Creating The Future - It's the Values, and the Value
There's just fish jumping all over the place
Fish tagging on the Klamath. | Photo courtesy CalTrout.
Despite the fact that the planet is heating faster than forecast, that wealthy autocrats without social ethics and fascists are gaining traction in the United States and in Europe, that people are worried about groceries and rent, and the stock market is facing global downhill skiing, the question we have to face is what has greater driving force, these polycrises, or the unstoppable switch to non-fossil energy around the world?
I assume that a 79-year old man who can’t say “acetaminophen” is not going to remain president for a great long time. You’ll probably outlive him.
Here are several factors weighing in favor of anti-fascist, pro-earth drivers of change. They foster halting global warming, restoring the planet, transnational values, and a reversal of financial wealth, from earth as non-replaced resources to reinvigorated ecosystems as sources of wealth.
Not all the news is good. Australia has approved new coal mines, expecting them to be profitable for 100 years. This puts Australia into the IPCC’s SSP5 ‘fossil fueled development’ trajectory. SSP5 means *at least* 2.7C global heating, likely 4C, by 2100. The government’s own National Climate Risk Assessment shows 3C is disastrous for every Australian.
On the bright future slate, however, we have:
In the first six months of the year, renewables like solar and wind generated more electricity than coal for the first time ever, according to a report published Tuesday by Ember, an energy think tank. “We are seeing the first signs of a crucial turning point,” Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, senior electricity analyst at Ember, said in a statement.
The European Union produced a record amount of renewable energy in the second quarter of 2025, according to a new release from Eurostat. Fifty-four percent of electricity generated in the EU came from renewable sources, up from 52.7% in the same period of 2024. In June, solar for the first time exceeded nuclear as the leading electricity source in the region.
China is also investing heavily in clean tech, including electric vehicles, with 60% of car sales in the country this year expected to be EVs. Chinese-made EVs are getting popular in many countries, with sales rising in Brazil, Thailand, and Mexico.
As Dana Nuccitelli reported earlier this year for Yale Climate Connections, “The United States has the world’s second-largest car market, but EVs account for less than 10% of the country’s new auto sales. That can give U.S. residents the mistaken impression that EVs are unpopular. In fact, more than one in five new passenger cars sold around the world in 2024 were electric.”
Jonas Nahm’s thread on Bluesky provides us with a list of significant events -
Chinese firms have committed $227bn across 461 green manufacturing projects since 2011 - with 88% of the investment occurring since 2022. This dwarfs the $200 billion Marshall Plan (in today’s dollars).
While America retreats from green energy leadership, China has built an end to end control of green supply chains: solar, batteries, EVs, wind turbines, green hydrogen. Over 75% of these projects are in Global South countries eager for this industrial capacity.
The geographic shift is telling: The Middle East and North Africa jumped from almost no Chinese green tech projects in 2021 to almost 20% of new deals in 2024, worth nearly $50 billion. Gulf states now welcome Chinese solar and electrolyser manufacturing that the US won’t support at home.
Key hubs are emerging outside western influence: Indonesia for battery materials; Morocco for EU-bound cathodes and hydrogen; Brazil for Latin American manufacturing. China is creating alternative supply chains that bypass the US entirely.
At the United Nations global climate negotiations in 2023, nearly 200 countries pledged to triple renewable energy installments by 2030. Even given the growth of renewables outlined in the International Energy Agency (I.E.A.) report, the world is still not on track to meet that pledge. However, the rate of increase in non fossil fuel electricity is growing.
In India, the world’s fourth-largest economy, fossil fuel electricity generation fell in the first half of 2025. Coal fell by 3 percent, and gas fell by 34 percent, the Ember report found. This was due in part to the country’s rapid build-out of wind and solar and in part because of mild weather that resulted in lower demand for air-conditioning.
Growth in clean energy was more than three times as large as demand growth.
Fatih Birol, the I.E.A.’s executive director, called India’s progress a “very impressive result” driven by government policies like support for rooftop solar and quicker permitting for hydropower projects. The tipping point is when solar and wind grow faster than the demand growth.
India’s rapid renewable growth is expected to continue, the I.E.A. found. It is now expected to be the world’s second-largest market for renewables growth over the next five years. Most of the new power capacity is expected to come from solar farms.
And up on the Klamath River, where the biggest dam removal project on earth took place last year and this year, the salmon have returned in massive numbers. A year after the Klamath River was returned to its free-flowing state, scientists say nature has rebounded in astounding ways.
Scientists from regional tribes, environmental nonprofits and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife reported observations and data from a year’s worth of fish monitoring, spawning habitat surveys, water quality testing and more.
The consensus was that things have gone better than anyone could have anticipated, particularly when it comes to fall-run Chinook salmon.
“What the fish have shown us is something extraordinary,” said Damon Goodman, Mount Shasta-Klamath regional director for California Trout. “The river seemed to come alive almost instantly after removal, and the fish returned in greater numbers than I expected, and maybe anyone expected.” From the Lost Coast Outpost:
Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department Director Barry McCovey Jr. said the Klamath’s improved water quality, including a dramatic decline in suspended algae, has been a game changer for the tribal fishermen who have fed their people through gillnet fishing since time immemorial.
Fall-run Chinook are entering the river earlier than they used to and traveling further upriver than they’ve been in a century. The ones that returned to the Klamath in August were so robust and chubby “we call them footballs,” McCovey said.
In talking with tribal fishermen, sport fishermen and the community at large, he said, “There’s this feeling that the river just feels different. It feels stronger. It feels cleaner.”
The future has some luster in it, non-fossil, fish fostered—-hope.
Hello, Hope. We have missed you. Let’s build some more future together.