Good morning, Quartz readers!
On the first Earth Day in April 1970, millions took to the streets to demand environmental protection. Nearly half a century later, things may not seem much better.
Nearly 80% of our energy still comes from fossil fuels—a figure that hasn’t changed since the first Earth Day. The atmosphere now has more carbon dioxide than any time in the past 800,000 years. The oceans are heating up, corals are dying, and natural disasters keep causing more damage. Oil and gas companies continue to be some of the most valuable in the world, and the warnings scientists give about climate catastrophe keep getting more urgent.
But all signs suggest the scale of the environmental movement has crossed a tipping point. It’s no longer just the woman on the street who seeks environmental justice. Instead, the movement now includes wealthy investors and powerful governments.
In the past year alone, activist shareholders, including trillion-dollar investors like BlackRock and Vanguard, have forced fossil-fuel companies like ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum to reveal the risks to their investments from climate change. In the face of Donald Trump’s retreat from the Paris climate accords, local governments have become stewards of the environment. Just this week, two counties in Colorado filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy, seeking compensation for damages caused by wildfires, droughts, and storms on infrastructure, agriculture, and tourism.
There is good news from other corners, too. Government investment and regulations in developing and deploying clean energy have scaled well. In many parts of the world, it is cheaper to build renewable-energy projects than fossil-fuel power plants. This week, the UK went 55 hours without burning coal, which hasn’t happened since before the Industrial Revolution. Portugal produced more renewable energy in March than energy it consumed.
To top it all off, poor countries are investing billions more in renewable energy than rich ones. Though Tesla may be suffering another episode of hiccups, forecasters keep revising electric-vehicles sales figures upwards. Even technologies that were considered fanciful, such as carbon capture, are making a comeback. Progress is all around us. We don’t breath the same dirty air or drink the same polluted water that we did back in the 1960s.
Still, it’s not enough. The time is ticking on how fast we can make the transition to a low-carbon world. Thus, the importance of the protester on Earth Day has never been greater.—Akshat Rathi
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Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, Amazon style reviews, and revamped resumés to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter here for updates throughout the day, or download our apps for iPhone and Android. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Kabir Chibber.