Column: It’s 2025. Time to start acting like climate change actually matters

Column: It’s 2025. Time to start acting like climate change actually matters

I’ll try to help you do that, with stories and columns that show how the energy transition is playing out across California and the American West, and how the climate crisis is affecting us here. 

Here are five issues I’m following in 2025.

1. The pace of progress

It’s not all bad. There are reasons for climate hope.

The world added record amounts of solar and wind power in 2023, and that growth is poised to continue. In the U.S., it will be accelerated by hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate bill signed by President Biden. Batteries that store solar and wind power are growing fast too, aided by falling costs. Batteries won’t make it possible to keep the lights on 24/7 with renewables alone, but they should go a long way toward limiting our need for fossil fuels.

The question now isn’t whether heat-trapping carbon emissions will go down — it’s whether they’ll go down fast enough to help us achieve a non-disastrous future. Scientists estimate that humanity must slash emissions 43% by 2030, just six years from now, to limit planetary warming to the global agreed-upon target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

2. Golden State leadership

California faces a projected $68-billion budget deficit in 2024. That will almost certainly spur efforts to cut spending on climate and renewable energy, even as fossil fuel combustion makes storms more intense and water shortages more urgent.

Will Sacramento lawmakers stand firm in their commitment to treat global warming like the emergency it is, and keep spending the money they’ve promised? Will Gov. Gavin Newsom and his advisors treat climate as just another budget line item that needs to be tidied up to burnish his political credentials, or will they put the fate of the planet ahead of his electoral fate?

I’ll be watching — and keeping an eye on elected officials in Los Angeles too.

3. The Western power grid

I haven’t spent the last two years traveling across the Western U.S. just because I like exploring quirky rural towns and admiring stark desert landscapes (although that’s certainly part of it). It’s also because California is part of a sprawling network of far-flung electricity generators — hydropower dams, nuclear reactors, wind turbines, coal plants and more — that shoot electrons across long-distance transmission lines to power our laptops, refrigerators, factories and more.

Will this be the year the Golden State starts working more closely with its Western neighbors to get fossil fuels off the grid?

Early signs point to yes. In the waning days of 2023, federal officials largely approved California’s long-simmering proposal for a “day-ahead market” to facilitate greater electricity-sharing across state lines. In theory, that should make it easier and cheaper to move the cleanest, lowest cost power from where it’s generated to where it’s needed. I’ll be watching to see if it works.

4. The energy in our homes

The day is coming when many of us will have solar panels on our roofs, electric heat pumps in our walls and induction stoves in our kitchens. Those clean energy fixtures will power hyper-efficient houses and apartments with electric cars out front.

Probably not in 2024, though.

In an affront to environmentalists, Newsom’s appointees voted in 2022 to slash incentive payments for rooftop solar power — a decision that was upheld in court last month. And in another blow to clean energy in the home, a federal appeals court this week refused to reconsider its rejection of Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation ban on gas hookups in new buildings. That could make it hard for Los Angeles and dozens of other cities to keep requiring climate-friendly appliances in new homes and businesses.

In potentially better news for climate, the California Public Utilities Commission is planning to reconfigure electric rates in a way that supporters say will make utility bills cheaper for most people, encouraging families to switch to electric cars and appliances. The planned new rates will include higher monthly charges for wealthier people, which has unsurprisingly led to criticism.

5. Presidential election time

With just a few years left to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, every election counts.

But whether Biden gets reelected or Trump or another Republican takes his place in the White House, that won’t be the end of the climate change story. As I wrote in November 2020, before it was clear who the next U.S. president would be, a Biden victory “wouldn’t magically solve the climate crisis” any more than a Trump victory would guarantee our doom. We’ve got a long way to go. Even if we can’t stop temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees, 2 degrees would be a hell of a lot better than 3.

Whoever wins the White House, I’ll probably look back at 2024 with disappointment and frustration over all the climate progress we could have made but didn’t. But that won’t mean we should throw up our collective hands in despair, or give up.

So let’s make climate a focus during the presidential race — without making the presidential race our only climate focus.