Here's the good news. Green energy is

getting better and cheaper faster than

we had ever dared hope. This next

sentence was unimaginable even a few

years ago. The energy [music] think tank

Ember found in April that all all of the

new electricity demand around the world

in 2025 was met with green power. That

is wild. But here is the bad news.

Climate change is accelerating. We're

discovering new ways the climate system

is more fragile, more sensitive to

emissions than we previously thought.

Europe is in the midst of an

extraordinary heat wave. The world is

staring [music] down the barrel of a

powerful El Nino.

>> Scientists say it could intensify to a

super El Nino causing extreme

temperatures and dramatically shifting

global weather patterns. [music]

>> We are not talking that much about

climate change lately. That doesn't mean

it has stopped happening. And climate

politics is in almost total disarray.

Trump has gutted the Inflation Reduction

Act. His administration is accelerating

fossil fuel production, kneecapping

green energy,

>> wind, it doesn't work, we'll tell you.

Aside from ruining our fields and our

valleys and killing all the birds,

having very being very weak and very

expensive.

>> But here's the the possibility. Here's

my bit of optimism. The advances in

green technology make a new climate

politics possible. one that doesn't just

talk about sacrifice and disaster

prevention, but presents decarbonization

and green energy as a way station on the

path to somewhere that is better. Clean

energy abundance, a new form of

energetic wealth, of the possibility of

the left actually offering a future of

more and better, not less and worse.

This was a hard case to make even a few

years ago. But now we can not just

imagine it, we can see it, touch it,

live in it. It is here.

So, how do we talk about it? How do

[music] we make it happen? Bill McKibben

is a Schuman distinguished scholar of

environmental studies at Mbury College,

founder of [music] 350.org, a climate

action group, as well as third act,

which is organizing people over 60 on

climate change. He is a contributing

[music] writer at the New Yorker. He

writes the substack, the crucial years,

and his most recent book is Here Comes

the Sun, a Last Chance for the Climate

and a [music] Fresh Chance for

Civilization. As always, my email

esrainshow@ny times.com. [music]

>> Bill McKibben, welcome back to the show.

>> Very good to be back with you.

>> So, you have a line that people think of

clean energy still like Whole Foods

energy. It's virtuous, pricey, a bit of

a flex when in fact you say it's become

the Costco of energy. Tell me about

that. cheap, available on the shelf in

bulk, ready to go. Uh the stuff that we

spent my whole lifetime calling

alternative energy from the sun and the

wind is now the obvious common sense

straightforward way to produce power.

Sometime earlier this decade, we passed

some invisible line where it became

cheaper to produce energy from the sun

and the wind than from setting stuff on

fire. That's a big line by the way. I

mean Darwin said fire and language were

the two things that marked our species.

Uh but now we live on a planet where the

cheapest way to make energy is to point

a sheet of glass at the sun. [snorts]

>> So I want to create a distinction here

because sometimes the numbers we use can

shift back and forth. There are a lot of

things we use energy for. M

>> uh solar energy

generally speaking becomes electricity

which can also be stored in batteries.

>> Yep.

>> I mean we make ammonia, we have fuels,

we have jet fuel, cement, etc.

>> And those things you cannot for the most

part use of the sun and the wind for

those are the things we know how to fix

and the things we don't. I see you

getting

>> we're very quickly very quickly moving

in all those directions too. I mean, the

things that are easiest are uh are is

electric power, but electric power is

quickly going to have to supplant, you

know, liquid fuel for driving cars.

That's the biggest thing we use liquid

fuel for and for running furnace in your

basement. You don't need it anymore

because you can stick in a heat pump and

it's cheaper, more efficient, uh, and

really a bit of a miracle. It's able to

use electricity to take latent heat out

of the air and turn it either to the

heating or the cooling that you'd like

in your house. Mark Jacobson at

Stanford, who's kind of the been the

authority on this,

>> the most optimistic on renewables of the

major modelers,

>> the most optimistic of the major

modelers and the one whose predictions

have come by far the closest to reality

over the last two decades. He's very

clear. He's modeled the data for I think

now 150 countries showing how you can

provide all the power you need from sun

and wind and water.

>> Yeah. For electricity and then you have

to use the other suite of new

technologies. If sun and wind and

batteries are the trinity of sort of

generating

capacity, the trinity of consumption for

Americans anyway are the EV/ the ebike,

the heat pump and the induction cooktop

to replace the open campfire in

[clears throat] your kitchen. We used to

have this whole set of things we called

hard to abate sectors. Uh things like

steel making. The last couple of years,

people have started figuring out how to

do this with electricity.

The one thing that seems hard to imagine

is transcontinental jet travel. [sighs]

Although the Chinese are now quickly

playing around with uh mediumh hall

battery powered jets. Up in Vermont

where I live, one of our big new

companies, Beta Technologies, is doing

short hall aircraft that run on

electricity. All of a sudden, there

really is an abundance of energy. So,

we're not short of energy, you know, but

we are short of time. uh because if

we're going to make any real difference

in the single most critical question

that humans face which is the rapid

heating of the earth then we have to do

this very fast faster than economic

forces and things by themselves would

produce.

So, one of the the amazing places I

think you see something happening that

feels almost unimaginable in America

right now is in Australia where the

solar revolution has moved into

something that almost sounds like

[snorts] utopic. What's happening in

Australia? Australia is now producing so

much solar power uh and wind power that

in the middle of the day they have more

than they need. So, they're trying to

get people to uh switch some of their

demand to the middle of the day. And the

way that they're doing it is saying to

Australians, uh, you get free

electricity between noon and 3. So, you

[clears throat] can imagine Australians

are busy digging out the owner's manual

for their dishwasher because it turns

out that there's a way to make it run at

a particular time, which none of us have

ever investigated because we haven't

needed to. the same thing with the EV,

but they're also out there buying

storage batteries, which are now cheap,

so they can fill them up in the

afternoon and run the household at

night. That's a miracle. I mean, the

first solar cell was invented at Bell

Labs in 1954.

There are people listening to this

program who were old enough in the 1950s

to be putting dimes in payoneses. And if

they did, they helped fund the

development of the first solar cell.

Now, when we built the first one, which

by the way, since we're sitting here in

the Times building next to the story of

the first solar cell on the front page

of the Times, directly next to it, it

butts into a story uh about the first

field trials of the polio vaccine. So

that gives you some idea of the kind of

strange twists of history that we're,

you know, since we're currently living

in America that's trying not only to get

rid of the wonders of clean energy but

also the wonders of vaccines, you know,

but at the time this was the most

expensive power in the world. The only

thing you could use it for was

satellites.

But iteratively we've gotten better and

better in a kind of dance between

activism and engineering that finally by

now has produced this thing that well

has literally become for parts of the

day on one of our continents too cheap

to meter

>> activism engineering and and I know

you're sort of including this in there

but state policy a number of governments

around the world Germany was a key mover

here America has been on and off but you

know until now pretty on a key mover

here and China of course

pumped money into creating a market for

something that was not yet economically

feasible just on its own cost and in

doing that they pulled forward all this

technology so now it is increasingly

economically feasible on its own it's

you know she as we're talking about is

Costco of energy but but I do think

there's an interesting underlying um

thing worth thinking about there which

is that we often treat technology and

policy as separate spheres from each

other but they're not policy can create

technology so let's go back to the great

missed opportunity which was the 1970s

Jimmy Carter facing an oil crisis and

with the first intimations of some of

the climate effects of fossil fuel uh

decides that solar is the way out uh he

puts solar panels famously on the White

House, but he goes to give a speech

where he says uh prophetically, sadly,

as it turns out, a generation from now,

this solar heater can either be a

curiosity,

a museum piece,

an example of a road

not taken,

or it can be just a small part of one of

the greatest and most exciting

adventures.

ever undertaken by the American people.

>> He actually says that

>> he puts money sufficient people thought

to power the R&D such that America would

have

>> 20%

of all the energy we use

from the sun.

>> Had that happened, we would live on a

different planet, a cooler one. Uh

instead, of course, Ronald Reagan ripped

the solar panels off the White House.

More importantly, he ripped that money

out of the federal budget and committed

us to the project of evermore drilling,

which is what's landed us where we are

now.

>> So, let's talk through some of the

objections or concerns people have here.

>> Australia, lot of sun, [snorts] very

warm. [clears throat]

>> Half of America, 180 million people live

close to the same latitude as Australia.

But here's something that will at least

give you some sense of possibility.

California is the place in the US that

committed most thoroughly to building

out renewable energy. Sometime in the

last 2 years, they've passed a real

tipping point. Most days now in

California, they produce more than 100%

of their electricity for long stretches

of the day from clean energy. When night

falls on the Golden State, uh, often now

the biggest source of supply to the grid

are batteries that have spent the

afternoon soaking up excess sunshine.

The bottom line is that California,

fourth largest economy in the world, is

using 60% less natural gas to produce

electricity than they were 3 years ago.

That's a very big shift. a number here

that I or a comparison here I thought

was very vivid which is that the amount

of battery power and storage California

has added in the past I think it was

three years is equivalent to having

built 12 new nuclear power plants and if

California built 12 nuclear power plants

we would talk about it

>> all the [laughter] time

>> it would be a big political topic

>> yes indeed batteries are like large

beige boxes you know so they're not as

interesting um but yes batteries

are quickly turning

night into day. Um, and sun is not the

only thing we have going for us. Wind

power is now essentially as cheap as

solar power. And wind power is beautiful

in that it complements the sun

perfectly. It complements it uh

geographically. Higher latitudes with

less sun tend to have more wind. It

complements it temporarily. uh in the

winter when the sun is lower in the sky,

we tend to get more wind. If we build

these things in tandem and then we put

batteries next to them, we're talking

24/7 power.

>> So the concern you hear about that is

that is 24/7 power. Sometimes um in some

places, not everywhere, not in all

places. The batteries that we have at

scale do not hold power forever. So you

still have significant intermittency

issues.

>> The batteries

>> when I when I talk to climate models,

they're they worry about this. They they

don't dis they don't

>> sure but let's be clear batteries are

now if the last 5 years was about sun

and wind. The next five are about

batteries and this technology is now

moving at extraordinary pace. So all of

a sudden we're assembling battery packs

that last easily 8 hours. So we're going

overnight. But people are putting up

increasingly batteries that can hold

power much longer than that. And the

technologies that accomplish them get

more remarkable with each passing month.

The big one of the big new batteries

going in for a big data center in the

Midwest uses

the oxidation of iron, essentially rust

as the storage mechanism for electric

power. The Chinese have now moved not

entirely but increasingly from lithium

to sodium as sodium is the fifth most

common element in the earth's crust I

think. Um so so technology is

increasingly making this much much much

easier to imagine.

>> So let's talk a bit about the the global

energy picture that's been built on

these technologies. So in April 2026,

the global energy think tank Ember,

[gasps] they released their global

electricity review is, you know better

than me, a big moment every year for

energy monks. It found that 75% of

global electricity growth in 2025 was

met by solar alone, which is amazing.

>> Renewables were over a third of power

generation for the first time,

overtaking coal. And I found this kind

of wild. I think it defies a lot of

people's expectations. In 2025 in China

and India, fossil fuel generation fell

for the first time.

>> Yep.

>> I often hear when you start talking

about energy and climate politics in

America, people say, "Well, China and

Indian aren't going to do it, and so it

doesn't matter what we do." But China's

been probably the world's most important

driver of electrote.

>> China is, let's let's be clear about

this. Not only are they the biggest

driver of electric, they're using it to

assume a position of technological and

economic primacy on this planet that

will probably come with a kind of

political primacy, too.

>> And they're doing it with things that if

you're an American patriot, we should

own. I mean, we talked about the first

solar cell in 1954. first world's first

industrial wind turbine was 20 miles

south of my house in Castleton, Vermont

on Grandpa's Knob. Watching the Trump

administration over the last 18 months,

I don't think there's ever been an act

of national economic self-sabotage that

quite compares with our decision to

deliver lock, stock, and barrel the

future to our theoretical main

adversary. And now the Chinese, by the

way, have a huge supply of cheap, clean

energy that they can use for anything

that they want.

You're you're more um hooked into the

world of AI than I am, but you know that

electricity is the sinoquinon of getting

this done.

They have endless amounts of cheap

electricity.

I mean, this pace at which the Chinese

have worked is astonishing. This time

last year, the Chinese were putting up 3

gawatts of solar power a day. Now, a

gigawatt is the rough equivalent of a

large coal fired power plant. So, they

were putting up one of those made out of

solar panels every 8 hours. Okay?

People, I think, can barely grasp the

speed at which this has been happening.

And now, the good news is that it's

leaking out in all kinds of places.

Pakistan across the border is arguably

the place hit hardest by climate change

on this planet. But geography played

them one good trick. Gave them a border

with China across which have come over

the last 18 months an astonishing number

of solar panels. If you go look at

Google Earth images of the rooftops of

Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, they're just

a sea of solar panels. This wasn't a

government program. This was people fed

up with expensive and unreliable

electricity who bought cheap Chinese

solar panels and went on YouTube and Tik

Tok to learn how to put them together.

We often talk about this energy

transition

only in terms of climate change but

pollution is part of it too. I was in

Lahore in I want to say it was 2019

probably

and

breathing scorched your throat. Yeah,

>> it it it was acurid. I mean, and I

thought one of the things that was

actually hard about being there was just

thinking about all the kids I was seeing

on, you know, the back of the motorbikes

with their parents and thinking about

them breathing this in all of the time.

>> But you saw this in China not long ago.

I mean, we used to talk constantly about

pollution in China. And now we're making

in many places such fast progress on

pollution that it is actually somewhat

accelerated warming is my understanding

because

well I mean let's do the good part of

this first. You know I remember being in

Beijing on days when you literally

couldn't see across the street. Uh in 10

years they've gotten marketkedly

cleaner. 60% of the cars sold in China

last month came with a plug. you know,

they're driving EVs. So, not only are

they is the air much cleaner, I I I

haven't been to China this year, but

I've talked to friends recently in

Shanghai who were saying the biggest

change is it's way quieter than it used

to be because so much of the traffic is

electric. And does this make a big

difference?

You know, you talked about L'ore, New

Delhi has 5 million school children. Two

and a half million of them have

irreversible lung damage from breathing

the air. Okay. And we don't need that

anymore. We can deal with this and deal

with it quickly. And as you say, China

and India are figuring that out. Pretty

much every place is starting to figure

it out. I mean, as of last month, the

country that uh looks like it's the new

Pakistan in terms of the speed of its

deployment of renewables is the

Philippines.

They were hard hit by the shutdown of

the straight of Hormuse. This became the

clear obvious way out. Everybody is

figuring out a that they don't want to

rely on something that can be bottled up

behind a waterway no one had ever

thought about, you know, before this.

And B, they don't want to depend for

energy on a country as erratic and

unreliable as the United States. So I

want to take this in some pieces but I

want to stay for a minute on

the differences in living in a clean

[snorts] energy electrified world. And

one reason I want to spend time on it is

I think for a very long time the ask has

been a kind of sacrifice

>> and we have not talked very much about

what could be better if we get this

right.

>> I mean let's just talk about it for a

minute. We live in a country built by

the automobile, the defining feature of

America in the 20th century. Um, for

people who like cars, once you've been

in an EV,

you're not going back to a gas car.

They're quiet. They have almost no

moving parts, so they don't need to be

repaired.

Even better than the EV is the ebike,

which I think may turn out to be the

transformative invention of our time on

Earth, you know. Um,

>> that's a big statement right there.

>> Well, you [laughter] remember, it's

funny because you remember, you may be

too young to remember this, uh, 20 years

ago or something, everybody was saying,

"There's a fancy new invention coming

that's going to change everything." And

it turned out to be the Segway.

>> The Segway. I do remember that.

>> That was the most disappointing. Well,

the ebike's different than that.

>> Kids, look up a Segway if you want to

see if you want to see what we're

talking about. It's an it's a

interesting visual

>> everywhere around the world. You can for

a few pennies worth of electricity go

miles and miles and miles on a bike.

It's pretty remarkable technology. Um, I

often don't get the ebike. I do a lot of

city biking around New York and it's a

testament to the technology of the the

ebike that I often don't choose it

because it is too fast. too capable. It

takes away also the fun of writing.

>> And you're and you're a Puritan, so you

know.

>> No, I actually mean I find it a little

bit unnerving to move that fast on New

York [laughter] City streets.

I I don't fully trust myself in my

reflexes. I want to move to maybe I

don't want to call this technological

utopianism. I feel like every time you

talk about a way technology can make

people's lives better, it's like, are

you a technological utopian? Are you now

or have you ever been a technological

utopian?

But a lot of what we can't do that we

would like to do is because the energy

to do it is too expensive.

So a lot of the world lives underwater

scarcity.

>> Mhm.

>> The cost of deselination

is very heavily the cost of energy that

goes into deselination.

>> A lot of the world lives under food

scarcity.

The cost of vertical farming is very

heavily influenced by the cost of energy

because a huge amount of the um price of

it is light.

There are a series of you know climate

change which we talk about

given the path we are on there is a

world in the future where we need to

begin doing capture of carbon in the

atmosphere. That is not economical to

do. It has other problems but is not

economical to do if you do not have

cheap and abundant clean energy.

I picked these three because I think

they're interesting in a very particular

way. They one could really improve the

lives of people, right? Having enough

water, having enough food, not living in

a heat trap. But the other is that there

ways where technology and a more

harmonious relationship with the earth

can actually connect to each other. that

there for instance farming is a good

example where if we were able to do more

farming vertically we would not have to

use as much land for agriculture as we

currently do. There are things that

would become possible that are not now

possible that are really profound.

>> Even now you can see small miracles and

this book of mine I describe being in a

warehouse. This would have been 18

months ago in Oakland. Um, and in sort

of beat up industrial district of

Oakland and behind one door there were

these two guys, one of whom had come

from Tesla. Uh, who were pioneering how

to make magnesium. Um, magnesium is a

structural metal. It's works as well as

steel or aluminum, but it's been there's

been a high energy cost associated with

making it. [gasps]

But it had [clears throat] other

technological advantages. So for

instance, unlike aluminum, you can

interrupt the smelting process. It

doesn't freeze into a crystallin state

if the temperature deviates a few

degrees. So what these guys had figured

out was that in a place like California,

which now has a big surplus of

electricity in the afternoon, and hence

it's very cheap, they could run their

smelter during the afternoon, turn it

off at night, come back the next day and

run it again. They were making metal out

of sunlight and seawater. That gives you

some sense of the possibilities. Uh uh

and there are 10,000 stories like that

around the world. So what widen that out

for me. What do you think becomes

possible here or in other countries

right in a world where there is more

accessible energy?

more accessible energy is at, you know,

the the synagoguan known for getting

anywhere near what we've called the

sustainable development goals around the

world. And you really get a sense of

this when you get to Africa where

there's still 6 or 700 million people

with no real electricity.

I remember being in a village in uh

Ghana uh far away from Acra where there

would never had power uh and they'd put

up one of these community micro grids

the day before with rudimentary wire 50

panels and rudimentary wiring out to

each of the very small homes in this

village.

And I was sitting the next day with the

village elders uh talking. They kept

handing me bottles of cold water to

drink, which I was grateful for. I'm a

verter. The equatorial sun is not my

thing. But it took me in my clueless

western way 15 minutes to figure out why

they were so proud to be handing me

bottles of cold water until the day

before. There really hadn't been

anything cold in that place. No one had

ever had a refrigerator. Now the most

important use for that refrigerator was

going to be storing vaccines but uh the

the other use was going to be providing

cold water some of the time and in fact

ice cream because there were kids having

their first taste of it that day too.

You really get a sense of what a miracle

this is. One of the other dimensions of

that is it makes it possible for a

village with a little bit of money to do

it on their own. It does not need to be

granted to them by a centralized

authority. And there are many many many

places in the world where the reason

they don't have power and another place

does even in that same country is

they're part of the disfavored ethnic

minority or just there weren't enough of

them there to put them up in the

priority list of where gets the the

infrastructure. So when you don't have

large capital investments

as what you need in order to have steady

energy

really remarkable things become

possible. And some of those things are

very um you wouldn't think of right

away. So I was at another village that

had had uh electricity for 6 months and

I asked the some of the older people in

the village what had changed. And one of

the things they said was our families

that moved to the city will come out and

visit us now. Um uh because it doesn't

get dark the minute the sun goes down

because we have a fan. you know those

sort of things those are enormous

differences for people. I I do want to

spend some time in the space of

possibility

and in the space not of the technologies

that clean energy make possible now or

in the next year or two but if you

imagine something we don't imagine that

often which is the wealth of clean

energy clean energy abundance every

person in the world but let's for now

talk about Americans every American

having access to much more energy per

American than than we do Now

it it's easier for people to imagine

cheap energy, right, where we're talking

about Australia, then what that kind of

clean energy abundance makes possible

that is not now possible. But so when

you think of that world, what is in it

that is not in our world. So look, I

I'll say truthfully, I don't think

Americans in our personal lives need

access to much more energy than we have

now. We already use huge quantities of

it and we use it for my money strangely.

We build enormous houses that are turn

out not even to make us very happy

because our families are all off in

separate ends of them and so on and so

forth. So for me the pleasure is not

imagining

>> now who's a puritan

>> all of this [laughter]

the pleasure comes in uh uh imagining by

contrast what it how it allows us to

imagine a kind of different political

world. If you depend on a resource

that's only available in a few places

then the people who control those few

places end up with way too much power.

[snorts] Our biggest uh oil and gas

barons in this country were the Koch

brothers. They used their winnings, I

think, to erode the foundations of our

democracy over the last three decades.

If you wonder why it was so easy for

Donald Trump to kick them over, it's

because they were kind of rotten to

start with. Vladimir Putin, uh, you

know, his winnings in the hydrocarbon

casino have funded a land war in Europe

in the 21st century. the king of Saudi

Arabia. And so one of the abundances

that comes, I think, with clean energy

is a uh is a kind of liberation from the

concentrations of power that we've grown

accustomed to with dirty energy.

>> I have to be honest, I'm pretty

skeptical of this vision. I want to

believe it, right? I want to believe it.

But I look around and it's of course

true that oligarchs and authoritarians

in the world we live in, many of them

have derived their power and their

wealth from fossil fuels, right? That's

inarguable.

But you look around and has Xi Jinping

lost power as China has become more of

an electrotte state. The richest man in

the world, Elon Musk, is one of the

great clean vehicle entrepreneurs. Oh,

come on, Bill. That's ridiculous. You

don't got to You don't have to like the

guy, but if you're not going to give

Tesla, it's due on the EV transition.

You know,

>> Tesla now is like the uh

75th best EV you could ever purchase,

you know,

>> but the only one in America that makes

money.

>> The only one in America that makes money

because we don't let many competitors

from the rest of the world. Uh

>> Well, I agree. Listen, we can talk about

whether or not we should bring in the

China EV, but what I am saying

>> I I take your point. What what I'm

saying is China is concentrations of

money.

>> Yes, but there won't be concentrations

of wealth in the same way.

>> You know, one of the questions that

people always ask is why doesn't Exxon

just go into the solar panel business.

Uh especially now that we know that

Exxon knew all about climate change back

in the 1980s. They had their own good

internal research that let them know

what was coming and would have given

them a hefty lead in

getting ahead of this curve. The CEO of

Exxon explained the answer to that year

before last. He said essentially, "We're

never going to do this because it

doesn't offer above average returns for

our investors." And he was right because

once you've got the solar panel up, when

the sun rises in the morning, it

delivers your energy for free. And from

Exxon's point of view, that's the

stupidest business model, you know, of

all time.

>> So, I want to I'm going to hold my

skepticism at least some of that. But

[clears throat] one thing, you know,

hear people talking about, I'm curious

to know to what degree you buy this, is

that

>> for a long time the topic was climate

politics and now it's climate economics.

So obviously Donald Trump came into

office the second time gutted much of

the key wind and solar subsidies in the

inflation reduction act and when I talk

to people around these industries

they're upset about that but it has not

wrecked the industry or the transition

>> in the way it might have been another

time or do you do you feel that that's

the hopeful vision there's a lot there's

been some data even in the last couple

of weeks looking at the number of

projects that have been cancelled

And I think what we're seeing for the

moment still is the momentum that was

built up in the Biden years. And I think

what we're going to see pretty quickly

is just how effectively the Trump

administration has quashed a lot of that

momentum. Um it's I mean the And why

would that be true if the economics are

as good as you say they are? Because

there's a tension there between saying

this is a Costco of energy, it's cheaper

than anything else and also taking away

government subsidies can destroy it.

because those well it's not even just

taking away government subsidies. Um I

mean so first let's talk about the

economic part. I mean the economics of

renewable energy are different than the

economics of fossil energy. All the cost

comes up front. Solar panel uh once

you've got it up the electricity is

free. So [clears throat] getting people

enough money to they can finance that

solar panel and get it up one thing.

It's important, but taking away those

subsidies wouldn't have been completely

fatal. What's been fatal is the full-on

absolute onslaught of the federal

government against renewable energy. In

fact, the US taxpayers have written

checks for billions of dollars to buy

back the wind leasing rights that

companies had paid for in the Biden

administration completely in an effort

to make sure that wind industry never

expands offshore. Federal lands have

been essentially put off limits to solar

panels off federal lands. the federal

government on looking at onshore wind uh

which powers much of the Midwest. Uh uh

they've in the last year stopped giving

out any new permits on completely absurd

and speurious grounds about that it

might I don't know what uh do something

to radar. None of this is true. It's all

just carrying water for the fossil fuel

industry. As you'll recall, fairly

[snorts] publicly, candidate Trump

declared to the fossil fuel industry,

"If you give me a billion dollars for my

campaign, I'll give you anything you

want."

>> So, this is a good transition into where

climate politics stands. the ferocity

of the movement between where climate

politics stood in the Biden years

uh not just the inflation reduction act

but the way it existed as a constant

concern as a lens through which much of

the world was seen

>> all the Fortune 500 companies were happy

to at least talk a good game here

>> to what has happened since it's not just

the demolition of those subsidies not

just the closing of federal lands to

solar panels.

>> But what I've heard people describe as

climate hushing.

>> So you don't hear Democratic politicians

talk about climate nearly as much as he

did before.

>> You do not hear the Fortune 500

companies doing this. And this is true

not just for, you know, centristy or

moderate Dems, but but on the left,

right? If you Oh, it's completely like I

I

>> the the real I mean the perfect example

is close to home is Kathy Hokll the

governor of New York who's essentially

gutted the state's climate policy over

the last few months. Uh again out of

some combination of feelalty to donors

and uh worries about affordability as

the new mantra. Well, so you did a kind

of air quotes around affordability, but

I think actually Democratic politicians

do have worries about

>> Oh, I agree.

>> And not just about affordability, but a

generalized sense that climate was

something that was putting them out of

step with voters. Not because voters

don't care about it in a poll, but

because the versions of this I've heard

from from Democrats or one that it

seemed that they got a lot of survey

data and they were persuaded by people

that the picture the electorate had of

them was that they care about climate

and not the day-to-day struggle, right,

of of people working on the pocketbook.

And the second the second dimension of

it was simply a seeing something which

was that when oil prices went up when

prices in general went up that that

really dissolved

>> right

>> the willingness people had for

>> so

>> sacrifice or limitations

>> and there are other factors here too

like the politics sort of movement

politics around climate you know

achieved most of what it had set out to

do with the inflation reduction act that

was the kind of natural endpoint of a

lot of the work that people had been

engaged in for decades. And so a lot of

people sort of disarmed, you know, put

down their rifles and went off to do the

work of building out this new future.

Um, I've one of the one of the few

advantages of being an old person and

having been around this story for a very

long time. I wrote what's often called

the first book about what we then called

the greenhouse effect back in the 1980s.

Uh is that I've seen these cycles

>> come and go. We've had, you know, we had

intense interest in 1988

and 89. My book ended up in 24

languages. Uh then that you know dipped

uh as the oil industry geared up for the

coyoto talks and went into a real lull

as Bush and Cheney took over American

policy. Al Gore managed to jin it up

again. Uh but then it subsided after the

failure at Copenhagen. We built a big

movement that made climate change

important and helped yield the Paris

Accords. when that momentum began to

flag Greta Tunberg and her movement

emerged and that scared the hell out of

Fortune 500 companies and they got on

board. Now the fossil fuel industry is

fighting has fought successfully back in

this country. Let's be clear, pretty

much the rest of the world remains

committed to working on climate and on a

>> there's been a fair amount of regression

in Europe.

>> We'll see. I mean, the Brits are about

to name a new chancellor. My money's on

Ed Miband, who's been the uh most

effective energy and climate guy in the

UK, but we'll see. Um, at any rate, I

think that this particular cycle of

climate hushing is coming quickly to an

end. Uh in Europe, we've just gone

through a heat wave so epic that it's

rewriting the politics as it happens.

You know, I mean, lots and lots and lots

of people dead. Um the earth is about to

enter a 12 or 18month period unlike any

in its history. The El Nino that's

gathering force in the Pacific as we sit

here today looks like it's going to be

the strongest thing of its kind in a

[snorts] very long time. That means that

the Earth in 2026 and definitely in 2027

is going to see temperatures higher than

it's ever humans.

>> Can you describe I think people have

heard the term but can you describe what

an El Nino is? El Nino is the uh the

periodic phenomenon where heat is

released in large quantities from the

Pacific and that heat then expresses

itself all over the planet and it comes

at a time when say in this country we're

already vulnerable. Uh we just had the

hottest winter in the western United

States by a large margin. And I was in

Colorado yesterday, uh, where there was

no snowpack this winter to speak of. And

where yesterday, day before, three

firefighters died on the Colorado Utah

border fighting what I think is going to

be one of the earlier fires of the year.

I think we're going to see, I'm afraid,

an extraordinary plague of flame.

>> California, I I when I grew up in

California, fires happened.

They were not the

constant frightening fact of life. They

I mean I had family lose their homes in

the LA and and Aladena fires the

>> and it has made California into a

fundamentally different place to live.

>> Look, let's talk about climate in two

dimensions.

The first is um

the stuff that we can see every day.

Warm air holds more water vapor than

cold. That means that in aid areas,

we're now seeing lots more evaporation

and drought and with it fire. And those

fires are now in places that we just

would never have thought be even

possible to catch on fire. Uh once that

water's up in the air, it comes down and

it comes down in deluge in wet parts of

the world. my town in Vermont. You know,

we've had two of the worst floods in our

history in the course of this decade.

The last one isolated our town for days,

weeks. The road both east and west of

town was destroyed by the river.

Um um so there's that kind of damage

that we can see and it is enormous and

it's much worse in the poorest parts of

the world that have done nothing to

cause the problem. Then there's now an

emerging

uh understanding of the damage we're

starting to do to the most fundamental

physical systems on the planet. The

jetream draws its power from the

temperature differential between the

equator and the pole.

>> Can you describe what the jetream is?

>> The high altitude movement of air and

hence weather and whatever around the

planet. Uh because we've now raised the

temperature of the poles so

dramatically, the jetream is gone wonky.

It gets stuck in weird high amplitude

positions. that allows among other

things for these uh extraordinary heat

domes like the one that just settled

over Europe, the ones we've seen in the

US in recent years.

Probably even more remarkable are the

series of currents including the Gulf

Stream that we call the Atlantic meridal

overturning currents AOCH. Together they

are 100 times the flow of the Amazon

River. They're the biggest heat

distribution engine on planet Earth.

We've always known that there was danger

here. As

melting, as water, fresh water pours off

a melting Greenland, it changes the

salenity and hence the density of

seawater in the North Atlantic. And it's

that density differences that drive this

giant gire. We used to think that this

was a problem for the next century. The

most recent science, the scientist who's

maybe the leading authority in all this

said a few weeks ago in response to the

latest series of papers that he thought

there was a 50% chance of the

large scale damage beginning collapse of

those currents in the decades ahead. If

that happens, it'll be the biggest

civilizational event in human history.

>> What happens if that happens? Well, I

mean, the first thing is that, you know,

Western Europe suddenly gets

paradoxically very cold. If you look at

a map, Milan is on a latitude line with

Montreal. Um, but it's kept artificially

warm by the flow of heat coming up

through these currents. But more

fundamentally, you begin just a profound

um that contrast between then the

southern hemisphere and the northern

hemisphere starts to produce the

capacity for storms of a violence we

only imagine in

movies. Um uh everything changes.

>> So I think we've now set up that there

are three forces happening

simultaneously.

So we are on a worse track on warming

than we had even believed ourselves to

be. So that's one piece. At the same

time, climate tech, energy tech,

whatever you want to call it, has also

accelerated faster than anybody had

dared hope. But then there is this kind

of intermediary force which is climate

politics or energy politics for lack of

a better term. And that is where I think

there is a lot of

dispiritedness. I get this feeling that

a lot of people in the climate movement

don't quite know where to go next

because something that I think is quite

tough for movements, I think it happened

to liberalism in general after Obama and

when it then hit Trump is finding a very

high level of success, right, the IRA in

this case,

>> only to then almost immediately see that

undone in a kind of backlash politics,

all of that traction kind of pulled

back.

it can leave movements a little bit

shattered. So I I guess I'd ask the

question this way.

What lessons are there to learn if if

what you're saying is comes true in its

own kind of horrible way, the kind of

politics is going to come back,

>> but having just lived through this, you

know, the the rise and the fall, what

has been learned? If you think about the

climate story, the first 35 years of it

post Jim Hansen's testimony in Congress

in 1988,

those 35 years are spent in a world

where fossil energy is relatively cheap

and renewable energy is relatively

expensive. So most of the work of much

of the work of climate movements and

things has to be devoted to in essence

making fossil fuel more expensive.

That's what carbon taxes and prices and

things were. That's why we ran this

giant divestment campaign that's reached

$40 trillion in endowments and

portfolios that began to get out of coal

and gas and oil. We wanted to raise the

cost of capital. Those things are remain

important work, you know, but

now we live in a world where clean

energy is cheaper. That means that the

forces of economic gravity are working

in more or less the right direction now.

And that explains, I think, why there's

been the extraordinary political

reaction from the fossil fuel industry

that there's been. That's why they were

suddenly so in bed with Trump and with

the I mean because remember prior to

this even the Exxons of the world had

been talking about climate change as a

real challenge and we will do what we

they've now seen the future BP beyond

petroleum.

>> The future is we actually can go beyond

petroleum. We don't need it anymore and

and we're beginning to dispense with it.

One of the most interesting parts of the

Iran war has been that oil prices didn't

get any higher than they did. Uh you

know that the price of oil topped out at

$130 a barrel. That's largely because

the Chinese are using something like 5

million barrels a day less than we

thought than they were projected to be

using. So anyway,

some clever Democratic politician at a

certain point is going to say to people,

"Look at Australia.

They're getting free electricity.

They don't have more sun and wind than

we have. They live on the same planet

that we do. we could be doing the same

thing if we had a sensible energy policy

and I think that that's going to become

a ever more enticing argument because

the rest of the world is not waiting

around uh they are moving especially

Asia and you know

Asia more or less defines humanity It's

60% of the world are moving very very

quickly in this direction.

>> Some of the parts of climate politics

that have ended up proving the most

politically difficult are the places

where people feel their autonomy is

being taken away.

>> [snorts]

>> So in California where it looks likely

that Javier Bera is going to be the next

governor, I think it is unlikely given

things he has said and given where the

politics have gone that the um the

aggression on phasing out internal

combustion engine cars that you saw

under Gavin Newsome is going to move

forward. We've talked about Kathy Hokll

here in New York who's been shifting out

of some of the sort of major climate

projects and targets. Um

the thing that I have heard from many

politicians who who actually are good on

this issue and do care about this issue,

but is what they are trying to figure

out and this is I think some of what the

inflation reduction act the balance it

was trying to strike was can you move

the transition fast enough by giving

people things that they want right

subsidies for heat pumps and solar and

so on

without doing the things that I think

they've people have often found are more

politically dangerous which is people's

feeling you're taking something from

them. You're taking their autonomy.

You're taking a technology they like. um

you know people as good as EVs are

people do people still have range

anxiety or they worry about you know

they just have attachment to cars they

currently have that there's a lot of

desire people have for options but they

don't want to be told what to do and on

the same time to get where we need to be

as fast as we need to get there it is

hard to say that that is all going to

happen through carrots subsidies

and stories that everybody can agree on.

>> Look, let's first again stipulate that

we're mostly just talking about the US

here.

>> Mhm.

>> Um, which now is about 11% of the global

emissions on the planet. So the other

89% people are to one degree or another

really working at. And these are

countries where policy seems in some

cases to be a little easier to uh figure

out either because like China you don't

no one gets a say except Xiinping or

because they're just working more

robustly.

>> This is actually a question you would

know the answer to that that I I didn't

look at in prep for this. The US is not

on its you know Paris pathway etc. Are

other countries do you see a fidelity to

climate promises there that you don't

hear? cuz my understanding is they're

not being great.

>> Well, you see

you see a lot of countries that are um

setting up the conditions now that are

going to allow them to change

much more quickly. And in fact, there's

new data today showing that the US is

the main place in the world where

emissions are increasing now.

>> Um which is

just unbelievable. I mean, let's be

clear. The US has already put more

carbon in the atmosphere than anybody

else, and no one, including China, is

ever going to match us. Um, uh,

historically, and it's all still up

there. I mean, the stuff that came out

of the tailpipe of my family's Plymouth

Fury when I was getting my learner's

permit in the 1970s is still up there in

the atmosphere trapping heat. Okay? So

it's unbelievably shameful that we're

that we are the outlier here. Uh

especially given that we invented the

necessary technology.

Um but I do think that it's not going to

be a matter of much longer before

politicians start emerging who

understand the ways to talk about and

act on this issue. And I think it is

probably going to be more carrots than

sticks. But I think the real thing that

happens is that every time a solar panel

goes up, every time an EV drives off the

showroom,

uh, every time someone switches to an

ebike from a car because they figured

out they don't need 3,000 pounds of

sheet metal to get their kids to school.

Um, every time that happens, the

political power of the fossil fuel

industry incrementally decreases.

And we're going to come at some point to

a place where their political power is

broken. And when that happens, we will

finally in this country be able to have

a more rational discussion of what our

choices are and how we move forward. I

kind of take that as our work at Third

Act and my work and whatever elsewhere

is to figure out how to do the things

that break that political power because

it has been the golden thread of

obstruction all the way along. So that

so that is still the way you see it that

the the core obstruction here is the

political power of the fossil fuel

industry not the preferences or

resistance of of just to finish the the

argument

>> of voters who may not want to do some of

the things who don't want to replace

their furnace who don't want to replace

their car who don't want to be told you

know that that the way they're doing

energy has to change

>> there's always going to be some of that

but I don't think those are that hard.

If you get people I because I've done

this a hundred times. If I put my

neighbors in an EV and let them drive

it, they're like, "This is great." You

know, if we have people over for dinner

and show them the induction cooktop,

which you can buy for 60 bucks online,

you know, and which boils water faster

than you can boil it on a gas stove.

Very few people are like, I must have an

open flame in my kitchen to make me

happy.

>> China's come up a lot in this

conversation and there's a tension in

the way I think the left sees and treats

China particularly on renewable energy.

So you can imagine a world where what

China has done is hailed as heroic and

we embrace it. We import their cheap

electric vehicles which work really well

and are much cheaper than what we make.

We embrace how rapidly they have pushed

the world forward on solar energy and

and other forms of uh green energy

infrastructure and and and we adopt it.

What we've actually done and this goes

back to the Biden administration not

just Trump is tariff a lot of that

particularly the EVs. We've treated

China's uh

dominance or primacy over the solar

supply chain as a threat that needs to

be combed, not as a kind of global

cooperation to be embraced.

Is that a mistake?

Look, I mean, it's understandable, for

instance, why we tariff EVs from China

because if we let them in right now,

our car industry would be over

overnight. You can get a great Chinese

EV for 20 grand now. You know, as good

as any car you've ever seen.

So, it made sense to erect a tariff wall

to try and preserve our auto industry.

What makes no sense is to erect the

tariff wall and then behind it keep

everything the same. The only rational

reason for building the wall of tariffs

would be to spend the next 3 years

busily incentivizing and building an

American EV industry that can compete.

And there's no reason that it can't. I

mean, in fact, these cars are actually

relatively easy to figure out how to

build because they have so few moving

parts. Detroit's capable of this, but

we're just

>> losing a lot of money trying it right

now.

>> They lost a lot of money because we

changed policy. There's no uh uh there's

no technological

um barrier to us doing. It's not like

the Chinese have some, you know,

incredible technological insight that we

haven't come up with.

>> No, they have manufacturing ecosystems

that we don't have.

>> That's right. They've done that hard

work to get that done. But we are

completely capable of doing that. You

know, that was really what the IRA

envisioned. I mean, the IRA,

among other things, one of the worst

named pieces of legislation in American

history, was really, you could have

called it the, you know, trying to catch

up to China Finally Act, and that would

have been a much clearer name for it.

>> But that doesn't quite answer the the

question behind it, which is what should

the relationship, what should the

orientation towards China be? Look, in

in Washington right now, not just under

Trump, but this is true for Democrats,

there's been a a real rising

>> uh level of antagonism towards China, a

sense that we are locked in in a

profound competition

>> and such that

advances that come from China are not

celebrated. Each one is a new kind of

threat. If they've got embedded solar

panels, instead of that being a boon for

the global,

>> you know, environmental ecosystem, we

treat that as a danger to American, you

know, supply chain capacities. I think

that's a huge mistake. You know,

[snorts] China has extraordinary

capacity to build, say, solar panels.

They're now shutting in some of that

capacity to try and drive the price up a

little bit because this stuff got so

cheap. But instead, imagine a world

where we just decide this is going to be

a priority and we work together to

globalize those factories, run them

24/7, turn out solar panels by the

gazillion, stack them on every railroad

sighting and warf on planet earth and

tell people to come take them away and

make their own Pakistans. you know, uh

you have begun to diffuse some of the

potentially very dangerous competition

between these two countries. You've done

it in a project that helps the rest of

the planet in ways that you can figure

out how to share the credit for. Um uh

and the option the the other option is

to inhabit a an earth where we continue

in competition with these guys uh even

as uh the sea level rises around us. Um

I think it's a no-brainer. I got to say

>> there is both the question of having the

technology and this question of

deploying the technology. So even before

Trump, you have this problem is

beginning to affect the roll out of the

IRA, which is one, it is hard to build a

lot of what needs to be built. So solar,

the solar roll out was going really,

really well. Wind turbines were tougher.

Um, a lot of wind was undershooting the

expectations of modelers. Uh, and the

other big problem we're facing is

transmission lines. So you build a big,

you know, solar array or wind farm,

>> you've got to get that energy from where

it's generated to where it's going.

>> We've seen the construction of

interstate transmission lines fall.

[sighs] There was an effort uh this was

like the big mansion compromised side

car that progressives fought and and

helped kill. that it had both like the

acceptance of a large natural gas

pipeline but also would have had pretty

big reforms on how you site interstate

transmission lines that didn't pass. And

so the transmission lines problem has

just kind of festered.

We have the technology but we have to

build and move it

>> in a way that is less sexy than

sometimes just thinking about the solar

panels can be.

>> What do we need to do there? So,

a few things.

>> One, the Biden administration was deeply

committed to building this stuff, and

they were actually getting a lot of it

done. They had in the White House a team

of people who were shephering each one

of these transmission projects through

its various hoops and and that was

important work. And it was sad that it's

disappeared.

Obviously, the Trump administration is

not going to allow any of this. They've

shut it down everywhere. But there are a

few for the moment technological

uh uh aids here. We've actually figured

out how we can more or less double the

flow of electricity across a lot of

transmission lines just by changing the

wire that hangs from those poles. And

that presents very few permitting

problems. And it's beginning to happen

in lots of places. It's also true that

people are starting to learn how to use

batteries to island energy as it were

and perhaps reduce some of it. But

people are also coming up with uh other

workarounds that are stranger. Uh there

are parts of the country now where um

people are near big uh uh solar

installations filling batteries on the

backs of train cars and then rolling

them uh to the nearest metro area, you

know, uh to back and forth, back and

forth to provide power. [gasps]

In the end, there's going to need to be

when we have some kind of sane politics

back in Washington, there's going to

need to be some kind of

way forward here where we figure out how

to do this. And it, you know, how that

deal gets structured will depend on the,

as it always does, the strength of the

competing political forces.

>> Well, I want to ask you what that deal

should be. Yeah. I mean, one of the

reason I'm bringing up transmission

lines is that

>> this all gets sort of bucketed under

this term permitting reform.

>> Permitting reform is, I think, generally

understood as first like a right of

center thing and then sometimes it's

like a bipartisan deal making space.

What I've actually not seen that much of

is people in the climate movement and

the broader left saying this is what I

think it should look like. Like this is

my priority for permitting reform. So in

a rational world, rational country,

you'd have a permitting reform or

permitting system that prioritized clean

energy over dirty energy. There's no

good reason to be building gas pipelines

anymore in this country. In the

political world in which we live,

there's probably some compromise that

has to be reached there uh between the

oil industry and sanity. So, in the

meantime, there's a lot that we can do.

Third act is this movement that I I and

a few others started a few years ago to

organize old people like me, people over

the age of 60 for action on climate and

democracy. And I'll tell you what we've

been doing for the last uh 10 months or

so. One, getting states to make it much

easier for people to put solar panels on

their roofs. Americans pay three to five

times as much as Europeans or

Australians for a home solar system. Not

because of the cost of the panels. Even

with tariffs, it's dimminimous. It's

because we have way too much bureaucracy

here. Uh every jurisdiction, and there

are 15,000 of them in the United States,

every town, every county has its own

zoning code, uh its own team of

inspectors. They want you to, you know,

they want to climb up on the roof and

they want you to send them diagrams. And

this is not how it works in the rest of

the world. In the rest of the world,

buying a solar panel is like buying a

refrigerator. You call up a guy Monday,

by Wednesday, he's up on your roof

hammering away. By Friday, you're

connected to the grid. That's why 40% of

homes in Australia have solar panels.

That makes it very cheap if you go fast

like that.

There's an app for this. The National

Renewable Energy Lab before it was

trashed by the administration produced

uh what's called uh Solar App Plus. It's

an instant permitting app. You type in

the address of the house you want to put

it on, the kind of equipment that you're

going to put up there. If the computer

likes it, it prints you out a permit.

You're up on the roof ready to go to

work. We've managed to get that

legislation going in a bunch of places.

Now, even more striking, though less

numerically significant is what Third

Act and a few others managed to do over

that 8 months with what we're calling

balcony solar or plug-in solar. If

you've been to Europe in the last 5

years, you have maybe not even noticed,

but 5 million Europeans have paid a few

hundred and come home with a solar panel

designed not to go on the roof, but to

be zip tied to the railing of your

apartment balcony. On the back is a

plug, which you plug into the wall. No

electrician required. Produces often 20%

of the power an apartment uses. So, not

everything, but not nothing either. Um,

this was illegal in the US pretty much

everywhere

until this spring. And in the last

12 weeks or 14 weeks, we've managed to

get now 10 states where we've authorized

this. It's not going to change

everything, but by next year, there'll

be a big market for cheap solar panels

that you can apartment renters can use.

I don't think of Europe as a low

regulation, low bureaucracy.

>> Those Germans very loosey goosey with

the rules.

>> So why has it been easier to do solar

panels there than here? What's behind

that?

>> I I think that they've had less power

from the fossil fuel industry and the

utility lobby. You know, there have been

a couple of times in the last uh uh few

months when I've been listening to the

your podcast and I've been loving what

I'm hearing, but I've also been wanting

to like shout at the you know, no, you

did this great interview with this woman

who was talking about sort of the

misogyny of the mega movement and

things, but it evolved into a really

interesting discussion of aesthetics and

political aesthetics and what they look

like. One of the things that a kind of

progressive political aesthetic is going

to look like in the years ahead is not

going to be like Corinthian columns

versus Dorian. What? I can't even

remember what the It's going to be solar

punk. It's going to be You've seen the

cover of my book.

>> Solar panels everywhere. Exactly. Right.

It's going to be beautiful. There's also

>> Okay, hold on. I want to hold here

because this is something that I have a

lot of uh interest in. I agree.

Aesthetics central to politics.

I also agree that the natural aesthetic

for the left to move to is solar punk.

And I can tell you that a huge number of

people on the left

had a viscerally negative reaction

to the techno

solar punk aesthetic of the book that

they don't like seeing the satellites

there. They think solar panels are ugly.

One of the sort of natural spaces I

think that the left could find both

optimism and aesthetics and a kind of

appreciation for human excellence and

ambition and ingenuity is is around this

kind of basket of um you this basket of

futurism

but I think people associate it with

Elon Musk.

>> They associate it with Silicon Valley.

>> So we need to start some other

associations.

>> There's a complicated relationship

between the left and technology. So

here's a here's some ways to start

thinking about that.

>> As I say, I've lived my life in rural

America. Um, so one of the things that

people sometimes say in my we don't want

to use farmland for this. Okay. Um, so

first you start just by kind of talking

about what that means. Um, at the moment

we use a huge amount of our farmland for

energy. Corn is the biggest crop in

America. We grow something like 95

million acres of it. 30 million of those

more or less we use for ethanol,

which is incredibly stupid. That 30

million acres produces something like 3%

of all the energy that America uses. If

we covered that same 30 million acres

with solar panels, we'd produce pretty

close to a 100% of the energy we

currently use.

Photosynthesis is a miracle, but it's

not as efficient as the photovoltaic

system. Um, you don't want to cover

Indiana and Iowa stem to stern in solar

panels. We've got lots of rooftops and

parking lots, but we can use some of our

land for this. No one's talking about

more than a percent or two of our land.

And it's a very good crop to be growing.

Clean electrons is way more useful than

corn syrup. You know, we need more of

it. And once you start this

conversation, you can go on to say a

couple of things. Uh, one of the virtues

of this crop is you don't need to pour

nitrogen and phosphorus on solar panels

to make them work. The stuff that washes

down the Mississippi River into the Gulf

of Mexico and forms this giant uh anoxic

dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Um, and

you're left with half the field

to do something else with. It's now

traveling under the clunky name of

agravaics.

But this is actually the biggest new

canvas for human ingenuity that we've

had in a very long time on this planet.

And people are doing fascinating things

with it. Turns out that on an

overheating world, there are a lot of

things that would like some shade. One

of those things are deserts where it's

able to as you retain a little bit more

moisture, it's possible for that crust

and the biotic crust in the desert to

reform and grow, holding sand in place.

This is the first place the Chinese are

having some luck stopping the giant

sandstorms that have plagued north

northern China. But you can do lots of

other things. In Vermont, where I live,

one of the things that we've done with a

lot of solar farms is interplant the

rose with wild flowers and weeds that

are attractive to native pollinators.

And the numbers are astonishing. You

find 10 times more of these insects than

you did in the farm field that was there

before. And what does that mean? It

means that the surrounding farms and

orchards see a big increase in

pollination and in fruit set. uh human

ingenuity can take these things and make

them beautiful. That's when I talk about

aesthetic. Uh we just need to start

allowing people to picture this stuff in

different ways. And part of that means,

you know, allowing them to understand

that it can be owned by communities, uh

that it doesn't have to be owned by just

utilities. We can have a real mix of

this kind of stuff around the country.

One of the dimensions I find interesting

in this conversation and in your work is

this sort of news story that's emerging

that yes like there is this

terrible calamity building and currently

unfolding and also there is this way to

solve it that is moving through towards

a future that is better not just because

of the absence of catastrophe but

because of the presence of new

possibilities.

>> Absolutely. Um,

we don't know how prehistoric people

thought about the world. Being

prehistoric, they failed to write it

down. But we know that every pile of

rocks that they built, anything like

Stonehenge, pointed to the equinox or

the solstice. We know that the minute we

started making myths on this planet uh

culture after culture, the very first

thing people had to explain was how does

this thing rise over here in the

morning, set over here in the evening

and get back over here next morning. The

sun is the most charismatic object in

our corner of the universe.

>> The Bible, let there be light comes

first.

>> Exactly. Right. Actually, that's a good

place to go with this story. I was in

Rome last September. The new pope

summoned over a bunch of people for a um

a kind of conference to mark the 10th

anniversary of Francis's great

encyclical on climate change, leado.

[snorts] And when he gave his talk, he

talked about how uh they were going to

keep going with Francis's work on

climate, a lot of good stuff about

stewardship and creation. And almost in

passing, he adds, uh, and you know,

sometime this year, we're flipping the

switch on our big new solar farm outside

Rome, at which point apparently Vatican

City will become the first fully solar

powered nation on Earth. Um, so when I

my turn to talk, I said, you know, uh,

uh, uh, that was excellent, your

holiness. Um and it provides us not only

with a kind of technological hope. It's

very nice. But a a kind of mantra under

which to operate henceforth uh you know

let's just keep saying energy from

heaven not from hell. [snorts]

I think this is an easy cell. Um, I I I

think that people are going to get more

and more and more intrigued with the

possibility that we're going to be able

to run the planet on new terms going

forward. Um, um,

>> I don't want to let you be quite this

optimistic here. I don't I don't think I

don't even think I don't think it's

>> great pessimism, too.

>> There you go. I don't think even you

think it's as easy a cell as you're as

you're describing there.

So when you're out there doing your

activism and you hear from someone who

says, "Look, I believe in climate

change. I don't like it. I don't want

it. But energy is already too expensive

and I've seen a lot of things fail and

I'm worried Democrats are worried about

the penguins and not about

>> my life." What do you think? What do you

say? What do you think a political

leader should say?

>> Well, I mean, I'll tell you what I say,

which is here. I'll show you my electric

bills. Um, and you'll quickly figure out

that I'm paying a lot less than you are

for power cuz I've had solar panels on

my roof for a long time. I I'll show you

how my house or my car or whatever works

and you'll see that there's nothing

strange, foreign, weird about it. Um, I

think that the politician who starts

figuring out how to make that case will

will find a kind of um

motherload of political new political

energy to uh uh uh mine because it moves

us past some of the places where our

politics has gotten so hung up and stuck

in recent decades. The fact that

Republicans find themselves hating clean

energy is just a function of the fact

that 20 years ago the oil industry

decided to purchase the Republican

party, you know, and did so successfully

and that set up a whole series of

things. But there's no intrinsic reason

for that to happen. Just the opposite. I

actually think that the next great

leader in American politics is is going

to be someone who starts figuring out

how to appeal to our better angels. Not

without an appeal to our own, you know,

needs, uh, but in a different

register than we've heard before. That's

what, for instance, interests me about

the mayor of this city, Mr. Mumani. not

so much his policies, but his ability to

figure out how to start making people

feel

interested, excited going forward. So, I

think that people will make the economic

argument about where we can go and so

on, but I also think that they're going

to someone's going to start seizing on

the idea

that the planet now has a um for the

first time in a long time a group

project to work on. And that project is

the rapid electrification of this planet

which would have huge advantages for uh

uh people around the world and for our

climate future. And I don't think those

things are impossible to imagine. I've

always thought that of all the forces

that animated the first Earth Day in

1970, which remains the biggest

political demonstration in American

history, 10% of the then population of

the US in the streets.

The oil spill in Santa Barbara and the

Kyhoga River and things catching on fire

were key to that. But I think the most

important thing were the pictures that

had come back from Apollo 8 which showed

our planet

floating out there in space.

I think someone's going to recapture

some of that energy and some of that

hope and do great things with it now

that there's no longer any technological

or economic obstacle in the way.

>> It's a good place to end as a final

question. What are a few books you

recommend to the audience?

>> There were two books this spring that I

really enjoyed. Terry Tempest Williams,

great nature essaist, a book called The

Glorian, and Rebecca Soulnet,

Poundforpound, maybe our best political

essayist, and her book, The Beginning

Comes After the End. But because, as Dr.

Johnson, I think, once said, "The

natural flight of the human mind is not

from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope

to hope." There are three books that are

coming out this fall that I've gotten to

read the galls of that I think are

crucial. Leah Stokes, um, uh, maybe our

leading expert on utilities, played a

huge role in getting the IRA through,

and she tells that story in a book

called The Carbon Wave. Uh it's a great

kind of insider political account and

it's also a beautiful story because she

was writing much of the IRA while she

was in the neonatal intensive care unit

with her newborn twins.

Amy Westervelt, tremendous uh freelance

reporter on a lot of climate and energy