Gelles, D., Plumer, B., Tankersley, J., Ewing, J., Dominguez, L., & Popovich, N. (2023, August 13). The Clean Energy Future is arriving faster than you think. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/12/climate/clean-energy-us-fossil-fuels.html

About 20 years ago, any sort of renewable energy source such as solar panels, wind turbines, and battery-powered vehicles, seemed to be viewed as “niche technologies” and too expensive to which they were overlooked. Present day, however, wind and solar power are breaking records, and renewables are now expected to overtake coal as the world’s largest source of electricity. Our planet is experiencing some of the highest temperatures on record (some areas have even become incompatible with human life), and our government is finally taking action to slow down the increase of global warming by putting trillions of dollars into clean energy. Luckily, many researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs around the world have tried to improve the damage done by climate change and governments have invested plenty of money into renewable energy sources, so we’re now seeing a rapid drop in costs for solar energy, wind power, and batteries. 

I’m glad to see there are improvements made by our government to help with our dying planet, but I think it’s gotten so bad that we’re only now making an impact even though we should’ve started many years ago. I guess it’s still important that we’re starting sooner rather than later, but changes should’ve been made a while back. I think it’s also crucial that prices for these renewable energy sources are decreasing because then it causes people to use them more if they’re more accessible. I wonder what our world will be like in 20 years; will nothing change or will we see a large difference in the energy sources we are using.