The Very Good and Very Bad News on Climate
About this episode
Bill McKibben lays out the very good news: solar and wind are now cheaper than every fossil fuel everywhere on earth, China installed more solar last year than the rest of the world combined, and electric vehicles are taking over transportation. The very bad news is political: the Trump administration is actively slowing America's transition, killing clean-energy subsidies while approving new LNG terminals, just as the world breaches 1.5 degrees of warming. McKibben argues the fight is now economic rather than moral: cheap energy creates jobs and growth, and China's electric economy proves the model works. The most useful thing Americans can do, he says, is build solar, with volunteers putting panels on churches and synagogues, and join the September Sun Day demonstrations to show politicians that clean energy has a constituency.