Optimism for Cop26: we must win the climate battle – and we absolutely can

(The Guardian, 1 Nov 2021) As an environment writer, I have seen many setbacks – but also triumphs such as the tackling of acid rain.

I’ve been covering climate and the environment for 17 years – it’s astonishing to me that so many positive things are happening in response to the crisis.

Of course, we should have been bringing down emissions much sooner, and lots of the things that should have happened didn’t. In particular, I’d point to energy efficiency, which we all thought would be a big win early on, and fossil fuel subsidies, which have not come down as fast as we would have hoped.

But in general we are seeing positive trends. Coal, gas and other fossil fuels are mostly on the way out, and clean energy is rising and rising.

Renewables are a key part of the solution to this crisis. We need to shift away from fossil fuel energy to clean forms of power, and we need to do so urgently.

Thankfully, their use is growing massively around the world, and the cost of this renewable energy has come down far faster than anybody had anticipated: now, in most parts of the world, wind and solar power are as cheap as – or cheaper than – building coal-fired power plants, which is fantastic news.

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The Guardian, 1 Nov 2021: Optimism for Cop26: we must win the climate battle – and we absolutely can

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