I’ve spent my career advancing the moral case from inside the environmental movement. Over the decades we succeeded at rallying the faithful, but we failed to deliver change at the scale and speed required. We passed regulations only to watch them be repealed. We pledged to cut emissions and missed the mark, again and again.
People think of climate change as a crisis to contain when it’s really a competition to win. We need to build what’s next, not stop what’s bad. And what’s at stake isn’t just emissions; it’s whether America leads or lags in the next era of global economic growth.
That calls for a new approach to climate action — a third front.
In the early 1900s, the first front focused on conservation — protecting forests, nature, and wildlife. The second front, in the 1960s and 70s, tackled pollution — cleaning up our air and water, regulating toxins, and safeguarding public health. Both were about “stopping” harm. They worked because they aimed at industries where slowing down made sense.
But energy doesn’t fit that mold. International pledges and national regulations to “stop” carbon emissions are destined to fail without affordable and accessible fossil-fuel replacements. Why? Because low-cost energy makes people’s lives better. Longer life expectancies, better health care, lower infant mortality, and higher literacy follow in its wake. Energy is foundational for prosperity, powering nearly every part of our modern lives.
No high-income country has low energy consumption. Prosperity depends on abundant energy. Global energy demand will keep rising, as poor countries install more refrigerators and air conditioning, and rich countries build more data centers and advanced manufacturing. Today, fossil fuels provide 80% of primary energy because they are cheap and easy to move around. That’s why the tools of “stopping harm” that we used to protect rivers and forests will not win the race. Innovation, not limits, leads to progress.
The third front is not about blocking fossil fuels; it’s about beating them. Stopping fossil fuels doesn’t fix the electric grid or reinvent steelmaking. By contrast, lowering the cost of clean technologies will spur economic growth, create jobs in rural counties, and lower electricity bills for working families.
Yet clean energy projects in the U.S. are routinely delayed by red tape, outdated rules, and policy whiplash. A transmission line often takes more than a decade to plan, permit, and construct. Meanwhile, China has added more than 8,000 miles of ultra‑high‑voltage transmission in just four years, compared with fewer than 400 miles here at home. American entrepreneurs are ready to build but our systems and rules haven’t caught up.
And the urgency to fix the problem is mounting. Electricity prices and energy demand are surging, while terawatts of clean energy projects pile up in the interconnection queue. We are struggling to build a 21st century economy on 20th century infrastructure.
The third front of climate action starts with building faster and smarter. That responsibility lies with policymakers at every level. In the U.S., Congress and federal agencies must treat energy infrastructure as economic competitiveness, not just environmental policy. State and local regulators must expedite permitting. Regional grid operators must speed up interconnection and integration of new technologies.
But government’s role is to clear the path, not dictate the outcome. The private sector — entrepreneurs pioneering technologies from long-duration storage to advanced geothermal to next-generation nuclear — is ready to build. What they need is for policymakers to remove the obstacles. We can use public policy not to command markets, but rather to unlock them, reward innovation, and create certainty that encourages investment.
The same logic applies globally. The multilateral climate system has focused on negotiating emission limits, but we need a renewed effort toward lowering the cost of clean energy so it can outcompete fossil fuels in every market, from the richest economies to the poorest. Whether through the UN, the G-20, or the Clean Energy Ministerial, the international community must play a role in that shift — not through collating new pledges, but by taking action on cost reduction, technology deployment, and removing barriers to scale. Through economic cooperation and competition, both, domestic policies around the world need to align toward making clean energy win on economics, backed by private capital and innovation.
It’s time to measure progress not only by tons of carbon avoided, but also by how much new energy capacity we add, how quickly clean projects come online, and how much private capital moves into clean industries.
There is a cure for the fatigue induced from 30 years of climate summits and setbacks. It’s a new playbook built on economic growth and shared prosperity. The goal is not only to reduce emissions. We must build a system where clean energy is so affordable, abundant, and reliable that it becomes the obvious choice. Not because people are told to use it, but because it is better.
Gassing up the planet. Montinique Monroe/Getty Images
