Bill McKibben was through Colorado six years ago this coming month on a book tour. My, how things have changed!
He spoke at Tattered Cover, then across the street from Union Station. It’s long gone, of course. And in the background you see a rack for magazines devoted to science. Climate change has been more or less excised from federal documents. Can science be far behind?
McKibben was recently interviewed by Pulitzer Prize-winning Elizabeth Kolbert for Yale Environment 360. McKibben admitted that it’s “fair to despair al little bit,” but he also shared “two slight saving graces” as the U.S. retreats from leadership in the effort to address the risk of climate change. One of them involves the Chinese stepping up to fill the vacuum.
The other is the reality that while the energy transition can be delayed, it can’t be stopped. “As of the last three or four years, the cheapest way to produce energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. And that won’t change,” McKibben told Kolbert.
You can read the full interview at Yale Environment 360.
In the interview, McKibben explained that he believes that civil disobedience is unlikely to be particularly effective.
“I think the Trump-MAGA world welcomes resistance of that kind. They like those kinds of fights. It energizes them. They’re cruel, and cruelty really is their kink in a lot of ways.”
The alternative?
“We’re gearing up to do this big national day of action in September. It’s called Sun Day. I think it’s going to be a huge celebration of possibility. And I think that that’s more dangerous right now to the MAGA agenda. They depend on people staying in a fearful crouch, convinced that whatever they have is under threat from somebody.
“The idea of Sun Day, instead, is that we’re on the edge of this extraordinary possibility for solar. I’m excited about figuring out how we do huge parades of e-bikes and inaugurate dozens of community solar farms, and have thousands of Americans opening their homes so their neighbors can see their heat pumps.
“And get millions of people who already have solar panels to put a green light in the window that night to tell everybody that they’re powered by the sun.”
The national SunDay(s) is/are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 20-21. I found a website, but not much more.
It’s still six months away, I’ll keep you posted with what I find out.
Allen Best publishes the e-journal Big Pivots, which chronicles the energy transition in Colorado and beyond.