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Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization
From the acclaimed environmentalist, a call to harness the power of the sun and rewrite our scientific, economic, and political future.
Our climate, and our democracy, are melting down. But Bill McKibben, one of the first to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, insists the moment is also full of possibility. Energy from the sun and wind is suddenly the cheapest power on the planet and growing faster than any energy source in history—if we can keep accelerating the pace, we have a chance.
Here Comes the Sun tells the story of the sudden spike in power from the sun and wind—and the desperate fight of the fossil fuel industry and their politicians to hold this new power at bay. From the everyday citizens who installed solar panels equal to a third of Pakistan’s electric grid in a year to the world’s sixth-largest economy—California—nearly halving its use of natural gas in the last two years, Bill McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy. And he shows how solar power is more than just a path out of the climate crisis: it is a chance to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. You can’t hoard solar energy or hold it in reserves—it’s available to all.
There’s no guarantee we can make this change in time, but there is a hope—in McKibben’s eyes, our best hope for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.
Our climate, and our democracy, are melting down. But Bill McKibben, one of the first to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, insists the moment is also full of possibility. Energy from the sun and wind is suddenly the cheapest power on the planet and growing faster than any energy source in history—if we can keep accelerating the pace, we have a chance.
Here Comes the Sun tells the story of the sudden spike in power from the sun and wind—and the desperate fight of the fossil fuel industry and their politicians to hold this new power at bay. From the everyday citizens who installed solar panels equal to a third of Pakistan’s electric grid in a year to the world’s sixth-largest economy—California—nearly halving its use of natural gas in the last two years, Bill McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy. And he shows how solar power is more than just a path out of the climate crisis: it is a chance to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. You can’t hoard solar energy or hold it in reserves—it’s available to all.
There’s no guarantee we can make this change in time, but there is a hope—in McKibben’s eyes, our best hope for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published August 19, 2025
About the author
Bill McKibben
218 books872 followersBill McKibben is the author of Eaarth, The End of Nature, Deep Economy, Enough, Fight Global Warming Now, The Bill McKibben Reader, and numerous other books. He is the founder of the environmental organizations Step It Up and 350.org, and was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warming. In 2010 The Boston Globe called him "probably the nation's leading environmentalist," and Time magazine has called him "the world's best green journalist." He studied at Harvard, and started his writing career as a staff writer at The New Yorker. The End of Nature, his first book, was published in 1989 and was regarded as the first book on climate change for a general audience. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. He has been awarded Guggenheim Fellowship and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and their daughter.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/billmc...
http://us.macmillan.com/author/billmc...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 248 reviews
August 23, 2025
September 21, Sun Day:
https://www.sunday.earth/
Okay, I'm not usually pushy about these things, but you have to read this book. YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK. It's about the future of the planet and humans and is actually potentially hopeful! I know that most people do not want to read about climate change and the steady destruction of the planet. It's avoidance; we do enough doom-scrolling already, maybe? We know this point the title makes, we're already convinced about renewables, and we see what our government is doing to almost single-handedly destroy the environment (again), including taking away subsidies for wind and solar power so we can continue to give unlimited corporate welfare to oil and gas, as always (which is a bipartisan scheme). So no need to read it, right? Wrong.
So why read it?
*It's short, and you can even listen to it already if you choose.
*It urges us to go all in on solar and wind and shows us many countries are now completely on board. It's become affordable and easy to get up and running and it's not too late. Yes, a lot of damage has been done and will continue to be done, but some reversal can happen! I have read several books by McKibben and others about how it is almost too late to act, especially as there has been very little response to the crisis in the US, but this one is not just STOP burning fossil fuels (which we do need to do) but Go with renewables. THIS is by far McKibben's MOST POSITIVE WORK, in spite of 47 and his denialist paid fossil fuel spokesmen. Terrible climate damage and denialism is happening here, no question, but good things are happening in spite of 47 and his no only damage congress. I was about ready to give up and this book kicked me in the rear to major activism on this issue.
* China is the unquestioned world leader in shifting to renewables, making millions of solar panels. You remember those pics of smoky Beijing from a decade ago? Gone, already raising the life expectancy rate there by two years in less than a decade! And China is also transforming Pakistan and so many other countries while we largely look away. But not all of us are looking away. And many countries like Germany have shifted significantly, and fast!
*McKibben makes the best and clearest case for solar I have yet seen, and makes it exciting, because it IS happening in many places and IS also possible on a grand global scale. It has in the past couple years become the cheapest and safest and simplest way to go, and did I say renewable, meaning it doesn't have to be burned like coal or gas. No waste, no downside! Except for the guys from the fossil fuel industry who will lose their federal welfare and the opportunity to pillage other countries (see Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow, which I have also reviewed here).
*Get this: The US National Coal Museum is now powered by solar panels, saving them 10k a year.
*One sad memory he recounts for me. Jimmy Carter, that much ridiculed and most humane president, wrote an articulate defense of Solar Power and when he was President he had solar panels put on the White House. When Reagan got elected he tore the panels down, insisting that the panels did not send a "good message" to the All-Important Fossil Fuel industries, and of course they have never been up since.
*The last part of the book looks at the long cultural and spiritual connections the world always had had to the sun.
Okay, this might not quite be a 5 star environmental book, but it is important, accessible, well reasearched, with stories based in numerous countries and local sites. Read it!
https://www.sunday.earth/
Okay, I'm not usually pushy about these things, but you have to read this book. YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK. It's about the future of the planet and humans and is actually potentially hopeful! I know that most people do not want to read about climate change and the steady destruction of the planet. It's avoidance; we do enough doom-scrolling already, maybe? We know this point the title makes, we're already convinced about renewables, and we see what our government is doing to almost single-handedly destroy the environment (again), including taking away subsidies for wind and solar power so we can continue to give unlimited corporate welfare to oil and gas, as always (which is a bipartisan scheme). So no need to read it, right? Wrong.
So why read it?
*It's short, and you can even listen to it already if you choose.
*It urges us to go all in on solar and wind and shows us many countries are now completely on board. It's become affordable and easy to get up and running and it's not too late. Yes, a lot of damage has been done and will continue to be done, but some reversal can happen! I have read several books by McKibben and others about how it is almost too late to act, especially as there has been very little response to the crisis in the US, but this one is not just STOP burning fossil fuels (which we do need to do) but Go with renewables. THIS is by far McKibben's MOST POSITIVE WORK, in spite of 47 and his denialist paid fossil fuel spokesmen. Terrible climate damage and denialism is happening here, no question, but good things are happening in spite of 47 and his no only damage congress. I was about ready to give up and this book kicked me in the rear to major activism on this issue.
* China is the unquestioned world leader in shifting to renewables, making millions of solar panels. You remember those pics of smoky Beijing from a decade ago? Gone, already raising the life expectancy rate there by two years in less than a decade! And China is also transforming Pakistan and so many other countries while we largely look away. But not all of us are looking away. And many countries like Germany have shifted significantly, and fast!
*McKibben makes the best and clearest case for solar I have yet seen, and makes it exciting, because it IS happening in many places and IS also possible on a grand global scale. It has in the past couple years become the cheapest and safest and simplest way to go, and did I say renewable, meaning it doesn't have to be burned like coal or gas. No waste, no downside! Except for the guys from the fossil fuel industry who will lose their federal welfare and the opportunity to pillage other countries (see Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow, which I have also reviewed here).
*Get this: The US National Coal Museum is now powered by solar panels, saving them 10k a year.
*One sad memory he recounts for me. Jimmy Carter, that much ridiculed and most humane president, wrote an articulate defense of Solar Power and when he was President he had solar panels put on the White House. When Reagan got elected he tore the panels down, insisting that the panels did not send a "good message" to the All-Important Fossil Fuel industries, and of course they have never been up since.
*The last part of the book looks at the long cultural and spiritual connections the world always had had to the sun.
Okay, this might not quite be a 5 star environmental book, but it is important, accessible, well reasearched, with stories based in numerous countries and local sites. Read it!
January 24, 2026
I decided to read Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization after reading Cory Doctorow's comments on it and received a copy for Christmas. It is, without a doubt, the most genuinely hopeful book I've read about climate change since joining goodreads. During that time I've tagged 80 books with 'climate-change'. I definitely recommend reading it as an antidote to fatalism and depression, with a significant caveat that cost it the fifth star. This is a book that gives every sign of being written in a great hurry. That is in a sense understandable, given how fast things have changed in the solar power industry in less than five years. However, I expect any serious non-fiction to include endnotes, a reference list, and an index. Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization has none of these, although it does mention sources within the text. I would have been a lot more doubtful of McKibben's arguments had I not happened to be familiar with a solar analyst who he frequently quotes, Jenny Chase. I followed her on twitter (RIP) and now mastodon for many years, which gives me some confidence in the evidence McKibben cites.
I will admit, when Trump got elected the first time I thought the climate was fucked. Then when he was elected the second time, I thought the climate was even more fucked. McKibben advances the radical argument that Trump's deranged support for fossil fuels is fighting a hopeless rearguard action against the reality that solar and wind energy are now much cheaper. The American government may be clinging desperately to oil, gas, and coal, but elsewhere in the world, the decarbonisation of electrical grids is proceeding at extraordinary, unprecedented speeds. China's carbon emissions appear to have peaked in 2024. A quote from an energy researcher in that article: "The solar capacity that China installed last year is comparable to what the EU has overall," he said. "It's a staggering pace of growth." This supports the central message of McKibben's book, that renewables finally have the momentum to not just supplement but actually displace fossil fuels:
Although these are big claims, McKibben has some strong arguments in support:
This vision of the future is not new; it has been mooted for a long time. What makes this book different is that it's talking about what's happening right now, rather than advancing a hopeful scenario for the next decade. Could it be that the long-awaited renewable energy revolution has finally hit critical mass? McKibben is pretty convincing. The example of Pakistan's 10% fall in energy demand and proliferation of solar panels identified via google earth is extraordinary. I would have liked a citation for the claim that China 'has dropped pollution levels faster than any place on earth', though. When I looked this up, sources were divided upon whether any Chinese cities remain in the top ten most polluted (although all rankings are dominated by Indian cities). The scale of solar panel exports from China is much easier to confirm. I also appreciated McKibben's reassurances that the world isn't running out of materials for renewables, that broken solar panels can be recycled, and that solar farms have wider ecological benefits.
Although Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization is a profoundly encouraging book, it isn't unrealistically optimistic:
McKibben sees the next stage of activism as overcoming NIMBY objections to renewable energy. He describes these in his home of Vermont. Such complaints are also endemic in Britain and never fail to piss me off. Thoughtless comments that solar farms and wind turbines look ugly beg the question, what about motorways? Gas plants? Landfills? Warehouses? Eye-searing fields of oilseed rape? Personally I find solar panels and wind turbines much easier on the eye than any of those, and certainly superior to the poop emoji on Edinburgh's skyline, not to mention vastly more useful.
McKibben's final chapter strikes a spiritual note, citing the centrality of the sun to human worship across the millennia. He concludes as follows:
Reading Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, I felt some of that exhilaration and thank McKibben for it. His brief book gives a fast and engaging account of important changes in global energy in the past three years. While I would really like a list of sources and references, I appreciate McKibben's desire for speed, in order to counter the fatalism that has dominated recent climate change discussions (not least my own). Despite record temperatures, extreme weather, and Trump, there are reasons to feel positive in 2026. If you doubt it, I highly recommend reading Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.
I will admit, when Trump got elected the first time I thought the climate was fucked. Then when he was elected the second time, I thought the climate was even more fucked. McKibben advances the radical argument that Trump's deranged support for fossil fuels is fighting a hopeless rearguard action against the reality that solar and wind energy are now much cheaper. The American government may be clinging desperately to oil, gas, and coal, but elsewhere in the world, the decarbonisation of electrical grids is proceeding at extraordinary, unprecedented speeds. China's carbon emissions appear to have peaked in 2024. A quote from an energy researcher in that article: "The solar capacity that China installed last year is comparable to what the EU has overall," he said. "It's a staggering pace of growth." This supports the central message of McKibben's book, that renewables finally have the momentum to not just supplement but actually displace fossil fuels:
The report on microgrids and data centres concluded with some strong language that I think applies to the planet as a whole: solar power, it said, was 'likely the only clean solution that could also achieve the scale and speed required.' Which is the point. The world has exactly one path available to make the rapid changes that the climate crisis requires, and the path is sun, wind, and batteries. They are available right now, in scale, at affordable price. And they can provide almost everything we need. In the future other technologies may supplement or even replace solar and wind power. It's possible that someday, for instance, we'll actually have fusion power, and it will be affordable. But that's not right now; right now money and attention spent on these glossy technologies is money and attention diverted from the task at hand. In April 2025, for instance, Spain announced it would slowly shut down its fleet of reactors because sun and wind 'generate three to four times more power with the same amount of investment'. Those who pine for nuclear power plants can console themselves wit the reminder that the largest reactor in the solar system is sending us energy every time it peeks above the horizon. It's time to rejoice that we no longer need a bridge fuel - that the sun and wind have built the bridge from the fossil fuel past to the clean energy future.
Although these are big claims, McKibben has some strong arguments in support:
This is what made the Rockerfellers rich - the simple fact that you have to write them a check each month for a new shipment. But solar and wind energy aren't like that. Once you've built the equipment to catch them - the solar panel, the wind turbine - then the sun and the wind deliver the energy for free. Yes, you need a battery to store some of that power, but the price of batteries has been plummeting right along the same curve as solar panels, and so even once you've added in energy storage, the cost is cheaper than fossil fuel. And falling, falling, falling, falling. If you understand that, then you understand the possible future. (And of course you understand why the fossil fuel energy companies will work so hard to slow that future.)
This vision of the future is not new; it has been mooted for a long time. What makes this book different is that it's talking about what's happening right now, rather than advancing a hopeful scenario for the next decade. Could it be that the long-awaited renewable energy revolution has finally hit critical mass? McKibben is pretty convincing. The example of Pakistan's 10% fall in energy demand and proliferation of solar panels identified via google earth is extraordinary. I would have liked a citation for the claim that China 'has dropped pollution levels faster than any place on earth', though. When I looked this up, sources were divided upon whether any Chinese cities remain in the top ten most polluted (although all rankings are dominated by Indian cities). The scale of solar panel exports from China is much easier to confirm. I also appreciated McKibben's reassurances that the world isn't running out of materials for renewables, that broken solar panels can be recycled, and that solar farms have wider ecological benefits.
Although Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization is a profoundly encouraging book, it isn't unrealistically optimistic:
But if it's actually going to save the world - whose temperature has spiked so sharply in [the] last decade - then it's going to take a lot more activism. There are still two forces inherent in human affairs that haven't gone away: inertia and vested interest. And between them they are entirely capable of slowing this energy transition sufficiently to allow the collapse of the planet's climate system.
McKibben sees the next stage of activism as overcoming NIMBY objections to renewable energy. He describes these in his home of Vermont. Such complaints are also endemic in Britain and never fail to piss me off. Thoughtless comments that solar farms and wind turbines look ugly beg the question, what about motorways? Gas plants? Landfills? Warehouses? Eye-searing fields of oilseed rape? Personally I find solar panels and wind turbines much easier on the eye than any of those, and certainly superior to the poop emoji on Edinburgh's skyline, not to mention vastly more useful.
McKibben's final chapter strikes a spiritual note, citing the centrality of the sun to human worship across the millennia. He concludes as follows:
I end this book saddened, too, of course - saddened by all that has happened in the last 40 years, and by all that we haven't done. But I also end it exhilarated. Convinced that we've been given one last chance. Not to stop global warming (too late for that) but perhaps to stop it short of the place where it makes civilisation impossible. And a chance to restart that civilisation on saner ground, once we've extinguished the fire that now both power and threaten it.
Reading Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, I felt some of that exhilaration and thank McKibben for it. His brief book gives a fast and engaging account of important changes in global energy in the past three years. While I would really like a list of sources and references, I appreciate McKibben's desire for speed, in order to counter the fatalism that has dominated recent climate change discussions (not least my own). Despite record temperatures, extreme weather, and Trump, there are reasons to feel positive in 2026. If you doubt it, I highly recommend reading Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.
July 6, 2025
Bill McKibben is not--at least on the basis of all of his stuff that I've read, which is quite a bit--a wonderful prose stylist, though he's not at all a bad writer either; he can come up with a great turn of phrase on occasion, and can sometimes put together a strong, lyrical argument, and you can find both in this book. But as I've noted a couple of times before, McKibben is at his best when noticing things, making connections, and earnestly pushing conclusions; what he fails at--and honestly, it's not something I would expect him to even try to do; it's not his meter--is engaging in immanent critique, making his arguments stronger by elaborating their intellectual suppositions from the inside-out, rather than always beginning with the surface. On the basis of that, I need to give this fine book some additional credit. While it is, still, mostly a passionate--if occasionally rambling--organizing of data and anecdotes and statements in an attempt to convince people to recognize the scientific and economic reality of the immense breakthroughs in solar power generation and storage over the past 15 years or so, and the potentially even more immense environmental consequences those breakthroughs may mean--something which is absolutely necessary--it is also, however minimally, self-reflective. McKibben never comes out and explicitly says so, but he's changed; as someone who has relied upon his (I think) best book, Deep Economy, many times in classes I've taught over the years, I recognize in McKibben today someone who has been convinced that the human response to climate change can and should be at least as much a technological one as sociological and moral one. While I don't think he'll ever stop entirely being at least in part a Vogtian-type environmental scold, calling on his fellow human being to be less busy, to consume less and build less, this book shows him complementing that with some outright boosterism--and occasionally, if only occasionally, some acknowledgment that his own side in the environmental cause needs to learn a new language: they need to be able to see that preserving the planet for human beings means saying "go!" to new technological possibilities, and not just saying "stop!" to all the ways hydrocarbon-based technologies have damaged nature over the decades. Good for him, I say.
September 29, 2025
McKibben makes a strong case for solar (and wind) power winning the battle with fossil fuels, and soon, based on economics, not subsidies, and all available data says he's right, despite Trump's desire to make it 1955 in America again. Well reasoned, full of facts, but a little disappointing at the end, where the rhetoric should have been the most rousing. Cal Flyn stuck the landing better at the end of her book by being honest in admitting failure is an option, and we might not come out of this okay. People need to hear that.
November 9, 2025
The general thrust of the book is that our planet is very sick but it's not too late to prevent a death spiral. The key is to quickly diminish our reliance on burning fossil fuels and speed up our implementation of solar and wind power. As prosaic as I made that sound McKibben brings lots of data as well as a cheerful and encouraging style to make his urgent case a quick and pleasing reading experience.
His commitment to the cause is commendable. He talks of adding solar panels to his house over 25 years ago, saying as an environmentalist he felt he should support the technology to help make it more popular and eventually less costly. This isn't a book about break-even points or ROI, it's a plea to the world to make big changes right now. I suspect the target audience will be fans of the author and the solar curious. (I fall into the latter category, I hadn't previously read anything by the author.) With McKibben's many encouraging statistics and his cheerful urging I feel the need to do my part and add solar panels to my home.
More and more renewable power is being added to grids worldwide at a heartening pace, and at rates much faster than predicted even a decade ago. The ramp up has resulted in declining equipment costs and improved panel and battery operating efficiencies. China leads the way in production and implementation. Challenges in America remain with regulatory hurdles, counter-programming from the fossil fuel industries and the cessation of the 30% tax credit on January 1, 2026. (I'm very curious to know if or how much solar installation prices will change in 2026 and beyond.)
Published in September (?) 2025 the book covers the time frame up to February or March 2025.
This feels like a niche book but I hope it attains a wide audience.
His commitment to the cause is commendable. He talks of adding solar panels to his house over 25 years ago, saying as an environmentalist he felt he should support the technology to help make it more popular and eventually less costly. This isn't a book about break-even points or ROI, it's a plea to the world to make big changes right now. I suspect the target audience will be fans of the author and the solar curious. (I fall into the latter category, I hadn't previously read anything by the author.) With McKibben's many encouraging statistics and his cheerful urging I feel the need to do my part and add solar panels to my home.
More and more renewable power is being added to grids worldwide at a heartening pace, and at rates much faster than predicted even a decade ago. The ramp up has resulted in declining equipment costs and improved panel and battery operating efficiencies. China leads the way in production and implementation. Challenges in America remain with regulatory hurdles, counter-programming from the fossil fuel industries and the cessation of the 30% tax credit on January 1, 2026. (I'm very curious to know if or how much solar installation prices will change in 2026 and beyond.)
Published in September (?) 2025 the book covers the time frame up to February or March 2025.
This feels like a niche book but I hope it attains a wide audience.
November 11, 2026
Right book, right time ... for me, even if I only (finally) got around to reading it more than a year after it was published. I strongly recommend it.
Even though I've read a lot about, and am quite familiar with (and invested in) solar power/energy (and, more broadly, climate change and climate-related policy and advocacy), I found the book hugely informative, particularly with regard to the trends (in terms of technology, pace of installation, etc.) that don't seem to have (fully, or for that matter, even partially) penetrated the public consciousness ... yet.
This was particularly gratifying for me to the extent that, in the ever-evolving and oft-roiling hopers-versus-doomers take on climate change, I far too often find myself squarely in the doomer camp. Of all of the hope/optimism-oriented books I've read, ... and I've read plenty of 'em ... I found this far and away the most compelling, and for that, more than anything, I've made space for it on my Favorites shelf.
But what really carries the day here is that McKibben, who has been doing this for some time ... I first read on his books more than 25 years ago ... is a craftsman deftly and effectively plying his trade ... quite simply, in this book, he's at the top of his game. (And, yes, at times, much of this reminded me - without the serial art - of Cook's sublime and worthwhile Cranky Uncle Vs. Climate Change.) And, as much as the book is chock full of statistics and information and detail ... you know, data and facts are the coin of the realm, ... it's also, at times, surprisingly poignant and, well, human.
Reviewer's bias: I fully concede that much of why I enjoyed the book could be cynically described as confirmation bias. (Yes, I live a privileged life, but) my interests, preferences, lifestyle, and home all align with the book's theme, in that we've got a large solar array on our roof, we have no gas line (and, instead, we enjoy an electric heat pump, induction range, and hot water heater), we drive an EV (which we charge at home, in the garage), but I drive little anyway, preferring to walk, ride my bike, or take the convenient (for me) METRO rail (again, it's a privilege (compared to most in the US) to enjoy this wealth of options). Despite all of that, the book is justifiably appreciated, and it wouldn't surprise if a reader far less familiar with solar power would find the book equally informative, compelling, and gratifying.
Even though I've read a lot about, and am quite familiar with (and invested in) solar power/energy (and, more broadly, climate change and climate-related policy and advocacy), I found the book hugely informative, particularly with regard to the trends (in terms of technology, pace of installation, etc.) that don't seem to have (fully, or for that matter, even partially) penetrated the public consciousness ... yet.
This was particularly gratifying for me to the extent that, in the ever-evolving and oft-roiling hopers-versus-doomers take on climate change, I far too often find myself squarely in the doomer camp. Of all of the hope/optimism-oriented books I've read, ... and I've read plenty of 'em ... I found this far and away the most compelling, and for that, more than anything, I've made space for it on my Favorites shelf.
But what really carries the day here is that McKibben, who has been doing this for some time ... I first read on his books more than 25 years ago ... is a craftsman deftly and effectively plying his trade ... quite simply, in this book, he's at the top of his game. (And, yes, at times, much of this reminded me - without the serial art - of Cook's sublime and worthwhile Cranky Uncle Vs. Climate Change.) And, as much as the book is chock full of statistics and information and detail ... you know, data and facts are the coin of the realm, ... it's also, at times, surprisingly poignant and, well, human.
Reviewer's bias: I fully concede that much of why I enjoyed the book could be cynically described as confirmation bias. (Yes, I live a privileged life, but) my interests, preferences, lifestyle, and home all align with the book's theme, in that we've got a large solar array on our roof, we have no gas line (and, instead, we enjoy an electric heat pump, induction range, and hot water heater), we drive an EV (which we charge at home, in the garage), but I drive little anyway, preferring to walk, ride my bike, or take the convenient (for me) METRO rail (again, it's a privilege (compared to most in the US) to enjoy this wealth of options). Despite all of that, the book is justifiably appreciated, and it wouldn't surprise if a reader far less familiar with solar power would find the book equally informative, compelling, and gratifying.
July 6, 2026
Everybody wants to be on the winning team. I recall screaming at the screen at sports bars rooting for the Oilers when they make it to game 7 even though 99% of the time, I don't care, I'm the smug annoying millennial that calls it "sportsball" -- but in my heart I'm an Edmontonian, I just forget it sometimes. And then the Oilers start winning, and I remember again. In most of our hearts we're environmentalists, we just forget it sometimes. Because for us, it's just bad season after bad season, heartbreak after heartbreak, L after tragic L. Everybody wants to root for an underdog, but only one with an actual shot. Bill McKibben offers us that underdog turnaround story. Solar (and wind) has been succeeding beyond what any of us noticed amidst all the doom. Even I, someone whose entire job it is to KNOW this stuff, didn't know how good it really was until reading this book.
Something I've been saying a lot: "Nobody wants to hear about climate. They just shut their brains off, there's so many worse and more immediate problems to deal with, there's just no way to get people to hear it," but this is only true of the painful parts, the losses. People want to hear about this. Not just about how capitalist technofixes can save the planet (they can't) but how this energy has the power to transform our economy, just as coal brought about the horrific injustices of the industrial revolution and oil brought about tyrannical petrostates and oil-soaked turbo-neoliberalism, solar and wind can help us transition to that necessarily egalitarian, decentralized, community-oriented economy that people like me keep saying is a prerequisite to real climate action. Maybe the reverse is true; maybe it's not "we need to change the economy to save the planet" but rather "saving the planet can change our economy, and thereby, the world." And the biggest impact any of us can make right now is loudly rooting for it from the stands
Something I've been saying a lot: "Nobody wants to hear about climate. They just shut their brains off, there's so many worse and more immediate problems to deal with, there's just no way to get people to hear it," but this is only true of the painful parts, the losses. People want to hear about this. Not just about how capitalist technofixes can save the planet (they can't) but how this energy has the power to transform our economy, just as coal brought about the horrific injustices of the industrial revolution and oil brought about tyrannical petrostates and oil-soaked turbo-neoliberalism, solar and wind can help us transition to that necessarily egalitarian, decentralized, community-oriented economy that people like me keep saying is a prerequisite to real climate action. Maybe the reverse is true; maybe it's not "we need to change the economy to save the planet" but rather "saving the planet can change our economy, and thereby, the world." And the biggest impact any of us can make right now is loudly rooting for it from the stands
October 3, 2025
This was a very informative and interesting book. Unlike so much about global warming, this book is full of hope – but also with warnings. It is not too late – but we do have to change things now.
The author sees solar energy as the main alternative to fossil fuels. It is not only a renewable resource, it is an egalitarian one, in that every country in the world has access to sunlight for free. Unlike fossil fuels that are supplied by very few countries, at high prices.
Fossil fuels do not only increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when burned for energy, thereby increase world temperatures, but they also pollute when transported across the planet, when they are extracted, and when refined.
The economic arguments for solar power outline in the book are compelling. New technology in battery manufacture uses readily available silicon rather than rare earth metals – so cheaper, and much less polluting than mining for the metals. Batteries can now be used to store electricity more easily and conveniently, they last longer, and are less bulky. The area required for solar power panels is less that that needed for storage, drilling and refining fossil fuels.
And most surprisingly of all, a number of countries and states have already made major shifts towards solar power generation – including Texas!
The book challenged a lot of my misconceptions about switching to solar power and away from fossil fuels. I have long been keen for more renewables, but we still have a diesel car, a gas boiler, and normally cook with gas. After reading this book, I am much more ready to add solar panels to our roof, and to entertain buying an electric car when it comes time to replace our diesel model.
Technology is changing so quickly – and for the better. There is a bright future ahead, without the need to give up on too much of our lifestyle. We just have to think differently.
Highly recommended
The author sees solar energy as the main alternative to fossil fuels. It is not only a renewable resource, it is an egalitarian one, in that every country in the world has access to sunlight for free. Unlike fossil fuels that are supplied by very few countries, at high prices.
Fossil fuels do not only increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when burned for energy, thereby increase world temperatures, but they also pollute when transported across the planet, when they are extracted, and when refined.
The economic arguments for solar power outline in the book are compelling. New technology in battery manufacture uses readily available silicon rather than rare earth metals – so cheaper, and much less polluting than mining for the metals. Batteries can now be used to store electricity more easily and conveniently, they last longer, and are less bulky. The area required for solar power panels is less that that needed for storage, drilling and refining fossil fuels.
And most surprisingly of all, a number of countries and states have already made major shifts towards solar power generation – including Texas!
The book challenged a lot of my misconceptions about switching to solar power and away from fossil fuels. I have long been keen for more renewables, but we still have a diesel car, a gas boiler, and normally cook with gas. After reading this book, I am much more ready to add solar panels to our roof, and to entertain buying an electric car when it comes time to replace our diesel model.
Technology is changing so quickly – and for the better. There is a bright future ahead, without the need to give up on too much of our lifestyle. We just have to think differently.
Highly recommended
January 29, 2026
I realize I'm in a tiny minority here, but after twenty or so years thinking about climate change, I feel I must raise a few objections to what to me amounts to feel-good optimism.
1) CO2 levels continue to rise year after year. and 2024 was the steepest increase yet. Global fossil fuel emissions hit a record high in 2025. To me it seems premature to regard civilization as nearly saved when we haven't even begun to slow down, much less reverse, the basic problem trend.
2) Adding new or "alternative" power sources tends only to increase overall power demand (please read, if you would, the Wiki entry on Jevons paradox). As William Stanley Jevons put it, "It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth." The basic idea: introducing new energy sources, or making existing ones more efficient, puts downward pressure on energy prices, which in turn spurs overall energy demand. That McKibbon doesn't so much as mention Jevons paradox is to me unforgivable.
3) From what I've read, intermittent energy sources like wind and solar will remain unable to support electric grids on their own unless innovative new battery or other storage technology comes massively online. In the meantime, fossil fuels must continue to make up at least 50% of the mix to assure steady power when the sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow. If you haven't yet, please read up on how power utilities must balance energy sources to provide continuous, dependable power that renewables alone simply can't provide.
4) "Green energy" use may be growing, but so is coal, all over the world, especially in Asia. China is a world leader in renewables, but that they are also out of control in ongoing use of fossils, maintaining notorious air pollution levels in Beijing and other cities. China exemplifies the key fact that McKibben tries to dodge: simply adding green is no guarantee of displacing fossil . In a power-hungry world, much of which still reaches for the middle class, it's more than plausible that both energy types could continue to grow with little or no actual displacement of fossil by green.
5) In strictly market terms, no "expert," not even Bill McKibben, can predict overall global energy demand in coming years, much less decades. Continued high demand growth, for whatever reason (the latest being AI data centers), may well leave more than enough room for fossil fuel to protect or even expand its market share. Economists can't predict the shape of markets even one year in advance. McKibben's implicit market assumption in which global demand growth will be just right for renewables to squeeze out fossils seem to me no more than a convenient guess.
6) A closer look shows renewables are far from "clean." Solar panels, windmills, and storage batteries will, over time, require significant growth in mining for metals and rare earth elements, as well as construction and maintenance, not to mention environmental costs. There's no reason to believe necessary changes and upgrades to power grids will be "cleaner" than any other industrial activity.
7) Corporate interests will guarantee that fossil fuels continue to fill markets in huge amounts. In the U.S., no action has been taken even to pare back outsized fossil fuel subsidies. Fossil firms aren't about to simply write off trillions of dollars of undeveloped resources on their books, and they've proved they have the political clout to keep themselves profitably in business. If I had to bet on any of these points, it would be this one.
Bill McKibben must know all this, but I fear he's sold out to pushing a falsely hopeful narrative -- one which I don't believe we can afford while life as we know it hangs in the balance. You hear some public figures preach that the worst thing is to lose all hope. But clinging to false hope may prove even costlier, if doing so saps crucial energies we need to mitigate a deadly fate as best we can.
1) CO2 levels continue to rise year after year. and 2024 was the steepest increase yet. Global fossil fuel emissions hit a record high in 2025. To me it seems premature to regard civilization as nearly saved when we haven't even begun to slow down, much less reverse, the basic problem trend.
2) Adding new or "alternative" power sources tends only to increase overall power demand (please read, if you would, the Wiki entry on Jevons paradox). As William Stanley Jevons put it, "It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth." The basic idea: introducing new energy sources, or making existing ones more efficient, puts downward pressure on energy prices, which in turn spurs overall energy demand. That McKibbon doesn't so much as mention Jevons paradox is to me unforgivable.
3) From what I've read, intermittent energy sources like wind and solar will remain unable to support electric grids on their own unless innovative new battery or other storage technology comes massively online. In the meantime, fossil fuels must continue to make up at least 50% of the mix to assure steady power when the sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow. If you haven't yet, please read up on how power utilities must balance energy sources to provide continuous, dependable power that renewables alone simply can't provide.
4) "Green energy" use may be growing, but so is coal, all over the world, especially in Asia. China is a world leader in renewables, but that they are also out of control in ongoing use of fossils, maintaining notorious air pollution levels in Beijing and other cities. China exemplifies the key fact that McKibben tries to dodge: simply adding green is no guarantee of displacing fossil . In a power-hungry world, much of which still reaches for the middle class, it's more than plausible that both energy types could continue to grow with little or no actual displacement of fossil by green.
5) In strictly market terms, no "expert," not even Bill McKibben, can predict overall global energy demand in coming years, much less decades. Continued high demand growth, for whatever reason (the latest being AI data centers), may well leave more than enough room for fossil fuel to protect or even expand its market share. Economists can't predict the shape of markets even one year in advance. McKibben's implicit market assumption in which global demand growth will be just right for renewables to squeeze out fossils seem to me no more than a convenient guess.
6) A closer look shows renewables are far from "clean." Solar panels, windmills, and storage batteries will, over time, require significant growth in mining for metals and rare earth elements, as well as construction and maintenance, not to mention environmental costs. There's no reason to believe necessary changes and upgrades to power grids will be "cleaner" than any other industrial activity.
7) Corporate interests will guarantee that fossil fuels continue to fill markets in huge amounts. In the U.S., no action has been taken even to pare back outsized fossil fuel subsidies. Fossil firms aren't about to simply write off trillions of dollars of undeveloped resources on their books, and they've proved they have the political clout to keep themselves profitably in business. If I had to bet on any of these points, it would be this one.
Bill McKibben must know all this, but I fear he's sold out to pushing a falsely hopeful narrative -- one which I don't believe we can afford while life as we know it hangs in the balance. You hear some public figures preach that the worst thing is to lose all hope. But clinging to false hope may prove even costlier, if doing so saps crucial energies we need to mitigate a deadly fate as best we can.
September 1, 2025
If I could, I would give this book 10 stars. It is a quick read on the most important topic of our time. As always, Bill McKibben delivers the facts in a most human way. This time, it is good news he shares, and a message that should be read by politicians of any party, as well as city planners, mayors, zoning boards, and governors. Clean energy is now cheaper and more reliable than fossil fuels; we have waited so long for this moment and it is here. Now is the time to say yes to clean, cheap, decentralized energy. The more people who read Here Comes the Sun and get on board with solar, wind, and batteries, the faster we get to a world with abundant energy, clean air, and healthy thriving communities.
September 22, 2025
I found Bill McKibben's latest to be filled with hope and good news. Without downplaying the very real climate crisis, Here Comes the Sun gives the reader plenty of reasons not to despair. The promise and potential of solar energy is a bright spot in an otherwise dismal forecast and I finished the book feeling better about the future. McKibben's storytelling and enthusiasm are infectious, especially as voiced by Patrick Lawlor, the narrator. Thank you to McKibben, Lawlor, Highbridge Audio, and NetGalley for the audioARC.
December 11, 2025
Really liberating, mind-expanding, electrifying (sorry, no pun intended).
Basically: we stand on the brink of total calamity this century - a mass extinction, climate tipping points destroying the Gulf Stream, an acidic boiling ocean, potentially +3 degrees Celsius by 2100 (twice the Paris agreement). We face the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect - a "hothouse Earth" - which would be pretty game over. Even the "moderate" climate chaos scenarios could lead to major societal collapse - you could say it's already started with the authoritarian convulsions in the US and Europe following the refugee crisis of the mid-10s in Europe. A refugee crisis pushed by the Syrian civil war (which people have called the first climate war?). Imagine if we 10xed climate refugees? While extreme weather events hammer our homes and insurance markets collapse? When scarce resources - water, food - become even more scarce, will our better angels prevail? Will we be able to hold steadfast to the Enlightenment ideals of rationality and pluralism/tolerance? I try to be "optopian" (pragmatic and optimistic), but it's hard not to read about the climate emergency and just be seized by paralyzing terror - especially for our children and grandchildren. This century is just gonna suuuuuuuck.
So a book like this is really, really powerful. And hopeful. In a crazy way. Who knows what will happen, indeed. Will we all be speaking Mandarin by 2100, because China suddenly became the only country that sees its way through the climate emergency, mostly intact and still-civilized? (That was actually the conclusion of Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway's wonderful The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future - that democracy, especially oligarchic pseudo-democracy like in the US, really gums up the works and Western civ will shoot itself in the foot on its way down to flaming, fossil fueled hell. Sob.)
(I am reminded of this exchange between Gandhi and a journalist:
Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
Hehehehe...)
ANYWAY. All that to say! I am burying the lede. The lede - the POINT - of this book is: SOLAR AND WIND ENERGY ARE NOW CHEAPER THAN FOSSIL FUEL. SHOUT IT FROM THE PHOTOVOLTAIC ROOFTOPS! WE HAVE SLAIN THE CAPITALIST BEAST: IT IS CHEAPER NOW. CHEEEEEAPERRRRRRRRRR.
Huzzahhhhh.
Bill McKibben is basically like: hey look, we found the capitalist gravity well - It. Is. Cheaper. - and so now things will just happen by their own moneyed forces. Except we need to make it go FAST. Reallllyyyyyyy FAST. China has, indeed, spent the last 18 months installing PV panels on every available surface. This book is literally up to the minute (well, mid-2025), and all of this is happening VERY rapidly and VERY recently. The numbers are insane. I can't remember them all. Lemme look up a few. Ah yes:
- Pakistani households installed the equivalent of a THIRD OF THE NATIONAL GRID via balcony solar.
- Meanwhile, Hungary got almost a third of its energy from solar as well.
- In 2024, 83% (!!!!) of China's energy demand was met with solar + wind!!!! source
- Globally, CO2 emissions PLATEAUED FOR PARTS OF 2025. source. Just a reminder: this was a HUGE moment in Ministry for the Future. Just like with covid, we are trying to bend this goddamn curve. When you SEE the curve bend - it's very very exciting.
In the US... ah, the US... Well, despite Turmp's (typo but I'm keeping it) best efforts, 91% (!!!) of all new electricity capacity in the US, built in the first half of 2025, was solar + wind (source). Wtf is going on!?! Just like A Crack in Creation, where apparently we now have the theoretical power to literally DNA-edit unicorns and winged humans (thanks, CRISPR), why is everyone not screaming about this??? ALL THE TIME?! Why is this not a stylized fact akin to the "climate change is real and man-made" that most people agree with?
Anyway, this has all got Bill McKibben very, very excited. Almost spiritual. He talks about stuff like, envision a world where you don't have petro-states, you have electro-states. Where energy is abundant (renewable energy hit NEGATIVE PRICES in 2025 in Europe?? it's in the book) and super duper decentralized and, like, way more efficient and easy to use? Imagine the leap-frogging of developing countries, just like they did with landlines/mobile phones (which led to exciting innovations like m-pesa)? Imagine the efficiency gains! You don't have to dig a disgusting well to find dinosaur jelly. You don't have to refine that jelly, killing nearby birds and plant life and such. You don't need to exude toxic fumes so you can put your disgusting dinosaur sauce into a coughing, barking, exploding machine that spits out noxious fumes??? Imagine an electricity-powered civilization that is POST-scarcity of its most foundational resource: energy? Omfg, it makes one's heart sing. It's Star Trek: TNG come upon us!
Yeah. So McKibben is excited. It's hard not to get very excited with him. His writing has enormous verve and personality. He's basically like FASTER. MUST GO FASTER. We don't know the precise part of the CO2 emissions curve that dooms us. We don't know how much authoritarianism can drag us into the grime and keep us in this period of centralized power and injustice. When the AI bubble pops, can we focus again on the REAL issues at hand: climate? I hope we can plz move past this crypto 2.0.
Basically: we stand on the brink of total calamity this century - a mass extinction, climate tipping points destroying the Gulf Stream, an acidic boiling ocean, potentially +3 degrees Celsius by 2100 (twice the Paris agreement). We face the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect - a "hothouse Earth" - which would be pretty game over. Even the "moderate" climate chaos scenarios could lead to major societal collapse - you could say it's already started with the authoritarian convulsions in the US and Europe following the refugee crisis of the mid-10s in Europe. A refugee crisis pushed by the Syrian civil war (which people have called the first climate war?). Imagine if we 10xed climate refugees? While extreme weather events hammer our homes and insurance markets collapse? When scarce resources - water, food - become even more scarce, will our better angels prevail? Will we be able to hold steadfast to the Enlightenment ideals of rationality and pluralism/tolerance? I try to be "optopian" (pragmatic and optimistic), but it's hard not to read about the climate emergency and just be seized by paralyzing terror - especially for our children and grandchildren. This century is just gonna suuuuuuuck.
So a book like this is really, really powerful. And hopeful. In a crazy way. Who knows what will happen, indeed. Will we all be speaking Mandarin by 2100, because China suddenly became the only country that sees its way through the climate emergency, mostly intact and still-civilized? (That was actually the conclusion of Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway's wonderful The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future - that democracy, especially oligarchic pseudo-democracy like in the US, really gums up the works and Western civ will shoot itself in the foot on its way down to flaming, fossil fueled hell. Sob.)
(I am reminded of this exchange between Gandhi and a journalist:
Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
Hehehehe...)
ANYWAY. All that to say! I am burying the lede. The lede - the POINT - of this book is: SOLAR AND WIND ENERGY ARE NOW CHEAPER THAN FOSSIL FUEL. SHOUT IT FROM THE PHOTOVOLTAIC ROOFTOPS! WE HAVE SLAIN THE CAPITALIST BEAST: IT IS CHEAPER NOW. CHEEEEEAPERRRRRRRRRR.
Huzzahhhhh.
Bill McKibben is basically like: hey look, we found the capitalist gravity well - It. Is. Cheaper. - and so now things will just happen by their own moneyed forces. Except we need to make it go FAST. Reallllyyyyyyy FAST. China has, indeed, spent the last 18 months installing PV panels on every available surface. This book is literally up to the minute (well, mid-2025), and all of this is happening VERY rapidly and VERY recently. The numbers are insane. I can't remember them all. Lemme look up a few. Ah yes:
- Pakistani households installed the equivalent of a THIRD OF THE NATIONAL GRID via balcony solar.
- Meanwhile, Hungary got almost a third of its energy from solar as well.
- In 2024, 83% (!!!!) of China's energy demand was met with solar + wind!!!! source
- Globally, CO2 emissions PLATEAUED FOR PARTS OF 2025. source. Just a reminder: this was a HUGE moment in Ministry for the Future. Just like with covid, we are trying to bend this goddamn curve. When you SEE the curve bend - it's very very exciting.
In the US... ah, the US... Well, despite Turmp's (typo but I'm keeping it) best efforts, 91% (!!!) of all new electricity capacity in the US, built in the first half of 2025, was solar + wind (source). Wtf is going on!?! Just like A Crack in Creation, where apparently we now have the theoretical power to literally DNA-edit unicorns and winged humans (thanks, CRISPR), why is everyone not screaming about this??? ALL THE TIME?! Why is this not a stylized fact akin to the "climate change is real and man-made" that most people agree with?
Anyway, this has all got Bill McKibben very, very excited. Almost spiritual. He talks about stuff like, envision a world where you don't have petro-states, you have electro-states. Where energy is abundant (renewable energy hit NEGATIVE PRICES in 2025 in Europe?? it's in the book) and super duper decentralized and, like, way more efficient and easy to use? Imagine the leap-frogging of developing countries, just like they did with landlines/mobile phones (which led to exciting innovations like m-pesa)? Imagine the efficiency gains! You don't have to dig a disgusting well to find dinosaur jelly. You don't have to refine that jelly, killing nearby birds and plant life and such. You don't need to exude toxic fumes so you can put your disgusting dinosaur sauce into a coughing, barking, exploding machine that spits out noxious fumes??? Imagine an electricity-powered civilization that is POST-scarcity of its most foundational resource: energy? Omfg, it makes one's heart sing. It's Star Trek: TNG come upon us!
Yeah. So McKibben is excited. It's hard not to get very excited with him. His writing has enormous verve and personality. He's basically like FASTER. MUST GO FASTER. We don't know the precise part of the CO2 emissions curve that dooms us. We don't know how much authoritarianism can drag us into the grime and keep us in this period of centralized power and injustice. When the AI bubble pops, can we focus again on the REAL issues at hand: climate? I hope we can plz move past this crypto 2.0.
January 3, 2026
It brings me immense hope to report this: We’re going to win.
July 27, 2026
My take aways for this book are as follows.
1) Think like Mr. Monopoly if you insist: Solar is so economical. It gets cheaper each year and the electricity it produces gets more expensive. Hello? Hello, is this thing on?
Nuclear sure isn't. Even carbon (oil and, God help us, coal) is only getting marginally cheaper to produce. So, in that Money-bags context, you'd choose the technology that is getting cheaper.
2) Then there is the chemistry. Carbon burning makes a lot of one thing => heat. It doesn't do the work we need it to (moving stuff, electrons, pistons or otherwise). So, the extra heat is a problem to be dealt with. And that inefficiency is produced INEFFICIENTLY in each individual car and engine, instead of doing the work somewhere that the heat could be managed and the productive energy (work best used to move electrons) could be stored. Solar produces little heat. SO LITTLE! Chemistry math makes Mr.Monopoly greedy too. Solar chemistry makes less wasted energy (which Mr.Monopoly reads as money).
3) And then there's the greenhouse gas thing that is ending biodiversity and burning us alive. Mr.Monopoly doesn't care about that, although technically global banks realize that an inhospitable planet actually is bad for business. The oil industry sure doesn't care, but it is designed not to.
I think when people start on the moral highground with point 3, the average person panics and says 'I need to think of my family here, right now'. How is the oil industry paying for their family to live? No idea, maybe?... (PSA - they aren't!). BUT industry puts out campaigns to make sure we feel like somehow the success of their industry means the success of our individual families.
Solar and alternatives actually make sense and will build an economy that can benefit more people, more easily. These choices turn out not to be an individual sacrifice at all!
This technology is cheaper and will cost less. That's so incredible!
The supply chain that we have built to support the carbon energy model is an absolute cross between a Rube Goldberg machine and a 50 year long ballet. It is HIGHLY complex, with many steps, refining, great sea-voyages, you name it. Totally whack-o, but we do it and it feels normal now.
Photons just fall out of the sky. Literally, fall, out of the sky, like rain. Refining? Transport? Just grab some light balls.
Wah, wah, the batteries aren't big enough and what about when it rains!
Bro, those battery technologies get better every year on an exponential scale, but even pretending that isn't true (and it bloody is true), imagine this example from the book!
GRAVITY BATTERIES (https://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...)--
You get enough panels and produce extra energy during the day you don't need and can't store. Use that extra energy that the grid doesn't need at that moment to move a pile of rocks on a pulley up an abandoned mine-shaft. Bring them all the way to the top and hit the breaks. Night coming? Or perhaps a big storm? Turn off the break and have it spin back down as gravity converts back the potential energy. Turbine produces the extra power at night. No lithium involved. It is SO ELEGANT! Imagine how many other elegant ways we can solve things? And there is TONS of lithium and other metals on the planet. Get over yourselves, this isn't the crisis. Solar is easy.
WE CAN SOLVE THIS!
1) Think like Mr. Monopoly if you insist: Solar is so economical. It gets cheaper each year and the electricity it produces gets more expensive. Hello? Hello, is this thing on?
Nuclear sure isn't. Even carbon (oil and, God help us, coal) is only getting marginally cheaper to produce. So, in that Money-bags context, you'd choose the technology that is getting cheaper.
2) Then there is the chemistry. Carbon burning makes a lot of one thing => heat. It doesn't do the work we need it to (moving stuff, electrons, pistons or otherwise). So, the extra heat is a problem to be dealt with. And that inefficiency is produced INEFFICIENTLY in each individual car and engine, instead of doing the work somewhere that the heat could be managed and the productive energy (work best used to move electrons) could be stored. Solar produces little heat. SO LITTLE! Chemistry math makes Mr.Monopoly greedy too. Solar chemistry makes less wasted energy (which Mr.Monopoly reads as money).
3) And then there's the greenhouse gas thing that is ending biodiversity and burning us alive. Mr.Monopoly doesn't care about that, although technically global banks realize that an inhospitable planet actually is bad for business. The oil industry sure doesn't care, but it is designed not to.
I think when people start on the moral highground with point 3, the average person panics and says 'I need to think of my family here, right now'. How is the oil industry paying for their family to live? No idea, maybe?... (PSA - they aren't!). BUT industry puts out campaigns to make sure we feel like somehow the success of their industry means the success of our individual families.
Solar and alternatives actually make sense and will build an economy that can benefit more people, more easily. These choices turn out not to be an individual sacrifice at all!
This technology is cheaper and will cost less. That's so incredible!
The supply chain that we have built to support the carbon energy model is an absolute cross between a Rube Goldberg machine and a 50 year long ballet. It is HIGHLY complex, with many steps, refining, great sea-voyages, you name it. Totally whack-o, but we do it and it feels normal now.
Photons just fall out of the sky. Literally, fall, out of the sky, like rain. Refining? Transport? Just grab some light balls.
Wah, wah, the batteries aren't big enough and what about when it rains!
Bro, those battery technologies get better every year on an exponential scale, but even pretending that isn't true (and it bloody is true), imagine this example from the book!
GRAVITY BATTERIES (https://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...)--
You get enough panels and produce extra energy during the day you don't need and can't store. Use that extra energy that the grid doesn't need at that moment to move a pile of rocks on a pulley up an abandoned mine-shaft. Bring them all the way to the top and hit the breaks. Night coming? Or perhaps a big storm? Turn off the break and have it spin back down as gravity converts back the potential energy. Turbine produces the extra power at night. No lithium involved. It is SO ELEGANT! Imagine how many other elegant ways we can solve things? And there is TONS of lithium and other metals on the planet. Get over yourselves, this isn't the crisis. Solar is easy.
WE CAN SOLVE THIS!
April 27, 2026
this is a perplexing read. i am fully down with the world that renewable energy will bring and i am almost as confident as mckibben that we will get there, but his arguments often feel naive.
i agree that we need to implement solar on a mass scale but i don’t think that it is naturally equalizing. this relies on an assumption that technology itself acts as a passive revolutionary force instead of one guided by capital accumulation.
i also wasn’t a big fan of how he belittles degrowth, a movement that encourages an awareness of energy consumption that can only help a green revolution. it felt like he used one person’s eccentric conclusions to speak for a varied and unsettled movement.
there is a lot of valuable argumentation for renewable energy in this book so i do think it is worth reading, but if you approach it without a political backbone then you might as well be establishing a new system with the same old problems.
i agree that we need to implement solar on a mass scale but i don’t think that it is naturally equalizing. this relies on an assumption that technology itself acts as a passive revolutionary force instead of one guided by capital accumulation.
i also wasn’t a big fan of how he belittles degrowth, a movement that encourages an awareness of energy consumption that can only help a green revolution. it felt like he used one person’s eccentric conclusions to speak for a varied and unsettled movement.
there is a lot of valuable argumentation for renewable energy in this book so i do think it is worth reading, but if you approach it without a political backbone then you might as well be establishing a new system with the same old problems.
October 27, 2025
Wreszcie jakiś powiew optymizmu i światełko w tunelu, nomen omen. Może się uda i nie ugotujemy się wszyscy. Może będzie darmowa energia i napędzimy nią nasz w pełni zautomatyzowany luksusowy kosmiczny homokomunizm.
September 7, 2026
Solar (and wind) power: the best solution to the climate crisis. McKibben provides all the data.
November 3, 2026
Had a wonderful discussion today with the Energy Markets and strategy professor about this book. We discussed the new paradigm that solar and wind power ARE CHEAPER THAN FOSSIL FUELS POINT BLANK PERIOD and all of the changes that follow. Energy independence and sovereignty and the ability for nations to build out their grids cleanly from scratch as well as not be dependently on power concentrated in the hands of the few.
Get gobsmacked by facts such as 40% of ocean shipping is dedicated to moving fossil fuels around the globe !! Also a lot of discussion of nimbyism and barriers to deployment of these solutions in our country.
Get gobsmacked by facts such as 40% of ocean shipping is dedicated to moving fossil fuels around the globe !! Also a lot of discussion of nimbyism and barriers to deployment of these solutions in our country.
February 23, 2026
This made me feel hopeful but also frustrated that we aren't going hundies on solar. I read this while sitting in the sun and it felt almost spiritual lol. Recommend to everyone keen on an easy non-fiction read that will bring you up to speed on current climate change woes and opportunities.
March 24, 2026
Hopeful, super informative, easy listen (audiobook). I didn’t know the technology for solar and other renewables has gotten to the point that it’s now so much more efficient and affordable than fossil fuels. The industry will still fight like hell to keep their hold on global markets, but if we can accelerate the necessary and inevitable, there’s hope for a saved planet.
November 5, 2026
Accept this gift the scientists have brought
Stop me if you've heard this one: when we burn stuff (any kind of stuff, really: wood, coal, oil, gas) it turns into carbon dioxide and water. The water isn't even noticeable, but the CO2 goes into the atmosaphere and traps heat. You might be surprised to hear that the atmosphere is substantially hotter now than it was even 60 years ago. (I'm 70 years old, and I remember -- this is true.) What's more, this global warming causes all kinds of problems forest fires, sea-level rises, etc. As always, the people who suffer most are the ones who aren't rich.
Oh, you have heard that? Why aren't you worried? Well, I know the answer to that, because I've heard it many, many times: "The scientists will figure something out." As a card-carrying scientist myself, I am not reassured by hearing that you're relying on me to FIX THIS.
But Bill McKibben is here to tell you that we did it! We scientists done figured something out. (Well, not me, personally. I'm a neuroscientist. Fixing the climate is not within my remit.) Just in the nick of time! Very dramatic. And it is astonishingly cheap. In the world right now solar power is the cheapest way of producing energy -- even cheaper than burning stuff.
What they figured out is this: solar panels that produce electricity when the sun shines on them, windmills that produce energy when the wind blows (we call them wind turbines now, because that sounds so much cooler), and batteries for when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. Also, heat pumps and electric cars that make it possible to do everything we used to do by burning stuff with electricity. And, as McKibben never tires of pointing out, the sun is everywhere, and after we use it, it is still there.
Here's the problem: you all need to accept this gift! And you need to accept that it won't be invisible. You'll see these windmills and solar panels everywhere. Right in your own back yards and on your rooftops and balconies. You also need to accept that solar energy is inexpensive. Most of the folks using it are not rich. Very few people are going to become obscenely wealthy by selling it. This is a problem, because we are stuck in this world where we only do BIG STUFF if someone can become very, very rich.
Yes, I know. Change is HARD. But change is coming, whether you want it to or not. Please, please, for everyone's sake, accept this gift.
Blog review.
Stop me if you've heard this one: when we burn stuff (any kind of stuff, really: wood, coal, oil, gas) it turns into carbon dioxide and water. The water isn't even noticeable, but the CO2 goes into the atmosaphere and traps heat. You might be surprised to hear that the atmosphere is substantially hotter now than it was even 60 years ago. (I'm 70 years old, and I remember -- this is true.) What's more, this global warming causes all kinds of problems forest fires, sea-level rises, etc. As always, the people who suffer most are the ones who aren't rich.
Oh, you have heard that? Why aren't you worried? Well, I know the answer to that, because I've heard it many, many times: "The scientists will figure something out." As a card-carrying scientist myself, I am not reassured by hearing that you're relying on me to FIX THIS.
But Bill McKibben is here to tell you that we did it! We scientists done figured something out. (Well, not me, personally. I'm a neuroscientist. Fixing the climate is not within my remit.) Just in the nick of time! Very dramatic. And it is astonishingly cheap. In the world right now solar power is the cheapest way of producing energy -- even cheaper than burning stuff.
What they figured out is this: solar panels that produce electricity when the sun shines on them, windmills that produce energy when the wind blows (we call them wind turbines now, because that sounds so much cooler), and batteries for when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. Also, heat pumps and electric cars that make it possible to do everything we used to do by burning stuff with electricity. And, as McKibben never tires of pointing out, the sun is everywhere, and after we use it, it is still there.
Here's the problem: you all need to accept this gift! And you need to accept that it won't be invisible. You'll see these windmills and solar panels everywhere. Right in your own back yards and on your rooftops and balconies. You also need to accept that solar energy is inexpensive. Most of the folks using it are not rich. Very few people are going to become obscenely wealthy by selling it. This is a problem, because we are stuck in this world where we only do BIG STUFF if someone can become very, very rich.
Yes, I know. Change is HARD. But change is coming, whether you want it to or not. Please, please, for everyone's sake, accept this gift.
Blog review.
October 19, 2026
Short and sweet, and spiritual, which I hadn’t expected. In a crash course rundown of the developing energy landscape over the past few decades, McKibben stops often to philosophize tenderly on the nature of human society, our millennia-long struggle to harness energy, and our relationship to fire: especially the “original fire”, or the sun. I was seriously left speechless at some of the parallels he draws, for example between fossil fuels, as, frankly, energy from hell - resources we have to “scrape and gouge” out of the bowels of the earth, whose inherent scarcity incentivizes greed and selfishness - and solar /wind, as energy from heaven quite literally “falling from the sky”, endlessly abundant energy provided free-of-charge by the natural processes of the earth, that can never be privatized or hoarded in reserve for profit. After all, everyone on earth lives under the same sun, and maybe a post-oil system in which we collectively share the source that powers what we need will inspire us to be kinder to nature and to each other. Solar is the way out of the climate crisis; as McKibben asserts, the question is not if solar will replace hydrocarbons, but how fast. But solar is also the way forward for a fairer and gentler future; a step towards liberation (indeed much of the playbook of modern late-stage capitalism was written by the fossil fuel industry), and towards repairing mankind’s warped relationship with the natural world.
Maybe the single most hopeful book for the future I have ever read. And a must read for any environmentalist; I will be recommending this to all of my friends. I feel passionate and energized, which is usually the opposite of how I feel after reading environmental nonfiction. Tomorrow is bright.☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Maybe the single most hopeful book for the future I have ever read. And a must read for any environmentalist; I will be recommending this to all of my friends. I feel passionate and energized, which is usually the opposite of how I feel after reading environmental nonfiction. Tomorrow is bright.☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
September 28, 2025
Bill McKibben’s ‘Here Comes The Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization’ is a book which throughout highlights the transformative revolution of solar power and which revels in the ability for countries around the world to see past the short-term interests of the fossil fuel industry- desperately clinging on to its profits- to see and build a new world. ‘ And yet, right now, really for the first time, I can see a path forward. A path lit by the sun.’
McKibben admits that the task between now and 2030- a scant 5 years away- is difficult, but also reminds us that there are no longer technical or financial obstacles in the way. ‘…[W]e must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half before the decade is out. That target is on the bleeding edge of the technically possible, and this book is an effort to shove us toward that deadline.’
This is a book which hopes to re-ignite our connection with our sun. McKibben reminds us that, ‘We were all sun worshippers once.’, with the hope that metaphorically, we can be again. He argues passionately that we have an opportunity, a chance in this moment, which is not to be missed- which cannot be missed. ‘Our species, at what feels like a very dark moment, can take a giant leap into the light. Of the sun.’
The revolutionary idea of this book is that it is past time when we should break the habit of burning things. In more poetic terms, the Fires of Isengard have already spread…’and all that was once green and good this world will be gone.’ McKibben notes that changing and converting the economy is as important as changing our power supply. He also highlights that Big Oil will be a difficult hydra to slay. ‘Big Oil will do almost anything to stay in the burning business, because their reserves of oil and gas are currency worth tens of trillions of dollars.’ He hammers this point home effectively arguing that ‘... fossil fuel is going all out to make sure it doesn’t happen. In fact, the entire point of the industry by this point in its history is to make sure we keep burning something. It’s desperate, as we shall see, to slow down this switch by any means necessary.’
As a result of their rapacious extractive measures, McKibben describes the state of humans on the planet through the medical metaphor of being in the ER. ‘We’re very much in the ER- that’s what all those statistics about the jet stream and the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef mean.’ He highlights the ecological systems around the world which are becoming critically threatened- ‘There are only so many really huge and vital systems on the planet, and now all of them seem to be in some sort of violent flux.’ Global records continue to be shattered by the world that has been forged and created by Big Oil, but McKibben outlines that even though they have tried hard to steer us off course- and despite their best efforts- solar power has undergone one of the most revolutionary successful transformations ever seen.
McKibben effectively reminds us of the many many solar technologies and projects taking off around the world- from Spain and Germany, to Ecuador, to China and to Australia and Pakistan. He points out that many of these revolutions tend not to gain the global attention which they deserve, because they are simply not in the West, calling us out accurately on our ideologies. ‘One reason we’ve missed some of that revolution is because so much of it is taking place in China, and we’re used to thinking that anything important must happen in the West.’
As a result of these extraordinary breakthroughs, McKibben is energised (terrible accidental word- pun) and encouraged to power through our dependency on the fossil fuel industry. ‘Before our decade is out, we have to break the back of the fossil fuel system. We have to land the sun on the earth.’ He ends Section 1 of the book with the alarming comment, ‘It would be unthinkable not to figure this out.’
As the book progresses, McKibben frankly ridicules the arguments trotted out by stooges for the fossil fuel industry- arguments solely designed to slow down the transition away from their product. He first ridicules the ‘Can we afford it?’ argument. ‘Of course we can afford it- the sheer fact that we’re merrily building out terrawatt after terrawatt of solar and wind power is more or less proof that it’s becoming affordable.’
He urges us to consider what the cost implications and ramifications would be if we continued on the fossil fuel path- citing that the insurance industry is already acting to protect its interests by not offering climate cover. ‘First, though, let’s reflect for a moment on what it would cost us to do nothing- that is, to continue lurching slowly through a haphazard transition off fossil fuels that happens too slowly to really arrest climate change.’ McKibben notes that the supply and demand pathway is one which works against capitalism- ‘because energy from the sun and wind is so plentiful and cheap, it can’t make as much profit for investors as oil and gas, which are scarce and dear.’
Throughout, he advises that ‘Emergencies demand urgency’ and that ‘[W]e need to do this now; we can’t afford another miss.’ He asks the very simple questions of what are the obstacles to this solar and wind transformation; who are the players acting against this revolution; and why are they behaving like this. It’s not a land coverage issue, it’s not a battery storage issue, it’s not a recycling of parts issue, it’s an enslavement to the fossil fuel industry issue and we have the power to break those bonds. Dependency on fossil fuel is dead. There’s no reason not to embrace the solar revolution.
McKibben asks us all to turn our faces to the sun once more in wonder and build a world ‘where we no longer set things on fire, but rely instead on the great fire out there in space. A world where we can turn to our star.’
He ends the book exhilarated about the possibilities lying ahead of us and exhorts us all to seize fire from the Gods once more.
‘We’ve been given one last chance…a chance to restart that civilization on saner ground, once we’ve extinguished the fires that now both power and threaten it.’
McKibben admits that the task between now and 2030- a scant 5 years away- is difficult, but also reminds us that there are no longer technical or financial obstacles in the way. ‘…[W]e must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half before the decade is out. That target is on the bleeding edge of the technically possible, and this book is an effort to shove us toward that deadline.’
This is a book which hopes to re-ignite our connection with our sun. McKibben reminds us that, ‘We were all sun worshippers once.’, with the hope that metaphorically, we can be again. He argues passionately that we have an opportunity, a chance in this moment, which is not to be missed- which cannot be missed. ‘Our species, at what feels like a very dark moment, can take a giant leap into the light. Of the sun.’
The revolutionary idea of this book is that it is past time when we should break the habit of burning things. In more poetic terms, the Fires of Isengard have already spread…’and all that was once green and good this world will be gone.’ McKibben notes that changing and converting the economy is as important as changing our power supply. He also highlights that Big Oil will be a difficult hydra to slay. ‘Big Oil will do almost anything to stay in the burning business, because their reserves of oil and gas are currency worth tens of trillions of dollars.’ He hammers this point home effectively arguing that ‘... fossil fuel is going all out to make sure it doesn’t happen. In fact, the entire point of the industry by this point in its history is to make sure we keep burning something. It’s desperate, as we shall see, to slow down this switch by any means necessary.’
As a result of their rapacious extractive measures, McKibben describes the state of humans on the planet through the medical metaphor of being in the ER. ‘We’re very much in the ER- that’s what all those statistics about the jet stream and the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef mean.’ He highlights the ecological systems around the world which are becoming critically threatened- ‘There are only so many really huge and vital systems on the planet, and now all of them seem to be in some sort of violent flux.’ Global records continue to be shattered by the world that has been forged and created by Big Oil, but McKibben outlines that even though they have tried hard to steer us off course- and despite their best efforts- solar power has undergone one of the most revolutionary successful transformations ever seen.
McKibben effectively reminds us of the many many solar technologies and projects taking off around the world- from Spain and Germany, to Ecuador, to China and to Australia and Pakistan. He points out that many of these revolutions tend not to gain the global attention which they deserve, because they are simply not in the West, calling us out accurately on our ideologies. ‘One reason we’ve missed some of that revolution is because so much of it is taking place in China, and we’re used to thinking that anything important must happen in the West.’
As a result of these extraordinary breakthroughs, McKibben is energised (terrible accidental word- pun) and encouraged to power through our dependency on the fossil fuel industry. ‘Before our decade is out, we have to break the back of the fossil fuel system. We have to land the sun on the earth.’ He ends Section 1 of the book with the alarming comment, ‘It would be unthinkable not to figure this out.’
As the book progresses, McKibben frankly ridicules the arguments trotted out by stooges for the fossil fuel industry- arguments solely designed to slow down the transition away from their product. He first ridicules the ‘Can we afford it?’ argument. ‘Of course we can afford it- the sheer fact that we’re merrily building out terrawatt after terrawatt of solar and wind power is more or less proof that it’s becoming affordable.’
He urges us to consider what the cost implications and ramifications would be if we continued on the fossil fuel path- citing that the insurance industry is already acting to protect its interests by not offering climate cover. ‘First, though, let’s reflect for a moment on what it would cost us to do nothing- that is, to continue lurching slowly through a haphazard transition off fossil fuels that happens too slowly to really arrest climate change.’ McKibben notes that the supply and demand pathway is one which works against capitalism- ‘because energy from the sun and wind is so plentiful and cheap, it can’t make as much profit for investors as oil and gas, which are scarce and dear.’
Throughout, he advises that ‘Emergencies demand urgency’ and that ‘[W]e need to do this now; we can’t afford another miss.’ He asks the very simple questions of what are the obstacles to this solar and wind transformation; who are the players acting against this revolution; and why are they behaving like this. It’s not a land coverage issue, it’s not a battery storage issue, it’s not a recycling of parts issue, it’s an enslavement to the fossil fuel industry issue and we have the power to break those bonds. Dependency on fossil fuel is dead. There’s no reason not to embrace the solar revolution.
McKibben asks us all to turn our faces to the sun once more in wonder and build a world ‘where we no longer set things on fire, but rely instead on the great fire out there in space. A world where we can turn to our star.’
He ends the book exhilarated about the possibilities lying ahead of us and exhorts us all to seize fire from the Gods once more.
‘We’ve been given one last chance…a chance to restart that civilization on saner ground, once we’ve extinguished the fires that now both power and threaten it.’
January 18, 2026
An all-too-rare book that is both unflinching clear about the environmental mess we've created for ourselves and a source of real hope. McKibben's End of Nature was one of the books that did most to raise awareness of the depth of the problem and he's never minimized anything. He's also deeply grounded in the state of scientific knowledge in the overlapping relevant areas.
So I was both surprised and relieve (on existential levels) to hear him say that not only is there a real path forward but that there are convincing indications that we may be able to fake it, despite the best effort of the deniers and cynical energy hogs to block the routes. I'd read bits and pieces of the relevant information in Science and Science News, but McKibben puts it together in clear accessible entertaining prose. If you're in need of a break from the horrors around us--and who isn't?--this is a perfect place to start.
So I was both surprised and relieve (on existential levels) to hear him say that not only is there a real path forward but that there are convincing indications that we may be able to fake it, despite the best effort of the deniers and cynical energy hogs to block the routes. I'd read bits and pieces of the relevant information in Science and Science News, but McKibben puts it together in clear accessible entertaining prose. If you're in need of a break from the horrors around us--and who isn't?--this is a perfect place to start.
December 29, 2025
A case for hope from someone who takes climate issues seriously. With the emergence of cheap solar, finally the possibility of decarbonizing the economy is within reach, argues McKibben. The book primarily relies on the research done by others, but its unique selling point is McKibben's background in the climate movement and his ability to make the argument against a degrowth politics. We have enough land and enough material to make a green transition happen, and we can afford it. But it requires political work as well as market forces. And it requires an environmental movement that supports building this new world, rather than focusing on decreasing consumption.
April 20, 2026
Fascinating read, and highly relevant to this moment in time. It's an important book to help westerners understand the significance and scale of the renewable energy revolution that's underway, especially in other parts of the world. It's a quick, engaging read, Bill McKibbon writes articulately about why adopting solar/wind is sensible from an economic as well as environmental perspective. He addresses common perceived roadblocks and downsides to making the switch while not losing sight of the big picture, which is the cataclysmic cost of maintaining the status quo.
July 29, 2026
McKibben writes about science and technology in such a beautiful and personal way, in a straightforward and plain style. I hope I can write my science with similar prose. This is a hopeful account of what solar and wind energy can do for our society and environment. Fighting climate change is a part of my life’s project and this book provided me with new language, stories, and data to apply to that project.
August 31, 2026
This book was an exercise in hope and frustration. McKibben’s vision for a renewable future is beautiful and sensical (if a bit simplistic - the book is only 200 pages after all) but it also highlights how the fossil fuel industry has well and truly screwed us, over and over again knowingly and carelessly wrecking our futures in the name of profit. This is not a perfect book but I do believe that everyone needs to read it. Renewable energy must be the future - there is no alternative.
November 4, 2025
This book is an impassioned plea to embrace solar energy and save our climate, and how the fossil fuel industry, their lobbyists and politicians are trying to prevent the solar industry from becoming predominant. My thanks to the author and publishers for providing me with a copy in exchange for my honest review.
December 10, 2025
5 out of 5. Wow. This is the book I needed to read. There is so much doom-and-gloom out there right now. Israel is slaughtering tens of thousands of children in Gaza, coal is apparently still round, and the Donald Trump's "drill, baby, drill" is an actual national agenda for fucks sake. But this book; this book right here gave me the big boost in optimism. Sure, we are burning oil and gas faster than we ever have. The climate is collapsing, species are going extinct, and somehow people that are getting roasted by climate change the worst for some reason still vote for that sweet potato Hitler in the Oval. ...But. And this is the silver lining. Renewable energy is not slowing down. Not even a little bit. Like literally in the complete opposite redirection. It’s accelerating. Wind energy became cheaper than oil in the early 2020's. Last year, solar was 50% the cost of the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternative. This year, the year of "drill, baby, drill', over 90% of new renewable energy projects, world-wide, were cheaper than fossil fuels. Solar and Wind are the cheapest forms of energy. Everywhere. (continued in comments)
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