WORLDFIRE - Chapter 5, Part I
Shooting for the Moon
photo credit: NASA
“Above all, Apollo was a voyage of inspiration. The thing that still fuels me in my day-to-day life, and what I want to convey to my children, and to the audience, is that if mankind can figure out a way to put twelve men on the moon, then, honestly, we can solve anything.” Tom Hanks (from the Forward to A Man on the Moon)
For millions of Americans, the stunning success of Project Apollo shines as an enduring inspiration for how the United States can make the seemingly impossible possible. In the early 1960s, many people questioned whether we would ever land on the Moon, yet before the decade was out, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin realized the audacious American dream of walking on the lunar landscape. In a similar vein, when I launched the Ride for Renewables in 2010, the ten-year goal of 100% renewable electricity for the U.S. was considered the wishful thinking of just a few. Now it is a vision shared by many. It is not a stretch to say that a green energy moon shot is within our reach if we will but make it a mission worthy of our undivided national attention.
Little in our history has inspired the American people more than when President John F. Kennedy in 1961 challenged us to land a man on the Moon before the decade was out. Looking back at Project Apollo today, it was a gutsy move politically (for Kennedy) and a risky move geopolitically (for the United States). For no one knew at the time if it could even be done. NASA’s History Office sets the stage for JFK’s edict and why he issued it: “On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade. A number of political factors affected Kennedy's decision and the timing of it. In general, Kennedy felt great pressure to have the United States ‘catch up to and overtake’ the Soviet Union in the ‘space race.’ Four years after the Sputnik shock of 1957, the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first human in space on April 12, 1961, greatly embarrassing the U.S… After consulting with Vice President Johnson, NASA Administrator James Webb, and other officials, he concluded that landing an American on the Moon would be a very challenging technological feat, but an area of space exploration in which the U.S. actually had a potential lead. Thus the cold war is the primary contextual lens through which many historians now view Kennedy's speech.” Kennedy was also reeling from the Bay of Pigs fiasco at the time and was looking for a way to reboot his presidency.
The following year, Kennedy declared during his famous moon shot speech at Rice University: “We shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun–almost as hot as it is here today–and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out.”
The rest, of course, is history. In a technological triumph for the ages, America’s best and brightest stepped up to the challenge and we accomplished our daring mission more than five months ahead of schedule. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong sent Mission Control the unforgettable transmission: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Then as hundreds of millions around the world watched, Armstrong triumphantly took “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” onto the lunar surface. In a tribute to the remarkable journey America had made from the first flight at Kitty Hawk to flying to the Moon, he actually carried with him a piece of fabric from the Wright Brother’s 1903 Flyer. President Nixon then made the most famous phone call in history when he patched in Armstrong and Aldrin standing on the Moon, some 240,000 miles away. Sitting in the Oval Office and speaking into an olive green desktop analog phone, Nixon said: “For one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one. One in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.”
Michael Collins, the astronaut who piloted the command module that orbited the Moon on that successful mission, would later say of Kennedy’s challenge: “It was beautiful in its simplicity. Do what? Moon. When? End of decade.” But Apollo 11’s success was not guaranteed. Far from it, for in space, there is little margin for error. Everything had to go pretty much perfectly for our astronauts to return safely home. Every man (and one woman–JoAnn Morgan) inside the mission control room, and the astronauts themselves, knew the most dangerous part of the mission would be getting from the Moon’s surface back up to the command module being piloted by Collins. As Collins himself recalled to the Associated Press in 2019: “We never discussed or hinted at their getting stranded on the moon. I mean, we were not fools, and we knew darn well that a lot of things had to go exactly right for them to ascend as they were supposed to do.” In fact, we now know President Nixon’s speechwriter had a backup speech prepared for Nixon to read if the astronauts ended up stranded. Here is “IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER” in full:
Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.
For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.
Thankfully, Nixon never had to read that speech. Instead, three courageous pioneers flew the hopes and dreams of much of the world to the Moon and made those dreams come true. It is time now for our generation to dream anew. In contrast to the unknowns America faced around space travel in the 1960s, we know how to transition from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy in the 2020s. We just have not yet made it a national priority to do so. More than half a century after Kennedy’s cold war gambit, it is the hot war we are waging against the planet that cries out for a moon shot of another kind: renewing America with renewable energy. Today’s mission is not about going to another planet, it is about coming home to the only planet in the universe known to support life: Earth.
You have probably heard the ancient proverb: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” For too long what America has been lacking is vision. Yet some have been stepping up to fill the void. You do not have to like Al Gore (I was not a big fan until he became a self-described “recovering politician”) to acknowledge that Gore has done more than almost anyone alive to sound the alarm on the global climate crisis. For this invaluable service to humanity, he has my enduring gratitude and respect. There is a reason why climate deniers attack him so viciously. They find it decidedly inconvenient for someone of Gore’s stature to be speaking climate truth to power.
Maybe you have read Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance, or seen his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. But have you heard the historic speech he gave on July 17, 2008 at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall? I’m talking about the speech where he boldly challenged America “to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within ten years.” I’ve watched it more times than I can remember, and I learn something new every time I see it. My 2010 ride across the country was inspired in no small part by that speech. In the end, I believe history will judge it as one of the most important political speeches ever made.
Among those in the crowd of more than 1,000 cheering supporters was Independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, former Democratic Senator Jim Sasser, Democratic congressmen Jim Cooper and Jay Inslee, and former Republican congressmen Sherwood Boehlert and Bob Barr. What is so remarkable about Gore’s speech is how so much of what he said then is still relevant today. He identified “our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels” as being “at the core” of America’s “economic, environmental, and national security crises,” drawing cheers when he said: “We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change.” Stressing that “a political promise to do something 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows that it's meaningless,” Gore reminded us: “Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.” Not 30. Not 20. Ten. Likening his strategic initiative to the ambition of Project Apollo, Gore urged America to reach for the stars: “Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind.”
Gore’s 2008 vision is one worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. It is also a vision that has languished in the wilderness for far too long. We have not heeded his call to “shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert” to the danger the climate crisis poses to our shared survival. Instead, we are sleepwalking into the abyss.
So what happened to Gore’s brave vision? Some green groups and leaders praised Gore’s ten-year goal at the time, but for reasons that escape me, the climate movement at large failed to pick up the green gauntlet he threw down and run with it, so he eventually stopped talking about it. Even presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain spoke favorably of it at the time. The day after Gore issued his public challenge, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Obama praising it as "a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced, and one that will leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer." The newspaper reported McCain going even further: "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable." Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reported to have said of Gore’s goal: “It is absolutely possible.” I don’t recall any of them ever uttering another word about it.
But like a stone thrown into a pond, Gore’s speech sent out ripples.
In 2011, Stanford engineer Mark Jacobson and University of California-Davis scientist Mark Delucchi threw down a green gauntlet of their own by commissioning a study showing how all the world’s new energy generation could be produced from solar, wind, and water by the year 2030, with all pre-existing energy production converted to renewables by 2050. Called “an effort comparable to the Apollo moon project,” here is how Jacobson described their vision: “Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources. It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will." Since their 2011 initial study, Jacobson and Delucchi have developed a roadmap for 139 countries to make the transition to renewables. Their exciting vision eventually evolved into The Solutions Project, a 50-state initiative sparked by Jacobson; actor/activist Mark Ruffalo, documentary filmmaker Josh Fox; CNN Political Correspondent Van Jones; Senior Vice President of Solar City, Marco Krapels; head of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Justin Winters; and other luminaries. In 2021, Jacobson moved up the 2050 timeline by asserting all of the world’s electricity could be converted to renewables by 2030, with the entire energy sector (electricity, transportation, heating, cooling, and industry) converted to renewables by 2035.
As far back as 2012, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) commissioned a study that concluded: “Renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.” The study’s 2050 timeline is decades too late, and 80 isn’t 100, but when even a federal entity says we can do 80 percent renewables, there’s no doubt in my mind the creative genius of America’s entrepreneurs can unlock the other 20 percent and it won’t take them decades to do it. A more recent 2018 scientific study similarly concluded that solar and wind, with adequate storage or transmission lines, could reliably meet about 80 percent of U.S. electricity demand. Shortly after that study was released, Bloomberg reported a 79 percent drop in the cost of lithium-ion batteries since 2010, which bodes well for energy storage affordability. Add to this the cost of installing solar plummeting by more than 60 percent since 2010, and the cost of deploying wind dropping 90 percent since the early 1980s, and you can see that the renewables runway is clear.
Greening the electricity grid also requires replacing the antiquated regional grid system–currently plagued by outdated technologies, power blackouts, bureaucratic inefficiencies, interstate squabbles, and administrative roadblocks–with an efficient and resilient national transmission grid. Vox climate blogger David Roberts paints the picture: “Sharing energy over a wider geographic area improves efficiency, smooths out peaks and troughs in demand, reduces the use of duplicative backup resources, allows for the integration of more renewable energy, and reduces power prices.” NREL has even shown that such a national grid would lower the cost of electricity enough to pay for itself through efficiencies. Modernizing our vulnerable electrical grid is also mission critical work to defend the United States against cyberattack.
Currently, however, big electrical utilities (like big oil corporations) wield far too much control over our lives. Regulated monopolies take their customers for granted, while rubber stamp state Public Utility Commissions (PUCs) routinely help these utilities more than the public. The PUC system is as outdated and unreliable as our electrical grid. It is a dinosaur obstructing progress. If NASA had confronted such bureaucratic inertia during Project Apollo, we never would have landed on the Moon. We need stronger oversight of investor-owned utilities as much as we need a stronger electricity grid. Microgrids developed by local communities are more resilient, efficient, and safer still. This calls for the necessity of streamlining the process of allowing local communities to sever ties with dinosaur utilities to enable the creation of cooperative utilities that operate under public control.
In 2014, a group of Catholic bishops from around the world weighed in on the 100% renewables goal by declaring it “an answer to what is considered God's appeal to take action on the urgent and damaging situation of global climate warming.” Courageously calling for “an end to the fossil fuel era, phasing out fossil fuel emissions and phasing in 100% renewables with sustainable energy access for all,” the bishops appealed for “a new financial and economic order” that puts “the human being and the common good at the heart of the economy.” America’s best-known conservation group, the Sierra Club, also endorsed the 100% renewable electricity goal in 2014, if on a longer timeline (16 years) than the ten years Gore and I were calling for in 2008 and 2010, respectively.
History was made in the summer of 2015 when Hawaii became the first state in the Union to formally declare a statewide goal of 100 percent renewable electricity. Showing just how popular bold visions can be, the legislation signed into law by Hawaii’s governor passed by 50-1 in the House and 24-1 in the Senate. It is entirely fitting that America’s only island state would be the first to embrace 100% renewables, given how dependent islands are on others for their energy needs and how islands have the most to lose from sea level rise. Hawaii’s law gives the state until 2045 to achieve its goal, but if the recent history of other statewide renewable energy standards is any indication, this timeline will be moved up as the urgency of the climate emergency becomes increasingly apparent. Reacting to the passage of Hawaii’s historic law, the advocacy group Blue Planet Foundation declared as much, saying, “Analyses from the utility and elsewhere show that 100 percent renewable energy can be achieved even earlier than 2045, by 2030.” Celebrating the law’s passage, the group’s chairman, Henk Rogers, crowed: “This week we put an expiration date on fossil fuel use. Hawaii is sending a signal to the world that 100 percent renewable energy isn’t just a vision, it’s a commitment.”
Ten days after Hawaii’s governor signed the Aloha State’s historic law, the former Democratic governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley, became the first presidential candidate to call for 100 percent renewable energy for the United States. Not wanting to be outflanked by her Democratic primary opponent, Hillary Clinton echoed O’Malley by vaguely calling for the U.S. to move “as quickly as possible to 100% clean renewable energy.” In a USA Today op-ed, O’Malley pledged to make achieving the 100% goal America’s “number one priority.” Panning President Obama’s “all of the above” energy approach, O’Malley wrote: “America did not land a man on the moon with an ‘all of the above strategy.’ It was an engineering challenge. Making the transition to a clean energy future is also an engineering challenge.” O’Malley got the 100 percent right, but his 2050 timeline ignored the most important part of JFK’s moon shot goal: the ten-year timeline. Had Kennedy given the U.S. 35 years to land on the Moon, we would probably still be wistfully dreaming of visiting there someday. That same year, a group of leading UK academics, among them economist Nicholas Stern, unveiled a Global Apollo Programme calling for a ten-year green energy “moonshot” to make carbon-free baseload electricity less expensive than electricity from coal by 2025.
A 2016 study published by the former chief of research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed that “a transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system can be accomplished with commercially available technology, and within 15 years.” While low-carbon is not the same as no-carbon, this study is closer to an actual moon shot timeline. It also importantly showed how the transition could be accomplished even without energy storage by utilizing an efficient, high voltage national electricity grid.
But 2017 was the year when the 100 percent goal really caught fire. This was the year that 118 U.S. mayors, many prodded by local Sierra Club chapters, publicly committed to the goal of 100 percent renewable energy for their cities by no later than 2035. Seven years after I would pedal under its Gateway Arch, St. Louis became the largest city in the Midwest to hop on the 100 by ‘35 bandwagon. Other cities, including Atlanta, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Salt Lake City, Denver, and my then hometown of Boulder have committed to achieving 100 percent renewables by 2030. Cities like Greensburg, Kansas and Georgetown, Texas have already achieved 100 percent renewable electricity, in both cases under the leadership of Republican mayors.
That same year, a group of some of the world’s leading economists endorsed 100% renewables by calling for “an immediate end to investments in new fossil fuel production and infrastructure.” In a public declaration, under the banner, “NOT A PENNY MORE FOR THE ENERGY SOURCES OF THE PAST,” they wrote: “Global investor and international development actors and institutions must recognize that continued investments in fossil fuel production supply-side is irreconcilable with meaningful climate action. Instead, let us all prioritize the tremendous investment opportunities for a 100% renewable future that support healthy economies while protecting workers, communities, and the ecological limits of a finite planet.” The Energy Watch Group, a global network of prominent scientists and parliamentarians, also produced a study in 2017 showing that “100% renewable electricity worldwide is feasible and more cost-effective than the existing system” of fossil fuels and nukes. They concluded that the transition to renewables is “achievable well before the year 2050” and would create 36 million jobs. The clamor for 100% renewables caused climate leader Bill McKibben to write in 2017: “[I]t’s important news that the environmental movement seems to be rallying round a new flag. That standard bears a number: 100 percent. It’s the call for the rapid conversion of energy systems around the country to 100 percent renewable power.” Important news, indeed.
NOTE: The written form of WORLDFIRE is the authoritative version. Any inadvertent errors in transcribing the recordings are mine and mine alone.