Lately, the climate change news hasn’t been very upbeat. Much of the coverage has dealt with President Trump’s efforts to roll back government initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And there is growing pessimism about meeting the goals set by the 2015 Paris accord.
Then again, there is hard data that progress continues. “In spite of cultural backsliding and a diminishing sense of political urgency, the clean energy rollout continues,” David Wallace-Wells wrote in a recent New York Times column. “In fact, it continues at a pace that would have astonished even optimistic forecasters a decade ago.”
He noted that last year worldwide spending on the energy transition was almost twice as high as it was in 2021. “In the United States, Vox recently tallied, wind capacity has grown more than 20-fold in two decades, and utility-scale battery capacity is up almost 30-fold in just five years…. Worldwide, solar capacity installation more than doubled since 2022. In 2024, more than 90 percent of all new power installed globally was clean.”
One reason is that a growing number of business leaders are realizing that the transition from fossil fuels is inevitable and that their companies’ success depends on adapting to this reality. Meantime, more and more consumers are concluding that electric cars (EVs) and solar panels are smart choices for them. And Americans are increasingly tuned in to the costs that climate change is imposing on their finances, their homes, and their health. Today 39 percent of Americans believe that global warming is harming our health “a great deal” or “a moderate amount,” up from 31 percent in 2014.
Fortunately, many nonprofit groups have taken up the cause, generally below radar. For example, a few seasoned GOP political operatives have created the EV Politics Project, a bipartisan effort to better understand the growing divide between Republicans and Democrats (and Independents) over EV adoption. The group is researching the causes of this divide “and developing highly effective communications strategies to overcome it…”
Another organization, America Is All In, has built an expansive coalition of cities, states, tribal nations, businesses, schools, and faith, health, and cultural institutions. It is developing and delivering an ambitious national climate strategy. The group’s leaders issued a statement April 9 in response to an executive order from President Trump that threatens state and local climate laws protecting American communities and fighting climate change. They derided the executive order as “an attempt to threaten the constitutionally protected authority of state and local governments to protect their residents through strong environmental and climate policies.”
Former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis of South Carolina started and heads RepublicEn.org at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Inglis believes that “it’s time to invest in right-of-center outreach on climate!”
The Citizens’ Climate Lobby champions a “consistently respectful, nonpartisan approach to climate education.” CCL trains and supports volunteers to build relationships with elected officials, the media and their local community. The organization strongly supports pricing carbon, saying: “A strong, economy-wide price on carbon could reduce America’s carbon pollution by 50% by 2030, putting us on track to reach net zero by 2050.”
Other outfits promoting carbon pricing (besides us!) include the Climate Leadership Council, the Carbon Tax Center, and the Pricing Carbon Initiative, which provides a forum for ongoing discussions among a broad range of stakeholders on potential pricing mechanisms and strategies.
Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends was started by 30 college Republican leaders and champions the carbon dividend plan promoted by James A. Baker III and the late George P. Shultz, both leaders in President Ronald Reagan’s administration.
Hundreds–perhaps thousands–of other organizations, including leading environmental nonprofits, are also contributing to the effort to speed the transition to clean energy. All of us need to keep at it.