{"id":234490,"date":"2025-12-15T19:55:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T19:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/234490\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T19:55:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T19:55:11","slug":"one-big-shining-beacon-for-climate-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/234490\/","title":{"rendered":"One Big, Shining Beacon for Climate Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

From our collaborating partner \u201cLiving on Earth,\u201d public radio\u2019s environmental news magazine<\/a>, an interview by host Steve Curwood with author and climate activist Bill McKibben.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In September 1989, along with a poem from John Updike and fiction from Muriel Spark, the New Yorker published an article titled \u201cThe End of Nature<\/a>,\u201d about the rise of greenhouse gases and the warming Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was penned by a writer in his late 20s named Bill McKibben, and he has been telling that story and calling us to action pretty much ever since. McKibben is a leading environmental activist on climate change and nature, and helped found the global grassroots climate campaign 350.org<\/a>, as well as Third Act, which organizes people over 60 for action on climate and justice issues. He\u2019s also written 20 books, starting with \u201cThe End of Nature<\/a>\u201d and most recently, \u201cHere Comes the Sun<\/a>.\u201d This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

STEVE CURWOOD: Is this book a more optimistic take on this world than your first book, \u201cThe End of Nature\u201d?<\/p>\n

MCKIBBEN: Optimism may not be exactly the right word. The things that we were warning about in \u201cThe End of Nature\u201d almost 40 years ago have happened. The planet is now warming fast. The scientists were absolutely right. We face an endless series of disasters that will get worse. This is the main legacy of our moment on Earth so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as of the last three or four years, we finally have a tool, not at this point to stop global warming\u2014it\u2019s too late for that\u2014but perhaps to at least shave some tenths of a degree off how hot the planet gets. And that tool is cheap energy from the sun and the wind and the batteries to store that power when the sun goes down or the wind drops. Alternative energy is the common sense, obvious, straightforward way to make power on this planet, which is why 95 percent of new generating capacity around planet Earth last year came from these clean sources.<\/p>\n

CURWOOD: The key point in \u201cHere Comes the Sun\u201d is that we have all that we need to arrest this progression of climate disruption, at least have it be functional enough for our civilization. What inspired you to write this book?<\/p>\n

MCKIBBEN: Mostly because I felt like I had a scoop. I\u2019m an old journalist at heart. I do this newsletter every week on Substack called The Crucial Years<\/a>, which, I think because it\u2019s free, has turned into the largest newsletter of its kind around climate and energy and the environment. It means that I get to keep track of all the things that are happening on a weekly basis around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ClimateClimate activist Bill McKibben. Credit: Storyworkz<\/p>\n

About 36 months ago, if you were paying attention, you couldn\u2019t help but notice this sudden spike beginning. We\u2019d finally hit the steep part of the S curve. All of a sudden there were stories coming in from around the world, especially, it must be said, China, which is providing the leadership here, and which is doing things on an almost inconceivable scale. In May, the Chinese were building three gigawatts of solar panels a day. A gigawatt is the rough equivalent of a big coal-fired power plant. They were putting up one of those out of solar panels every eight hours. This is like building the pyramids or something, the scale at which this is going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are similar stories from many corners of the world, and they just keep coming. In Australia, they\u2019ve built so much solar power that the government has now decided that electricity will be free for all Australians for three hours every afternoon. Human beings for 700,000 years have worked hard to get energy for our lives if it meant collecting firewood, if it meant paying your electric bill. Now you don\u2019t have to do that anymore, at least if you\u2019re in a place that\u2019s had the foresight to build the solar panels and the wind turbines.<\/p>\n

CURWOOD: How will a transition to solar power address global inequality and the disparities that exist in the developing world, in parts of our country as well, many of which came to be because of the fossil fuel industry?<\/p>\n

MCKIBBEN: As long as you rely on a source of power that\u2019s only available in a few places, the people who control those places will end up with inordinate wealth and power. John D. Rockefeller, the first plutocrat, was the first guy to recognize that. His heirs include Vladimir Putin, who\u2019s using his winnings to run a land war in Europe. They include the Koch brothers, our biggest oil and gas refiners and pipeline suppliers, who use their winnings to systematically undermine our democracy. They include the king of Saudi Arabia, who likes to cut up journalists like you and me with saws.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The world on the other side of this is very different, because there\u2019s sun and wind everywhere, for everyone, and it works best toward the equator. So this is perhaps even a way to start rebalancing a little bit of this North-South division. If you\u2019re in the 80 percent of humanity that lives in countries that have to import fossil fuel, this couldn\u2019t be really better news, because once you\u2019ve paid the money to build your solar panel or your wind turbine, then you no longer have to come up with American money to buy the next tanker load full of oil.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pakistanis, mostly working by themselves, without government help, have put up so many solar panels in the last few years that the Pakistani government last month canceled the delivery of 27 huge cargo loads full of liquefied natural gas from Qatar. They had to pay a penalty, but it was cheaper to pay the penalty than to import this gas that they didn\u2019t need anymore because now they\u2019ve got lots of solar panels.<\/p>\n

CURWOOD: So we have enough money on the planet to make the transition that\u2019s required to really put the brakes on this advance towards climate disruption. What\u2019s keeping folks from providing the resources for poor fossil fuel-trapped countries from making the full transition right away?<\/p>\n

MCKIBBEN: To some degree, it\u2019s really starting to happen, and it\u2019s happening with Chinese financing and Chinese technology. The Chinese exported half again as much worth of green tech last year as America did of oil and gas. The force that\u2019s slowing down all of this, of course, is the fossil fuel industry, which understands this good news for everybody else as the worst possible news for its future prospects, and they have trillions of dollars worth of hydrocarbons in the ground at today\u2019s market prices that they would like to get out and sell for trillions of dollars, which they won\u2019t be able to do if we\u2019re busily converting to sun, wind, to EVs, and heat pumps. So they\u2019re doing everything they possibly can<\/a> to stop that transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In our country, where their work is the most advanced, that meant when Donald Trump asked them for a billion dollars in campaign donations last year, they came up with about half a billion in donations and advertising and lobbying in the last election cycle, and that was enough to convince the president to shut down wind farms off the coast of New England that were 80 percent complete, or put the kibosh on huge solar farm in Nevada that by itself would have powered 2 million homes, more than 1 percent of American homes. We can\u2019t have this stuff that the rest of the world is busily building because our oil and gas industry has corrupted our president\u2014not that that was a very hard task\u2014and so now we get to pretend that climate change isn\u2019t real, that green energy doesn\u2019t work and that we\u2019re somehow all going to go back and inhabit the 1950s again.<\/p>\n

CURWOOD: Why is it that people are acting this stupid? Let\u2019s be blunt.<\/p>\n

MCKIBBEN: All transitions are hard and they involve change, and our species doesn\u2019t deal particularly well with change. And in this case, we\u2019ve had 35 years of a full-on disinformation campaign from the fossil fuel industry about climate change, about alternative energy, all designed to drive home the idea that only the way that we\u2019re doing things now could possibly work. And that\u2019s sunk in with too many people, especially in this country, but the rest of the world is quickly shaking off that habit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You could tell watching the climate talks this year in Bel\u00e9m, Brazil, that people are sort of moving past the U.S., like we\u2019re sort of receding into the rearview mirror. It\u2019s becoming clearer and clearer where the future lies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As patriotic Americans, that should upset us. These technologies were all invented in the U.S. The first solar cell in 1954 at Bell Labs in New Jersey. The first industrial wind turbine in 1941 at Grandpa\u2019s Knob in Vermont. We could have owned these technologies, and instead, we\u2019ve just ceded them to our theoretical main rival on this planet. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s been an act of national self sabotage quite like this that I can think of anywhere in human history.<\/p>\n

CURWOOD: \u201cHere Comes the Sun\u201d is a handbook for people who are trying to wrap their heads around this notion that, \u201cHey, it really does make a lot of sense to make the transition away from fossil fuel and will be better for us.\u201d It\u2019s not just, I think you use the term, the Whole Foods of energy, that so-called alternative energy. No, this is the main game.<\/p>\n

MCKIBBEN: This is the Costco of energy, man\u2014cheap, available in bulk, on the shelf, ready to go.<\/p>\n

This story is funded by readers like you.<\/p>\n

Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.<\/p>\n

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CURWOOD: How is this book doing? To what extent are people grabbing this and saying, \u201cOh, my goodness, this really is possible to make a change?\u201d<\/p>\n

MCKIBBEN: It\u2019s doing well. It\u2019s been fun. We use it as a kind of organizing vehicle for this thing in September that we called Sun Day, not Earth Day, but Sun Day. We had 500 events across the country; people are waking up, and I think that they\u2019ll wake up more as the next year goes on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My guess is that one of the two or three key issues for the midterm elections, on which all attention will be focused, are going to be electricity prices, which are soaring<\/a>, as you would expect, because we\u2019re permitting every data center that anyone could ever want to build at exactly the same moment that we\u2019re constricting the supply of sun and wind. You don\u2019t need to be a Nobel Prize-winning economist to know that when you increase demand and decrease supply, prices are going to rise, and that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThis is the Costco of energy, man\u2014cheap, available in bulk, on the shelf, ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

CURWOOD: Anything you want to add to our discussion?<\/p>\n

MCKIBBEN: We\u2019ve talked about the economic necessity of doing this and the climate urgency of doing this, but there\u2019s also just a certain amount of beauty that comes with it. When we were getting ready to do Sun Day, one of the things we did was make a playlist of all the songs about the sun. Obviously, I stole the title of my book from George Harrison; \u201cHere Comes the Sun\u201d is the most listened-to Beatles song on the world\u2019s streaming services. There were hundreds of songs to choose from, which, by the way, is hundreds more than if you tried to compile a playlist of great songs about fracking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The reason is that humans have a deep, deep connection to the sun. We don\u2019t really know how prehistoric people thought, but all the piles of stone they left behind, like Stonehenge, point towards the equinox or the solstice. As soon as people were in the business of making myths, the first thing they had to explain was how the sun rose over here, set over here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was in Rome in September with the new pope, who had summoned people for a conference on the 10th Anniversary of Pope Francis\u2019s epic encyclical on global warming. The new pope said, \u201cYes, we\u2019re going to continue this work that Francis set us on. In fact, next year, the Vatican will become the first fully solar-powered nation on Earth, when they flip the switch on this big new solar farm they\u2019re finishing up outside Rome.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When it was my turn for my remarks, I just said, \u201cI think this is fantastic. Let\u2019s henceforth concentrate on energy from Heaven, not from Hell.\u201d I think that\u2019s a useful mantra for the period ahead.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAbout This Story<\/p>\n

Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That\u2019s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can\u2019t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We\u2019ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.<\/p>\n

Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.<\/p>\n

Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don\u2019t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places? <\/p>\n

Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.<\/p>\n

Thank you,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From our collaborating partner \u201cLiving on Earth,\u201d public radio\u2019s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[18,440,19,17,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-234490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115725345049596904","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}