![]() Our Waypoints initiatives build on this momentum. They are successfully tackling the tough challenge of balancing and storing that energy for when it’s needed. During the day, Kauai runs substantially on renewable energy and often at 100% clean energy for a few hours midday. Today if you plug in your electric vehicle on Maui, most of the fuel will come from the sun and the wind. Here Kalihi resident Jimmy Aquino - who has put his roof to work for Hawaii’s greener future - checks out his solar system. Solar now accounts for nearly 25 percent of all of the electricity generated in the islands and an even higher percentage on Maui and Kauai. In Hawaii, the work to wean ourselves off fossil fuels continues. Because of this, renewable energy - mostly solar - now accounts for more than half of the electric power on not one but two islands. Today, the cheapest source of new energy (after energy efficiency) is harvesting the sun. In Hawaii, our transition to clean energy is well underway - and we’re learning that decarbonizing our economy is not only possible, but profitable. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we know we must put an expiration date on burning fossil fuels. Every passing year the alarm sounds louder. Sea level rise and beach erosion are erasing our shorelines, record-breaking temperatures are sparking wildfires and bleaching coral and more frequent and severe weather events are flooding our communities, businesses and homes. While progress has been made and several collective actions were recently adopted into law, the proposed policies and programs are now more imperative than ever.Īs a remote island chain in the middle of the Pacific, Hawaii is experiencing the impacts of climate change firsthand. ![]() Some offer new and imaginative solutions, and others build upon years-long advocacy by engaged champions and committed stakeholders. Waypoints explores the systemic scope of our clean energy challenge and outlines 50 specific actions designed to foster economic growth, create new jobs, ensure equitable access to affordable energy and accelerate our transition to 100% clean energy. It was with this mindset that Blue Planet Foundation developed Waypoints one year ago. Not, “How do we make the future slightly less bad?” but rather “How can we change our systems to create a prosperous, equitable future that serves all?” Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question. It requires us to examine deeper, systemic issues. Unlike COVID-19, however, there is no vaccine for climate change. What’s more, both yield impacts that are unequally distributed. Both require government intervention and social adaptation, and both reveal our interconnectedness. Both are global in reach, life-threatening and characterized by science. 7, paints a dire picture of the state of the world’s ecosystems.Ĭlimate change and COVID-19 share some of the same disaster DNA. Now we also still have to solve climate change? The 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released Aug. Our limited energies have rightly been focused on fighting this global health villain and the economic and social destruction it has sowed. We all are experiencing disaster fatigue. The UN report, which doesn’t share new findings about our spiraling Earth so much as put an exclamation point on them, lands during an exhausting and heartbreaking global pandemic. Elsewhere, the planet is suffering with catastrophic floods, storms, droughts and other disasters. Cause and effect: Hotter, drier conditions driven by climate change have contributed to the scope and intensity of the fires now burning across the western United States. So why are we still failing to act at the speed and scale necessary to stop catastrophe? If this were a blockbuster “save the world from aliens” film, we’d be bored - or horrified - by now, wondering if the superheroes even have a chance. It leaves little room to question what we must do now: End the use of fossil fuels before they end us. That’s the pivotal word in last week’s nearly 4,000-page, decisive United Nations’ climate report, describing the scientific basis for the relationship between humankind’s activities and the dramatic unnatural disasters we’ve been witnessing worldwide.
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