The election results have many of us contemplating how we should respond, personally and professionally. I don’t have it all figured out, but here are some early thoughts.

November 8 notwithstanding, Americans strongly favor renewable energy and energy efficiency over fossil fuels and nuclear power. Opinion surveys demonstrate that quite clearly. Furthermore, surveys show that the more people know about things like wind power, solar, LEDs and electric cars, the more they prefer them over things that are hazardous to our planetary and bodily health. So whatever else it was, the election was not a referendum on energy issues.

But you know that the stakes are high. President Obama’s science advisor John Holdren says that when it comes to climate change, we are going to have a mix of mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. The more we do in terms of mitigation, the less adaptation we’ll have to do and the less suffering we’ll have to endure.

When it comes to mitigation, which means shifting from hydrocarbons to zero emission energy, I often think about a triangle with one side being technology, a second being public policy, and a third being markets. Regarding technology, our organization is not one of those that builds better mousetraps. We leave that to many others. Thankfully there are engineers and scientists making new gizmos all the time that make keeping the beer cold, showers hot, and getting from point A to point B cheaper and cleaner. You may have seen this graph showing the dramatic reductions in costs for wind power, solar, LED lightbulbs and lithium-ion batteries.

The election will delay progress, but the transition from fossil fuels to zero-emission energy is going to happen.

The election will delay progress, but the transition from fossil fuels to zero-emission energy is going to happen.

Clearly, we need good policy, but for the next four years, we are not going to get that from the White House. We should all start with the assumption that the next administration will take actions to increase fossil fuel extraction and consumption. Congress will go along and the Supreme Court will too. Advocates for clean energy will do their best legislatively and in the courts, but things are going to get worse before they can get better insofar as our federal government is concerned.

While we have every right to fret about the White House, policy at the state and local levels have helped greatly to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. Massachusetts and Rhode Island are widely recognized as among the leaders. And we have plenty of great stories to tell about how cities and towns are stepping up and showing us what can be done locally.

More must be done. We can march on Washington, but also lobby at the state and local levels. We’ve been doing that since 1982, we are not going to stop and with your help, we will do more.

The nonprofit sector has been instrumental in bringing about all kinds of progressive change in this country, especially in the energy field. Nonprofits generate many of the good policy ideas and mobilize citizens to demand that those ideas be put into effect. We can play both offense and defense, whatever the situation calls for. And moreover, while politicians and businesses come and go, many nonprofits are more resilient. Think about the venerable Sierra Club, or the Conservation Law Foundation, and our organization, which was founded in 1982. And think about super-effective, relatively new additions to the cause like Mothers Out Front.

If you look at our particular organizational financials, you will see that we are not receiving any federal funds these days. Over the course of our 34 years, almost all of our income has come from people like you, folks who pay for an energy service. This makes us built to last and outlast.

This nonprofit has always been involved in the markets, helping consumers find ways to meet energy needs more sensibly. Our niche has been consumer aggregation. We band together and get better information, prices and suppliers. So while the next administration tries every which way to make things easier for coal, oil, and gas companies, we still have the right to choose where our energy comes from. Instead of buying fracked methane to light up our incandescents, we buy wind power to make our LEDs shine. Instead of buying gas guzzlers, we can buy affordable electric cars. He can’t stop us.

I’m not naïve enough to suggest that nonprofits can offset an administration intent on scrapping the Clean Power Plan, wiping out the EPA, building Keystone, and digging more coal. But I do think we can make things a helluva a lot better than if we didn’t exist. The transition will happen faster and the suffering will be less if we stay in the game rather than give up.

If you agree with me, want to learn more, or have ideas on how we can do better, please come to our 34th annual meeting on December 7. It just so happens that our featured speaker is perfect for this moment we find ourselves in. Greg Watson is a remarkable guy. He’s a strategic organizer who has spent the past 45 years designing and implementing social “trimtabs”, working primarily in the areas of food, energy and community development. What’s a trimtab? Greg frequently invokes these words of Buckminister Fuller:

“Something hit me very hard once, thinking about one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary – the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing on the edge of the rudder called a trim-tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving that little trim-tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim-tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether…the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me Trimtab.”

People can be trimtabs. Nonprofits can be trimtabs. Nonprofits organizing lots of people to be trimtabs seems to be a good idea. So we’re going to do that and you can join us. Come to our annual meeting, listen to Greg and become a trimtab: