Salvage the Climate
And Improve America
25 January 2026
Projecting Biden’s policies into the future, in January, 2025, the United States still had a good chance to achieve a 100 percent renewable energy economy by 2050. One year later, projecting Trump’s policies into the future, the U S may achieve 100 percent renewable energy in 2148. [1] That’s a century later, folks. Meanwhile, according to a recent Stanford University study, China is on track to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2051. At current speed, that’s one century before the United States, folks. Of course, MAGA may be turned out of office in 2028 and, if so, the United States might then resume a Bidenesque climate policy that would bring this country to 100 percent renewables by 2060, only a decade behind China. Alas, neither outcome is in the bag. Nonetheless, MAGA or no MAGA, solar energy is unstoppable now. [2] Trump can delay solarization, but he cannot derail it because profit incentives now drive the train.
Unfortunately, there is a downside to this good news. Because renewable electricity is now cheaper than conventional, and provides 90 percent of new capacity, too many Americans have concluded that the free market is driving change in the right direction. Quite true! Therefore, they reason, the federal and state governments no longer need invest taxpayer money in climate protection. Wrong! Yes, if Americans are willing to wait until 2148 to run their economy on renewable energy, no government funding will be required. The obvious problem is the extreme deterioration of the climate that will occur if GHGs are allowed to fuel the economy for another 120 years. The ensuing climate deterioration can never be undone. In 2148, at +5.1C, human life on earth won’t be easy to sustain. [3]
To expedite the energy transition to renewables, governments need to inject taxpayer money into climate protection. Money thus spent is called transition funding. To understand why transition funding is required, one need go no farther than the family car. About 12 million new gasoline‑powered cars and light trucks were sold in the U.S. in 2024, and they are expected to remain in use until approximately 2038. Their average purchase price was $48,000. The people who bought one of these gasoline powered trucks or cars made a financial commitment to use fossil fuels for the next 14 years. Climate protection needs these owners to trade in those gasoline vehicles before they are worn out and to acquire new electrical vehicles as replacements. If that is done at the halfway point of depreciation, seven years from now, we are asking 12 million people to lose $24,000 of use value on their gasoline powered cars and trucks. That comes to $288 billion that somebody has to pay for if we want to retire 12 million gasoline vehicles within seven years. To create a 100 percent EV vehicle fleet in a decade, the US would have to replace 280 million gasoline-powered autos, trucks, and buses now in service with EVs. To replace those vehicles with EVs at even $20,000 each would cost $6.5 trillion. The government could split the cost with the owners but somebody has to pay.
The same logic applies to home heating and cooking. Equipping all occupied structures with clean energy appliances would require the United States to exchange existing gas and oil powered furnaces and stoves for electric models. Estimating a furnace replacement at $5000 and a stove replacement at $3000, we must replace 132 million furnaces ($660 trillion) and 40 million stoves ($120 trillion) for an aggregated cost of $780 trillion. Governments could split these costs with homeowners. But somebody has to pay for throwing out usable furnaces and stoves long before they are worn out and useless.
These calculations are rough but the list could also be expanded so its numbers are conservative. For instance, what’s the total cost of building enough electric charging stations to enable the all-EV fleet to function conveniently? Or how about the total cost of retrofitting all factories, shipping and fishing fleets, aircraft, and nuclear power plants with electric power rather than oil or coal power? These items would increase the bill.
Happily, there is no need to go farther because there is enough information here already to enable some important conclusions. Obviously, the foundational cost of building a 100 percent renewable energy system and a servant electrical grid ($5 trillion) is just starters. Those costs are dwarfed by the cost of replacing all the gasoline powered vehicles, gas and oil furnaces, and gas stoves with new electric models. The average household would have to replace two automobiles, a gas furnace and a gas stove in order to operate on 100% clean energy. That’s an upfront bill of approximately $88,000 per home. For comparison, that is $1400 more than the yearly gross income of the average American household.
Conclusion
To expedite the economy’s electrification, Americans will have to throw away gasoline and oil powered machines before their normal replacement date. Doing so will impose uncompensated costs on the users. Biden sunk taxpayer money into paying this uncompensated cost and the pace of electrification accelerated. There were tax incentives for buying EVs and heat pump furnaces. Trump discontinued all infusion of taxpayer money and the pace of electrification slowed to a crawl. [4] Because speedy electrification of the economy is so expensive, in order to accomplish it, federal and state governments will have to make some tough choices to find the money. These choices will require the governments to reduce funding to existing beneficiaries of government spending and to raise taxes. Climate Defenders has argued that to salvage the climate, the U. S. government will have to tax billionaires. [5] Additionally, to salvage the climate, the federal government will have to reduce military defense and transfer the money to climate defense. When and as that happens, the foreign policy of the United States must move away from global military dominance, a maximalist posture, toward protecting the homeland from invasion, a minimalist posture. Most people would agree that fewer wars and reduced economic inequality would improve American society. However, even if one does not, these are predictions, not exhortation. These predictions envision major changes in American society if and when governments get serious about climate defense. Environmentalists, get real! Salvaging the climate will require major and contested social change in America. Of course, none of that will be necessary if Americans opt for global warming rather than social change.
References
[1] William Driscoll. “U.S. would reach 100% renewable energy by 2148 at recent pace. China is outpacing the U.S. toward 100% renewables for all energy uses and is on track to reach that standard by 2051, versus 2148 for the U.S.” PV Magazine 9 Jan. 2026.
[2] Bill McKibben. “Just possibly it’s the oil? A solar panel is the new peace sign.” Jan. 3 2026 https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQfBGbQcwMZxjmrstzbVDdndsGV
[3] Global temperature currently rises at 0.27C per decade so, projecting forward 12 decades, it would be expected to add 3.6C to the 1.5C we already have, bringing the earth’s mean temperature up to +5.1C over preindustrial levels.
[4] “Hitting the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement would have meant engineering a swift, worldwide shift away from fossil fuels and toward clean power sources like wind and solar.” David Gelles. “How Wall Street turned Its back on climate change. Six years after the financial industry pledged to use trillions to fight climate change and reshape finance, its efforts have largely collapsed.” New York Times 18 Jan 2026.
[5] “Trump’s Trinity: Petroleum, Billionaires, and the Pentagon.” Climate Defenders 5 Jan. 2026. All back issues of Climate Defenders are available free at: https://ivanlight.substack.com/archive.