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      Grading Biden’s Big Law

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      The climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act is popular with businesses. But its cost is expected to double over the next decade, and its outlook is uncertain.The Inflation Reduction Act is popular with business, and that’s adding to its cost.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe costs, and the benefits, of the I.R.A.In the past 24 hours, President Biden has taken questions (and heat) on his age, memory and mental fitness. But the one economic issue that is most likely to generate scrutiny from the business community and beyond over the next several months is the biggest bill he has passed, the Inflation Reduction Act, which he hailed at his news conference last night.Big questions still hang over the law, which many Americans appear not to know exists. How much will it add to the federal deficit? And can the law survive a potential Trump second term?The I.R.A. is expected to cost more than $800 billion through 2033, the Congressional Budget Office said, up from the $391 billion price tag assessed when it was passed in 2022.One reason: There’s huge demand for the credits and subsidies created by the law for building solar, hydrogen and nuclear energy projects, as well as discounts for buying electric vehicles. (An analysis by Goldman Sachs last fall showed that the law led to about $282 billion in investment and roughly 175,000 jobs in its first year.)The green transition won’t come cheap. The I.R.A., which aims for steep emissions cuts, is expected to add $250 billion more to the deficit than initially forecast, according to the C.B.O., despite cost-saving promises by the White House.That said, the math isn’t set in stone. The Treasury Department forecast this week that additional tax-collection resources provided by the I.R.A. would help the I.R.S. gather up to $851 billion more in tax revenue over the next decade. That raises the question of whether this is actually a deficit-paring law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden to Travel to Minnesota to Highlight Rural Investments

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      The president’s push to focus attention on the domestic economy comes as his administration has been dealing with events overseas after the terrorist attacks in Israel.The White House on Wednesday will announce more than $5 billion in funding for agriculture, broadband and clean energy needs in sparsely populated parts of the country as President Biden travels to Minnesota to kick off an administration-wide tour of rural communities.The president’s efforts to focus attention on the domestic economy ahead of next year’s campaign come after three weeks in which his administration has been seized by events overseas following the terrorist attacks in Israel and the state’s subsequent military action in Gaza.The trip will take place as Mr. Biden is urging Congress to quickly pass a $105 billion funding package that includes emergency aid to Israel and Ukraine, two conflicts he has described as threats to democracy around the globe.But the president and his aides are well aware that his hopes for a second term are likely to be determined closer to home. Rural voters like the ones he will address at a corn, soybean and hog farm south of Minneapolis are increasingly voting Republican. A recent poll showed that most voters had heard little or nothing about a health care and clean energy law that is the cornerstone of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. And the president even faces a challenge within his own party, from Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who announced his long-shot presidential bid last week.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, declined on Tuesday to speak about campaign issues, citing the Hatch Act, which limits political activity by federal officials, but said that Mr. Biden “loves Minnesota.” Administration officials have said Mr. Biden’s trip was planned before Mr. Phillips announced his candidacy.The White House has called the next two weeks of events the “Investing in Rural America Event Series.” It includes more than a dozen trips by Mr. Biden as well as cabinet secretaries and other senior administration officials. The White House said in a statement that the tour would highlight federal investments that “are bringing new revenue to farms, increased economic development in rural towns and communities, and more opportunity throughout the country.”Mr. Biden will be joined on Wednesday by Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary. Against the backdrop of a family farm that uses techniques to make crops more resilient to climate change, they will announce $1.7 billion for farmers nationwide to adopt so-called climate-smart agriculture practices.Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will join President Biden in Minnesota and later travel to Indiana, Wyoming and Colorado.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesOther funding announcements include $1.1 billion in loans and grants to upgrade infrastructure in rural communities; $2 billion in investments as part of a program that helps rural governments work more closely with federal agencies on economic development projects; $274 million to expand high-speed internet infrastructure; and $145 million to expand access to wind, solar and other renewable energy, according to a White House fact sheet.“Young people in rural communities shouldn’t have to leave home to find opportunity,” Neera Tanden, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said Tuesday on a call with reporters.She said federal investments were creating “a pathway for the next generation to keep their roots in rural America.”Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, said he expected Mr. Biden to face serious headwinds in rural communities, in large part because of inflation levels.“It is a little challenging, there’s no denying, when prices go up,” Mr. Walz said. “The politics have gotten a little angrier. I think folks are feeling a little behind.”But Mr. Walz also praised Mr. Biden for spending time in rural communities. “Democrats need to show up,” he said.Kenan Fikri, the director of research at the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington think tank, said the Biden administration had made sizable investments over the past two and a half years in agriculture, broadband and other rural priorities.“The administration has a lot to show for its economic development efforts in rural communities,” he said, but “whether voters will credit Biden for a strong economic performance is another question.”Later in the week Mr. Vilsack will travel to Indiana, Wyoming and Colorado to speak with agricultural leaders and discuss land conservation. Deb Haaland, the interior secretary, will go to her home state of New Mexico to highlight water infrastructure investments.Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm will be in Arizona to talk about the electricity grid and renewable energy investment in the rural Southwest.The veterans affairs secretary, Denis McDonough, plans to visit Iowa to discuss improving access to medical care for veterans in rural areas. Isabel Guzman, who leads the Small Business Administration, will travel to Georgia to talk about loans for rural small businesses.Miguel A. Cardona, the education secretary, will go to New Hampshire to promote how community colleges help students from rural areas. Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, will be in North Carolina to talk about health care access in rural areas. More

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      How Utilities Use Money From Your Bills to Block Clean Energy

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      To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we have to make two big transitions at once: First, we have to generate all of our electricity from clean sources, like wind turbines and solar panels, rather than power plants that run on coal and methane gas. Second, we have to retool nearly everything else that burns oil and gas — like cars, buses and furnaces that heat buildings — to run on that clean electricity.These changes are underway, but their speed and ultimate success depend greatly on one kind of company: the utilities that have monopolies to sell us electricity and gas.But around the country, utility companies are using their outsize political power to slow down the clean energy transition, and they are probably using your money to do it.State regulators are supposed to make sure that customers’ monthly utility bills cover only the cost of delivering electricity or gas and to set limits on how much utilities can profit. But large investor-owned utilities, with legions of lawyers to help them evade scrutiny, bake many of their political costs into rates right alongside their investments in electrical poles and wires. In doing so, they are conscripting their customers into an unknowing army of millions of small-dollar donors to prolong the era of dirty energy.Fortunately, Colorado, Connecticut and Maine passed laws this spring that prohibit utilities from charging customers for their lobbying, public relations spending and dues to political trade associations like the American Gas Association and the Edison Electric Institute. Regulators in Louisiana are considering similar policy changes. Every state in the country should follow those leads.These reforms are crucial because while all corporations in the United States can spend money on politics, in most cases, consumers who don’t approve can take their business elsewhere. Utilities — as regulated monopolies — have the unique ability to force customers to participate.It’s not that utilities aren’t interested in building and profiting from clean energy. Many are doing so, and the Inflation Reduction Act offers utilities extensive tax incentives to increase their investments in wind, solar and batteries. But that does not mean that utilities want others to do the same. They will support a clean energy transition only if it happens exclusively on their terms and at their pace — a stance at odds with the scope and urgency of the herculean task of decarbonizing our electric grid.Most electric utilities view distributed energy — technologies owned by customers that generate electricity in smaller amounts — as a threat to their business. They have tried for years to stop their customers in many states from investing in rooftop solar by rigging rates to make it less economically attractive. They’ve also funded opposition to policies that would speed clean energy.Florida Power & Light spent millions of dollars on political consultants who are accused of engineering a scheme to siphon votes to third-party ghost candidates, according to reporting by The Orlando Sentinel. The ghost candidates never campaigned, but their names appeared on ballots for competitive State Senate seats in an effort to spoil the chances of Democrats who had been critical of the utilities. One of the Democrats had repeatedly introduced legislation supportive of rooftop solar power, which Florida Power & Light has crusaded against for years, including writing legislation in 2021 that would have slowed its growth. “I want you to make his life a living hell,” the utility’s chief executive wrote in an internal email. The legislator lost by fewer than 40 votes. Florida Power & Light has denied wrongdoing in the ghost candidate scandal.Utilities also have also fought to cling to plants powered by fossil fuels as long as possible. In Ohio the utility FirstEnergy concealed $60 million in bribes through a web of dark-money groups to the political organization of the state’s speaker of the House. Before his conviction and sentencing for this instance of racketeering, he helped pass a law that secured a $1.3 billion ratepayer-funded bailout for FirstEnergy’s bankrupt nuclear and coal plants, gutted the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards for utilities and bailed out coal plants owned by other utilities. Audits showed that FirstEnergy used money collected from ratepayers in its scheme.Electric utilities have even opposed policies to hasten the development of desperately needed long-range transmission wires for clean energy, as NextEra Energy, Florida Power & Light’s parent company, spent millions to do in New England, where NextEra generates and sells power from oil and gas.And many utility conglomerates don’t just sell electricity; they also sell methane gas, a serious threat to decarbonization efforts. Many of those gas utilities are fighting tooth and nail against local communities’ efforts to electrify our buildings and using ratepayers’ money to do so. In California, SoCalGas, the nation’s largest gas distribution utility, has been caught illicitly and repeatedly misusing ratepayer money to fight cities’ building electrification plans. In New York the gas utility National Fuel reportedly made its customers pay for advocacy materials directing New Yorkers to oppose pro-electrification policies.The Colorado, Connecticut and Maine laws address these tactics by prohibiting utilities from charging customers for a suite of political activities. Other states and the federal government should go further in two ways:First, they should add mandatory enforcement provisions so that if utilities illegally charge customers for political activities, stiff and automatic fines would kick in.Second, policymakers should, at minimum, require that utilities disclose all political spending. The recently passed state laws won’t stop utilities from spending their profits on politics. The post-Citizens United campaign finance landscape makes it difficult to restrict such expenditures, but it does not protect companies’ ability to spend secretly, which is how utilities like FirstEnergy, Florida Power & Light and SoCalGas have attempted their most noxious influence campaigns.Utilities are too central to the clean energy transition to be allowed to dictate our energy and climate policies based on their profit motives. Limiting their influence gives us the best chance to move quickly and affordably to a safer and cleaner future.David Pomerantz is the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility watchdog organization.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      ‘Where’s My Flying Car?’ Is a Legitimate Question

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      In December, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they had achieved on Earth what is commonplace within stars: They had fused hydrogen isotopes, releasing more energy in the reaction than was used in the ignition. The announcement came with enough caveats to make it clear that usable nuclear fusion remains, optimistically, decades away. But the fact that nuclear fusion will not change our energy system over the next year doesn’t mean it shouldn’t change our energy ambitions for the coming years.There are three goals a society can have for its energy usage. One is to use less. That is, arguably, the goal that took hold in the 1970s. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” is the key mantra here, with the much-ignored instruction to reduce coming first for a reason. Today, that ambition persists in the thinking of degrowthers and others who believe humanity courts calamity if we don’t respect our limits and discard fantasies of endless growth.The second goal is to use what we use now, but better. That is where modern climate policy has moved. The vision of decarbonization — now being pursued through policy, like last year’s Inflation Reduction Act — is to maintain roughly the energy patterns we have but shift to nonpolluting sources like wind and solar. Decarbonization at this speed and scale is so daunting a task that it is hard to look beyond it, to the third possible goal: a world of energy abundance.In his fascinating, frustrating book “Where Is My Flying Car?” J. Storrs Hall argues that we do not realize how much our diminished energy ambitions have cost us. Across the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the energy humanity could harness grew at about 7 percent annually. Humanity’s compounding energetic force, he writes, powered “the optimism and constant improvement of life in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.”But starting around 1970, the curve flattened, particularly in rich countries, which began doing more with less. In 1979, for instance, Americans consumed about 10.8 kilowatts per person. In 2019 we consumed about 9.2 kilowatts a person. To a conservationist, this looks like progress, though not nearly enough, as a glance at CO2 emissions will confirm. To Hall, it was a civilizational catastrophe.His titular flying car stands in for all that we were promised in the mid-20th century but don’t yet have: flying cars, of course, but also lunar bases, nuclear rockets, atomic batteries, nanotechnology, undersea cities, affordable supersonic air travel and so on. Hall harvests these predictions and many more from midcentury sci-fi writers and prognosticators and sorts them according to their cost in energy. What he finds is that the marvels we did manage — the internet, smartphones, teleconferencing, Wikipedia, flat-screen televisions, streaming video and audio content, mRNA vaccines, rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, to name just a few — largely required relatively little energy and the marvels we missed would require masses of it.But they are possible. We’ve flown plenty of flying car prototypes over the decades. The water crises of the future could be solved by mass desalination. Supersonic air travel is a solved technological problem. Lunar bases lie well within the boundaries of possibility. The path that Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, outlined for nanotechnology — build machines that are capable of building smaller machines that are capable of building smaller machines that are capable of, well, you get it — still seems plausible. What we need is energy — much, much more of it. But Hall thinks we’ve become an “ergophobic” society, which he defines as a society gripped by “the almost inexplicable belief that there is something wrong with using energy.”Here, Hall’s account drips with contempt for anyone who does not dive out of the way of today’s industrialists. He reaches back to old H.G. Wells stories to find the right metaphor for where our civilization went sideways, finding it in the feckless Eloi, a post-human race that collapsed into the comforts of abundance. The true conflict, he says, is not between the haves and the have-nots but between the doers and the do-nots. “The do-nots favor stagnation and are happy turning our civilization into a collective couch potato,” he writes. And in his view, the do-nots are winning.“Where Is My Flying Car?” is a work of what I’d call reactionary futurism. It loves the progress technology can bring; it can’t stand the soft, flabby humans who stand in the future’s way. There is nothing inexplicable about why country after country sought energy conservation or why it remains an aim. A partial list would include poisoned rivers and streams, smog-choked cities, the jagged edge of climate change and ongoing mass extinction and the geopolitical costs of being hooked on oil from Saudi Arabia and gas from Russia.Hall gives all this short shrift, describing climate change as “a hangnail, not a hangman” (for whom, one wants to ask), and focusing on the villainy of lawyers and regulators and hippies. He laments how the advent of nuclear weapons made war so costly that it “short-circuited the evolutionary process,” in which “a society that slid into inefficient cultural or governmental practices was likely to be promptly conquered by the baron next door.”Hall’s sociopolitical theories are as flimsy as his technical analyses are careful. His book would imply that countries with shallow public sectors would race ahead of their statist peers in innovation and that nations threatened by violent neighbors would be better governed and more technologically advanced than, say, the United States.Among his central arguments is that government funding and attention paradoxically impedes the technologies it’s meant to help, but — curiously for a book about energy — he has little to say about the astonishing progress in solar, wind and battery power that’s been driven by public policy. He predicts that if solar and wind “prove actually usable on a large scale,” environmentalists would turn on them. “Their objections really have nothing to do with pollution, or radiation, or risk, or global warming,” he writes. “They are about keeping abundant, cheap energy out of the hands of ordinary people.”But on this branch of the multiverse, most every environmentalist group of note fought to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which was really the Deploy Solar and Wind Everywhere and Invest in Every Energy Technology We Can Think of Act. And if they had their way, it would have been far bigger and far better funded.Indeed, the existence of Hall’s book is a challenge to its thesis. “Where Is My Flying Car?” is now distributed by Stripe Press, the publishing offshoot of the digital payment company Stripe, which was started by two Irish immigrants in California. That state is the home of the postmaterialist counterculture that Hall sees as the beating heart of Eloi politics, and there is little fear of a near-term invasion by Mexican forces. Even so, California has housed a remarkable series of technological advances and institutions over the past century, and it continues to do so. The fusion breakthrough, for instance, was made by government scientists working in, yes, Northern California. There is an interplay here that is far more complex than Hall’s theories admit.But Hall’s book is worth struggling with because he’s right about two big things. First, that the flattening of the energy curve was a moment of civilizational import and one worth revisiting. And second, that many in politics have abandoned any real vision of the long future. Too often, the right sees only the imagined glories of the past, and the left sees only the injustices of the present. The future exists in our politics mainly to give voice to our fears or urgency to our agendas. We’ve lost sight of the world that abundant, clean energy could make possible.The remarkable burst of prosperity and possibility that has defined the past few hundred years has been a story of energy. “Take any variable of human well-being — longevity, nutrition, income, mortality, overall population — and draw a graph of its value over time,” Charles Mann writes in “The Wizard and the Prophet.” “In almost every case it skitters along at a low level for thousands of years, then rises abruptly in the 18th and 19th centuries, as humans learn to wield the trapped solar power in coal, oil and natural gas.”Without energy, even material splendor has sharp limits. Mann notes that visitors to the Palace of Versailles in February 1695 marveled at the furs worn to dinners with the king and the ice that collected on the glassware. It was freezing in Versailles, and no amount of wealth could fix it. A hundred years later, Thomas Jefferson had a vast wine collection and library in Monticello and the forced labor of hundreds of slaves, but his ink still froze in his inkwells come winter.Today, heating is a solved problem for many. But not for all. There are few inequalities more fundamental than energy inequality. The demographer Hans Rosling had a striking way of framing this. In 2010 he argued that you could group humanity by the energy people had access to. At the time, roughly two billion people had little or no access to electricity and still cook food and heat water by fire. About three billion had access to enough electricity to power electric lights. An additional billion or so had the energy and wealth for labor-saving appliances like washing machines. It’s only the richest billion people who could afford to fly, and they — we — used around half of global energy.The first reason to want energy abundance is to make energy and the gifts it brings available to all. Rosling put this well, describing how his mother loaded the laundry and then took him to the library, how she used the time she’d once spent cleaning clothes to teach herself English. “This is the magic,” he said. “You load the laundry, and what do you get out of the machine? You get books.” There is no global aid strategy we could pursue that would do nearly as much as making energy radically cheaper, more reliable and more available.Then there is all we could do if we had the cheap, clean and abundant energy needed to do it. In a paper imagining “energy superabundance,” Austin Vernon and Eli Dourado sketch out some of the near-term possibilities. “Flights that take 15 hours on a 747 could happen in an hour on a point-to-point rocket,” they write. Vertical greenhouses could feed far more people, and desalination, which even now is a major contributor to water supplies in Singapore and Israel, would become affordable for poorer, populous nations that need new water sources most. Directly removing carbon dioxide from the air would become more plausible, giving us a path to reversing climate change over time.Vernon and Dourado’s definition of superabundance is fairly modest: They define it as every person on Earth having access to about twice the power Icelanders use annually. But what if fusion or other technologies give us energy that becomes functionally limitless? I enjoyed the way Benjamin Reinhardt, a self-proclaimed ergophile, rendered this kind of world, writing in the online journal Works in Progress:You could wake up in your house on the beautiful coast of an artificial island off the coast of South America. You’re always embarrassed at the cheap synthesized sand whenever guests visit, but people have always needed to sacrifice to afford space for a family. You say goodbye to yours and leave for work. On your commute, you do some work on a new way of making high-temperature superconductors. You’re a total dilettante but the combination of fixed-price for infinite compute and the new trend of inefficient but modular technology has created an inventor out of almost everybody. Soon enough, you reach the bottom of the Singaporean space elevator: Cheap space launches, the low cost of rail-gunning raw material into space and decreased material costs made the whole thing work out economically. Every time you see that impossibly thin cable stretching up, seemingly into nothingness, it boggles your mind — if that’s possible, what else is? You check out the new shipment of longevity drugs, which can only be synthesized in pristine zero-G conditions. Then you scoot off to a last-minute meet-up with friends in Tokyo.As you all enjoy dinner (made from ingredients grown in the same building and picked five minutes before cooking) a material scientist friend of a friend describes the latest in physics simulations. You bask in yet another serendipitous, in-person interaction, grateful for your cross-continental relationships. While you head home, you poke at your superconductor design a bit more. It’s a long shot, but it might give you the resources to pull yourself out of the bottom 25 percent, so that your kids can lead an even brighter life than you do. Things are good, you think, but they could be better.The fusion demonstration is a reminder not of what is inevitable but of what is possible. And it is not just fusion. The advance of wind and solar and battery technology remains a near miracle. The possibilities of advanced geothermal and hydrogen are thrilling. Smaller, modular nuclear reactors could make new miracles possible, like cars and planes that don’t need to be refueled or recharged. This is a world progressives, in particular, should want to hasten into existence. Clean, abundant energy is the foundation on which a more equal, just and humane world can be built.“In 100 or 200 years, everything will look radically different,” Melissa Lott, the director of research at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told me. “Folks will look back and be blown away by how we used energy today. They’ll say, ‘Wait, you just burned it?’”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      California Recall Vote Could Weaken the State’s Aggressive Climate Policies

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      Many Republicans vying to replace Newsom as governor want to roll back the state’s ambitious plans to cut planet-warming emissions, a change with nationwide implications.Follow our latest updates on the California Recall Election and Governor Newsom.California has long cast itself as a leader in the fight against global warming, with more solar panels and electric cars than anywhere else in the nation. But the state’s ambitious climate policies now face their biggest reckoning to date.Voters in California are deciding whether to oust Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom ahead of a Sept. 14 recall election. Many of the Republicans vying to replace Mr. Newsom want to roll back the state’s aggressive plans to curb its planet-warming emissions, a move that could have nationwide implications for efforts to tackle climate change given California’s influence as the world’s fifth-largest economy.Under the rules of the election, Mr. Newsom would be removed from office if more than 50 percent of voters choose to recall him. If that happens, the governorship would go to whichever of the 46 replacement candidates on the ballot gets the most votes — even if that person does not win a majority.Democrats have worried that Mr. Newsom could lose, although polling over the past week suggests that voters in the state have started rallying around him.Polls say the leading Republican is Larry Elder, a conservative radio host who said in an interview that “global warming alarmism is a crock” and that he intends “to stop the war on oil and gas.” Another top candidate, Republican businessman John Cox, says California’s climate policies have made the state unaffordable for many. Also running is Kevin Faulconer, a former Republican mayor of San Diego, who oversaw the city’s first climate plan but has taken issue with Mr. Newsom’s approach.“There’s the real potential for a huge shift in direction,” said Richard Frank, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Davis. “California has had substantial influence over the direction of climate policy both nationally and internationally, and that could easily wane.”Under the past three governors — Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown and Mr. Newsom — California has enacted some of the most far-reaching laws and regulations in the country to shift away from fossil fuels.That includes a requirement that utilities get 100 percent of their electricity from clean sources like wind and solar power by 2045, regulations to limit tailpipe pollution from cars and trucks and building codes that encourage developers to shift away from natural gas for home heating. California’s legislature has ordered the state’s powerful air regulator, the Air Resources Board, to slash statewide emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.While California accounts for only a fraction of the nation’s emissions, it often serves as a testing ground for climate policy. Its clean electricity standard has been mirrored by states like New York and Colorado, and Democrats in Congress are now crafting a nationwide version..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Under the federal Clean Air Act, California is the only state allowed to set its own vehicle pollution rules. California’s rules have been adopted by 14 other states and have frequently pushed the federal government to ratchet up its own regulations.California has installed more solar power than any other state.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut California has also struggled with the transition to cleaner energy and the effects of global warming. Last August, a record heat wave triggered rolling blackouts across the state, in part because grid operators had not added enough clean power to compensate for solar panels going offline after sunset. Pacific Gas and Electric, the state’s largest utility, has repeatedly had to switch off electricity to customers to avoid sparking wildfires.As the top elected official in a state reeling from record-breaking drought and raging fires, Mr. Newsom has faced pressure to do more. Last September, he directed the Air Resources Board to develop regulations that ban sales of new gasoline-powered cars statewide by 2035. He has called on agencies to place new restrictions on oil and gas drilling. More recently, the state’s transportation agency finalized a plan to direct more funding to measures that would curb emissions, such as public transit or biking.And in his most recent budget, Mr. Newsom directed more than $12 billion toward a spate of climate programs, including electric vehicle chargers, measures to deal with worsening water shortages and efforts to protect forest communities against wildfires.In his campaign against the recall, Mr. Newsom has attacked his opponents for downplaying the risks of global warming. “With all due respect, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about when it comes to the issue of climate and climate change,” Mr. Newsom said of Mr. Elder in an interview last month with ABC News.“California’s been in the vanguard of climate leadership, and all of that can be undone very quickly,” said Nathan Click, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom’s campaign.Mr. Cox and other Republican rivals say Mr. Newsom has not done enough to manage California’s forests to make them less fire-prone. They argue that the flurry of environmental regulations is driving up costs in a state that already faces a severe housing shortage.“I’m all for cleaning up the world’s pollution, but not on the backs of the middle class and low income people,” said Mr. Cox, who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. Newsom in 2018. “When China’s building a new coal-fired power plant every week, do you really think driving up the cost of energy in our state is going to make an appreciable difference?”If Mr. Newsom is recalled, a new governor would be unlikely to overturn many of California’s key climate laws, not least because the legislature would stay in Democratic hands. But that still leaves room for major changes.Firefighting plane above the Dixie Fire late last week.Christian Monterrosa for The New York TimesA new governor could, for instance, rescind Mr. Newsom’s order to phase out new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 or his push to restrict oil and gas drilling, since those were issued by executive order. A governor could also appoint new officials who were less keen on climate regulation to various agencies, including the Air Resources Board, although doing so could set up a clash with the legislature, which oversees appointments. Any governor would also have broad latitude in shaping how existing climate laws are implemented.Mr. Elder, the talk radio host, said he did not see climate change as a dire threat and would de-emphasize wind and solar power. “Of course, global warming exists,” he said. “The climate is always changing. Has it gotten a degree or two warmer in the last several years? Yes. Is man-made activity a part of that? Yes. But nobody really knows to what degree.”He added: “The idea that the planet is going to be destroyed if we don’t force feed some sort of renewable system, that’s a crock.”Mr. Elder’s view is at odds with the scientific consensus. Last month, a United Nations scientific panel concluded that virtually all of the global warming since the 19th century was driven by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. And it warned that consequences such as heat waves, droughts and wildfires would continue to worsen unless nations slashed their planet-warming emissions by shifting to cleaner sources of energy.Instead of focusing on renewable power, Mr. Cox said he would build a bigger fleet of firefighting planes to combat wildfires. He also argued that the United States should increase its natural gas production and ship more of the fuel abroad, so that countries like China could rely on it instead of coal. “If we bring down the cost of natural gas and ship it to China, we’ll do wonderful things for the world’s pollution problem,” he said.Mr. Cox also disagreed with Mr. Newsom’s plan to phase out new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. “I drive a Tesla, I’m all for electric cars,” he said. “But we’re already struggling to generate enough electricity for our air-conditioners in August,” he said. “Where are we going to get the electricity for 25 million electric vehicles?”Mr. Faulconer, who is further down in the polls, criticized Mr. Newsom for underfunding the state’s wildfire budget. While he endorsed the state’s push for 100 percent clean electricity, he warned the state risked further blackouts without relying on sources like nuclear power. He also said he would work with the legislature on a policy to boost electric vehicles “that does not rely on a statewide ban” of gasoline-powered cars.All three Republican candidates said they would push to keep open Diablo Canyon, the state’s last remaining nuclear plant, which is set to close by 2025. Critics of the closure have warned it could exacerbate California’s electricity shortage and lead to the burning of more natural gas, which creates emissions.Diablo Canyon, California’s last remaining nuclear plant, is scheduled to close by 2025.Michael Mariant/Associated PressAny new governor would serve only until California’s next election, in 2022, and some experts predicted that political gridlock would largely result. But even short-term gridlock could have a significant effect on climate policy.California is already struggling to meet its target of cutting emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Hitting that goal, analysts said, would likely require all of the state’s agencies to work together, developing additional strategies to curtail fossil-fuel use in power plants, homes and vehicles. It could also require fixing the state’s cap-and-trade program, which caps pollution from large industrial facilities but has attracted criticism for relying on poorly designed carbon offsets.“We don’t have many years left between now and 2030,” said Cara Horowitz, co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at U.C.L.A. Law School. “If we waste a year or more because the Air Resources Board has been told not to prioritize cutting emissions, it’s a lot harder to see how we get there.”That, in turn, could have ripple effects nationwide. President Biden has pledged to halve the nation’s emissions by 2030 and is hoping to persuade other world leaders that the United States has a plan to get there. Without California on board, that task becomes tougher.California also has an outsized influence over clean vehicle standards, in part because it can set its own rules and prod the auto industry to develop cleaner cars. The Biden administration recently proposed to essentially adopt California’s car rules nationwide. Some fear that if California is no longer pushing to ramp up electric vehicles, as Mr. Newsom has envisioned, the federal government will feel less pressure to act.“I can’t think of a single instance where the federal government has moved ahead of California,” said Mary Nichols, the former chair of the Air Resources Board. “California has always had this unique role as a first mover.”Shawn Hubler More

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      German Election: Who Is the Green Party's Annalena Baerbock?

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      Annalena Baerbock, the 40-year-old candidate for the Green Party, is likely to have a say in Germany’s next government, no matter who wins this month’s election.BOCHUM, Germany — The woman who wants to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel strode onto the stage in sneakers and a leather jacket, behind her the steel skeleton of a disused coal mining tower, before her a sea of expectant faces. The warm-up act, a guy with an Elvis quiff draped in a rainbow flag, sang “Imagine.”Annalena Baerbock, the Green Party candidate for chancellor, is asking Germans to do just that. To imagine a country powered entirely by renewable energy. To imagine a relatively unknown and untested 40-year-old as their next chancellor. To imagine her party, which has never before run Germany, leading the government after next month’s election.“This election is not just about what happens in the next four years, it’s about our future,” Ms. Baerbock told the crowd, taking her case to a traditional coal region that closed its last mine three years ago.“We need change to preserve what we love and cherish,” she said in this not necessarily hostile, but skeptical, territory. “Change requires courage, and change is on the ballot on Sept. 26.”Just how much change Germans really want after 16 years of Ms. Merkel remains to be seen. The chancellor made herself indispensable by navigating innumerable crises — financial, migrant, populist and pandemic — and solidifying Germany’s leadership on the continent. Other candidates are competing to see who can be most like her.Ms. Baerbock, by contrast, aims to shake up the status quo. She is challenging Germans to deal with the crises that Ms. Merkel has left largely unattended: decarbonizing the powerful automobile sector; weaning the country off coal; rethinking trade relationships with strategic competitors like China and Russia.It is not always an easy sell. In an unusually close race, there is still an outside chance that the Greens will catch up with Germany’s two incumbent parties. But even if they do not, there is almost no combination of parties imaginable in the next coalition government that does not include them. That makes Ms. Baerbock, her ideas and her party of central importance to Germany’s future. But Germans are still getting to know her.“This election is not just about what happens in the next four years, it’s about our future,” Ms. Baerbock said during her election tour.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesA crowd gathered to listen to Ms. Baerbock in Duisburg, in western Germany.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesA competitive trampolinist in her youth who became a lawmaker at 32 and has two young daughters, Ms. Baerbock bolted onto Germany’s national political scene only three years ago when she was elected one of the Greens’ two leaders. “Annalena Who?” one newspaper asked at the time.After being nominated in April as the Greens’ first-ever chancellor candidate, Ms. Baerbock briefly surged past her rivals in Germany’s long-dominant parties: Armin Laschet, the leader of the Christian Democrats, and Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats, who now leads the race.But she fell behind after stumbling repeatedly. Rivals accused Ms. Baerbock of plagiarism after revelations that she had failed to attribute certain passages in a recently published book. Imprecise labeling of some of her memberships led to headlines about her padding her résumé.More recently, she and her party failed to seize on the deadly floods that killed more than 180 people in western Germany to energize her campaign, even as the catastrophe catapulted climate change — the Greens’ flagship issue — to the top of the political agenda.Hoping to reset her campaign, Ms. Baerbock, traveling in a bright green double-decker bus covered in solar panels, is taking her pitch to German voters in 45 cities and towns across the country.Ms. Baerbock in the campaign bus with her social media and logistics team.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesIt was no coincidence that her first stop was the industrial heartland of Germany, in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, which was badly hit by floods this summer and is run by Mr. Laschet, who has been criticized for mismanaging the disaster.“Climate change isn’t something that’s happening far away in other countries, climate change is with us here and now,” Ms. Baerbock told a crowd of a few hundred students, workers and young parents with their children in Bochum.“Rich people will always be able to buy their way out, but most people can’t,” she said. “That’s why climate change and social justice are two sides of the same coin for me.”Leaving the stage with her microphone, Ms. Baerbock then mingled with the audience and took questions on any range of topics — managing schools during the pandemic, cybersecurity — and apologized for her early missteps.“Yes, we’ve made mistakes, and I’m annoyed at myself,” she said. “But I know where I want to go.”Germany’s two traditional mainstream parties have seen their support shrink in recent years, while the Green Party has more than doubled its own.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesIf there is one thing that sets Ms. Baerbock apart from her rivals, it is this relative openness and youthful confidence combined with a bold vision. She is the next generation of a Green Party that has come a long way since its founding as a radical “anti-party party” four decades ago.In those early days, opposition, not governing, was the aim.For Ms. Baerbock, “governing is radical.”Her party’s evolution from a fringe protest movement to a serious contender to power in many ways reflects her own biography.Born in 1980, she is as old as her party. When she was a toddler, her parents took her to anti-NATO protests. By the time she joined the Greens as a student in 2005, the party had completed its first stint in government as the junior partner of the Social Democrats. By now, many voters have come to see the Greens as a party that has matured while remaining true to its principles. It is pro-environment, pro-Europe and unapologetically pro-immigration. Ms. Baerbock joined the Greens as a student in 2005.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesMs. Baerbock proposes spending 50 billion euros, about $59 billion, in green investments each year for a decade to bankroll Germany’s transformation to a carbon-neutral economy — and paying for it by scrapping the country’s strict balanced budget rule.She would raise taxes on top earners and put tariffs on imports that are not carbon neutral. She envisions solar panels on every rooftop, a world-class electric car industry, a higher minimum wage and climate subsidies for those with low incomes. She wants to team up with the United States to get tough on China and Russia.She is also committed to Germany’s growing diversity — the only candidate who has spoken of the country’s moral responsibility to take in some Afghan refugees, beyond those who helped Western troops. Ms. Baerbock’s ambitions to break taboos at home and abroad — and her rise as a serious challenger of the status quo — is catching voters’ attention as the election nears.It has also made her a target of online disinformation campaigns from the far right and others. A fake nude picture of her has circulated with the caption, “I needed the money.” Fake quotes have her saying she wants to ban all pets to minimize carbon emissions.Ms. Baerbock’s enemies in the mainstream conservative media have not held back either, exploiting every stumble she has made.Many of those who heard her speak in Bochum recently said they were impressed by her confident delivery (she spoke without notes) and willingness to engage with voters in front of rolling cameras.A supporter surprised Ms. Baerbock by offering her a heart-shaped balloon in Hildesheim, in northern Germany.Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times“She focused on issues and not emotions,” said Katharina Münch, a retired teacher. “She seems really solid.” Others were concerned about her young age and lack of experience.“What has she done to run for chancellor?” said Frank Neuer, 29, a sales clerk who had stopped by on his way to work. “I mean, it’s like me running for chancellor.”Political observers say the attacks against Ms. Baerbock have been disproportionate and revealing of a deeper phenomenon. Despite having a female chancellor for almost two decades, women still face tougher scrutiny and sometimes outright sexism in German politics.“My candidacy polarizes in a way that wasn’t imaginable for many women of my age,” Ms. Baerbock said, sitting in a bright wood-paneled cabin on the top level of her campaign bus between stops.“In some ways, what I’ve experienced is similar to what happened in the U.S. when Hillary Clinton ran,” she added. “I stand for renewal, the others stand for the status quo, and of course, those who have an interest in the status quo see my candidacy as a declaration of war.”Bochum was among the stops on Ms. Baerbock’s campaign swing.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesWhen Ms. Merkel first ran for office in 2005, at 51, she was routinely described as Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s “girl” and received not just endless commentary on her haircut, but relentless questions about her competence and readiness for office. Even allies in her own party dismissed her as an interim leader at the time.Ms. Baerbock’s answer to such challenges is not to hide her youth or motherhood, but rather to lean into them.“It’s up to me as a mother, up to us as a society, up to us adults to be prepared for the questions of our children: Did you act?” she said. “Did we do everything to secure the climate and with it the freedom of our children?”Ms. Baerbock talking with a group of young women at the end of a campaign day in Duisburg.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesChristopher F. Schuetze More

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      How Sustainable Is the Rally in Renewable Energy Stocks?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Sustainable Is the Rally in Renewable Energy Stocks?Solar and wind power companies have soared in value. Are they in a bubble or in a virtuous upward cycle?Installing solar panels on a rooftop in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Solar power is the cheapest source of electricity in many countries, according to the International Energy Agency.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York TimesJan. 14, 2021Updated 1:50 p.m. ETThe overall stock market was fabulous last year, but as investors focused on climate change, renewable energy stocks did even better.Consider that while the SPDR S&P 500 Exchange-Traded Fund Trust, which tracks the benchmark S&P 500, returned 18.37 percent in 2020, the Invesco Solar E.T.F., which tracks an index of solar energy stocks, soared 233.95 percent, according to Morningstar Direct. The Invesco WilderHill E.T.F., which invests more broadly in alternative energy of various types, rose 204.83 percent.Returns like those are so strong that they are unlikely to be replicated: It is possible that the stocks of companies engaged in carbon-free energy production are already in a bubble. Jason Bloom, head of fixed income and alternative E.T.F.s for Invesco, describes the sector this way: “I would call it rational optimism in view of improving fundamentals.”The International Energy Agency recently called solar-generated energy the “cheapest” electricity source in many countries. In the United States, it accounts for just 3 percent of energy output, but it is increasing rapidly. Wind power, which now supplies roughly 8 percent of domestic energy, has also been growing. There is plenty of room for expansion for many renewable energy companies.The results of the presidential election have already bolstered the returns of these companies, too. While President Trump has promoted the use of fossil fuels like coal, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has advocated a $2 trillion climate plan to “achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.” His plan, not yet fully detailed, includes a variety of investment inducements and tax breaks.That would be more ambitious than the once-trendsetting 2045 goal of carbon-free energy production set by California. Already, solar power accounts for 18 percent of electricity generation at the utility Southern California Edison, said Erica Bowman, the company’s director of resource and environmental planning and strategy.Garvin Jabusch, chief investment officer for Green Alpha Advisors, an alternative energy investor, notes that the cost of generating electricity from solar energy is 90 percent lower than 10 years ago. Mr. Jabusch expects alternative energy prices to decline further with expanded demand. Mr. Jabusch favors companies that are “growing production capacity,” like First Solar, which has opened a new plant in Lake Township, Ohio, to expand production of its solar panels.For all its promise, investment in solar and wind power is limited by the laws of nature: Solar units can produce electricity only when the sun is shining, and wind turbines need wind.For the most part, Southern California Edison backs up its solar power with electricity generated by natural gas. But the utility recently contracted for nearly 600 megawatts of lithium ion battery storage so it can store excess electricity produced under ideal weather conditions.“Battery prices are down 90 percent over the last five to eight years,” Ms. Bowman said. “As we transition to a cleaner grid, solar generation coupled with battery storage is the cost-effective solution for California,” she added.Hydrogen fuel cells, which produce electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen, have emerged as a possible near-term solution for use in trucking and shipping, says Mr. Bloom. But such applications will require a costly expansion of the hydrogen gas filling station network, said Steve Capanna, director of U.S. climate policy and analysis for the Environmental Defense Fund. Right now, he said, beyond “a handful in California,” there aren’t many such stations.Buying shares of renewable energy stocks now requires a degree of faith, because they are so expensive, partly because of the low interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve, which have helped to drive the overall stock market higher. Fed support may be the biggest reason the market has withstood all the grim economic news of the coronavirus to continue its seemingly unending valuation advance.Paul Coster, a JPMorgan analyst, said that the high prices in the renewables sector are based on solid achievement. “It’s not like the dot-com era,” he said. “These are real actors with real technology.” He added, “We’re living in this wonderful moment in time when virtue and self-interest coincide.”Perhaps, Mr. Coster mused, there are still good reasons to own some of these stocks. He cited FuelCell Energy, which has negative cash flow and has consistently reported quarterly earnings losses. Mr. Coster said investors may want to project out several years.By 2025, he said, it’s “feasible” that FuelCell Energy would have $60 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, justifying a rich, growth stock valuation. Even so, the company’s shares more than doubled in the last month, and on Jan. 14, Mr. Coster warned that at current prices, the stock was already “richly valued.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Al Gore: I Have Hope on the Climate Crisis. America Must Lead.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyAl Gore: Where I Find HopeThe Biden administration will have the opportunity to restore confidence in America and take on the worsening climate crisis.Mr. Gore was the 45th vice president of the United States.Dec. 12, 2020Al Gore at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015.Credit…Francois Mori/Associated Press­­­­­This weekend marks two anniversaries that, for me, point a way forward through the accumulated wreckage of the past year.The first is personal. Twenty years ago, I ended my presidential campaign after the Supreme Court abruptly decided the 2000 election. As the incumbent vice president, my duty then turned to presiding over the tallying of Electoral College votes in Congress to elect my opponent. This process will unfold again on Monday as the college’s electors ratify America’s choice of Joe Biden as the next president, ending a long and fraught campaign and reaffirming the continuity of our democracy.The second anniversary is universal and hopeful. This weekend also marks the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement. One of President Trump’s first orders of business nearly four years ago was to pull the United States out of the accord, signed by 194 other nations to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases threatening the planet. With Mr. Trump heading for the exit, President-elect Biden plans to rejoin the agreement on his Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.Now, with Mr. Biden about to take up residence in the White House, the United States has the chance to reclaim America’s leadership position in the world after four years in the back seat.Mr. Biden’s challenges will be monumental. Most immediately, he assumes office in the midst of the chaos from the colossal failure to respond effectively to the coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation that has resulted.And though the pandemic fills our field of vision at the moment, it is only the most urgent of the multiple crises facing the country and planet, including 40 years of economic stagnation for middle-income families; hyper-inequality of incomes and wealth, with high levels of poverty; horrific structural racism; toxic partisanship; the impending collapse of nuclear arms control agreements; an epistemological crisis undermining the authority of knowledge; recklessly unprincipled behavior by social media companies; and, most dangerous of all, the climate crisis.What lies before us is the opportunity to build a more just and equitable way of life for all humankind. This potential new beginning comes at a rare moment when it may be possible to break the stranglehold of the past over the future, when the trajectory of history might be altered by what we choose to do with a new vision.With the coronavirus death toll rising rapidly, the battle against the pandemic is desperate, but it will be won. Yet we will still be in the midst of an even more life-threatening battle — to protect the Earth’s climate balance — with consequences measured not only in months and years, but also in centuries and millenniums. Winning will require us to re-establish our compact with nature and our place within the planet’s ecological systems, for the sake not only of civilization’s survival but also of the preservation of the rich web of biodiversity on which human life depends.The daunting prospect of successfully confronting such large challenges at a time after bitter divisions were exposed and weaponized in the presidential campaign has caused many people to despair. Yet these problems, however profound, are all solvable.Look at the pandemic. Despite the policy failures and human tragedies, at least one success now burns bright: Scientists have harnessed incredible breakthroughs in biotechnology to produce several vaccines in record time. With medical trials demonstrating their safety and efficacy, these new vaccines prefigure an end to the pandemic in the new year. This triumph alone should put an end to the concerted challenges to facts and science that have threatened to undermine reason as the basis for decision-making.Similarly, even as the climate crisis rapidly worsens, scientists, engineers and business leaders are making use of stunning advances in technology to end the world’s dependence on fossil fuels far sooner than was hoped possible.Mr. Biden will take office at a time when humankind faces the choice of life over death. Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of severe consequences — coastal inundations and worsening droughts, among other catastrophes — if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050.Slowing the rapid warming of the planet will require a unified global effort. Mr. Biden can lead by strengthening the country’s commitment to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement — something the country is poised to do thanks to the work of cities, states, businesses and investors, which have continued to make progress despite resistance from the Trump administration.Solar energy is one example. The cost of solar panels has fallen 89 percent in the past decade, and the cost of wind turbines has dropped 59 percent. The International Energy Agency projects that 90 percent of all new electricity capacity worldwide in 2020 will be from clean energy — up from 80 percent in 2019, when total global investment in wind and solar was already more than three times as large as investments in gas and coal.Over the next five years, the I.E.A. projects that clean energy will constitute 95 percent of all new power generation globally. The agency recently called solar power “the new king” in global energy markets and “the cheapest source of electricity in history.”As renewable energy costs continue to drop, many utilities are speeding up the retirement of existing fossil fuel plants well before their projected lifetimes expire and replacing them with solar and wind, plus batteries. In a study this summer, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Sierra Club reported that clean energy is now cheaper than 79 percent of U.S. coal plants and 39 percent of coal plants in the rest of the world — a number projected to increase rapidly. Other analyses show that clean energy combined with batteries is already cheaper than most new natural gas plants.As a former oil minister in Saudi Arabia put it 20 years ago, “the Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones, and the oil age will come to an end not because we have a lack of oil.” Many global investors have reached the same conclusion and are beginning to shift capital away from climate-destroying businesses to sustainable solutions. The pressure is no longer coming from only a small group of pioneers, endowments, family foundations and church-based pension funds; some of the world’s largest investment firms are now joining this movement, too, having belatedly recognized that fossil fuels have been extremely poor investments for a long while. Thirty asset managers overseeing $9 trillion announced on Friday an agreement to align their portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050.Exxon Mobil, long a major source of funding for grossly unethical climate denial propaganda, just wrote down the value of its fossil fuel reserves by as much as $20 billion, adding to the unbelievable $170 billion in oil and gas assets written down by the industry in just the first half of this year. Last year, a BP executive said that some of the company’s reserves “won’t see the light of day,” and this summer it committed to a 10-fold increase in low-carbon investments this decade as part of its commitment to net-zero emissions.The world has finally begun to cross a political tipping point, too. Grass-roots climate activists, often led by young people of Greta Thunberg’s generation, are marching every week now (even virtually during the pandemic). In the United States, this movement crosses party lines. More than 50 college conservative and Republican organizations have petitioned the Republican National Committee to change its position on climate, lest the party lose younger voters.Significantly, in just the past three months, several of the world’s most important political leaders have introduced important initiatives. Thanks to the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the E.U. just announced that it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent in the next nine years. President Xi Jinping has pledged that China will achieve net-zero carbon emissions in 2060. Leaders in Japan and South Korea said a few weeks ago said that their countries will reach net-zero emissions in 2050.Denmark, the E.U.’s largest producer of gas and oil, has announced a ban on further exploration for fossil fuels. Britain has pledged a 68 percent reduction by 2030, along with a ban on sales of vehicles equipped with only gasoline-powered internal-combustion engines.The cost of batteries for electric vehicles has dropped by 89 percent over the past decade, and according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, these vehicles will reach price parity with internal-combustion vehicles within two years in key segments of vehicle markets in the United States, Europe and Australia, followed quickly by China and much of the rest of the world. Sales of internal-combustion passenger vehicles worldwide peaked in 2017. It is in this new global context that President-elect Biden has made the decarbonization of the U.S. electricity grid by 2035 a centerpiece of his economic plan. Coupled with an accelerated conversion to electric vehicles and an end to government subsidies for fossil fuels, among other initiatives, these efforts can help put the nation on a path toward net-zero emissions by 2050.As the United States moves forward, it must put frontline communities — often poor, Black, brown or Indigenous — at the center of the climate agenda. They have suffered disproportionate harm from climate pollution. This is reinforced by recent evidence that air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels — to which these communities bear outsize exposure — makes them more vulnerable to Covid-19.With millions of new jobs needed to recover from the economic ravages of the pandemic, sustainable businesses are among the best bets. A recent study in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy noted that investments in those enterprises result in three times as many new jobs as investments in fossil fuels. Between 2014 and 2019, solar jobs grew five times as fast in the United States as average job growth.Still, all of these positive developments fall far short of the emissions reductions required. The climate crisis is getting worse faster than we are deploying solutions.In November of next year, all of the signatories to the Paris Agreement will meet in Glasgow with a mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions much faster than they pledged to do in 2015. What will be new in Glasgow is transparency: By the time the delegates arrive, a new monitoring effort made possible by an array of advanced technologies will have precisely measured the emissions from every major source of greenhouse gases in the world, with most of that data updated every six hours.With this radical transparency, a result of efforts of a broad coalition of corporations and nonprofits I helped to start called Climate Trace (for tracking real-time atmospheric carbon emissions), countries will have no place to hide when failing to meet their emissions commitments. This precision tracking will replace the erratic, self-reported and often inaccurate data on which past climate agreements were based.Even then, a speedy phaseout of carbon pollution will require functional democracies. With the casting of a majority of the Electoral College votes on Monday for Mr. Biden, and then his inauguration, we will make a start in restoring America as the country best positioned to lead the world’s struggle to solve the climate crisis.To do that, we need to deal forthrightly with our shortcomings instead of touting our strengths. That, and that alone, can position the United States to recover the respect of other nations and restore their confidence in America as a reliable partner in the great challenges humankind faces. As in the pandemic, knowledge will be our salvation, but to succeed, we must learn to work together, lest we perish together.Al Gore shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for his work to slow global warming.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More