{"id":1207,"date":"2025-09-22T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/?p=1207"},"modified":"2025-09-26T19:15:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T19:15:29","slug":"why-the-clean-energy-revolution-can-outrun-the-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/22\/why-the-clean-energy-revolution-can-outrun-the-trump-administration\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the clean energy revolution can outrun the Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Wind

\n\tWind turbines are seen in front of Mount San Jacinto in Palm Springs, California, on June 6, 2025.\ufeff | Gina Ferazzi\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images\ufeff\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Talking about climate change can feel hopeless. Even the good news, on the rare occasion we get some, feels hollow.<\/p>\n

But for the most part, it\u2019s bad news. The planet keeps heating up. So many of the disasters we were warned about years ago are starting to pile on. Meanwhile, the oil keeps flowing, the politicians keep punting, and the systems meant to save us keep failing. <\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re staring down the barrel of another Trump presidency and the potential unraveling of what little climate progress we\u2019ve made. But there\u2019s a twist: Solar and wind are booming, and they\u2019re now the world\u2019s cheapest energy sources. Many cities, towns, and in some cases countries are running almost entirely on renewables. That is all great<\/em> news.<\/p>\n

But what does it actually mean? Is it too late to turn this thing around?<\/p>\n

Bill McKibben is one of the most influential voices on the climate over the past four decades. He sounded the alarm in his 1989 book The End of Nature<\/em><\/a>, which many consider a foundational text of the modern environmentalist movement. He\u2019s also founded organizations like Third Act and 350.org<\/a>, the latter of which remains one of the biggest climate activist groups in the world.<\/p>\n

His new book, Here Comes the Sun<\/em><\/a>, is about the revolution in solar and wind power and it might be the most hopeful thing he\u2019s ever written. And that\u2019s because we now have the tools we need to tackle this problem. The question is, do we have the political will to do it?<\/p>\n

I invited McKibben onto The Gray Area<\/em><\/a> to talk about that and the many possibilities in front of us. As always, there\u2019s much<\/em> more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area<\/em><\/a> on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, Pandora<\/a>, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

This book is much more optimistic than I expected. It doesn\u2019t feel forced; it feels like you\u2019re genuinely excited about what\u2019s possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an odd moment for me. Much of what I\u2019ve been describing since The End of Nature<\/em> in the late \u201980s is now happening in real time. We\u2019re watching the climate system come apart. Politically, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve lived through a bleaker period. And yet, at the same time, I have news of one big good thing: a transformation in how we make and use energy that\u2019s actually moving fast enough to matter. So I get to be the bearer of some good news, for once.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re clear that we\u2019re past being able to \u201cstop\u201d global warming. So what\u2019s the plausible goal now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stopping warming entirely isn\u2019t on the menu. What might still be on the menu is stopping it short of the point where it cuts civilization off at the knees. That\u2019s the goal here. Recent science about the jet stream, the Gulf stream, and the atmosphere\u2019s moisture content is scary. These are enormous systems with momentum. But every tenth of a degree matters. Each tenth we avoid keeps tens or hundreds of millions of people within a livable climate zone. That remains the biggest task humans have ever had: Keep the damage within survivable limits.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat Trump is really doing \u2014 and this should make any American furious \u2014 is ceding the energy future to China, often for technologies that were developed here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Right \u2014 this isn\u2019t binary. Degrees matter. Fractions of degrees matter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the clean energy news is so important. I\u2019ve covered this long enough to feel the ground shifting, and the pace has surprised even people in the climate and energy world. California, which is the fourth-largest economy on Earth, has quietly hit a tipping point. On many days, it supplies more than 100 percent of its power for long stretches from clean energy. <\/p>\n

When the sun goes down, batteries that spent the afternoon soaking up surplus sunshine now become the biggest source of electricity. The net result is that California used about 40 percent less natural gas for electricity this summer than two years ago. If that spreads globally, you start shaving tenths of a degree off the future. That\u2019s the best number I\u2019ve heard in almost 40 years of doing this.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re talking in mid-August, more than six months into President Donald Trump\u2019s second term. He ran promising to \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d and to kneecap electric vehicles. Has he delivered?<\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u2019s doing extraordinary damage and he\u2019s doing it with the spineless support of a lot of Republicans who know better. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ll make two points. First, this is a global crisis and a global energy market. What Trump is really doing \u2014 and this should make any American furious \u2014 is ceding the energy future to China, often for technologies that were developed here.<\/em> We invented the solar cell and the lithium-ion battery. Now we\u2019re practically handing the future to Beijing on a platter. In the long run, that might still be good for the planet because they\u2019re pushing these technologies everywhere, but it\u2019s a staggering abdication by the US.<\/p>\n

Second, even here at home, the story isn\u2019t finished. The most interesting state in America for energy right now is Texas. It\u2019s installing renewables faster than California. In the spring, fossil fuel interests tried to ram through a \u201cDEI for gas\u201d bill, which is basically forcing one unit of gas buildout for every unit of solar. People in rural Texas came out of the woodwork to say, Don\u2019t do this.<\/em> Wind and solar keep schools open, fund elder care. These are real, tangible benefits. The legislature backed down. So even in red states, the economics and the local benefits are changing the politics.<\/p>\n

And one reason I\u2019m optimistic is that a lot of this is now mundane economics. We live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. This is no longer the Whole Foods of energy \u2014 nice but pricey. It\u2019s the Costco of energy: cheap, abundant, on the shelf, ready to go.<\/p>\n

The federal picture is obviously grim. The EPA under Trump revoked a long-held scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger health and welfare, which is the legal basis for a lot of climate regulation. Is this as bad as it looks? Do you think the courts will stop it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It will be challenged. We\u2019ll see what happens. But it\u2019s an \u201cup is down\u201d administration. They insist DC is a crime-ridden hellscape when the data say otherwise, and they insist climate\u2019s no big deal as entire neighborhoods burn, as Texas floods, as wildfire smoke becomes a seasonal feature in the East, and as we log the hottest months in recorded history. But physics doesn\u2019t care about press releases. The danger is the damage they can do in the meantime. So we can\u2019t just rely on the superior economics of solar, wind, and batteries. We also need activism to change laws and minds. There\u2019s a lot that states and cities can do \u2014 even with Washington hostile.<\/p>\n

Give me a concrete example.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rooftop solar in the US costs roughly three times as much, and takes far longer, than in many other countries. In Australia, you can call on Monday and have panels up by Friday; 40 percent of homes there have rooftop solar. The difference isn\u2019t the price of panels; it\u2019s our baroque, Byzantine permitting across 15,000 municipalities. We\u2019re treating a safe, standardized appliance like it\u2019s a bespoke construction project. The National Renewable Energy Lab built an instant-permitting tool \u2014 SolarAPP+ \u2014 and states like California, Maryland, and New Jersey have adopted it. We should scale that everywhere.<\/p>\n

Another example is \u201cbalcony solar.\u201d In the past two years, millions of Europeans \u2014 apartment-dwellers! \u2014 have bought a plug-in panel that hangs off the balcony and instantly supplies around 20 percent of a home\u2019s power. That\u2019s illegal across the US, except in Utah, where a libertarian state senator asked the obvious question: Why can Hamburg do it but Provo can\u2019t? The law changed unanimously. Now you can find people in Utah happily plugging in balcony panels and watching the meter spin backward.<\/p>\n

Why did so many people \u2014 including environmentalists \u2014 so badly underestimate how fast solar and wind would scale?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For decades, fossil energy was cheap and renewable energy was expensive. That got lodged in our heads. Even climate advocates focused on things like carbon taxes to raise fossil prices so renewables could compete. But about four or five years ago we crossed an invisible line and people didn\u2019t update. Today, it\u2019s often twice as cheap to make power from sun as from fire.<\/p>\n

If you want a date, I\u2019d circle June 2023. That\u2019s when global temperatures began their latest spike. Some of the hottest months in at least 125,000 years, and it\u2019s also the month humanity started installing a gigawatt of solar every day. Since then the pace has only accelerated. In April, China alone was installing around 3 gigawatts per day, which is the equivalent of a coal plant\u2019s capacity every eight hours.<\/p>\n

In your book, you note that in 2022, China spent 26 times as much on the clean energy supply chain as Europe and the US combined. The Inflation Reduction Act was starting to narrow that gap. With Trump back, how dramatically will that change? Will we get anywhere close to that expected number or will China just continue to lap us?<\/strong><\/p>\n

They\u2019ll lap us. The IRA was our best chance to catch up; parts may survive, but a lot won\u2019t. Twenty years from now, the US may be a kind of theme park where tourists come to see how people used to make energy by setting things on fire. Eventually, we\u2019ll try to catch up, but we won\u2019t be owning that future anymore. <\/p>\n

I wanted to ask about movement politics since you\u2019ve been so involved for so long. For decades, climate politics was about stopping bad things \u2014 pipelines, leases, drilling. But the economics have flipped. The movement now has to be about building. What does that shift look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing for a year that people like me \u2014 old white guys \u2014 should stop reflexively suing to block projects we don\u2019t like. It\u2019s absurd to block solar farms because you don\u2019t like looking at them. The imperative is to make it easier to build the clean stuff. That\u2019s why we\u2019re focused on permitting reform at the local and state level.<\/p>\n

Washington is a write-off for the moment; rational thought has left the building. But states \u2014 red and blue \u2014 can move. Texas and Utah show it. And the appeal is broad. If you\u2019re a \u201cmy home is my castle\u201d American, solar makes that literally truer; if you love the idea of a network powered by something elegant and natural, you\u2019re on board for different reasons. Small versus big is the fault line \u2014 not left versus right.<\/p>\n

Why did this become a red-blue cultural fight when it really doesn\u2019t have to be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fossil fuel industry spent decades and billions making it partisan. The Koch network effectively bought one of our political parties. Fifty years ago, environmentalism was bipartisan. [Republican President Richard] Nixon signed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and created the EPA under pressure from the first Earth Day. The science has been clear since the \u201980s, and the oil companies knew. They treated it as a threat to their business model, not to the planet, and were willing to wreck our democracy as well as our atmosphere to defend it. The wild card is that we\u2019ve now introduced the cheapest, most beautiful form of energy into this mix and that changes the politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeautiful\u201d isn\u2019t a word people associate with utility-scale power \u2014 but you lean into it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It matters! The sun already gives us light, warmth, and photosynthesis. Now it can power everything else. People respond to that. The Vatican just announced it\u2019s building a solar farm outside Rome that will make the Vatican the first fully solar-powered nation. That\u2019s not just a tech story; it\u2019s a civilizational story. Big Oil is still powerful, but a lot of what they\u2019re pushing \u2014 like leaning on countries to lock themselves into US liquefied natural gas \u2014 may backfire. If you\u2019re Indonesia or Vietnam, do you really want to tie your future energy supply to a fickle superpower? Or do you want to harvest the sun and wind that fall on your own land and sea?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a perverse wrinkle here: Sun and wind are so cheap they don\u2019t fit neatly into a profit model built on scarcity. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an investment problem for some incumbents. Returns aren\u2019t as juicy as selling fuel forever. But for countries, cheap power is a competitive advantage. If you can run your industries on electricity, your economy hums. That\u2019s what China is aiming at. Meanwhile, if the US insists on expensive options \u2014 coal, gas, or boutique nuclear \u2014 we handicap ourselves.<\/p>\n

You also make the blunt point that breaking the centralized power of the fossil fuel industry is a big deal if we do want a more humane politics. What\u2019s the argument there?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s liberating in multiple senses. Cut emissions or the planet fries \u2014 that\u2019s incentive enough. But we also save lives. About 9 million people die each year from air pollution tied to fossil combustion. We prevent childhood asthma. We reduce the leverage of petro-authoritarians. And we unlock a wave of useful appliances: heat pumps that use a little electricity to move latent heat in the air and keep homes comfortable year-round; EVs and e-bikes that make cities quieter and cleaner. <\/p>\n

You really believe there\u2019s hope?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have hope that it\u2019s worth the try. I can\u2019t think of a better way to spend a life than working on the gravest problem our species has stumbled into.<\/p>\n

On page one you say there\u2019s still a path forward. When is that path foreclosed? How much warming is too much?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Honestly, we don\u2019t know. We\u2019ve never run this experiment with people watching. The last five times the atmosphere filled with carbon \u2014 because of massive volcanic eruptions \u2014 there were mass extinctions. We\u2019re adding carbon faster now than in those episodes. But unlike volcanoes, our \u201ceruptions\u201d are cars, factories, and power plants we could shut down quickly if we chose. It may be that we\u2019ve already waited too long. The momentum in polar melt and the knock-on effects on jet and Gulf streams are frightening. I\u2019m not a Pollyanna. My first book was called The End of Nature<\/em>. But for the first time, we have a scalable response. So we should try like hell and hope the Hollywood ending works at least a little.<\/p>\n

Paint the bleak alternative plainly. If we don\u2019t get this right, what\u2019s the world like in 10, 50, 100 years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If it\u2019s not hell, it\u2019s close in temperature. Smokier. Harder to grow food. Biology in shock. Extinctions accelerating. At 3 degrees Celsius, the UN estimates 1 to 3 billion climate refugees. That would mean up to a quarter of humanity forced to move. A couple of million people at our southern border nearly broke American politics; now multiply by a thousand. That\u2019s why every tenth of a degree we avoid is the most important political work humans have ever undertaken.<\/p>\n

Listen to the rest of the conversation<\/em><\/a> and be sure to follow <\/em>The Gray Area<\/em><\/a> on<\/em> Apple Podcasts<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> Spotify<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> Pandora<\/em><\/a>, or wherever you listen to podcasts. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wind turbines are seen in front of Mount San Jacinto in Palm Springs, California, on June 6, 2025.\ufeff | Gina Ferazzi\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images\ufeff Talking about climate change can feel hopeless. Even the good news, on the rare occasion we get some, feels hollow. But for the most part, it\u2019s bad news. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1210,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions\/1210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}