Here Comes the Sun; Bill McKibben, 2025
At 210 pages this short book is intended to paint an optimistic picture of our chances to limit global temperature rise to a livable maximum. The book is packed with decades long activist experience and remarkable solar power technical development. The reader can reach their own conclusions whether this picture warrants optimism. But the book is well worth reading.
Solar power generation technology that required breakthroughs in solar panels, storage batteries, and power generating wind turbines have, in only the past 15 years, succeeded in joining Moore’s law of growth in digital computing power as the second exponentially advancing technology in human history.
Thanks to Chinese and other nation’s investments, the world is now in position to replace the burning of fossil fuels with greenhouse gas free energy to meet the total needs of the planet. Now the question becomes – will solar based infrastructure be deployed in time to limit temperature rise to livable levels. In McKibben’s view we may only have five years to do so.
Solar power is now far and away the cheapest power source in human history and it continues to drop in price. On the positive side, China has made the most progress, reducing its dependence on coal burning generation more than any other country. China is also the leader in the development and production of EV cars, trucks, and buses. Even the petrol-states of the middle east are converting to solar power generation. In America, California and Texas (surprise?) are leading the way in adopting solar power. Rolling blackouts in California are (almost) a thing of the past. Arizona’s SRP (home to valley of the sun) is slowing down deployment by charging $50 a month just to connect your home solar to their grid. They should be paying homeowners and businesses to connect.
The global south, most close to the equator stand most to gain and adoption is happening at the grass roots first with self installed Chinese panels being placed everywhere. Cheap power is central to reducing inequality and improving lives throughout the globe.
The cost of converting the globe as fast as possible could be expedited with surprisingly little investment but the returns on such investment would be much lower than other alternate investments for billionaires and wealthy retirement funds. In the investment world, saving the planet does not enter the calculations.
The risks (of coups or outright corruption) are greater as well. McKibben suggests that the World Bank and IMF should shoulder these risks but that seems unlikely.
So we have an unstoppable exponential growth source of clean energy that may not get deployed in time to save the planet.
McKibben ends talking about grass roots efforts in the U.S. where key decisions regarding building wind and solar farms are usually local decisions that may come down to the whims of one or two key participants.
He notes that the Covid pandemic demonstrated a widespread and fast public and political response but the threat of immediate personal risk was at the heart of this pandemic. Within a five year period only those directly affected by weather and fire events are likely to be motivated to take action.
And the billionaire class are busy investing in survival pods and space travel! Like Trump, only they matter – no empathy for anyone else.