Doing something a little different this week. Feel free to discuss systems thinking and issue #4 (and read it if you haven’t yet)…or answer these questions:
What do you feel like you’re getting out of this newsletter? What would you like to get out of this newsletter? Are there topics you’d like to see covered here in the future?
I'll chime in with my perspective here, too, which is likely to be a bit different.
On the one hand, I'm of course learning by putting these together -- it's forcing me to read more books, and to try to organize my thoughts in a consistent way.
On the other hand, I'm learning from conversations I'm having with all of you, generally outside Substack. There's a broad range of perspectives and attitudes.
Some of our conversations have been deeply personal, illuminating the sort of omni-present depression that many people who take these issues seriously suffer from. That's been sad, but it's also been inspiring. To hear how many people are already so far along in their thinking on these topics is really great. Tackling those psychological effects is a challenge, but it's also an opportunity to reframe action as finding a new, better way of life instead of fighting an old one.
Other of our conversations have made clear to me how far we have to go, and made me feel like this newsletter is a viable and valuable approach. There is a large segment of the population that "believes in climate change" (whatever that really means) and is acutely aware of the impacts of our ongoing global failure to act. But they're not aware of the myriad of other ecological issues we face. And they're not aware of the deep interconnection between all these biophysical problems and the social problems in our civilization. My goal here is to help draw that connection and to encourage everyone to ask more questions, because a reductive approach that fails to account for the entire system -- ecological and human -- will inevitably fail.
Hey Nick I like the newsletters and think this is indeed a valuable approach to getting more people to think and talk about climate change and biodiversity loss and all the factors involved. I like how you approach these issues with a holistic viewpoint. In my opinion the big shift to sustainability needs among many things a massive cultural shift. It would be awesome if there was more political leadership leading the charge but it seems to be lacking (maybe theres some examples to prove otherwise, i'll admit I don't pay much attention to politics). So maybe not only as individuals but more importantly as communities we can make changes where we live in our community systems (more local food sourcing, promoting local activities to discourage so much air travel, etc.) Anyways enough ranting.. I'd love to see some newsletters telling us how we can make or affect change in our communities to become more sustainable. Basically how can we get a bunch of people who care about the future of our planet to get on board on achievable goals for our community.. And maybe some examples of other places where this may be happening. Cheers dude and hope to paddle with you again soon!
Thanks Harold! Definitely interested in doing a piece on local government sustainability efforts. There are some inspiring examples out there, I'll have to do some more research. Squamish Council is talking a big game about these strategies right now but their actions speak otherwise, unfortunately.
Nick, I am learning a huge amount from your newsletter, the sources recommended and especially the discussions. thank you.
One topic I was wondering about as a possible future newsletter would be water including a discussion on rivers. Damming rivers, controlling flow etc has long been a technique of generating "sustainable" power but has caused so many other environmental problems. I know that vast reservoirs are terrible evaporators and hence endanger water supplies even as they are meant to save water, and that some dams are being dismantled to regenerate river health. But I would be curious to learn more about the science of rivers, the future of the world's water, what it means that more of the world's water will be freed from ice into the sea even as land masses lose their supplies of water due to melting snowcaps. And would like to know more about the science of water conservation and use and projections of managing water supply to increasingly desertified areas of earth surface.
Thank you! great discussion so far. Last night I attended Robert J. Klee's talk based on his paper "Searching for a New Deal on Climate? Look to the States." an article series from Clean Energy Finance Forum of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Yale School of Management. The talk was cosponsored by CT Audubon Society. link here: (https://www.cleanenergyfinanceforum.com/series/searching-for-new-deal-on-climate-look-to-the-states).
While he spoke of many of the issues you have discussed in Sacredheadwaters, including electrification, clean energy, partnering between states and business....in discussing the many states that are embracing up to 40 % clean energy by 2030 and 80 % by 2040....the focus lacked several important things I have been wondering about and wonder if you have researched them, Nick.
1. Wind Power - Klee (former commissioner of CT Dpt Energy and Environmental Protection) showed the great progress on offshore wind power systems along Ct and MA coast - and talked about how many many more will be built. There was no mention of the potential problems of this technology on bird migration patterns, on whale feeding grounds, on fish routes, on the noise leading to whale communication confusion and so on - not to mention sound pollution for humans, bird deaths and I am sure so much more.
2. the hydro questions already raised in this discussion
3. clean energy procurement - and the incentives to power companies etc was much discussed (though he did not dwell on nuclear power which has to be in the mix) - as was need to modernize electric grid discussed - but there was no discussion of the process of electrification of buildings - large urban buildings, individual homes - most of which rely on fossil fuels for heat, and cooking. What incentives for landlords and homeowners on a large scale in cities and country will it take to totally transform heat systems in the current building stock, as well as to legislate full electrification in all new building stock? .
4. And Yes - there was discussion of need to electrify transport grid - and individual cars - but not really about the massive incentives and perhaps legislation that will phase out all fossil fuel transport on a time scale that matches the sources of electricity supply. just for eg. a lot of people now who own and are quickly buying up (apparently) huge gas guzzling cars and trucks will likely keep them running for more than the mere 10 years up to 2030. Are we going to legislate removing them - I imagine we will be no more successful than trying to legislate removing guns. Are we going to close all gas stations and make gasoline unavailable for retail use any time soon? Are we going to stop taking up land and soil to make more "biofuel"so people can keep running their giant combustion engines on the roads?
5. in the Q and A , psychology and denial did come up - but we will have to go much further than overcoming denial about climate change - we will have to change people's minds on a huge scale about the role they should assign to their governments - including the role of a world body that will have to be co-ordinating efforts to "save the planet" ecosystems. This psychological/philosophical project is at least as daunting (it seems much more daunting to me) as the development of the technologies to go to zero carbon emission and to start the drawdown of carbon already built up in the atmosphere.
The newsletter is fantastic but I just made it through #3 so I am a bit behind. The articles and links to visuals are extremely informative... I have a lot of random thoughts about topics I would like to learn about. I like Jo and Harold's recommendations. Local issues tend to be easier for me to digest and I am trying to avoid national politics.
Obviously I like water related issues and want to get back into the policy side of water rights. As you know the Colorado River has loads of interesting water related issues but the Columbia River US-Canada treaty is up for renewal in 2024. It would be interesting to dive deeper into how these agreements are made and if climate change is discussed during the treaty renewal, the US-Canda relationship, upstream mines, dams, flood protection etc. The Columbia River treaty has been on my list to look into for over a year but the farthest I ever get is https://www.state.gov/columbia-river-treaty/. Maybe not the most climate change focused topic but still relevant to some of the issues such as water resources in a changing climate. What the allocation amounts are and whether they considered climate change or are over allocated.
Additionally, around here the conservation groups are driving me crazy because they have two opinions about the Hells Canyon hydro power complex on the Snake. A) it blocks fish migration, remove it asap, B) it is great clean energy, yay hydropower and I receive 50% of my energy from this complex. I am curious as to where we would get our energy from if the dams were removed and a little more about how "clean", clean energy actually is. If we changed our energy to wind, how long does that windmill need to be in place to offset its production? Similar question with solar power. I know there are loads of resources discussing this but there are also lots of blogs, and business advertisements to wade through.
On another random note, Idaho power keeps its cloud seeding project on the down-low. Apparently, as an experiment, they just released a lot of propane into the air. Anyways, cloud seeding is kind of interesting. I am not sure what states or countries use cloud seeding or what the ramifications are.
Thanks! I think maybe an issue focusing on frameworks for international cooperation in the face of climate change could fit into your Columbia River questions. Of course, in that specific case, we have two countries that are just burying their heads in the sand and trying to extract as much as they can while they still can... I'll look into it as international cooperation is for sure a key and extremely challenging piece of moving towards a sustainable civilization.
I could do a piece on large-scale hydro. I think on the margin, you're right that the issue is unclear -- the dam is already built. That said, large scale hydro is generally *not* considered clean or renewable at this point, and with good reason. It doesn't get talked about that much, but you may have noticed that most references to clean energy in media these days say "wind and solar" and purposefully do not say hydro. There are a lot of reasons for this, including but not limited to the previously not understood methane emissions from large reservoirs. I think the most compelling arguments against large scale hydro are holistic ones.
When you dam a river, you halt a huge number of earth systems -- cycles that ultimately affect human life, through atmospheric gas, through water availability, and more. I'll give two quick examples here because I find them both really fascinating. The lifecycle of salmon is incredibly important for our northwest forest ecosystems. Salmon spawn and die in headwaters and eagles spread their carcasses around. Nutrients they've collected in the ocean over their lifetimes are then left in the high elevation inland forests, allowing the forest to thrive. Here's one paper about it I find with a quick search, but lots more out there: https://phys.org/news/2011-03-links-forest-health-salmon-populations.html. So when you disrupt that with a dam, you're actually cutting a critical nutrient supply off for the forest, which in turn causes cascading effects. A less diverse and healthy forest means more soil erosion -- which means more mobilization of CO2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere. It also means less sequestering of CO2 by the healthy forest. This is one cycle that we understand pretty well -- there are many more, some that we know about and countless that we don't.
Here's another example that I thought was really cool: https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2019/10/23/wood-1/. Basically, mountain geomorphological processes send surface carbon and plant matter into rivers. Those rivers carry that to the ocean...where it ends up buried in sediment under the ocean floor.
It's not that any one of these processes is necessarily critically important for fighting climate change. But rivers are part of an unknowable number of natural cycles and processes that contribute to the conditions that keep us alive, and damming them interrupts those cycles.
I don't specifically know a lot about the Snake dams aside that there should be a ton of salmon migrating through there. But I will say that the hydro "clean energy" narrative has been and continues to be supported by massive PR campaigns. So while there's perhaps some truth, especially with an already constructed dam, to it being better from a carbon perspective than some other options, there's also a lot of deliberately misleading information out there. BC Hydro (a government-owned corporation) is incredibly guilty of this and it's awful. You can see this in messaging / marketing from Idaho Power, too -- they are all about their clean hydro.
I think your questions about how long it takes renewable infrastructure to offset production are important from a perspective of when we transition. Basically, we know that we need to be essentially 100% renewable by 2040-2050. But on the margins, when we should transition each power source over the next three decades will be different. So from a strict carbon perspective, your hesitation about replacing Idaho's hydro with wind/solar could be right. But there's a lot more going on than just GHG emissions from power generation. Ecosystem restoration -- and holistic watershed management -- can't really happen until the dams are removed, and those steps are key for increasing natural CO2 sequestration, for water and food security, and more. I'm inclined to land on the remove-the-dams-sooner side for those reasons, but they're a lot harder to directly quantify.
thank you for catching me on the 'clean' energy statement. Idaho power has been running ads saying how clean their hydropower is and I have heard it a lot from other groups. I don't think wind is as clean as it is advertised mostly because of some of Jo's answers. Also, I have questions about solar farms. They replace grass or sagebrush but overall increase the surface temperature. On a small scale that shouldn't matter but I would imagine it having an impact at a large scale. Geothermal is something I hear about a bit but I am not 100% sure how it works. So ya, energy would be interesting to learn a bit more about.
As dams come up for maintenance or age sometimes it makes more sense to remove them but what about currently operating, dams in good condition? Ideally it would be replaced by some other energy source but I think for dam removal to be on the table there needs to be numbers to compare keeping the dam, removal, and transition to other resources that include carbon footprint, costs and time. I am pro dam removal, but I don't think the save the fish argument will work for a lot of stakeholders.
These are just some ideas to discuss now and in the future newsletters and if you don't have time to respond with links that is ok. I appreciate the time you take to look into each topic but feel bad that I don't always do my research.
I won't dive in too far but I did want to mention something pretty neat I learned recently. No doubt, large-scale solar farms and wind farms play a role. But actually, one of the huge benefits of smaller-scale distributed generation is because of grid inefficiency. By decentralizing power production and reducing the distance electricity has to travel, we can actually save the majority of the current cost of electricity in the US. Exactly how much it saves depends where you are, but at least where Saul Griffith is in California (podcast link below), transmission costs are like $0.12 per kilowatt hour. More than half the cost of the electricity at the meter, and 4x the cost of producing solar on a roof-top. And when we're talking dollar amounts here -- we mean actual electricity that's lost, not just some abstract monetary value. It's a co-benefit that is -- in many cases -- probably bigger than the actual benefit of switching to solar, but it's one we can't accomplish with traditional power sources. There are other positive, non-GHG related co-benefits too -- less susceptibility to blackouts, lower administrative costs, etc. (https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/12/16/21024323/ezra-klein-show-saul-griffith-solve-climate-change?mc_cid=14bf578aff)
some local communities - eg. Berkeley have managed to bring in legislation to ban gas hook-ups in new construction. While there is push back from the real estate industry (eg. Cambridge) there is more progress in this area at the city level than I was aware of.
I'll chime in with my perspective here, too, which is likely to be a bit different.
On the one hand, I'm of course learning by putting these together -- it's forcing me to read more books, and to try to organize my thoughts in a consistent way.
On the other hand, I'm learning from conversations I'm having with all of you, generally outside Substack. There's a broad range of perspectives and attitudes.
Some of our conversations have been deeply personal, illuminating the sort of omni-present depression that many people who take these issues seriously suffer from. That's been sad, but it's also been inspiring. To hear how many people are already so far along in their thinking on these topics is really great. Tackling those psychological effects is a challenge, but it's also an opportunity to reframe action as finding a new, better way of life instead of fighting an old one.
Other of our conversations have made clear to me how far we have to go, and made me feel like this newsletter is a viable and valuable approach. There is a large segment of the population that "believes in climate change" (whatever that really means) and is acutely aware of the impacts of our ongoing global failure to act. But they're not aware of the myriad of other ecological issues we face. And they're not aware of the deep interconnection between all these biophysical problems and the social problems in our civilization. My goal here is to help draw that connection and to encourage everyone to ask more questions, because a reductive approach that fails to account for the entire system -- ecological and human -- will inevitably fail.
Hey Nick I like the newsletters and think this is indeed a valuable approach to getting more people to think and talk about climate change and biodiversity loss and all the factors involved. I like how you approach these issues with a holistic viewpoint. In my opinion the big shift to sustainability needs among many things a massive cultural shift. It would be awesome if there was more political leadership leading the charge but it seems to be lacking (maybe theres some examples to prove otherwise, i'll admit I don't pay much attention to politics). So maybe not only as individuals but more importantly as communities we can make changes where we live in our community systems (more local food sourcing, promoting local activities to discourage so much air travel, etc.) Anyways enough ranting.. I'd love to see some newsletters telling us how we can make or affect change in our communities to become more sustainable. Basically how can we get a bunch of people who care about the future of our planet to get on board on achievable goals for our community.. And maybe some examples of other places where this may be happening. Cheers dude and hope to paddle with you again soon!
Thanks Harold! Definitely interested in doing a piece on local government sustainability efforts. There are some inspiring examples out there, I'll have to do some more research. Squamish Council is talking a big game about these strategies right now but their actions speak otherwise, unfortunately.
Nick, I am learning a huge amount from your newsletter, the sources recommended and especially the discussions. thank you.
One topic I was wondering about as a possible future newsletter would be water including a discussion on rivers. Damming rivers, controlling flow etc has long been a technique of generating "sustainable" power but has caused so many other environmental problems. I know that vast reservoirs are terrible evaporators and hence endanger water supplies even as they are meant to save water, and that some dams are being dismantled to regenerate river health. But I would be curious to learn more about the science of rivers, the future of the world's water, what it means that more of the world's water will be freed from ice into the sea even as land masses lose their supplies of water due to melting snowcaps. And would like to know more about the science of water conservation and use and projections of managing water supply to increasingly desertified areas of earth surface.
Thank you! great discussion so far. Last night I attended Robert J. Klee's talk based on his paper "Searching for a New Deal on Climate? Look to the States." an article series from Clean Energy Finance Forum of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Yale School of Management. The talk was cosponsored by CT Audubon Society. link here: (https://www.cleanenergyfinanceforum.com/series/searching-for-new-deal-on-climate-look-to-the-states).
While he spoke of many of the issues you have discussed in Sacredheadwaters, including electrification, clean energy, partnering between states and business....in discussing the many states that are embracing up to 40 % clean energy by 2030 and 80 % by 2040....the focus lacked several important things I have been wondering about and wonder if you have researched them, Nick.
1. Wind Power - Klee (former commissioner of CT Dpt Energy and Environmental Protection) showed the great progress on offshore wind power systems along Ct and MA coast - and talked about how many many more will be built. There was no mention of the potential problems of this technology on bird migration patterns, on whale feeding grounds, on fish routes, on the noise leading to whale communication confusion and so on - not to mention sound pollution for humans, bird deaths and I am sure so much more.
2. the hydro questions already raised in this discussion
3. clean energy procurement - and the incentives to power companies etc was much discussed (though he did not dwell on nuclear power which has to be in the mix) - as was need to modernize electric grid discussed - but there was no discussion of the process of electrification of buildings - large urban buildings, individual homes - most of which rely on fossil fuels for heat, and cooking. What incentives for landlords and homeowners on a large scale in cities and country will it take to totally transform heat systems in the current building stock, as well as to legislate full electrification in all new building stock? .
4. And Yes - there was discussion of need to electrify transport grid - and individual cars - but not really about the massive incentives and perhaps legislation that will phase out all fossil fuel transport on a time scale that matches the sources of electricity supply. just for eg. a lot of people now who own and are quickly buying up (apparently) huge gas guzzling cars and trucks will likely keep them running for more than the mere 10 years up to 2030. Are we going to legislate removing them - I imagine we will be no more successful than trying to legislate removing guns. Are we going to close all gas stations and make gasoline unavailable for retail use any time soon? Are we going to stop taking up land and soil to make more "biofuel"so people can keep running their giant combustion engines on the roads?
5. in the Q and A , psychology and denial did come up - but we will have to go much further than overcoming denial about climate change - we will have to change people's minds on a huge scale about the role they should assign to their governments - including the role of a world body that will have to be co-ordinating efforts to "save the planet" ecosystems. This psychological/philosophical project is at least as daunting (it seems much more daunting to me) as the development of the technologies to go to zero carbon emission and to start the drawdown of carbon already built up in the atmosphere.
The newsletter is fantastic but I just made it through #3 so I am a bit behind. The articles and links to visuals are extremely informative... I have a lot of random thoughts about topics I would like to learn about. I like Jo and Harold's recommendations. Local issues tend to be easier for me to digest and I am trying to avoid national politics.
Obviously I like water related issues and want to get back into the policy side of water rights. As you know the Colorado River has loads of interesting water related issues but the Columbia River US-Canada treaty is up for renewal in 2024. It would be interesting to dive deeper into how these agreements are made and if climate change is discussed during the treaty renewal, the US-Canda relationship, upstream mines, dams, flood protection etc. The Columbia River treaty has been on my list to look into for over a year but the farthest I ever get is https://www.state.gov/columbia-river-treaty/. Maybe not the most climate change focused topic but still relevant to some of the issues such as water resources in a changing climate. What the allocation amounts are and whether they considered climate change or are over allocated.
Additionally, around here the conservation groups are driving me crazy because they have two opinions about the Hells Canyon hydro power complex on the Snake. A) it blocks fish migration, remove it asap, B) it is great clean energy, yay hydropower and I receive 50% of my energy from this complex. I am curious as to where we would get our energy from if the dams were removed and a little more about how "clean", clean energy actually is. If we changed our energy to wind, how long does that windmill need to be in place to offset its production? Similar question with solar power. I know there are loads of resources discussing this but there are also lots of blogs, and business advertisements to wade through.
On another random note, Idaho power keeps its cloud seeding project on the down-low. Apparently, as an experiment, they just released a lot of propane into the air. Anyways, cloud seeding is kind of interesting. I am not sure what states or countries use cloud seeding or what the ramifications are.
Thanks! I think maybe an issue focusing on frameworks for international cooperation in the face of climate change could fit into your Columbia River questions. Of course, in that specific case, we have two countries that are just burying their heads in the sand and trying to extract as much as they can while they still can... I'll look into it as international cooperation is for sure a key and extremely challenging piece of moving towards a sustainable civilization.
I could do a piece on large-scale hydro. I think on the margin, you're right that the issue is unclear -- the dam is already built. That said, large scale hydro is generally *not* considered clean or renewable at this point, and with good reason. It doesn't get talked about that much, but you may have noticed that most references to clean energy in media these days say "wind and solar" and purposefully do not say hydro. There are a lot of reasons for this, including but not limited to the previously not understood methane emissions from large reservoirs. I think the most compelling arguments against large scale hydro are holistic ones.
When you dam a river, you halt a huge number of earth systems -- cycles that ultimately affect human life, through atmospheric gas, through water availability, and more. I'll give two quick examples here because I find them both really fascinating. The lifecycle of salmon is incredibly important for our northwest forest ecosystems. Salmon spawn and die in headwaters and eagles spread their carcasses around. Nutrients they've collected in the ocean over their lifetimes are then left in the high elevation inland forests, allowing the forest to thrive. Here's one paper about it I find with a quick search, but lots more out there: https://phys.org/news/2011-03-links-forest-health-salmon-populations.html. So when you disrupt that with a dam, you're actually cutting a critical nutrient supply off for the forest, which in turn causes cascading effects. A less diverse and healthy forest means more soil erosion -- which means more mobilization of CO2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere. It also means less sequestering of CO2 by the healthy forest. This is one cycle that we understand pretty well -- there are many more, some that we know about and countless that we don't.
Here's another example that I thought was really cool: https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2019/10/23/wood-1/. Basically, mountain geomorphological processes send surface carbon and plant matter into rivers. Those rivers carry that to the ocean...where it ends up buried in sediment under the ocean floor.
It's not that any one of these processes is necessarily critically important for fighting climate change. But rivers are part of an unknowable number of natural cycles and processes that contribute to the conditions that keep us alive, and damming them interrupts those cycles.
I don't specifically know a lot about the Snake dams aside that there should be a ton of salmon migrating through there. But I will say that the hydro "clean energy" narrative has been and continues to be supported by massive PR campaigns. So while there's perhaps some truth, especially with an already constructed dam, to it being better from a carbon perspective than some other options, there's also a lot of deliberately misleading information out there. BC Hydro (a government-owned corporation) is incredibly guilty of this and it's awful. You can see this in messaging / marketing from Idaho Power, too -- they are all about their clean hydro.
I think your questions about how long it takes renewable infrastructure to offset production are important from a perspective of when we transition. Basically, we know that we need to be essentially 100% renewable by 2040-2050. But on the margins, when we should transition each power source over the next three decades will be different. So from a strict carbon perspective, your hesitation about replacing Idaho's hydro with wind/solar could be right. But there's a lot more going on than just GHG emissions from power generation. Ecosystem restoration -- and holistic watershed management -- can't really happen until the dams are removed, and those steps are key for increasing natural CO2 sequestration, for water and food security, and more. I'm inclined to land on the remove-the-dams-sooner side for those reasons, but they're a lot harder to directly quantify.
thank you for catching me on the 'clean' energy statement. Idaho power has been running ads saying how clean their hydropower is and I have heard it a lot from other groups. I don't think wind is as clean as it is advertised mostly because of some of Jo's answers. Also, I have questions about solar farms. They replace grass or sagebrush but overall increase the surface temperature. On a small scale that shouldn't matter but I would imagine it having an impact at a large scale. Geothermal is something I hear about a bit but I am not 100% sure how it works. So ya, energy would be interesting to learn a bit more about.
As dams come up for maintenance or age sometimes it makes more sense to remove them but what about currently operating, dams in good condition? Ideally it would be replaced by some other energy source but I think for dam removal to be on the table there needs to be numbers to compare keeping the dam, removal, and transition to other resources that include carbon footprint, costs and time. I am pro dam removal, but I don't think the save the fish argument will work for a lot of stakeholders.
These are just some ideas to discuss now and in the future newsletters and if you don't have time to respond with links that is ok. I appreciate the time you take to look into each topic but feel bad that I don't always do my research.
I won't dive in too far but I did want to mention something pretty neat I learned recently. No doubt, large-scale solar farms and wind farms play a role. But actually, one of the huge benefits of smaller-scale distributed generation is because of grid inefficiency. By decentralizing power production and reducing the distance electricity has to travel, we can actually save the majority of the current cost of electricity in the US. Exactly how much it saves depends where you are, but at least where Saul Griffith is in California (podcast link below), transmission costs are like $0.12 per kilowatt hour. More than half the cost of the electricity at the meter, and 4x the cost of producing solar on a roof-top. And when we're talking dollar amounts here -- we mean actual electricity that's lost, not just some abstract monetary value. It's a co-benefit that is -- in many cases -- probably bigger than the actual benefit of switching to solar, but it's one we can't accomplish with traditional power sources. There are other positive, non-GHG related co-benefits too -- less susceptibility to blackouts, lower administrative costs, etc. (https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/12/16/21024323/ezra-klein-show-saul-griffith-solve-climate-change?mc_cid=14bf578aff)
I have just discovered an article in Wednesday, Feb. 4th NYTimes Business Section about building electrification. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/business/all-electric-green-development.html?searchResultPosition=1)
some local communities - eg. Berkeley have managed to bring in legislation to ban gas hook-ups in new construction. While there is push back from the real estate industry (eg. Cambridge) there is more progress in this area at the city level than I was aware of.