The climate change era (the “find out” follow-up to the Anthropocene’s “fuck around” stage) is further along than we’d like to admit.

But as much as we have so much work left to do, with so much of society, so many industries, economies, and housing to replace and build anew, we have also made more progress, more quickly than you can possibly imagine.

The race is on, and seemingly all of the sudden, the age of sun machines is upon us.

And just in time.

You’re a human alive today, so I don’t have to describe how untenably fucking hot it is in the summer and how much catastrophically warmer winters are; how much drier and wetter it is; how much migration is increasing; how much our staple crops are threatened and how few heat and employment protections the farmworkers who seed and harvest them have.

You may think this is all going faster than advertised, and while it actually isn’t, that feeling is understandable. The power systems that be have lied to you for decades now — the most consequential decades of them all.

And yet — even the most astute and incentivized among us drastically underestimated how much ground distributed solar could (literally) cover in that same stretch of time.

From The Economist, hear my man Nat Bullard, an energy analyst formerly of Bloomberg Green and recent founder of Halcyon:

Solar’s place in charts of historical energy prices is beginning to look a lot like Katie Ledecky’s lol run in the 1500 free:

This is all impossibly good news.

Now more than ever the best way to remove emissions from the atmosphere is to stop adding new ones altogether. The best way to use fewer fossil fuels is to leave them in the fucking ground.

This is what solar (and wind, and nuclear, and geothermal) does.

The more solar we build, the cheaper it gets, and we rely on fossil fuels less and less. We aren’t there yet, but we are hurtling towards a (again literally) brighter, more renewable, and maybe even one day, drastically more abundant future.

In a world where energy poverty is still a thing, and where we still shut off people’s water and power, equitable abundance can feel a ways off, but it’s also closer than ever.

And what’s even more incredible is how much more solar would be built if we weren’t absolute morons.

…if residential solar wasn’t three times as expensive in the US as in other countries. If our politics and (literal and metaphorical) power systems allowed for problem solving instead of bribes to make new ones. And if our grid wasn’t an overloaded, rickety old wagon trying to fjord a river in The Oregon Trail while Timmy actively succumbs to dysentery.

If.

And yet — even despite all of that, some pretty pretty pretty shitty interest rates, and pervasive disinformation campaigns against onshore and offshore wind, our clean electric infrastructure is coming to life all around us. California — still a clusterfuck of self-defeating bureaucracy — saw an immediate future of rolling, lethal blackouts in front of them and built more enormous batteries in less time than I can even process.

Conversely, the only bureaucracy that Texas has is wrapped firmly around any available uteri. You want to build a fuck-ton of solar and batteries? Have at it, barely any permits required.

The most recent RMI clean energy report has earned breathless coverage and for good reason. Mostly because we all need some good news.

Here is the OG Bill McKibben highlighting the clean power and transportation progress since Russia annexed Crimea, which feels like an eternity ago:

An electrostate! Fuck yeah. Just look at these goddamn EV subsidies. It’s S-Curve time, dammit!

But here’s the thing: I said the age of sun machines was “upon us”, but all of this didn’t just happen.

People, companies, and yes, governments of all sizes made it happen, and against enormous odds. Replacing our energy system with a new one mid-stream is a complicated clusterfuck but we are actually doing it, and way, way, way faster than anyone ever imagined.

But again: none of it is guaranteed. It requires all of us. It requires residential and massive commercial solar, it requires many new transmission lines and progressively slashing fossil fuel subsidies starting yesterday. There are many, many consequential elections this year, but the US election in November will matter greatly for all of these.

I said the race is on and it is toe to toe:

2000 kids die every single day from air pollution. The American Climate Corps is coming.

The great SunZia is (finally, barely) coming. Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Itaú Unibanco, Santander, Bank of America, and HSBC, among others, continue to finance oil and gas operations in a drying Amazonia.

Geothermal is coming. Greece is shutting down, the road to Mecca is more dangerous than ever, and The New York Times and other papers of record continue to not only run, but help create ads for fossil fuel majors. Fucking incredible, really.

The youth are winning. Miami is drowning. Car-free city streets are proliferating.

Crops (and people) can’t survive in Indian heat, or China’s drought. Nuclear is back. Alt-meat isn’t dead yet. The Nature Restoration Law may save Europe’s forests, but Europe’s green political parties are getting crushed.

Every inch of new solar, especially historically cheap renewables that replace coal, oil, gas, and wood, immediately saves lives now and in the future.

So what can you do?

So much. We didn’t get here on accident, and we’re not going to eradicate energy poverty, much less go full-blown sun gods without you, or all of us combined.

It’s 1000 degrees out, everywhere. Sure, running a toe-to-toe race is invigorating, but I would be more like Sha’Carri Richardson just yesterday: long-heralded and long-denied, finally back at Olympic Trials, tragically stumbling out of the blocks with her shoe untied, and then — despite it all — absolutely crushing the field in the 100 meters anyways.

Check out just some of our vetted, awesome, solar-related Action Steps below and let’s get to fucking work.

— Quinn