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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 solar power and rewrite our scientific, economic, and political future.
Every eighteen hours, the world puts up a nuclear power plant’s–worth of solar panels. At the same time, combustion continues to melt our poles, poison our bodies, and drive our global inequality. And it is no longer For the first time in 700,000 years, we know how to catch the sun’s rays and convert them into energy.
In Here Comes the Sun, world-renowned author Bill McKibben tells the story of our sudden spike in power from the sun and wind. McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy, which, if it accelerates, gives us a chance not just to limit climate change’s damage, but to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. Getting there means overcoming obstacles like Big Oil, but McKibben sees a chance for a new one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.
Every eighteen hours, the world puts up a nuclear power plant’s–worth of solar panels. At the same time, combustion continues to melt our poles, poison our bodies, and drive our global inequality. And it is no longer For the first time in 700,000 years, we know how to catch the sun’s rays and convert them into energy.
In Here Comes the Sun, world-renowned author Bill McKibben tells the story of our sudden spike in power from the sun and wind. McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy, which, if it accelerates, gives us a chance not just to limit climate change’s damage, but to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. Getting there means overcoming obstacles like Big Oil, but McKibben sees a chance for a new one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.
1 pages, Audio CD
Published August 19, 2025
266 people are currently reading
3500 people want to read
About the author
Bill McKibben
203 books821 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 116 reviews
December 14, 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!
July 19, 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.
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.
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.
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 3, 2026
It brings me immense hope to report this: We’re going to win.
December 14, 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.
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 23, 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.
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.
August 18, 2025
True to its allusion to George Harrison’s upbeat song, Bill McKibben’s Here Comes the Sun is a book in response to climate change with a whole lot of good news, for a pleasant change of pace.
Sure, McKibben includes a ton of information about all the climate related disasters we’ve experienced recently: fires, floods, droughts and killer heat waves. And alarming predictions about what the future is likely to hold. But at its core, this is a book that celebrates the rapid and increasing rise of solar and wind power (which is also, really, solar power). According to McKibben, in 2024, 92.5% of all new electricity brought online worldwide and 96% in the U.S. came from renewables. That’s both astonishing and heartening. Yes, only about 15% of the world’s electricity comes from such sources—so far—but I’m surprised it’s that much, and McKibben’s book is full of accounts of new efforts to replace fossil fuels with solar. The success of renewables is not just a function of fear of climate change but, notably, the fact that renewables are actually cheaper than fossil fuels in all kinds of ways, obvious and less so, which he explains with all kinds of examples and figures. For example, because burning coal is only 30% efficient, “We are sending more energy up smokestacks and exhaust pipes than we are putting to work to power our economy.” And of course once you burn oil or coal, it’s gone, and more needs to be mined, but a solar array lasts 30 years (and once it ceases to function can be recycled), and the sun just keeps on shining.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration has halted many of the most promising initiatives to increase use of renewables that were in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, and there’s little sign we will be catching up soon with China in the manufacture—or installation—of solar arrays or wind turbines. And even before Trump, costs in the U.S. of installing solar weren’t what they might have been. I know, because after Hurricane Helene left us without electricity for 18 days, we priced installing rooftop solar, and even with the various incentives (that are about to go away), it was more than we could afford, and we would not have recouped the costs over the time we could possibly own the house. That’s unfortunate, not just for us but for the planet. And McKibben makes a persuasive case that by continuing to push fossil fuels at the expense of renewables, the U.S. is putting itself at an economic disadvantage in relation to the rest of the world. Of course, what else is new these days? Ironically, though, Americans still continue to install solar panels and wind turbines, even in places like Texas. In fact, Texas’s dearth of regulations and permitting rules is ironically a boon for solar. Things would be even better if we were actually trying to compete with China for dominance in “alternative” energy, but I guess for another three years we’re just going to have to cut off our own noses by imposing tariffs on China’s solar equipment rather than using the scientific prowess our country might still have to create even better equipment than China’s.
Anyway, if the world can keep up the pace of solar installation or even increase it, which McKibben seems to think is likely, then the planet can cut carbon dioxide and methane emissions to zero and global warming will level off, eventually even stabilizing the climate. But that means there is work to do. The final couple of chapters of the book talk about that, though in fairly general terms.
I’m no expert in this field; indeed, though I’ve long been concerned about climate change, I’ve read next to nothing about it before this. Also, my scientific training, to the extent I have any at all, is beyond rudimentary, and my math is terrible--not that I needed to be a scientist to understand this book, which is geared towards readers like me. All the same, as a non-scientist, I don't think I’m the best person to evaluate the arguments and data in this book. My impulse, though, is to trust it. The book is full of facts and figures, not to mention common sense. Why, after a career dedicated to scaring the crap out of people about climate change, would McKibben write such an optimistic book, if the news weren’t actually better than we deserve?
“The smiles returning to the faces,” indeed.
Thank you, W. W. Norton, via Goodreads, for an advance reading copy of this book.
Sure, McKibben includes a ton of information about all the climate related disasters we’ve experienced recently: fires, floods, droughts and killer heat waves. And alarming predictions about what the future is likely to hold. But at its core, this is a book that celebrates the rapid and increasing rise of solar and wind power (which is also, really, solar power). According to McKibben, in 2024, 92.5% of all new electricity brought online worldwide and 96% in the U.S. came from renewables. That’s both astonishing and heartening. Yes, only about 15% of the world’s electricity comes from such sources—so far—but I’m surprised it’s that much, and McKibben’s book is full of accounts of new efforts to replace fossil fuels with solar. The success of renewables is not just a function of fear of climate change but, notably, the fact that renewables are actually cheaper than fossil fuels in all kinds of ways, obvious and less so, which he explains with all kinds of examples and figures. For example, because burning coal is only 30% efficient, “We are sending more energy up smokestacks and exhaust pipes than we are putting to work to power our economy.” And of course once you burn oil or coal, it’s gone, and more needs to be mined, but a solar array lasts 30 years (and once it ceases to function can be recycled), and the sun just keeps on shining.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration has halted many of the most promising initiatives to increase use of renewables that were in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, and there’s little sign we will be catching up soon with China in the manufacture—or installation—of solar arrays or wind turbines. And even before Trump, costs in the U.S. of installing solar weren’t what they might have been. I know, because after Hurricane Helene left us without electricity for 18 days, we priced installing rooftop solar, and even with the various incentives (that are about to go away), it was more than we could afford, and we would not have recouped the costs over the time we could possibly own the house. That’s unfortunate, not just for us but for the planet. And McKibben makes a persuasive case that by continuing to push fossil fuels at the expense of renewables, the U.S. is putting itself at an economic disadvantage in relation to the rest of the world. Of course, what else is new these days? Ironically, though, Americans still continue to install solar panels and wind turbines, even in places like Texas. In fact, Texas’s dearth of regulations and permitting rules is ironically a boon for solar. Things would be even better if we were actually trying to compete with China for dominance in “alternative” energy, but I guess for another three years we’re just going to have to cut off our own noses by imposing tariffs on China’s solar equipment rather than using the scientific prowess our country might still have to create even better equipment than China’s.
Anyway, if the world can keep up the pace of solar installation or even increase it, which McKibben seems to think is likely, then the planet can cut carbon dioxide and methane emissions to zero and global warming will level off, eventually even stabilizing the climate. But that means there is work to do. The final couple of chapters of the book talk about that, though in fairly general terms.
I’m no expert in this field; indeed, though I’ve long been concerned about climate change, I’ve read next to nothing about it before this. Also, my scientific training, to the extent I have any at all, is beyond rudimentary, and my math is terrible--not that I needed to be a scientist to understand this book, which is geared towards readers like me. All the same, as a non-scientist, I don't think I’m the best person to evaluate the arguments and data in this book. My impulse, though, is to trust it. The book is full of facts and figures, not to mention common sense. Why, after a career dedicated to scaring the crap out of people about climate change, would McKibben write such an optimistic book, if the news weren’t actually better than we deserve?
“The smiles returning to the faces,” indeed.
Thank you, W. W. Norton, via Goodreads, for an advance reading copy of this book.
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.
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)
October 12, 2025
I really enjoyed and appreciate this book. It helped me to see the practicality of sun and wind power and how far we have come in using them to eliminate the need for fossil fuels. It left me feeling hopeful. Though McKibben apologized for his last chapter, I loved it. I was poetic and beautiful.
December 1, 2025
The perfect book when you want to be amazed and somewhat optimistic about the climate but deeply annoyed by bad writing.
December 19, 2025
A must read for everyone!
January 15, 2026
Just as wonderful as expected of a book from Bill McKibben. I wish my brain was able to retain details better so that I could use the info in the book in everyday conversation. I’ll have to buy copies for everyone instead
January 15, 2026
The best book I've read about the climate crisis. Also happens to be a great synopsis of my area of work.
Solar and wind are the cheapest forms of energy!! Build them with battery storage!! All our public policy makers need to read this book and care about our damn planet
Solar and wind are the cheapest forms of energy!! Build them with battery storage!! All our public policy makers need to read this book and care about our damn planet
October 2, 2025
Hopeful that Bill is right, and that it’s finally time to shift away from burning all earthly things.
Read
November 4, 2025Lots of statistics, with enough narrative and analysis to make them palatable, if not memorable (for me). A very encouraging view of all the progress being made in solar and other renepriwable energy--mostly not in the US, but also plenty of ideas of what we (people and our government) can do to help make generous amounts of power available pretty rapidly .
He even predicts it will bring some world peace, because a fairly high amount of conflict between countries is over fuels. The sun is free and an unlimited source!
A very upbeat book on slowing climate change!
He even predicts it will bring some world peace, because a fairly high amount of conflict between countries is over fuels. The sun is free and an unlimited source!
A very upbeat book on slowing climate change!
November 8, 2025
Wow! As advertised, this book gave me HOPE! Serious, grounded hope. The worst possible outcomes of the climate crisis really can be averted, as long as we stay focused on solving the problem.
Bill McKibben's writing is straightforward and concise, geared towards a wide audience of laypeople and perhaps as lighthearted as you can get while talking about a heavy subject. In fact, if anything, as someone with a background in science and engineering, I sometimes wished for more technical explanations.
In this very approachable book, McKibben brought the receipts for the argument Tom Steyer made in Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War - that clean energy can save us from climate catastrophe. Specifically, solar and wind energy are right now already cheaper than energy from fossil fuels, and the use of renewable energy is growing exponentially. At this point, switching to green energy is just plain saving money, and saving the planet happens to be a nice fringe benefit. (p. 94)
There's an obligatory, sobering chapter describing what climate disaster currently looks like (e.g., heat waves and wildfires and record-breaking storms causing death, destruction, and human migration), how we got here, and why we need to take immediate action on a ginormous scale.
The rest of the book describes various clean energy sources and technologies - e.g., solar cells, wind turbines, hydropower, batteries, heat pumps, electric vehicles, induction cooktops, etc. - their benefits, why it's taken them so long to catch on, the active opposition they've faced (p. 67-68) and are still facing (p. 73, 138-139), how they've improved significantly in recent years and are still improving and will continue to improve (p. 74, 130), why they are now so cheap, how they are already being used, how quickly they are growing, and what we need to do to enable even faster growth.
In an overall sanguine book - he thinks we can achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 (p. 56) and even the energy demands of AI can be accommodated (p. 39) - McKibben points out that though the transition to affordable renewable energy is already underway, an essential point is the speed at which it must be done. We've already crossed the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold in global temperature rise, and physical planetary systems like jet streams have already been altered (p. 6); to stop the total destruction of the earth, the pace of transition must be urgent and sustained. (p. 76-77)
Of course, Big Oil isn't about to just give up their oil and gas reserves that are worth "tens of trillions of dollars" (p. 34), and they've retained power partly by actively spreading misinformation about renewable energy. (p. 139) Even in liberal U.S. states, communities object to wind and solar farms solely on the basis of aesthetics. (p. 140) Fortunately, attitudes are changing - Rockford, IL is proud of their union-built solar farms (p. 147) - and the fight against climate change is global; in some parts of Asia and Africa, the reality of cheap and reliable electricity means individuals and corporations are installing solar panels on their own, independent of the government and their nation's electric grid. (p. 104-109)
Mostly what's needed to enable more widespread implementation of green energy systems is money; there's certainly enough capital tied up by billionaires to fund the entire transition, and "the reallocation and redistribution of that money" - via a 2% wealth tax or a modest tax on luxury goods or the elimination of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry - "is now an existential necessity." (p. 112-113) Additionally, we need to support government policies and programs at all levels that will promote and make it easier for people and organizations to install and switch to green energy. (p. 169-172) Indeed, McKibben writes, "If fascism scares you...figuring out how to break the centralized power of the fossil fuel industry is a key form of resistance." (p. 5)
More than "just" allowing us to cut greenhouse emissions - which is immensely significant in itself - clean energy can help bring about more equitable and humane geopolitics; sun and wind are available for free everywhere, the sun being even more reliable near the equator, and they can't be hoarded like oil and gas. Already, renewable energy is "growing twice as fast in the developing world of the Global South as in the developed world of the Global North." (p. 5)
Importantly, McKibben identifies the bulk of green energy growth as happening in China, where "seven Chinese companies... were by 2024 producing more energy than the Seven Sisters of the oil industry." (p. 57) Instead of connecting cars with Detroit, "increasingly we should be thinking Changchun" in China. (p. 58) Meanwhile, the Trump administration is intentionally propping up fossil fuels and choking any progress in support of green energy - he's put the breaks on the momentum of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (p. 117-118) - and China is happy to benefit. With the U.S. sidelined, China is poised to "become the dominant player in international climate politics" (p. 118) and, unless the U.S. gets back on track, "it's entirely possible that the US could slide into a kind of global irrelevance." (p. 119)
But it's complicated. China's climate leadership is achieved in part by building solar farms on land where the indigenous Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Mongolians are oppressed. (p. 132-133) In the U.S., too, new mines for materials needed to build green energy equipment are often on indigenous land. (p. 133) "There's real harm that will come to real places and real people as we build out this new energy future." (p. 135) Ideally, responsible growth accounting for morality would include indigenous peoples as decision-makers on issues related to their land, or at least allow them to "extract some serious concessions from the government... But we don't live in a fair world" (p. 135) and, sadly, those in power are unlikely to start developing a conscience now.
Interestingly, McKibben weighs in on degrowth. (p. 50-53) He disagrees with the most extreme notion that even renewable energy can't sufficiently meet the future energy needs of the planet. He likes the "softer and smarter" idea to stop chasing after ever-growing GDP and instead "reorient ourselves around measures like 'gross national happiness' that attempt to balance lots of different goals," but not as a solution in itself. (p. 50) He is worried about too much attention being given to efforts to live more modestly to reduce energy demand, because though it's reasonable and desirable to try to reign in consumerism and increase sustainability, it's just not at all likely for all of humanity to make drastic, self-sacrificing lifestyle changes, especially not in the short time frame we have to head off the worst-case outcomes of the climate crisis. (p. 53) The hope is that "a clean energy transition will buy us some time to do these things." (p. 132)
Truly, if you want to feel hopeful about solving the climate crisis, read this book!
Bill McKibben's writing is straightforward and concise, geared towards a wide audience of laypeople and perhaps as lighthearted as you can get while talking about a heavy subject. In fact, if anything, as someone with a background in science and engineering, I sometimes wished for more technical explanations.
In this very approachable book, McKibben brought the receipts for the argument Tom Steyer made in Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War - that clean energy can save us from climate catastrophe. Specifically, solar and wind energy are right now already cheaper than energy from fossil fuels, and the use of renewable energy is growing exponentially. At this point, switching to green energy is just plain saving money, and saving the planet happens to be a nice fringe benefit. (p. 94)
There's an obligatory, sobering chapter describing what climate disaster currently looks like (e.g., heat waves and wildfires and record-breaking storms causing death, destruction, and human migration), how we got here, and why we need to take immediate action on a ginormous scale.
The rest of the book describes various clean energy sources and technologies - e.g., solar cells, wind turbines, hydropower, batteries, heat pumps, electric vehicles, induction cooktops, etc. - their benefits, why it's taken them so long to catch on, the active opposition they've faced (p. 67-68) and are still facing (p. 73, 138-139), how they've improved significantly in recent years and are still improving and will continue to improve (p. 74, 130), why they are now so cheap, how they are already being used, how quickly they are growing, and what we need to do to enable even faster growth.
In an overall sanguine book - he thinks we can achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 (p. 56) and even the energy demands of AI can be accommodated (p. 39) - McKibben points out that though the transition to affordable renewable energy is already underway, an essential point is the speed at which it must be done. We've already crossed the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold in global temperature rise, and physical planetary systems like jet streams have already been altered (p. 6); to stop the total destruction of the earth, the pace of transition must be urgent and sustained. (p. 76-77)
Of course, Big Oil isn't about to just give up their oil and gas reserves that are worth "tens of trillions of dollars" (p. 34), and they've retained power partly by actively spreading misinformation about renewable energy. (p. 139) Even in liberal U.S. states, communities object to wind and solar farms solely on the basis of aesthetics. (p. 140) Fortunately, attitudes are changing - Rockford, IL is proud of their union-built solar farms (p. 147) - and the fight against climate change is global; in some parts of Asia and Africa, the reality of cheap and reliable electricity means individuals and corporations are installing solar panels on their own, independent of the government and their nation's electric grid. (p. 104-109)
Mostly what's needed to enable more widespread implementation of green energy systems is money; there's certainly enough capital tied up by billionaires to fund the entire transition, and "the reallocation and redistribution of that money" - via a 2% wealth tax or a modest tax on luxury goods or the elimination of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry - "is now an existential necessity." (p. 112-113) Additionally, we need to support government policies and programs at all levels that will promote and make it easier for people and organizations to install and switch to green energy. (p. 169-172) Indeed, McKibben writes, "If fascism scares you...figuring out how to break the centralized power of the fossil fuel industry is a key form of resistance." (p. 5)
More than "just" allowing us to cut greenhouse emissions - which is immensely significant in itself - clean energy can help bring about more equitable and humane geopolitics; sun and wind are available for free everywhere, the sun being even more reliable near the equator, and they can't be hoarded like oil and gas. Already, renewable energy is "growing twice as fast in the developing world of the Global South as in the developed world of the Global North." (p. 5)
Importantly, McKibben identifies the bulk of green energy growth as happening in China, where "seven Chinese companies... were by 2024 producing more energy than the Seven Sisters of the oil industry." (p. 57) Instead of connecting cars with Detroit, "increasingly we should be thinking Changchun" in China. (p. 58) Meanwhile, the Trump administration is intentionally propping up fossil fuels and choking any progress in support of green energy - he's put the breaks on the momentum of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (p. 117-118) - and China is happy to benefit. With the U.S. sidelined, China is poised to "become the dominant player in international climate politics" (p. 118) and, unless the U.S. gets back on track, "it's entirely possible that the US could slide into a kind of global irrelevance." (p. 119)
But it's complicated. China's climate leadership is achieved in part by building solar farms on land where the indigenous Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Mongolians are oppressed. (p. 132-133) In the U.S., too, new mines for materials needed to build green energy equipment are often on indigenous land. (p. 133) "There's real harm that will come to real places and real people as we build out this new energy future." (p. 135) Ideally, responsible growth accounting for morality would include indigenous peoples as decision-makers on issues related to their land, or at least allow them to "extract some serious concessions from the government... But we don't live in a fair world" (p. 135) and, sadly, those in power are unlikely to start developing a conscience now.
Interestingly, McKibben weighs in on degrowth. (p. 50-53) He disagrees with the most extreme notion that even renewable energy can't sufficiently meet the future energy needs of the planet. He likes the "softer and smarter" idea to stop chasing after ever-growing GDP and instead "reorient ourselves around measures like 'gross national happiness' that attempt to balance lots of different goals," but not as a solution in itself. (p. 50) He is worried about too much attention being given to efforts to live more modestly to reduce energy demand, because though it's reasonable and desirable to try to reign in consumerism and increase sustainability, it's just not at all likely for all of humanity to make drastic, self-sacrificing lifestyle changes, especially not in the short time frame we have to head off the worst-case outcomes of the climate crisis. (p. 53) The hope is that "a clean energy transition will buy us some time to do these things." (p. 132)
Truly, if you want to feel hopeful about solving the climate crisis, read this book!
October 4, 2025
I listened to this book, and then I started it over and listened to it again!
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.’
November 4, 2025
Mckibben only mentions nuclear energy in passing as "a side dish", if costs ever come down. He claims nuclear energy is a distraction, ironically "in the distorted infosphere of green-wash and spin we inhabit". McKibben is in the anti-nuke cult, and it's hard to quit your religion.
Nuclear energy has the potential to be 1000 times cheaper and nearly pollution free. We won't know what today's price really is until someone builds a modern factory making nuclear modules, redesigned in 2025. But we do know the fuel is so cheap as to be threatening "too cheap to meter" to the capitalist industry. Manufactured reactors could be built at about the same price as heavy diesel, and with fuel that's 1000x cheaper, and far less pollution or waste. The fossil fuel industry cannot compete so they distract us, as you say, with chaotic energy sources that cement demand for Gas. Wind and solar are like the guy who spins the roulette wheel. California has a casino called CAISO where speculators gather every afternoon to bet on when clouds will quench wind and solar farms. Frackers sell wee bits of gas at fabulous prices when Solar takes the day off around 4:20 pm, saving us from the manufactured emergency. Nuclear energy ruins the party, providing power 95% of the time except for scheduled interruptions-- speculators can't bet against that! Nuclear energy cuts down costs for consumers but is bad for fossil generators and utilities.
The cult of anti-nukism has roots in goodness and generosity, as well as racism and fossil fuel boosting. They recite a mantra of whataboutism. "whatabout-the-waste, cost, proliferation". Such arguments are easy to refute in reality, but that doesn't change anti-nuke spiritual beliefs that "beyond" logic.
When I was a teenager the arms race was really scary. President Reagan was building expensive and destabilizing weapons that could only be used in a surprise sneak attack on USSR. If USSR attacked first the weapons would be useless. Was the USA planning a sneak attack as in Dr. Strangelove? Billions of dollars suggested "Yes". I was surprised that once the Peacekeeper missile was complete, the Pentagon mothballed it. They didn't need it. Just needed to be paid to build it. A Boondoggle. I'm more alert to govt programs that exist only for the contractors now. Given the immediate existential threat of climate collapse via mutually assured destructive nuclear war, stopping the arms race was the most environmental thing to do. PR experts at Sierra Club and other places decided that people weren't smart enough to be able to tell nuclear energy from nuclear bombs, and went full-court-press against anything "nuclear-".
Supporters of Oil and Coal found it convenient to amplify the anti-nuke movement, using Peace and Environmental grounds, rather than expose their anti-competitive agenda. Groups like RMI then dedicated to the "more efficient" use of coal. And FOE "Friends of the Earth" was funded with an initial $200k from the Oil company Atlantic Richfield's head. See Engdahl's _Century_of_War:_Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Orders for more.
McKibben cannot explain where the solar panels and batteries and other manufactured goods come from. They are NOT made with solar energy! Today they are made with coal, gas or nuclear, as no one can run industry on solar power. His focus on the grid is silly. Most of our energy demand is for buildings, and minerals, and transportation, which today is 0% supplied by solar. We know how to make solar energy 8 times cheaper! Make the panels with 10x cheaper nuclear energy! So the success of the new generation of nuclear plants can't kill solar- just make it better for the tasks it is ideally suited for, such as rooftops.
The cult of austerity doesn't sell in the developing world. And people need to clean up after themselves. We have a lot of poverty to cure. We have a lot of pollution to clean up. Much cheaper clean energy is necessary to decouple our human needs from environmentally destructive exploitation. The cheaper energy is, the more we can leave nature alone, and have modest sized families. Cheaper energy means better recycling, purification, desalination, transportation, and economic growth while reducing human demands on Earth's ecosystems and minerals.
We don't need energy efficiency. People need more energy. We cannot pollute. We need to clean it up. We need perfect recycling. The cheaper energy is, the more realistic it is to live a sustainable life.
McKibben is just waiting for solar to save the day. But We Can't Wait.
Nuclear energy has the potential to be 1000 times cheaper and nearly pollution free. We won't know what today's price really is until someone builds a modern factory making nuclear modules, redesigned in 2025. But we do know the fuel is so cheap as to be threatening "too cheap to meter" to the capitalist industry. Manufactured reactors could be built at about the same price as heavy diesel, and with fuel that's 1000x cheaper, and far less pollution or waste. The fossil fuel industry cannot compete so they distract us, as you say, with chaotic energy sources that cement demand for Gas. Wind and solar are like the guy who spins the roulette wheel. California has a casino called CAISO where speculators gather every afternoon to bet on when clouds will quench wind and solar farms. Frackers sell wee bits of gas at fabulous prices when Solar takes the day off around 4:20 pm, saving us from the manufactured emergency. Nuclear energy ruins the party, providing power 95% of the time except for scheduled interruptions-- speculators can't bet against that! Nuclear energy cuts down costs for consumers but is bad for fossil generators and utilities.
The cult of anti-nukism has roots in goodness and generosity, as well as racism and fossil fuel boosting. They recite a mantra of whataboutism. "whatabout-the-waste, cost, proliferation". Such arguments are easy to refute in reality, but that doesn't change anti-nuke spiritual beliefs that "beyond" logic.
When I was a teenager the arms race was really scary. President Reagan was building expensive and destabilizing weapons that could only be used in a surprise sneak attack on USSR. If USSR attacked first the weapons would be useless. Was the USA planning a sneak attack as in Dr. Strangelove? Billions of dollars suggested "Yes". I was surprised that once the Peacekeeper missile was complete, the Pentagon mothballed it. They didn't need it. Just needed to be paid to build it. A Boondoggle. I'm more alert to govt programs that exist only for the contractors now. Given the immediate existential threat of climate collapse via mutually assured destructive nuclear war, stopping the arms race was the most environmental thing to do. PR experts at Sierra Club and other places decided that people weren't smart enough to be able to tell nuclear energy from nuclear bombs, and went full-court-press against anything "nuclear-".
Supporters of Oil and Coal found it convenient to amplify the anti-nuke movement, using Peace and Environmental grounds, rather than expose their anti-competitive agenda. Groups like RMI then dedicated to the "more efficient" use of coal. And FOE "Friends of the Earth" was funded with an initial $200k from the Oil company Atlantic Richfield's head. See Engdahl's _Century_of_War:_Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Orders for more.
McKibben cannot explain where the solar panels and batteries and other manufactured goods come from. They are NOT made with solar energy! Today they are made with coal, gas or nuclear, as no one can run industry on solar power. His focus on the grid is silly. Most of our energy demand is for buildings, and minerals, and transportation, which today is 0% supplied by solar. We know how to make solar energy 8 times cheaper! Make the panels with 10x cheaper nuclear energy! So the success of the new generation of nuclear plants can't kill solar- just make it better for the tasks it is ideally suited for, such as rooftops.
The cult of austerity doesn't sell in the developing world. And people need to clean up after themselves. We have a lot of poverty to cure. We have a lot of pollution to clean up. Much cheaper clean energy is necessary to decouple our human needs from environmentally destructive exploitation. The cheaper energy is, the more we can leave nature alone, and have modest sized families. Cheaper energy means better recycling, purification, desalination, transportation, and economic growth while reducing human demands on Earth's ecosystems and minerals.
We don't need energy efficiency. People need more energy. We cannot pollute. We need to clean it up. We need perfect recycling. The cheaper energy is, the more realistic it is to live a sustainable life.
McKibben is just waiting for solar to save the day. But We Can't Wait.
December 30, 2025
I bought the book after listening to McKibben on a podcast recently. I have always been a fan of his work and an advocate for green energy. So, I wasn't looking to be convinced of moving in this direction.
In this book he reviews the global status of transitioning to solar and wind, some of the history and why it's taken so long. Of course, fossil fuel giants have fought it for decades. He's basically an historian on the subject and supports his findings with references.
I was looking for a reason to hope things were making a turn in this direction and McKibben provides enough evidence to support that hope. China is leading the way. And China is selling its technology (solar panels and batteries mainly) to many developing nations who are now producing electricity in regions previously not supported by fossil fuel infrastructure.
McKibben started writing the book in December, 2024. All his facts and figures are current, within the year of this review, 2025. He claims 2024 was a break through year because in many nations, solar energy is cheaper to produce than fossil fuel energy. Even some developed nations have reached this milestone.
The reason this milestone is attainable now more than before is simple economics. Electricity from solar and wind is cheaper to produce than burning fossil fuel. Much of the reason comes from better technology and cheaper production of this better technology. But you'd have to read the book to understand why. Skeptics to green energy reside even amongst liberals. We have been persuaded by arguments from both sides of the isle, liberals and conservatives, why investing in green energy won't work.
The book was often a slow read for me. At times it would read like a science textbook. A couple of pages and I would put it down as I am not one for just dry facts and figures. But I read it like I would be tested later. I plan on keeping it for a reference.
Don't get me wrong. McKibben has been an activist and leader on climate policy for decades. He has addressed numerous conferences, spoken with scores of scientists, leaders, environmentalists and climate advocates alike. Has attended and led rallies and protests. From all his years of leadership in climate activism, he shares numerous stories and discussions that contribute to the books purpose.
What did excite me was McKibben's praise for the eternal power of our Sun to provide our energy. We, our planet and our species, would not be here without the sun. The book provides a brief science lesson on the sun in case you're interested. McKibben points to the science that it will take a few billion years to burn out, so that's close to an eternal source of energy. And, it is available everywhere and cannot be hoarded. Fossil fuel is limited, isolated, and very much hoarded by the few.
His catch phrase is, "The Sun burns, so we don't have to". That's a bit of a double entendre, because, a) we burn fossil fuel, which we could replace with solar; and, b) we, along with our planet, will be burning up from climate change, and there's still time to stop our burning by using the sun's energy.
In this book he reviews the global status of transitioning to solar and wind, some of the history and why it's taken so long. Of course, fossil fuel giants have fought it for decades. He's basically an historian on the subject and supports his findings with references.
I was looking for a reason to hope things were making a turn in this direction and McKibben provides enough evidence to support that hope. China is leading the way. And China is selling its technology (solar panels and batteries mainly) to many developing nations who are now producing electricity in regions previously not supported by fossil fuel infrastructure.
McKibben started writing the book in December, 2024. All his facts and figures are current, within the year of this review, 2025. He claims 2024 was a break through year because in many nations, solar energy is cheaper to produce than fossil fuel energy. Even some developed nations have reached this milestone.
The reason this milestone is attainable now more than before is simple economics. Electricity from solar and wind is cheaper to produce than burning fossil fuel. Much of the reason comes from better technology and cheaper production of this better technology. But you'd have to read the book to understand why. Skeptics to green energy reside even amongst liberals. We have been persuaded by arguments from both sides of the isle, liberals and conservatives, why investing in green energy won't work.
The book was often a slow read for me. At times it would read like a science textbook. A couple of pages and I would put it down as I am not one for just dry facts and figures. But I read it like I would be tested later. I plan on keeping it for a reference.
Don't get me wrong. McKibben has been an activist and leader on climate policy for decades. He has addressed numerous conferences, spoken with scores of scientists, leaders, environmentalists and climate advocates alike. Has attended and led rallies and protests. From all his years of leadership in climate activism, he shares numerous stories and discussions that contribute to the books purpose.
What did excite me was McKibben's praise for the eternal power of our Sun to provide our energy. We, our planet and our species, would not be here without the sun. The book provides a brief science lesson on the sun in case you're interested. McKibben points to the science that it will take a few billion years to burn out, so that's close to an eternal source of energy. And, it is available everywhere and cannot be hoarded. Fossil fuel is limited, isolated, and very much hoarded by the few.
His catch phrase is, "The Sun burns, so we don't have to". That's a bit of a double entendre, because, a) we burn fossil fuel, which we could replace with solar; and, b) we, along with our planet, will be burning up from climate change, and there's still time to stop our burning by using the sun's energy.
November 21, 2025
A succinct and powerful argument for the rapid transition from burning fossil fuels for energy to relying primarily on solar power. An absolute Must Read during this disastrous second trump administration.
The book starts with a brief overview of the imminent and ongoing climate emergency. Deadly heat waves, more powerful storms, catastrophic flooding, life-threatening drought, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, etc. It's stuff everyone knows by now, but either ignores or doesn't know what to do about it. Thankfully, he immediately pivots to the solution: solar power!
McKibben carefully goes through the various objections to relying on solar power, some obvious (no sun at night), some silly (solar panels are ugly). He demonstrates that panel efficiency and battery capacity have improved to the point that there's plenty of electricity to last from sundown to sunrise. If we can build oil pipelines from Northern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, we can install transmission lines from large solar stations in the southwest to the midwest or west coast grids. Solar panels can be installed in agricultural areas, or better incorporated into architecture.
Some of the arguments are more disingenuous, disseminated and propagated by the oil industry and related bad actors. For instance, highlighting the dangers of cobalt mines while ignoring the much larger dangers of coal mines. Similar for the amount of waste generated (e.g. all those photos of wind turbines in the landfill, which look shocking until the actual numbers are examined). He devotes an entire chapter to the spurious economic arguments (i.e. "solar is too expensive"), showing that the opposite is true. Solar is now less expensive than coal and getting more affordable every year. If the hundreds of billions of dollars of annual government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry were instead invested in renewable energy, the savings would be even more dramatic.
The bottom line is that we do in fact have the technology and the capacity to make the transition, the only thing holding us back is the lack of political will (e.g. the trump administration's efforts to prop up coal mines and ban wind power). The good news is that China is proceeding without the US, and places like Pakistan and many African countries are doing what they did with telephony to energy, i.e. skipping the large infrastructure and going with small local systems. Just as they never bothered with landlines and went straight to cellphones, they are not installing large electrical grids, and relying instead on individual house/village scale systems).
The last chapter or two were the weakest IMO, as McKibbon zooms out and waxes philosophic on the sun in mythology and his four decades of climate activism. Interesting, but for me it distracted from the solid arguments and call to action that comprise the rest of the book.
October 3, 2025
The growth of solar power has taken everyone by surprise.
When Bill Gates wrote his book 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster' back in 2021, solar power (as well as wind) carried a significant 'Green Premium'. Today, however, solar power is the cheapest one around. (If you count kWh on a yearly basis. It's true that in order to be useable all-year-round everywhere they need to be coupled to batteries, but that cost is also dropping.)
The amount of installed photovoltaic capacity has been growing by a factor of ten every decade since the early 1980s. (Actually more, it has grown by a factor of 200'000 since 1985). And the trend shows no sign of slowing yet! While it's clear that it can't go on forever, it looks like it's currently accelerating, rather than slowing down! The amount of photovoltaic power generated currently doubles every two years, which would mean an increase of a factor of 32 in a decade.
In 2024 solar electricity produced 7% of all electricity, so if the current trend were to continue for another decade, the amount of solar electricity would correspond to twice as much as current electricity usage! (Electricity stands for about ⅓ of all energy use, and if electric cars etc take over, that share will increase, so it's not entirely implausible.)
Wind power is also increasing, but not quite as dramatically. Today wind power generates more power than solar, but it's not growing as fast (currently doubling in six years) so solar will overtake wind probably already for 2025.
The conclusion that McKibben draws is that this is happening right now, and that we need to sustain the momentum just a little bit longer.
The conclusion that I draw from the same data is that there's really no point in me putting up solar panels, as electricity will be too cheap to meter, any time the sun is above the horizon. A better investment would be to buy a bunch of batteries, but even they are dropping in price fast enough that it makes more economic sense to wait and buy them in the future.
I have long claimed that domestic solar panels are feel-good teddy-bears for the environmentally conscious. Sure - you can might be able to count home the investment over a decade or two, assuming that the electricity price remain moderately expensive (which I doubt that it will). But if you (like my 80-year-old father) go up on the roof to clean the panels every year, then the risk of falling down probably outweighs any savings. Large scale commercial solar farms, on the other hand - that's something to encourage. There's no reason not to cover any large school, shopping center or office building with photovoltaics.
Sorry - that turned more into a rant than a book review - but McKibbens new book is well worth reading, if only for the history of solar (and to a lesser extent wind-) power.
When Bill Gates wrote his book 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster' back in 2021, solar power (as well as wind) carried a significant 'Green Premium'. Today, however, solar power is the cheapest one around. (If you count kWh on a yearly basis. It's true that in order to be useable all-year-round everywhere they need to be coupled to batteries, but that cost is also dropping.)
The amount of installed photovoltaic capacity has been growing by a factor of ten every decade since the early 1980s. (Actually more, it has grown by a factor of 200'000 since 1985). And the trend shows no sign of slowing yet! While it's clear that it can't go on forever, it looks like it's currently accelerating, rather than slowing down! The amount of photovoltaic power generated currently doubles every two years, which would mean an increase of a factor of 32 in a decade.
In 2024 solar electricity produced 7% of all electricity, so if the current trend were to continue for another decade, the amount of solar electricity would correspond to twice as much as current electricity usage! (Electricity stands for about ⅓ of all energy use, and if electric cars etc take over, that share will increase, so it's not entirely implausible.)
Wind power is also increasing, but not quite as dramatically. Today wind power generates more power than solar, but it's not growing as fast (currently doubling in six years) so solar will overtake wind probably already for 2025.
The conclusion that McKibben draws is that this is happening right now, and that we need to sustain the momentum just a little bit longer.
The conclusion that I draw from the same data is that there's really no point in me putting up solar panels, as electricity will be too cheap to meter, any time the sun is above the horizon. A better investment would be to buy a bunch of batteries, but even they are dropping in price fast enough that it makes more economic sense to wait and buy them in the future.
I have long claimed that domestic solar panels are feel-good teddy-bears for the environmentally conscious. Sure - you can might be able to count home the investment over a decade or two, assuming that the electricity price remain moderately expensive (which I doubt that it will). But if you (like my 80-year-old father) go up on the roof to clean the panels every year, then the risk of falling down probably outweighs any savings. Large scale commercial solar farms, on the other hand - that's something to encourage. There's no reason not to cover any large school, shopping center or office building with photovoltaics.
Sorry - that turned more into a rant than a book review - but McKibbens new book is well worth reading, if only for the history of solar (and to a lesser extent wind-) power.
September 13, 2025
I’ve been a fan of Bill McKibben’s environmentally-focused writing in the New Yorker and on Substack for quite some time, so when I saw he was coming to Seattle’s Arts & Lecture series next week for his book tour, I bought a ticket and the book. It’s a short, accessible, fun, and fundamentally hopeful read.
Weaving in interesting tidbits of history - like the significance of burning things throughout the course of humanity, our tendency to marvel in wonder at the sun across cultures, and our repeated scientific attempts at harnessing its power - Bill tells a story intended to hope and inspire. Up until very recently, if you cared about climate, most of what you could do was try to *stop* the bad things from happening, but a viable alternative only seemed to exist fuzzily in the future. Over the last decade, thanks to technological advancements and learning curves, the insane price drop (90% for solar power, 70% for onshore wind, and 90% for batteries) has brought the potential for a new world into focus. Renewables are now able to compete with fossil fuels on price, and in many cases, are the cheapest and easiest option available. In 2024, roughly 90% of new capacity in the United States came from renewables, with notable climate hawks Texas (jokes) adding the most of any state. Look around hard enough and you will find amazing stories from Pakistan to Africa to Germany. It won’t be an easy transition, but as Bill notes while thoroughly dispensing many myths - it will be too expensive, the poor countries will suffer, there aren’t enough rare earth minerals, there isn’t enough land - we can do this.
The paradigmatic shift coming into view on the horizon is not one that’s known by most people, even those who largely agree that we need action on climate change. It’s important that people understand how far we’ve come, what’s possible, and the benefits (outside of //just// pushing back climate change) of a world powered by renewables. The time has come to focus not only on stopping bad things, but to *build* things. Unless there is a shift in the presence of these stories in the information environment and culture writ large, it will be incredibly difficult to push past entrenched fossil fuels interests, right-wing misinformation, and human nature.
It’s a weird time to be turning to voices, books, and movements pushing for a better future, especially as the Trump administration engages in an all-out assault on clean energy that can largely be reduced to a culture war not grounded in reality. But the only way out is through, and that’s why books like this are important. We can do this, we should do this, and it’s up to us to try and bring forth the world we want to see.
Weaving in interesting tidbits of history - like the significance of burning things throughout the course of humanity, our tendency to marvel in wonder at the sun across cultures, and our repeated scientific attempts at harnessing its power - Bill tells a story intended to hope and inspire. Up until very recently, if you cared about climate, most of what you could do was try to *stop* the bad things from happening, but a viable alternative only seemed to exist fuzzily in the future. Over the last decade, thanks to technological advancements and learning curves, the insane price drop (90% for solar power, 70% for onshore wind, and 90% for batteries) has brought the potential for a new world into focus. Renewables are now able to compete with fossil fuels on price, and in many cases, are the cheapest and easiest option available. In 2024, roughly 90% of new capacity in the United States came from renewables, with notable climate hawks Texas (jokes) adding the most of any state. Look around hard enough and you will find amazing stories from Pakistan to Africa to Germany. It won’t be an easy transition, but as Bill notes while thoroughly dispensing many myths - it will be too expensive, the poor countries will suffer, there aren’t enough rare earth minerals, there isn’t enough land - we can do this.
The paradigmatic shift coming into view on the horizon is not one that’s known by most people, even those who largely agree that we need action on climate change. It’s important that people understand how far we’ve come, what’s possible, and the benefits (outside of //just// pushing back climate change) of a world powered by renewables. The time has come to focus not only on stopping bad things, but to *build* things. Unless there is a shift in the presence of these stories in the information environment and culture writ large, it will be incredibly difficult to push past entrenched fossil fuels interests, right-wing misinformation, and human nature.
It’s a weird time to be turning to voices, books, and movements pushing for a better future, especially as the Trump administration engages in an all-out assault on clean energy that can largely be reduced to a culture war not grounded in reality. But the only way out is through, and that’s why books like this are important. We can do this, we should do this, and it’s up to us to try and bring forth the world we want to see.
October 11, 2025
"Here Comes the Sun" is a wonderful mix of grounded optimism and cautious realism. It's written by Bill McKibben, who has been worried (with good reason) for 4 decades about risks of escalating global warming. But it surveys recent game-changing improvements in solar & wind tech.
People have advanced many arguments why solar and wind power will be insufficient to head off catastrophic climate change. Until recently, these arguments have seemed strong. But McKibben's new book shows how much has changed with improvements in the technology and distribution.
For example: Until recently, I thought that batteries and grids still lagged far behind the requirements to convert most of our electricity and heating to sun and wind. As McKibben explains, these shortfalls, too, are being made up fast.
Again and again while listening to this book, I found myself thinking - "of course, this is such a clear explanation". So, indeed, my optimism has increased, that we humans can set aside our addictions to dirty energy sources, sufficiently quickly.
But McKibben is a realist too. He includes examples of the terrible damage that is already resulting from unchecked climate change. And he chronicles the fierce resistance and devilish skulduggery that proponents of the status quo apply in protection of their profit streams.
In other words: whilst a wonderful solar-powered future is within our grasp, we're not going to reach it without skilfully combatting the torrents of disinformation and cronyism that keep finding new ways to sow doubt about the costs, sustainability, and scalability of solar.
Some parts of the book are perhaps indulgent and unnecessarily discursive. But I see these parts as illuminating the human dynamics of the drama. And given the seriousness of the topic, occasional doses of light relief are welcome.
If you're still unconvinced about the scale of the dangers of the energy status quo - or if you're pessimistic about what solar and wind power can accomplish - then I strongly recommend this book to you: "A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization".
People have advanced many arguments why solar and wind power will be insufficient to head off catastrophic climate change. Until recently, these arguments have seemed strong. But McKibben's new book shows how much has changed with improvements in the technology and distribution.
For example: Until recently, I thought that batteries and grids still lagged far behind the requirements to convert most of our electricity and heating to sun and wind. As McKibben explains, these shortfalls, too, are being made up fast.
Again and again while listening to this book, I found myself thinking - "of course, this is such a clear explanation". So, indeed, my optimism has increased, that we humans can set aside our addictions to dirty energy sources, sufficiently quickly.
But McKibben is a realist too. He includes examples of the terrible damage that is already resulting from unchecked climate change. And he chronicles the fierce resistance and devilish skulduggery that proponents of the status quo apply in protection of their profit streams.
In other words: whilst a wonderful solar-powered future is within our grasp, we're not going to reach it without skilfully combatting the torrents of disinformation and cronyism that keep finding new ways to sow doubt about the costs, sustainability, and scalability of solar.
Some parts of the book are perhaps indulgent and unnecessarily discursive. But I see these parts as illuminating the human dynamics of the drama. And given the seriousness of the topic, occasional doses of light relief are welcome.
If you're still unconvinced about the scale of the dangers of the energy status quo - or if you're pessimistic about what solar and wind power can accomplish - then I strongly recommend this book to you: "A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization".
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