But—and here’s the interesting and good news......this fight for oil and gas and coal will be a rearguard action. That Donald Trump lost in 2020 was, it turns out, of great importance: it gave the U.S. four years to help break renewable energy out of its “alternative energy” niche. In those years the price of solar power and wind power dropped below the price of energy from coal and gas and oil, and as a result everything has begun to change. If you want a fact to cheer you up—and I sure do—here’s one. It took humanity 68 years from the invention of the solar cell in 1954 to reach one terawatt of installed solar capacity. We passed that mark in 2022—and then we installed the second terawatt in two years since. To meet the goals set by climate scientists we need to roughly double the pace of solar installation again through the end of the decade: so, a terrawatt a year. Is that doable? We currently have the factory capacity to produce 1.1 terrawatts a year worth of panels. It’s a matter of finance and execution.

Most of that factory capacity, of course, is in China, and it is China that will now unambiguously be in the lead...... There will be other players (here’s a good account of how India is trying to build its solar capacity) but the action shifts pretty powerfully from Washington to Beijing, which has bet big on this energy transition. Which is true—but we also, clearly, won’t be leading the charge into this century’s clean energy transition. As the leading climate scientist Michael Mann put it in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the day after the election, “the United States is now poised to become an authoritarian state ruled by plutocrats and fossil fuel interests. It is now, in short, a petrostate.” (Not unlike the petrostate of Azerbaijan, whose lead climate negotiator was discovered last week to be using his role as host of the climate talks to negotiate new fossil fuel deals).

But—and here’s the interesting and good news.......this fight for oil and gas and coal will be a rearguard action. That Donald Trump lost in 2020 was, it turns out, of great importance: it gave the U.S. four years to help break renewable energy out of its “alternative energy” niche. In those years the price of solar power and wind power dropped below the price of energy from coal and gas and oil, and as a result everything has begun to change. If you want a fact to cheer you up—and I sure do—here’s one. It took humanity 68 years from the invention of the solar cell in 1954 to reach one terawatt of installed solar capacity. We passed that mark in 2022—and then we installed the second terawatt in two years since. To meet the goals set by climate scientists we need to roughly double the pace of solar installation again through the end of the decade: so, a terrawatt a year. Is that doable? We currently have the factory capacity to produce 1.1 terrawatts a year worth of panels. It’s a matter of finance and execution. One imagines that its diplomats are now the unrivaled key players in climate talks like the one in Baku, though the phalanx of other big, growing nations (Brazil, South Africa, India, Indonesia, and so on) will play important roles. Crucially, most of these are fossil fuel importers, and have every reason to move speedily in the direction of sun and wind; it’s possible that in terms of international negotiations things may get somewhat easier without the drag of the U.S. on the proceedings. (Which is why, comically, Exxon is asking the Trump administration to stay in the Paris talks).

And what of the U.S.?......Well, it’s a big country, and much of it is still in rational hands. As the World Resources Institute put it. Both Republican-led and Democratic-led states are seeing the benefits of win. d, solar, and battery manufacturing and deployment thanks to the billions of dollars of investments unleashed by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Governors and representatives in Congress on both sides of the aisle have come to recognize that clean energy is a huge moneymaker and a job creator. President Trump will face a bipartisan wall of opposition if he attempts to rip away clean energy incentives now.....think positive, read on         https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-us-climate-leadership

2. America’s Two Preceding Oligarchies......THE WORD “OLIGARCHY” comes from the Greek word oligarkhes, meaning “few to rule or command.” It refers to a government of and by a few exceedingly rich people or families who control the major institutions of society, and therefore have the most power over other people’s lives. Oligarchs may try to hide their power behind those institutions, or justify their power with platitudes about the public good, or excuse their power through philanthropy and “corporate social responsibility.” But no one should be fooled. Oligarchs wield power for their own benefit.  Modern-day Russia is an oligarchy. A handful of billionaires there control most major industries and dominate politics and the economy. Even a system that calls itself a democracy can become an oligarchy if power becomes concentrated in the hands of a corporate and financial elite. Their power and wealth increase over time as they make laws that favor themselves, manipulate financial markets to their advantage, and create or exploit economic monopolies that put even more wealth into their pockets. As I’ve noted, America has experienced oligarchy before. Many of the men who founded America were slaveholding white oligarchs. At th e time, the United States did not have much of a middle class. Most white people were farmers, indentured servants, farm hands, traders, day laborers, and artisans. Black people comprised a fifth of the population, almost all enslaved.A century later, a second oligarchy emerged comprisedr, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Mellon. They ushered the nation into an industrial revolution that vastly ex of men who amassed fortunes through their railroad, steel, oil, and financial empires — men such as J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefellepanded economic output. They also corrupted government, brutally suppressed wages, generated unprecedented levels of inequality and urban poverty, pillaged rivals, shut down competitors, and made out like bandits — which is why they earned the sobriquet “robber barons.”

The Progressive Era that began with the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt in 1901 undertook a series of reforms to erode the power of the robber barons. World War I and the Great Depression of the 1930s sapped much of the robber barons’ wealth. And beginning in 1933, after the elections of Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, coupled with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, most of their power was eliminated. For the next half-century, the gains from economic growth were more widely shared. Democracy became more responsive to the needs and aspirations of average Americans. During these years, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. There was still much to do — civil rights and voting rights for Black Americans, wider economic opportunities for them and for women and Latinos, protection of the environment. Yet by almost every measure the nation was making progress.  

3. How America’s Third Oligarchy has led to Trump......STARTING AROUND 1980, A THIRD AMERICAN OLIGARCHY EMERGED. It is even less principled and more willing to subvert democracy than the second. Since 1980, the share of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest 400 Americans has quadrupled — from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent —while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent, according to an analysis by my Berkeley colleagues Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. The richest 130,000 American families now own nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent — 117 million families — combined. The only other country with similarly high levels of wealth concentration is Russia.This has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the political power of the super-wealthy and an equally dramatic decline in the political influence of everyone else. Two of America’s most respected political scientists — Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University — analyzed 1,799 policy issues and found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Instead, they found that American lawmakers respond to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and big corporations — those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns. And “when a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose.”......read on- there's much more                 https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-american-oligarchy-why-is-american