242 digests. 3,221 posts, indexed in our online archive. Daily encouragement from colleagues, friends, and other readers whose ideas, feedback, and story leads keep us going.
It’s hard to believe that The Energy Mix is entering its third year of operation. And mind-boggling to look back on the progress we’ve seen on the road to a post-carbon world.
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A post-carbon world—even that language is a product of the last two years. When we launched The Mix, our framing statement pointed out that humanity was “on a tight deadline to cut global carbon pollution by at least 80%, no later than 2050.” That target seemed ambitious enough at the time, it still appears in our e-digest template, but it’ll be changing soon. With oil prices crashing, coal companies declaring bankruptcy, electric vehicles and energy storage surging, solar and wind competing and winning against coal and natural gas, and clean energy jobs on the rise, analysts now speak credibly of a drastic reduction in fossil production over the next decade.
For the first time in living memory, a post-carbon world is actually imaginable. The last chapters of the story have yet to be written. But increasingly, clean energy entrepreneurs, advocates, analysts, and legislators are holding the pen.
That won’t be enough to head off the disasters and suffering we’re already seeing, with climate change as a major contributing factor—from the Philippines and Vanuatu to Miami, from Ethiopia and Syria to, yes, Fort McMurray.
But building the new economy, and building it on clean energy, is one of the first and biggest steps in the urgent effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions and gradually, eventually, stabilize the climate. When we launched The Mix two years ago, we were under no illusions about the complexity or difficulty of the job ahead. We just knew we wanted to help tell the story, in a way that would bring together the three related worlds of climate impacts and adaptation, fossil industry analysis, and clean energy development. We never imagined how quickly the scene would shift, or how many incredibly positive developments we would see in a relatively short time.
We don’t write about ourselves very often, so while I’m at it I’m going to thank the Smarter Shift staff and associates—Karen Irving, Chris Wood, Emilie Preston—who’ve kept The Mix on track. Also the subscribers—most often Diane Beckett, Gary Martin, Shelley Kath, Ralph Torrie—who’ve sent excellent story leads our way. It’s been a fascinating, challenging run so far, sometimes deeply disturbing, but usually a lot more encouraging than you might expect for a publication focused on climate change and energy.
