{"id":53942,"date":"2025-08-08T22:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T22:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/53942\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T22:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T22:25:12","slug":"can-solar-energy-save-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/53942\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Solar Energy Save Us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Activism<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n August 7, 2025<\/p>\n

Bill McKibben\u2019s new book argues that sun power can displace fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

Ad Policy<\/a><\/p>\n

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An aerial view of the CGN Delingha Solar Thermal Plant, a 50 megawatt energy storage project, on April 15, 2025 in Qinghai province, China.<\/p>\n

(Ma Mingyan\/China News Service \/ VCG via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\"CoveringThis story is part of Covering Climate Now<\/a>, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation strengthening coverage of the climate story.<\/p>\n

No journalist has covered the climate story longer or better than Bill McKibben. In 1989, as a 27-year-old staff writer at The New Yorker, he published the first mass-market book on the subject, The End of Nature. Since then, he has reported from around the world, covering all aspects of the issue\u2014science, economics, politics, ethics\u2014with an output other writers can\u2019t help but envy. He has done his share of calling out the fossil fuel chieftains and their government and financial enablers, but he has also paid special attention to the scientists, activists, and other civil society representatives pushing against climate breakdown.<\/p>\n

Indeed, almost 20 years ago, McKibben did something traditional journalists frown upon: He became an activist himself. With some of his students at Middlebury College in Vermont, he formed 350.org, a group named after the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide known to be compatible with civilization as we know it. When 350.org was founded in 2008, Earth\u2019s atmosphere contained 385 parts per million of CO2. Today, it\u2019s 427 ppm\u2014the highest in at least 3 million years\u2014and rising fast.<\/p>\n

In his new book, Here Comes the Sun, McKibben wears both his journalist and activist hats. His core argument is that the sun\u2019s rays, transformed into electricity, might still help humanity to escape the worst of climate change. It won\u2019t be easy, but shifting from fossil fuels to solar energy fast enough \u201cto stay on anything like a survivable path\u201d is \u201con the bleeding edge of the technically possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

That path, scientists have said, requires slashing emissions by half over the next five years. That could happen, McKibben suggests, because of a game-changing but underappreciated economic development. \u201cSometime in the early part of the 2020s,\u201d he writes, civilization \u201ccrossed an invisible line where the cost of producing energy from the sun dropped below the cost of fossil fuel. That\u2019s not yet common knowledge\u201d\u2014mainly because \u201cso much of [the solar revolution] is taking place in China\u201d\u2014but it makes a rapid, global phase out of fossil fuels not just technically possible but economically advantageous.<\/p>\n

But if economics now favor solar, politics remain a towering challenge. The entrenched interests behind fossil fuels intend to burn \u201cevery last molecule of oil and gas\u201d beneath the earth\u2019s crust, Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, said in 2024. So, citizen activism, McKibben adds, remains imperative.<\/p>\n

All this and more makes Here Comes the Sun an essential read for anyone interested in where the climate story is heading. McKibben\u2019s reporting is thorough and thought-provoking. He investigates a number of concerns about solar\u2014are there enough raw materials and land to produce all the panels and electricity needed?\u2014and concludes that such concerns are overstated. (More solar will indeed mean more mining for lithium and other minerals, he notes, but it will also put a halt to the vastly greater amount of mining for coal, gas, and oil.)<\/p>\n

For journalists, Here Comes the Sun proffers a cornucopia of story ideas and a bracing re-evaluation of the future of the climate fight. It refutes the notion that society can\u2019t afford to stop burning fossil fuels, while emphasizing that the decisive question is how quickly those fuels get left behind. \u201cI have little doubt we will run the world on sun and wind 40 years from now,\u201d McKibben writes, \u201cbut if it takes us anything like 40 years to get there, then it will be a broken planet; our energy sources will hardly matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this moment of crisis, we need a unified, progressive opposition to Donald Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019re starting to see one take shape in the streets and at ballot boxes across the country: from New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani\u2019s campaign focused on affordability, to communities protecting their neighbors from ICE, to the senators opposing arms shipments to Israel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Democratic Party has an urgent choice to make: Will it embrace a politics that is principled and popular, or will it continue to insist on losing elections with the out-of-touch elites and consultants that got us here?\u00a0<\/p>\n

At The Nation, we know which side we\u2019re on. Every day, we make the case for a more democratic and equal world by championing progressive leaders, lifting up movements fighting for justice, and exposing the oligarchs and corporations profiting at the expense of us all. Our independent journalism informs and empowers progressives across the country and helps bring this politics to new readers ready to join the fight.<\/p>\n

We need your help to continue this work. Will you donate to support The Nation\u2019s independent journalism? Every contribution goes to our award-winning reporting, analysis, and commentary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thank you for helping us take on Trump and build the just society we know is possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sincerely,\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bhaskar Sunkara\u00a0
President, The Nation<\/p>\n

Mark Hertsgaard<\/a><\/p>\n

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Mark Hertsgaard is the environment correspondent of The Nation and the executive director of the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now<\/a>. His new book is Big Red\u2019s Mercy:\u00a0 The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and A Story of Race in America<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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