Stormy Weather

As I write this, Hurricane Melissa is pounding Jamaica with sustained 180 mph winds with gusts to 220. Melissa is the most violent Atlantic Basin storm in recorded history and was fueled partly by record warm water in the Caribbean Sea—2.5 degrees F warmer than usual (86 degrees F at 200 feet below the surface). More heat equals more energy as well as increasing the storm’s ability to hold moisture, resulting in more than 40 inches of rain in western Jamaica in two days. 

Hurricane Melissa’s death toll is at least 25 so far; damages in Jamaica are at least $52 billion, and Haiti, Cuba, and the Bahamas will be tens of billions more—high prices to pay for the increasingly violent weather that is just one result of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. The consequence is global climate change, and the only solution is to shift to sustainable energy sources.

On the other side of our planet, China, the world’s largest emitter, is making dramatic progress toward sustainable energy. Fifteen solar parks—huge areas covered with solar panels—are producing electricity with more under construction. Talatan Solar Park, the largest, covers 162 square miles of the Tibetan Plateau at an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet where the sun is brighter and the air cooler, important for nearby AI data centers because their thousands of computers require little air conditioning. Talatan has a capacity of 15,000 megawatts, enough to power a large city. The U.S. has 16 solar parks, mostly in the Southwest. The largest, in Nevada, has a capacity of 966 megawatts.

At a September UN climate summit, China’s President Xi Jinping, a trained chemical engineer, pledged to increase China’s clean energy output by 600 percent in the next few years using solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear sources. China already produces more clean energy than any other country, and the goal is to wean the country off coal, oil, and natural gas as soon as possible. China dominates the world’s solar, wind, battery, and electric vehicle (EV) production, and has built, or is building, 31 nuclear power plants, nearly as many as the rest of the world combined. 

Solar power is attractive because it’s about 41 percent cheaper than fossil fuels, partly because solar, like wind, hydro, and nuclear, needs no costly transportation. No coal trains, no pipelines, no huge tankers sailing the seas. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said recently that last year renewables more than doubled the investment in fossil fuels and generated a third of all the world’s electricity. “We have passed the point of no return…just follow the money,” he said, adding that countries who fail to create a clean-energy economy are “missing the greatest economic opportunity of the 21^st century.”

Ten years ago, 195 nations signed the Paris Accords agreeing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible to keep our atmosphere’s temperature increase since preindustrial times to no more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Last year was the first year the average global temperature exceeded this rise.

To reach the Paris Accords goal, emissions need to be cut 50 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, at which point warming will slowly reverse. The U.S., the second-largest emitter after China, withdrew from the Accords in 2020, rejoined in 2021, and withdrew again in 2025. The Trump Administration, alone in the world, still acts as if climate change is a hoax. 

Violent storms set record after record, glaciers and ice caps are rapidly melting, sea levels are rising while corals and other sea life are dying, and record droughts threaten food supplies, driving millions to seek more habitable lands. Fossil fuels are the past. Clean energy is the future. China knows that.