I have always been a sun-worshiper — just ask my dermatologist. I extolled the virtues of solar and wind power in my last column.
Renewable energy is superior not only for the environment but cheaper and more equitable than subsidized fossil fuels. What about their hazards?
Any energy-driven process comes with side effects. Even drying clothes on a clothesline may come with the ire of neighbors who treat it as visual blight.
Some who are intent on tackling the climate crisis are nevertheless troubled by solar and wind powers’ needs for metals, particularly rare earth metals.
The scale of mining is worth considering. According to the Energy Transitions Commission: “All the refined metals needed to reach net zero by 2050 will add up to less than the amount of coal mined in 2023 alone.”
In other words, solar and wind power reduce our dependence on mining operations.
Santa Barbarans are also concerned about offshore wind production’s potential effect on marine life. The concern is legitimate and requires continuing research.
Bill McKibben observes in “Here Comes the Sun” that 40% of all maritime cargo consists of coal, oil and gas delivery. One container ship of electric vehicles avoids the need for 84 tankers full of oil.
In other words, solar and wind power reduce whale ship strikes and transportation pollution simply by reducing ship traffic.
Alternative energy is young and will keep improving. But even at this early state, “its footprint, while far from negligible, will be much, much smaller than extracting and burning fossil fuel,” asserts McKibben. That is the comparison that counts.
There is one group that opposes development of this civilization-changing win-win-win solution. Oil and gas interests own trillions of dollars’ worth of product under the soil and seas. Those investors include many of us, except those who have fully divested from fossil fuels.
The world’s biggest fossil fuel companies are on track in 2026 to clear almost $3,000 in profits — every second of every day of 2026, according to Oxfam International.
Their profits support the quintessential power struggle of our time. Oil and gas corporations are doing “everything they can to slow the transition, lobbying, disinformation, regulatory obstruction and in the U.S., outright political capture,” writes McKibben.
Their lobbying has had its successes. In 2025 the federal administration scrapped nearly half a billion dollars in support for offshore wind development in Northern California’s Humboldt Bay.
Just last month two energy companies announced plans to accept $885 million taxpayer dollars to abandon offshore wind projects in federal waters. Each has apparently agreed to substitute “reliable conventional energy projects,” keeping us mired in sticky toxic dead plants and animals.
Suppliers for the wind project are waiting out the current federal administration.
“Offshore wind is a key climate solution,” writes Hayley Smith for the L.A. Times. “Officials say the project is crucial to helping California reach its goal of 25 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2045.”
The Port of Long Beach’s managing director of engineering services, Suzanne Plezia, concurs. With the long lead times involved, they are moving forward with all that is under their control.
The positive momentum is threatened on land also. California’s Demand Side Grid Support Program was cancelled a couple of weeks ago. This virtual array worked by tapping into an army of registered smart thermostats, EV chargers, and solar-powered batteries to share power or ramp down electricity use when the grid is strained.
Perhaps the mule-headedness isn’t just about profits. It’s also inertia. The necessary conversion is the greatest deal of all time, but it topples the long-held capitalist convention on the economics of scarcity.
Indeed, The Economist has flipped 180 degrees. In 2014 the magazine asserted, “Solar power is by far the most expensive way of reducing carbon emissions.”
A mere decade later, their 2024 special issue on solar energy extolled, “An energy source that gets cheaper the more you use it marks a turning point in industrial history … The steepest drop in the price of one of the basic factors of production that the world has ever seen.”
Perhaps it’s not just profits or inertia. It’s the fear of yielding the power to the people — literally.
The Kochs‘, Rockefellers‘, Hunts‘, Gettys‘, and others’ riches developed because fossil fuels are incinerated and continually need to be replaced. Solar and wind energy, by contrast, are free.
Battery prices for storage have shrunk exponentially. Consumers have it within their power to use the diffuse energy of the sun by neighborhood, by building, or even individually.
With solar power we can make the West what we imagined it was, only much better. It is steeped in American values: independence, distributed power, and freedom from big government, big corporations, and foreign countries. It is as free as our big land and big skies.
It is our turn — and our right — to take control of our American destiny by embracing the power of the sun.
Just wear sunscreen and avoid looking at it directly.