Good Sunday Morning!
And happy Third day of Christmas! Three French hens! If you want to count down the twelve days of Christmas, the FIRST day is Boxing Day. And tradition, and church calendar say, your tree should come down by Epiphany – January 6. So relax. It is still Christmas! I hope you are enjoying the season!
As I write this, I am enjoying it! And I do not want this weekly letter to bring bad news. Today I want to celebrate GOOD news.
Starting with good news from California.
Officials stunned by impacts of US region’s dominance in global industry: ‘Biggest transformation… in a century’
“Outside of China, [it’s the] only one other jurisdiction in the world … that has as much.”
by Kim LaCapria December 22, 2025
Last month at COP30, Governor Newsom (the highest ranking US official in attendance) announced that California’s economy was powered by clean energy for an astonishing “nine out of 10 days” in 2025.
“Outside of China, there’s only one other jurisdiction in the world – California – that has as much battery storage implemented,” he added. In addition to utility-scale battery backups, home solar paired with sufficient storage keeps the lights on during widespread power outages.
According to The Guardian, California’s stunning clean energy evolution did not happen spontaneously; the state has invested “heavily in solar, wind, and battery storage” to meet its “ambitious targets”.
Installing solar panels is the ultimate home energy hack, in part because battery storage makes homes more resilient. They’re becoming increasingly sought after as electric bills continue to soar, because solar panels can bring monthly costs down to $0 or even less.
California offers significant subsidies for solar power, which is undoubtedly a factor in the state’s impressive growth in clean energy in 2025. Solar panels can involve upfront costs, but Solar Explorer also offers $0 down subscription options, like Palmetto’s LightReach.
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/california-solar-program-gov-newsom-brazil/
This video is long, but worth watching: “Top Ten Good News Stories for 2025” from a clean energy expert – Angry Clean Energy Guy.
I was surprised that it starts out with Mark Carney, unveiled for the way-beyond-Canada audience for this podcast as someone who has betrayed his climate reputation. Razzouk has the benefit of clarity in the way he calls out the lies. Assaad W. Razzouk is a graduate of Syracuse University, has an MBA from Columbia University and a PhD in Climate Change, Sustainable Development and International Cooperation from Teri University in India. As well, he has worked in renewables for years. The video is about 30 minutes long.
He answers the un-answered question – often un-asked – Why are we continually told that renewables are not able to replace fossil fuels? In this video he makes it clear that the fossil fuel lobby flat out lies. Those lies continue to drown out the truth, The writing is on the wall for fossil fuels. Their day is done. Good news!
To fast forward, here are his highlights among the Angry Clean Energy Guy’s top ten good news climate stories:
Around the world EV sales are soaring. Hitting the global EV tipping point. Nepal has dramatically reduced importing gas; cars are increasingly running on clean electricity.
In 2025, solar overtook coal as an electricity source for all of Germany – not renewables alone. Solar power alone overtook coal!
To get a quick and authoritative review – once again confirming that investments in renewables have far out-paced fossil fuels –- here are ten charts from the World Resources Institute: https://www.wri.org/insights/state-clean-energy-charted
Please notice none of these even mention nuclear. It is neither “clean” nor playing a role in the energy transformation now underway. If you live in Saanich-Gulf Islands, my winter 2026 newsletter (mailed and hard copy) will be in your mail box in early January. This issue’s theme is nuclear energy and why it is a bad choice.
Lastly the news that really matters – the climate equivalent of the “proof is in the pudding” – Are climate warming emissions finally going down??
We know they are going up in Canada, after briefly going down a titch under Trudeau’s policies. We remain the worst performer of all G7 countries. Yes, even worse than the US with our current emissions 18% above 1990 levels and the USA 3% below 1990. On to the global trends…
This excellent article from Science magazine explains how scientists try to get a real-time measurement of emissions. We know, without a doubt, that the concentration of carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide equivalents in our planet’s atmosphere has never been as high as they are now – at least when human beings were able to live here. (Note: try to keep the concepts of emissions and concentrations distinct.)
For example, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, millions of years ago, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations were off the charts – as high as 6,000 ppm (ppm= parts per million). No mammals lived on Earth, reptiles did fine.
But once humans were established, for the entire time that human civilization has flourished, up until the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide concentrations stayed below 280 ppm. Today CO2 is measured at 428 ppm. Unlike emissions, that go up or down, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is long term and has only gone up in our lifetimes. That is because the concentration of CO2 is the result of a number of factors. The earth’s systems include actions that pull carbon out of the atmosphere – as green leafy things use CO2 for photosynthesis to make oxygen. Oceans and forests generally absorb carbon. So concentration measurements of CO2 are more stable and do not turn on a dime. Concentrations tell us what remains after all the netting out actions of natural sequestration. I watch the concentration and the emissions numbers. Emissions must drop dramatically and soon to avoid the worst case scenarios of unstoppable, irreversible, self-accelerating global warming. That is why the Paris Agreement targets keeping global average temperature on Earth to as far below 2 degrees C as possible. No scientist knows exactly where the global atmospheric trip wires are that could plunge us into runaway global warming. Runaway global warming could push climate systems, ocean currents and climate regimes to an unendurable climate. We do not know if we have crossed those thresholds or not. We only know that the more we increase burning fossil fuels and removing forests the more bullets we put in the chambers of a civilization-scale game of Russian Roulette. As the Earth warms due to human actions, that warming creates feedback loops that unleash more warming. Such positive feedback loops include warming that thaws Arctic permafrost that releases methane-hastening warming. OR when forests burn, unleashing more carbon, or when the Arctic ocean warms, thawing more Arctic ice at the pole, undoing the albedo effect that kept the planet cooler by bouncing the sun’s rays back out to space. As dark ocean water absorbs more heat, the warmer waters melt more ice, to create more heat, to melt more ice. All what are called ‘positive feedback loops’. The impact is anything but positive.
So we must fight to avoid every fraction of a degree warming. We have no idea if it is too late. The more important question is ‘too late for what?’ It is too late for the dodo. It is not too late for the Marbled murrelet. It is too late for my granddaughter Lily to experience the more predictable climate of my lifetime. In 1954, when I was born, the CO2 concentration on Earth was about 313 ppm. Lily was born in a world with a CO2 concentration of 423.9 ppm. It is NOT too late for Lily to glory in a wonderful biosphere. But I cannot tell myself, or more accurately, I cannot fool myself into thinking there is any guarantee that when Lily is my age, human civilization will thrive. I know that with really hard work, NOW, we can. These studies help see that pathway to a planet whose climatic extremes have increased, but to which, we can as a civilization adapt.
What is remarkable about this article is the extent to which scientists can see the climate-hostile political actions of a President Trump or Prime Minister Carney can slow down healthy trends reducing emissions.
Turning Point: Global greenhouse emissions will soon flatten or decline – a historic moment driven by China’s surge in renewable energy
https://www.science.org/content/article/global-carbon-emissions-will-soon-flatten-or-decline
It is very good news that we are seeing the global proof in the pudding. It is very late, but not too late. Getting emissions to stabilize and then go sharply down is possible. Those watching the disruptive and irresistible pull to cheaper renewables might say ‘inevitable’.
But certainly POSSIBLE. Now to get the banker billionaires of the world, the offensive Mr. Trump and the charming Mr. Carney to take their foot off the firehose of disruption. Time to stop boosting fossil fuels and far-fetched techno-fantasies like carbon capture and nuclear. Carney is still talking about ‘decarbonized oil’. Talk about an oxymoron!
Let’s end 2025 with a raised glass of cheer to 2026. Let us cheer the rise in renewables, not as future fantasy but as current reality. And, never forget that as we work harder than ever for the survival of human civilization that no culture can be called civilized that practices Ecocide. We seem hell-bent on ‘build baby build’, murdering our own Mother Earth, while allowing the deep unfairness of a society that allows injustice and inequality.
I hope you and those you love were able to be near this season. I am deeply grateful for all my many blessings. And to be a Canadian in this world of turmoil is a deep blessing indeed.
Here’s to 2026!
much love,
Elizabeth
P.S. It is NOT TOO LATE to make a 2025 donation to the Green Party. Please do!
https://www.greenparty.ca/en/civicrm/contribute/transact?id=1?id=1&source=NC.W.MABU&id=1
And if you are near by, please come to one of my non-partisan community meetings in January 2026: