5 ways we’re making progress on climate change

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Any time I try to convince skeptical people that the world isn’t as bad as they think it is — which I do quite a lot, given that I write a newsletter called Good News — they usually come back with a two-word rejoinder: “climate change.”

It’s a tough one to rebut. Climate change is very real, and its toll is worsening by the year. 2024 was the hottest year on record, and the first year where the average global temperature was 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was in the pre-industrial era — a red line set by policymakers as part of the Paris agreement. Antarctica’s winter sea ice dropped to its second-lowest level on record this past fall, while the world has now experienced more than $4 trillion — yes, with a “t” — in damages from extreme weather events since 1970. And in the White House, President Donald Trump is busy eviscerating government climate research and pulling back on clean energy policies.

Climate change presents a difficult challenge to the narrative of progress. Not just because it’s causing death and destruction now, and not just because each year it gets cumulatively worse, but because in many ways it is the direct result of trends that have otherwise made the world better.

Economic growth makes us all better, but it requires more energy, and as long as that energy mostly derives from fossil fuels, which still provide about 80 percent of global energy, it will make the world warmer as well. In a particularly bitter irony, one of the most important environmental advances in recent years — the reduction in conventional air pollution — seems to play a role in accelerating the pace of climate change.

But two things can be true: Even as climate change gets worse every year, every year we’re making more progress to slow it down. That’s the theme of “Escape Velocity,” an excellent package that came out this week from Vox’s climate team. As Vox climate editor Paige Vega wrote: “The energy economy is transitioning. Technology is advancing. The market is shifting. Our politics might feel stuck, but in many important ways, we continue to move forward.”

So, in honor of the end of Earth Week, here are five positive trends that demonstrate that the fight against climate change is far from lost.

Climate change is bad now, but it could do even more damage in the future, as the carbon dioxide we’re adding to the atmosphere keeps accumulating. The worst-case scenario outlined by UN climate scientists could result in as much as 4° to 5°C of warming, which could reduce global GDP by as much as 15 percent, destroy coral reefs around the world, leave large parts of the Earth all but uninhabitable, and push the world past environmental tipping points with consequences we can’t begin to know.

The good news is that this worst-case scenario is looking less and less likely. Global CO2 emissions are still growing, but at an increasingly slow rate. As carbon emissions eventually begin to shrink, it makes the UN’s worst-case scenario — which assumes no major changes to where we get our energy — all but impossible. Based on current climate policies, the most warming the world is likely to experience is more in the range of 2.5° to 3°C. Recent research suggests the climate system may actually be more resilient to warming than scientists once though, which also reduces the risk of sudden catastrophe.

Now, 2.5° to 3°C degrees of global warming is still very, very bad. But our improved outlook shows that a catastrophic climate future isn’t written yet, and every bit of emissions reduction now will make a difference later.

In 2024, the US crossed an important threshold: For the first time ever, wind and solar produced more electricity than coal for an entire calendar year.

Why is that so notable? Coal is the dirtiest of dirty fuels, and is still responsible for about half of the CO2 emitted by the US power sector, even as its share of US electricity production shrinks. But despite what Trump may say, coal isn’t coming back in the US, because it’s being replaced by cleaner-burning natural gas, and increasingly, zero-carbon sources like wind and solar. That’s a win both for the global climate and for air quality here at home.

Altogether, renewable sources generated just under a quarter of all US electricity in 2024, an increase of almost 10 percent from the year before. Solar is leading the way, providing 66 percent of all new capacity additions on the grid in 2024. Thanks to both environmental and economic incentives, there’s no reason to expect that progress to halt any time soon.

In his excellent piece in the Escape Velocity package, Vox correspondent Umair Irfan called enormous grid-scale batteries the “holy grail” of clean energy. There’s a simple reason for that. As great as renewable sources like wind and solar are for the environment and the economy, unlike coal or natural gas, they are intermittent, which means we can’t count on them to run around the clock. Sometimes they produce more energy than we need and sometimes less — but the grid always needs supplies.

Enter the battery. By storing energy produced by renewables, big batteries can keep the grid humming and clean even when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. We’re adding more of them to the grid every day: Utility-scale battery storage increased fivefold between 2021 and 2024 to exceed 26 gigawatts (GW). Developers are planning another 19.6 GW in 2025, which would be the biggest increase on record. The result is a grid that is cleaner and more resilient.

One of the most important concepts in climate policy is decoupling — which, in this context, is not something you go to a divorce lawyer for. It means breaking the link between greenhouse emissions and economic growth, because no climate policy is truly sustainable if it weighs down the economy.

Well, decoupling is happening. Last year, US emissions fell by 0.2 percent, while the economy grew by 2.7 percent. The more this happens, here in the US and abroad, the more we get the best of both worlds: climate progress and a healthy economy.

The clean-energy economy itself can power this decoupling. In 2024, clean energy and clean vehicle employers added nearly 150,000 jobs, and for the fifth straight year, job growth in the clean economy outpaced job growth overall.

The Trump administration wants to take us backward on climate policy, but here’s a secret: The real difference makers are working outside Washington, coming up with new solutions to the biggest challenges in climate and energy.

Just this week, the XPrize for Carbon Removal — an innovation competition that, notably, is funded by one Elon Musk — announced the winners of its $100 million contest. The $50 million grand prize went to Mati Carbon, a small startup that is using “enhanced rock weathering” to capture CO2 from the air. The company’s technology takes advantage of the fact that as it rains, rocks will slowly break down in a process that absorbs CO2 in the atmosphere and turns it into bicarbonate, where it can be safely stored for thousands of years. Mati Carbon speeds up the process by breaking rocks and spreading them across farmers’ fields, which has the added benefit of releasing nutrients that can enhance crop yields.

Mati Carbon is precisely the kind of company we’ll need more of in the years and decades ahead. Climate change is a challenge unlike any that human beings have ever faced, but it’s one we can solve — just as long as we get out of our own way.