energy – Susan Feathers

Today on the Sam Matey-Coste Substack account – The Weekly Anthropocene – news and a record of how countries voted to uphold the right of people across the world to a stable environment is presented. The vote responded to a ruling by the International Court of Justice. Note below, the U.S. now joins Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Liberia, and others, to deny that right.

A U.S.A. nonprofit supporting youth is working in state and federal courts toward a declaration of the rights of children and youth to a healthy, sustainable climate. Our Children’s Trust is a nonprofit worth following.

Listening to youth speak to their futures requires all of us to understand our inaction acts to decrease their life’s potential. No one would deny that to children, right? The children and youth are given top notch legal education and representation at no cost. Explore the website by state to learn where youth are applying pressure to achieve a sustainable environment for their generation.

I highly recommend the book, The Ecology of Childhood, How Our Changing World Threatens Children published in 2020. Barbara Bennett Woodhouse devoted her law career to the rights of children. (See Google Scholar for her published works.) Bennett demonstrates how the U.S. ranks low compared to other developed nations in the social safety net provided for our children. We talk a good game about how we love our children in the U.S. but, when studied, that proves to be false. Now, we deny them a stable climate as well?

Readers, it is my firm belief that Americans are misrepresented by the current administration which denies climate change and has turned our country back to increasing fossil fuel production and use. The momentum toward clean energy that just got started in the Biden administration has slowed as a result.

In Sam Matey-Coste’s Substack account you can learn about advancement in clean energy and environmental victories in countries around the world. I highly recommend him to all of you who need a daily dose of climate hope.

In the U.S. there is progress in clean energy development such as in Texas and California, but it is much slower than it could be – especially in the automobile industry where sales of electric cars have plummeted. And now that Trump has illustrated how vulnerable the fossil fuel industry can be, the U.S. is losing out and our children’s futures are even more imperiled as the Earth warms. Emissions from fossil fuels are the primary driver of climate anomalies and storms like we’ve recently experienced — fires like we’ve never seen, droughts across whole regions of the continent.

But, it is not just our children whom we imperil. We imperil the world’s children. Emissions do not stay in place but circulate around the globe. We are all responsible and must get back to representatives in government who are responsible, serious adults. The window of opportunity for Americans to gain access to free or cheap clean energy is attenuating.

How can this be true? We have historically been a nation of innovators. But here, oligarchs in tech have taken away our agency and made us prisoners of their outsized influence over our politics and thus our government. Data centers to support AI development are being shoved down communities throats. Who profits? Oligarchs.

Step Up!

Step into this path we are on to take back our country and get back on a path to innovation, clean cheap energy for All, and working alongside our allies across the world to obtain for youth and coming generations a safe, stable environment, a world of innovators and well cared for people. War is obsolete, and our people must have a say through our representatives as to whether we go on defense of liberty. DEFENSE. The Speaker of the House refused to bring a vote to the floor of the House of Representatives to end the Iran War.

This administration must be held accountable. We must stand for truth and for our children’s future.

This time in U.S. history will either be recorded as our undoing and defeat, or our finest hour. Which will history record?

Update: A Related Post – New Book for Hotter Times

Beginning about the middle of 2023, we entered the really steep part of this growth curve that could redefine our future, crossing another invisible line, this one marking the installation of a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels on this planet everyday. ~ Bill McKibben, Here Comes the Sun; Introduction, p. 3.

I want to help promote Bill’s book which was just released, written in 2024 with updated figures about the world’s and the U.S.’s transition to solar and wind power.

UPDATE: 8.28.25

But first, I want to share that Bill expertly and with flare and humor, traces humankind’s history of burning things for power and light. Scanning over our journey as a species, we can see how all that came before from burning wood, coal, oil and gas will be surpassed at warp speed as cheap, clean energy replaces those sources. Solar and wind energy are AVAILABLE TO ANYONE which will not only revolutionize how we live but will shift power because, as Bill points out, solar energy is diffuse – available for anyone anywhere on Earth.

Where people who were once able to hoard and control the availability of energy, that will no longer be true. People everywhere will be freed to experience a healthier and more robust life.

Are we in time to stem the worst of a heating Earth and oceans? Bill brings readers up to date on climate science and clean industry, soberly laying out what we have to do and by when to stop additional heating. The race is on but the current U.S. leadership has declared climate change a hoax. That decision is the real hoax – one that imperials Americans and the world.

The book is full of hope and good sense and a realistic estimation of where we are and what we must do over the next 4 and a half years (by 2030) and 24 years (by 2050). Most of the solar industry development is in China but in spite of all the obstacles in America’s way, its happening here as well.

We are going to buy the cheapest energy, the cheapest cars and transportation, and everyone will have access equally. That is a Revolution in America and across the planet.

VOLTS INTERVIEW WITH BILL MCKIBBEN AND JAMIE HENN