noted above, is beginning across the entire energy sector), we can get bipartisan support for action. Experts say that successfully phasing out HFCs could prevent up to 1℉ of warming by the end of the century. This is big.

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