Being optimistic about the trajectory of climate change, and the pace of our response to it, has never been easy. In 2025, it might have become more difficult than ever here in Canada: with the federal government retreating from some of its key climate policy commitments and the American government openly describing renewable energy as some sort of nefarious socialist plot, it probably feels like the energy transition that was promised will never actually arrive. 

I’m still an optimist. That’s partly a reflection of my natural inclination, but it’s mostly a reaction to an increasingly obvious reality that continues to unfold around the world: the clean technology revolution that is being increasingly powered by China will not, and cannot, be stopped. As my friend Chris Turner argued in his 2022 book How To Be a Climate Optimist: Blueprints for a Better World, the growing array of low-carbon technologies like solar, battery storage and electric vehicles are going to replace both the guts of our global economy and the gears of their day-to-day lives. More importantly, they are going to do it whether our elected officials want them to or not. That is even truer now than when he wrote the book — even, or maybe especially as our politics have shifted towards fossil fuel revanchism.

That’s because electric vehicles, solar power and batteries keep getting better and cheaper with each passing year. None of them are subject to the whims of a cartel. Their price doesn’t explode in the face of military aggression by global despots. And they don’t require constant investments in additional fuel, which in turn require expenditures of foreign currency. For developing nations around the world, who will largely determine the pace of the energy transition, this is an irresistible........

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