Climate watch: May this be the year Earth Day stops being a ‘next year’ thing

Earth Day has always seemed like a “next year” thing.

As in, “I’ll pay more attention to climate issues next year because, while I know it’s important, other things are my priority right now.”

Measurements taken in 2021 bear this out. According to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 72% of people in Centre County felt that global warming was happening but only 53% believed that addressing it should be a high priority for the president and Congress.

Earth Day 2022, however, which we will mark on Friday, has a “this year” vibe. Now it’s not only the usual climate activists who are banging the drum.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has snapped into focus the geopolitical hazards of a world dependent on fossil fuels from aggressive autocracies. It’s a lesson that should have been learned long ago, but better late than never. “Russia,” observed the late John McCain, “is a gas station masquerading as a country.” Ending the addiction to fossil fuels will shutter the gas station that funds war.

Other things are happening too.

People who care about money and markets started to pay attention when solar and wind energy became less expensive than oil, gas and coal. Between 2009 and 2019 the price of electricity from solar declined by 89%. The energy price from onshore wind dropped 70% over the same period.

Investors now see there is money to be made in the transition to clean energy. That was the message of L. Hunter Lovins, climate activist and president of Natural Capitalism Solutions, in her talk at Penn State’s Colloquium on the Environment on April 6.

Renewable energy, she told an enthusiastic crowd, “will be a $19 trillion global market by 2050.”

Markets were very much on the minds of political conservatives who gathered at a conference March 29-30 in Washington, D.C., titled “A Right Response to a Warming Planet.” Policies that not only address climate change but job creation, global competitiveness and a thriving economy were the focus of the event, presented by the non-partisan Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

Speakers included Republican leaders such as Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Representatives John Curtis of Utah, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and others. There were panels on business and climate issues and speakers from “eco-right” organizations such as the Evangelical Environmental Network and Republic-EN.

And have you noticed how many ads on your screens tout electric cars and trucks? The move to electrify as many things as possible is underway. In her talk at Penn State, Lovins gave the audience a two-word stock tip: “heat pumps.” The International Energy Agency notes that heat pumps have “…become the most common technology in newly built houses in many countries.”

Quicker than could have been imagined even a year ago, a consensus seems to be forming. It is finally time to get serious about electrifying as much as we can and generating that electricity from renewable energy sources.

Government action still is needed to end what economists call the market failure that subsidizes and privileges fossil fuels over renewable energy. When that happens, it will spur even more private sector investment.

Perhaps we will look back at 2022 and say it was when things really began to change. Maybe this is the year that Earth Day ceases to be a “next year” thing.