Energy
Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but this article the most optimistic thing I’ve read in a few years, though of course tempered by the current political disaster:
Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply.
…
In fact, the sheer scope of that potential change seems to be motivating much of the current backlash against clean energy in the U.S.
Plus, I always love a bit on e-bikes; not only fun, but an excellent way to get around without burning things:
E-biking—best thought of as biking without hills—may prove to be an even more important innovation. The e-bike is almost unbelievably efficient: to fully charge a five-hundred-watt e-bike costs, on average, about eight cents. That charge provides some thirty miles of range, so it costs about a penny to ride five miles.
Tons of facts here that indisputably illustrate how the transformation of global energy that is not only under way, but accelerating:
The United Kingdom—where, after all, fossil fuel really began—now has so much wind power that in 2024 its carbon emissions fell below what they were in 1879
Worth a read. Let’s see if the optimism I felt while reading it is still there in five years.