The Art of Perspective on the Clean Energy Transition

Perspective is everything. It’s both the vision and the roadmap. It is our view on the past, present, and future. It guides us forward or keeps us stuck. It’s a mix of feelings, thoughts, and choices, both conscious and not, about what to allow in and what to dismiss. Perspective is nuanced and unique to each individual, based on their specific inner narratives and experiences. When pondering shared perspectives across 8.3 billion human beings, it’s a miracle we can agree on anything. Perspective shapes our world, and often it is not the perspective of the many who shape it, but the perspective of a relative few.

What is your perspective on the future of our planet in the face of our climate crisis? On either end of the thought spectrum, we can generalize two opposing perspectives with very different outcomes for our special little planet and the fate of life upon it. We are either headed for ultimate doom on a hellscape version of Earth due to runaway warming and its cascading effects (yes, even if worst-case scenario RCP8.5 is now “implausible”. Worst-case is itself a matter of perspective). Or we’re headed in a corrective direction, starting with a successful energy transition from the old and dirty to the renewable and clean, allowing us to cut and drawdown enough atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, just in time.

Done right, this new power system promises to then lead us towards a happier, healthier, and better existence, so the vision goes. The details of this better future also depend on perspective, and for every fraction of a degree’s difference in coordinates for how we choose to move forward with the energy transition, it could result in significantly varied implications for the reshaping of our societies in this new world order (will it be fair and just or rife with inequality and exploitation like today?). Having the right perspective towards how we rebuild our clean, green future matters greatly, and there remains much to overcome when dealing with the complicated human psyche, especially as it relates to remaking societies.

On NASA’s recently completed Artemis II lunar mission, the perspective of Earth and our moon from space was reportedly one of awe and joy. “Moon joy”, to be exact, as it was labeled during an endearingly authentic moment of human communication between mission control and crew. After all, the beloved astronauts were literally flying over the moon on their aptly named vessel, Integrity. Upon returning back to Earth, the crew of four astronauts expressed their deep feelings about what could be called “Earth joy”, during their moving press briefing back in Houston. I dare you not to cry while watching them speak, as they emanate with love for each other and for our planet. It’s beautiful. Earth joy, a perspective of deep love for our planet and all its lifeforms, is one we must all embody if we are to make it through these existential planetary crises, and come out better.

It’s too soon to tell if the Artemis missions will have an impact on our culture anywhere close to that of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, which gifted humanity with the iconic Earthrise photo. That photo was one of a handful of seismic moments during “the long sixties” that catapulted the environmental movement from a grassroots smattering of insightful individuals and campaigns into a mainstream mass protest that engaged 20 million people to participate in the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. That showing of civic care pressured our government to pass several of our country’s bedrock environmental laws. Laws that are now being dismantled and ignored by the current terrible Trump administration.

For the Artemis/Moon/Earth joy effect to play out in modern times, we may have to wait for the inspired kids of today to grow into adults, in hopes they retain their newfound perspectives. Because while the recent mission did produce powerful new images of Earth from space, I fear these incredible tokens of human achievement were not nearly enough to cut through the polluting smog that has settled over the collective human psyche of 2026. The concept, let alone the actualization, of humans traveling further into outer space than ever before is no longer enough to break open the hearts of humanity en masse.

What then will it take to wake up the collective us from a slumber of apathy and ignite the movement of all movements to confront the climate crisis with the species-level behavioral reset required? From the climate science perspective, the forewarned projections are playing out in real time, but these facts have yet to shift enough people’s perspective to one of urgency and action. Breaching 1.5°C after globally agreeing we wouldn’t didn’t change minds. Planet-warming emissions continue to rise year after year. That the last 11 years were the hottest ever recorded didn’t do it, even as these hotter temperatures cause more people to die from heat, and more severe drought robs us from basic staples of hydration and food. The stat that 7 million people die each year from fossil-fueled air pollution doesn’t seem to rally the troops. The ongoing mass coral bleaching that began in 2023 affecting 84% of our ocean’s corals hasn’t generated extinction-level urgency. And the alarming new research from scientists warning about the increased likelihood and earlier arrival of an Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) weakening or, worst case, collapse that would fundamentally alter climate and weather patterns across continents this century (in one lifetime!), doesn’t appear to be making waves.

It’s clear that no single, isolated event, no matter how devastating, will make the difference to stop the world in its tracks and change course like it should. It was perhaps naive to ever think the human population could wake up and collaborate in unison to phase out fossil fuels as we must, but damn if I’ll ever stop hoping. But this isn’t a story about inaction. It’s one of perspective, where if we look around for what’s going right in the clean energy transition, we can see that the majority of humans want climate action, renewable energy capacity is growing, and electrification (which signals decarbonization) is spreading.

It is true the energy transition is not happening fast enough by a long shot; fossil fuels still power over 80% of global energy needs. But it is happening. Last year marked the first time ever that renewables (wind, solar, and hydro) generated the largest share of global electricity (33.8%), beating out the incumbent top source, coal (33%), just barely. And clean energy exclusively met all new electricity demand in 2025.

We are in the beginning of what some call the “mid-transition”, where pockets of change happen in fits, starts, and u-turns across dispersed populations in response to locally recurring climate-fueled disasters combined with global and societal shifts that for various reasons become intolerable. Different countries have their different tipping points to action. But the action is there and current unlikely events are accelerating it. The perspective is: it’s about time.

Australia is a prime example. In 2019-20 Australia suffered a historically devastating wildfire season, known as “Black Summer”, supercharged by anthropogenic factors. They’ve also had a front row seat to the devastating abovementioned mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. Australia is a coal country. They’re a producer and burner of the stuff, and the industry has successfully managed to prevent climate action – until recently. Since 2020, the amount of electricity Australia gets from solar has doubled, now representing 20% of their electricity mix. Solar adoption, especially rooftop solar, is growing fast, and they have such an abundance of it that states now offer citizens three free hours of electricity every afternoon. What pushed them to this turnaround? Did that historic fire, piled on top of all the other tangible impacts on their soil and seas push enough Australians over the edge to finally embrace the change from dirty to clean energy? Perhaps the evidence is in the ballot box. In 2022, Australians voted-in a pro-climate action government in what was called their “climate election”. “Environment” was the most mentioned election issue on social media that year (Americans, can you imagine?!). Australia still has a long way to go before it burns its last lump of coal, but it sure seems as though they’ve had their key moment of a population-wide climate awakening.

A similar story is being written in Pakistan, where solar has ballooned to provide 28% of the country’s electricity generation, up from just 5% four years ago. It’s touted as one of the fastest solar adoption stories ever. What did it? A prolonged shock to their energy system, against a backdrop of recurring annual climate disasters. Deadly floods and heat waves, fueled by climate change, rock Pakistan year after year. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 seemed to be their tipping point for change, as gas prices spiked and developing countries, like Pakistan, couldn’t afford the fuel, causing mass blackouts. Luckily for them, China was ready with cheap and abundant solar panels, which Pakistanis quickly snapped up and installed on rooftops, making them the largest importer of solar panels by 2024. That smart move has helped insulate citizens from the current oil shock caused by the Iran war, as Pakistan is much less dependent on foreign fuel this time around.

Wars are catalytic events, and the current two major ones have largely been about access, denial, reliance, and independence from fossil fuels. The attacks on Ukraine by Russia in 2022 and on Iran by the US and Israel this year may not have started by being about fossil fuels, but the embers of war and disruption continue burning because of it. As a reminder, it is because of the human activity of burning fossil fuels that we have pushed our climate system into unprecedented territory and are facing this planetary crisis. Though these wars were not directly about climate change, they are catalytic climate events nonetheless, ironically pushing the world towards an embrace of renewable energy, if not in the name of saving the planet, then for the sake of country-level energy security and independence. Nobody can stop the flow of sun and wind (though try as the startup-bitten geoengineers might), nor can anyone spike the price of what is free, which is precisely why fossil fuel companies and their ally governments have made it their mission to obstruct renewable energy adoption.

There is no shortage of examples that the Iran war is progressing the clean transition, especially across Europe, Africa, and Asia. EV sales are ticking up all over the world from South Korea and Japan, France and Scandinavia, Australia, and yes, even the US, as drivers seek to decouple their transportation expenditures from geopolitics. On the solar front, Nigeria, Kenya, Malaysia, and Ethiopia are just a few of the 50 countries that recorded record imports of solar panels from China in March. And in the EU, they are doubling down on their quest for energy independence with a new proposal to speed the shift towards homegrown clean energy, while aiding decarbonization across various industries.

It should be noted that the war-drawn line to global clean energy adoption is not linear. As oil and gas is restricted, and renewable infrastructure is still in its infancy in many places, some countries, particularly in Asia, are regressing back to burning coal for their energy needs. As the most polluting fossil fuel, coal consumption is a serious impediment to global emissions reductions, and all the more reason that advanced economy countries must help coal-burning nations quickly build out their clean energy systems.

But the reason this continual flurry of positive clean energy data is happening now is largely due to one major X factor: China and their spot-on foresight (ahem, future perspective) about the inevitability of the clean energy transition. Due to their brilliant and disciplined long-term planning, capacity building, technological advancements, and cost efficiencies, China effectively now acts as the global Walmart dominating clean energy supply chains, manufacturing, and end-product sales for everything from electric vehicles to storage batteries to solar and wind components. All with a low price guarantee.

The fact that it’s China controlling the future has the rest of the world feeling sore. They don’t like that China dominates the global solar market with an 80% share, or that it controls 90% of the production and refinement of the rare earth minerals required for renewable energy components. The EU, the US, and others attempt to punish China’s correct perspective with tariffs and trade restrictions. But China won this game fair and square. They made the right bets, while everyone else made the wrong ones. Deal with it.

It’s thanks to China’s fully stocked shelves that countries now struggling with the volatility of oil prices can quickly pivot to building homegrown alternatives that are resistant to foreign ownership and exploitation. It’s becoming more obvious to more populations that the fossil jig is up. With its geographic concentrations, single-use-burn nature, and never-opt-out subscription model, the activity of burning dead Earthly beings for energy is simply not a smart product for a country to be reliant on. Sun and wind on the other hand are free, abundant, and locally harvested. Cheap battery storage can now largely fill the gaps, providing 24/7 power. It’s not yet a perfect system, but surely human ingenuity will solve the remaining challenges once we are freed from the death grip of Big Oil.

Back in the US, the current pro-pollution, climate denying administration would never let the war’s renewables and electrification effect take hold here. Not that it could, as we are the world’s largest exporter of oil and gas, and largely insulated from oil shocks elsewhere. No, war won’t be our reason to accelerate our own clean energy transition. The undeniable economics of it will. This year, 93% of new energy capacity set to come online in the US will be from solar, battery storage, and wind. Renewables, for additional energy needs, are winning because they are the cheapest and fastest energy sources to build, even while enduring their own war from Trump’s vendetta to kill the renewables market, using every trick in his AI-generated audio book.

But that’s not all. Something else is taking shape in the US that, like the wars, is not directly about emissions and the energy transition, but can help the climate fight all the same. And that is the data center revolt. Data centers and the power-hungry AI computing that they life-support represent a major resource distraction (in capital and brain power) from addressing the climate crisis, and a climate pledge backpedaling from the Big Tech companies who once led the way on corporate climate action. The artificially constructed race to win profits and supposed world dominance generated by artificial intelligence is obstructing the all-in urgency needed to address the very real, physics-based war that human-caused climate change is waging on all of us. Tech companies are keen to power their massive energy needs by any fuel necessary, and we are seeing that gas plants have a starring role in their roadmaps. Not only that, but data centers create environmental harm beyond incremental air pollution and planet-warming emissions. They divert and deplete our fresh water, pave over our local lands, and strain our outdated electric grids with excess demand, threatening heightened electric bills. And we haven’t even touched on the societal and mental damage that unregulated, rampant AI will cause to our people, culture, and livelihoods.

The anti-AI data center movement underpins these issues and more, and is much more powerful than a mere sentiment, though according to a recent poll, that sentiment is strong: 7 in 10 Americans oppose AI data centers in their local area. But it’s more than just NIMBY-ism. In another recent poll, 46% of American voters have negative views on AI, and only 26% view the technology positively. A third poll finds that 80% of Americans are somewhat concerned to very concerned about AI. The idea that this widespread concern is a general concern speaks to the magnitude of topics at risk of being negatively impacted by AI.

The fact that we are seeing real grassroots action spring up and result in successful denials and bans of new data center construction, born from a collective distaste and revolt for a technology being forced down our throats and into our communities, is incredibly encouraging to see. Not only that, but this community-led movement began organically in isolated towns and cities all over the country without any coordination among them. That’s starting to change, as successful organizers and savvy nonprofit groups have taken notice and are working to grow this momentum into something much bigger in order to galvanize support for serious climate action beyond just the data center.

And it is much bigger than just about the data center. It is the new resistance in America. Resistance to resource extraction. Resistance to AI. Resistance to Big Tech. Resistance to billionaire tech bro and ‘girl boss’ culture. Resistance to Trump cronyism and the free pass given to tech companies to dominate our lives, steal our jobs, pollute our minds, and degrade our natural environment with their shiny, dangerous new toy, which literally has the power to alter and even destroy life on this planet. We, the people, don’t want this. And we’ve identified a choke point. A way to cut the figurative dick off these immature bros. Their power source. Their data centers.

Will it work? It’s a tall order on its own. These behemoths are popping up around the world faster than a digital native can cycle through their phone apps in one round of checks-ins. But this strategy’s got legs. Data center moratoriums are being proposed at the city, state, and federal levels. Some have passed. These could help stall or even kill a portion of these environmental demons from erecting. As for the power deals brokered to serve dirty gas power at these AI buffets, we have supply chain constraints on our side, as the wait for new gas turbines is 5 years long, and building new fossil infrastructure is itself a multi-year feat, whereas building new solar farms takes a fraction of that time. At the least, we can try to limit the damage by powering it with clean energy.

Where does all of this leave us in the global quest to save our planet? One perspective might be that among the rubble of war, control, degradation, and breakdown, a new world order has already taken form. It is there for all of us to allow in and open our eyes to see. If more of us can shift our perspective to one of acceptance about our shared climate crisis, and choose to move forward with love for each other and our planet, then we can do this right and create the better future we all deserve. We must let what hasn’t worked burn down and fossilize into a geological time capsule teaching future generations how not to live. Then from the ashes we rebuild a brighter, happier, healthier, harmonious future for all living beings. The clean energy era is here. We must accelerate it to rise up for Earth and take back our home. That’s Earth joy. Copy?

Image credit: NASA