Ignore the noise. Stay focused on the mission…
That’s my advice today to anyone working in the environmental sciences. After all, it’s a weird time to outline our goals and objectives, the solutions we have, and the acceleration of everything having to do with renewables, batteries, and grid technology.
After all, have you noticed that the future has become a culture war?
While you deal with these realities of science, technologies, trends, and tomorrow, large groups of people seek to inflame and chase their agenda by pursuing falsehoods. It seems that all of a sudden, electric cars have become doomed to fail; wind and solar energy have transitioned into an awful sort of tool designed to harm the carbon industry; and the concept of protecting the environment and our future has now become a test of loyalty to the ancient ideas of yesterday.
While all of this unfolds in the US during a heated election season, China and other advanced economies are solidifying their stranglehold on the technologies and industries of tomorrow. In that context, history has taught us that when a culture war ends, the winner is usually not the one taking the side that is anti-science and anti-future.
Even so, consider where we are. The math behind the acceleration of renewable energy is clear. Wind and solar are growing faster than any other sources of electricity in history, according to a new analysis from think tank Ember. Carbon Brief suggests that “they are now growing fast enough to exceed rising demand, meaning there will be a peak in fossil fuel electricity generation – and emissions – from this year.”
The era of carbon is over.
The impact of this rate of growth is pretty profound. Renewables hit a record 30% of global electricity demand in 2023. The cost of battery storage technology has collapsed by 97% in the last 3 decades. Wind turbines now produce more power in the U.S. than the entire country used in 1950. Bloomberg suggests that there will be $11.5 trillion in energy investment by 2050 – and 855% of that will go into wind, solar, renewables, grid, smart technology, and microgrids. We are seeing the arrival of industrial-scale battery storage, the maturity of local microgrid technology, sophisticated grid management via AI tools, and the arrival of vehicle battery tech as a part of the grid.
What’s not to like? The speed of change is astonishing. No other sources of electricity generation have ever grown at such a pace.
Math doesn’t lie.
To me and many others, the trend lines are clear – and yet the culture war is in full swing.
All I can suggest is – watch the trends. Not the noise. To work in the environmental sciences and new energy industry is to have a mindset of optimism. Negativity doesn’t become thee, and yet you are surrounded by it.
Ignore it.
Think about it – all of us are surrounded by those who are determined that our belief in a better future is a false hope; that the technologies, trends, and disruptive ideas that we see as opportunities are nothing but a sham of misplaced optimism; that our belief in the trends of tomorrow is misguided and wrong. I learned a long time ago to ignore much of what they say and have usually been right in my decision.
And yet as their voices get louder and their ranks steadily increase, it is more important than ever to simply tune them out.
If you listen to them, you would think that electric cars are dead, renewables are a hoax, and science is but a plot. They pounce gleefully on any small item or a study that might justify their viewpoint or give them the narrative they want; in doing so betraying their ignorance of the fact that the future is not linear – that goes forward in an uneven path with spikes and twists.
And more often than not, in the long run, they are proven to be dead wrong in their predictions.
It’s in your best interest to ignore them, rather than fight them, and save your energies for the trends, opportunities, and optimism that tomorrow represents, and for the action that matters.
Ignore their prattle and their babble, and carry on.
Watch the trends. Not the noise!
