No one said winning the battle to save the world from climate change disaster would be easy. But you have a chance to make a difference.

Climate justice is front and center this year in the California state legislature. And Indivisible’s CA StateStrong (a coalition of independent Indivisible groups in California) is working to make sure the pressure stays on. They are currently promoting five climate-related bills as a top priority in 2024. These include:

  • AB 1999: Repeals the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC’s) proposed income-graduated fee by capping a flat tax of $10/month and prohibit it from rising faster than inflation.
  • AB 2256: Shapes a fairer assessment of the benefits and costs of rooftop solar and would unwind the policy CPUC put in place that sharply reduced the amount people with solar panels are paid.
  • AB 2619: Bans solar taxes and requires CPUC to revise the states net metering decision to align with the states clean energy goal of 100% renewables by 2045.

The necessity for these bills primarily results from having to combat the actions by PG&E and their allies — as they work to block progress towards a clean energy future. In our view, this stems from PG&E’s belief that green energy is a threat to their profits and their near-monopoly control all means of power sourcing and transmission. For example, rather than providing a discount as an incentive for customers to switch to solar power, they want to charge these customers even more — creating a penalty for using solar power.

But fighting against opponents of clean energy is more than just a state problem. And it’s more than just a problem with utility companies. A nationwide campaign of disinformation and lies — promoted by climate-science deniers — is working to “foil the renewable energy revolution.” This is all made crystal-clear in an outstanding article by Rebecca Burns in Sierra magazine. She reveals just how successful these disinformation campaigns can be:

For fossil fuel ideologues, sowing misinformation about wind and solar power is proving to be an effective stall tactic. Public opinion surveys show that renewable energy remains popular with a bipartisan majority of Americans; in a poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland, seven out of 10 people said they’d be comfortable with a wind farm in their own community. But in New Jersey—where Morano’s group has gone so far as to buy billboards reading “Save Whales Stop Windmills”—nearly half of all the state’s residents now {falsely} believe that such a connection probably exists, according to an August poll from Monmouth University. “There is absolutely zero evidence that any of the offshore wind activity has been involved in any of those {whale} strandings,” says Douglas Nowacek, a professor of marine conservation technology at Duke University.

Local opponents have also raised concerns about the waste generated by solar panels; last year, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Colorado School of Mines warned that such claims may be slowing solar deployment, even though decarbonization “represents a substantial reduction in mass and toxicity of waste.” At present, they found, as much toxic coal ash is generated globally in one month as solar panels are expected to produce in the next 35 years.

In other words, we are dealing with clean-energy opposition that traffics in deception and outright lies in order to promote their goals. We need to fight back!

What can you do?

What can you do to help stop these climate deniers and anti-green companies? Plenty.

Published by indivisibleebadmin