Zachary Pullin: We can’t afford to not invest in clean energy
By Zachary Pullin
We are living in a new normal.
Last month, two wildfires ignited in Spokane County, the Gray fire near Medical Lake and the Oregon Road fire near Elk. In a matter of days, more than 20,000 acres went up in flames, two people died, and hundreds of homes and other structures burned to the ground.
The National Interagency Fire Center warns of heightened fire danger through September, something that used to be rare in this area when I was growing up in north Spokane. Now the forests and lands are drier, temperatures are hotter, the snowpacks are dismal – all a perfect recipe for fires.
This sort of thing is happening all over the world: This June was the globe’s hottest since records began in 1850. July was even hotter, breaking June’s record. In Phoenix, the temperature hit or exceeded 110 degrees every day for 31 days. It was so hot that the region’s iconic saguaro cacti shriveled and collapsed. Wildfires continue to set records in Canada and even Greece. Extreme temperatures have caused torrential flooding in Vietnam and China.
The kind of floods, wildfires and heat waves we’re now seeing around the globe would be rare, and in some cases, nearly impossible, if not for planet-warming pollution from burning gas, oil and coal. This should make us angry!
We are enmeshed in an economy that forces us to burn fossil fuels to heat our homes and fuel our cars, and ultimately warm the planet beyond a sustainable temperature.
Rather than pivoting to invest in cleaner technologies, big oil CEOs would have you believe that we just can’t afford this kind of change. Their greed has raised our fuel prices here. Gas sales in Washington are among the most profitable in the nation. They are creating the problem and making us pay for it. For my family, we’re already paying more for groceries, entertainment, housing, and now oil companies are taking more of our hard-earned money.
So what to do? We must efficiently and fairly transition our economy and society so that we stop burning dirty fossil fuels and rein in their price-gouging.
Washington state has taken bold steps to do this. This includes establishing a carbon pricing system to ratchet down climate pollution while generating at least $2 billion over the next two years to protect our lands and keep our air and water clean, moving to cleaner fuels for our cars, and transitioning to 100% clean electricity.
Washington Conservation Action and our partners fought fiercely to pass, and now implement, all these forward-thinking measures. Coupled with the federal Inflation Reduction Act investments and jobs, the resources to build this future are here, now.
And yet, the notion that we can’t afford this kind of progress keeps resurfacing. What we can’t afford is being at the mercy of big oil companies that operate solely to maximize their own profits on our backs.
We can no longer afford to delay investing significant funding for projects that transition us to a carbon-free economy. We can no longer afford a system so weighted toward big oil CEOs and shareholders’ profits that we’re paying more at the pump. We can no longer afford to avoid the reality that we need to move quickly to clean energy. We can’t afford to get distracted.
In the next year or so, we will begin to see broad and bold progress: programs to help working families weatherize their homes and to trade in their polluting gas furnaces for cleaner, safer heat pumps; investing in tribal nations and other frontline communities to adapt to the problems already created by climate chaos; investments in conservation of carbon dense forests; and reduce pollution by electrifying short-haul trucks and improve the charging station infrastructure for electric vehicles.
Our question is this: Who wants to join us and build the future with us now?
State lawmakers must hold big oil companies accountable and stand with consumers. The clean energy economy is arriving and it’s time that oil companies no longer dictate the rules. Passing legislation to require transparency and consumer protections from unfair fuel pricing is a great step alongside increasing investments in durable, affordable, and reliable climate solutions.
Join us! Visit our website and learn how to contact your legislators – make sure they work for you, not big oil CEOs. www.waconservationaction.org
Zachary Pullin, of Spokane, is the communications director for Washington Conservation Action, a statewide environmental organization that advocates for strong environmental policies and elects the leaders who will pass and enforce them.