For those who don’t know, Bill McKibben is a lifelong environmental activist, journalist and author of more than twenty books. His first book, The End of Nature (1989), was one of the first books about climate change written for general audiences, and he has written many other books about the environment and humans ever since. He is also one of the founders of the climate change activist group 350.org, as well as Third Act, an environmental activist group for seniors.
So presumably we can expect dire warnings of impending environmental disaster from any new McKibben book, right? But with his new book, Here Comes the Sun, we get something unexpected – a very hopeful book in this time of environmental and political peril.
I was fortunate to be able to hear the author speak a few weeks ago, when he was in town for Seattle Arts and Lectures, and his talk in person reinforced the message of this new book. The message is this: even though our political situation may be dire, the worldwide prospects for replacing the fossil fuel industry with renewable energy sources have never been greater.
McKibben tells the story of how solar and wind power technology is being adopted around the world at rates never seen before. He contrasts our current situation during the second Trump administration in the United States, where the U.S. government is doing everything it can to preserve fossil fuel industries and undermine or block renewables, with both the ongoing rapid growth in renewable energy and storage capacity here in our own country (including in very red states), and astounding increases in renewable energy generation in many other parts of the world.
He particularly contrasts the obstructionist energy policies of the U.S. administration with China’s decision to become the manufacturing center for renewable energy generation technology, and other hardware and software needed for electric-based economies around the world. The result has been that the cost of solar panels is continuing to drop rapidly, as supplies of Chinese solar panels increase and economies of scale kick in.
Countries around the world are taking rapid advantage of Chinese solar equipment, and McKibben points out that China is now rapidly becoming the top manufacturer of affordable, high-quality electric vehicles and appliances in the world too.
Not content to just make these general assertions, he provides charts and graphs to demonstrate how much of the power needs here and abroad are now coming from renewable energy sources, and to show that a transition to a new electric age appears to be happening much faster than we thought. He also has some remarkable recent anecdotes to share to support this claim.
For example, in one of the poorest regions of Pakistan, local power companies began to notice the strange phenomenon of falling demand for power from consumers during the past year. It turned out that poor Pakistani people and communities were importing cheap solar panels from China, and hooking them up locally, thus creating decentralized electric power sources that cost little, and freed them from needing their power utility’s fossil fuel-generated power.
Similar stories are emerging from around the world, as other countries and their peoples discover that setting up solar and wind power is a far cheaper and easier solution to their power needs than importing fossil fuels. He mentions the fact that solar power units are now being sold in many countries as “balcony” units than can be purchased from big box stores, hung outside of apartments, and plugged right into a wall socket to feed energy into the grid.
He also discusses the importance of improvements in battery technology, production and deployments, and how that is helping to address the problem of how to guarantee electricity supplies remain available during the times when the sun isn't out or the wind isn't blowing.
McKibben is not underestimating the political obstacles to replacing fossil fuels, particularly here in the U.S., but he is trying to make the case for why renewable energy has suddenly become the obvious and most practical solution to the world’s power needs. One of his main talking points is that renewables are no longer the “alternatives” to fossil fuels, and we should stop thinking of them as just backups or "next best" solutions to fossil fuels.
In fact, he claims, they are now the obvious go-to solution, because they are less expensive, cleaner, more cost-effective over time, and now abundantly available due especially to Chinese manufacturing and sales. All we need to do is keep deploying them, and prevent the fossil fuel companies and their supporters in politics and power utilities from obstructing progress in the necessary transition away from fossil fuels.
This is an up-to-the-minute primer on renewable energy, and why and how solar and wind power, along with fast-increasing energy storage technologies, are now poised to take us into a new electric age, even in a time of political adversity. If some of his predictions seem a little overly rosy, it is still an uplifting and encouraging story in an often dark and demoralizing time.
Here Comes the Sun is a quick read and an optimistic tale, just what we need to hear at this moment, as the current U.S. administration tries to dismantle environmental protections, and drag our energy systems back to the mid-twentieth century. Recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment