Chris Hayes, a most excellent MSNBC television host, has a podcast. It is called Why Is This Happening. In one of his latest podcasts he interviews Bill McKibbin, the creator of 350.org and Third Act and is one of the earliest and staunchest voices on Climate Change.
This is about the most uplifting Youtube item I have seen and if I could summarize the message in a sentence or two I would say, The switch to renewable energy has really taken off over the last half decade and is unstoppable. It is now in a race to become sufficiently wide spread soon enough to save us from our sorry selves. There are revelation after revelation in this Youtube item and I have described them below. but if you want to watch the original (a well spent hour) here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9MmJkkv780&list=PLDIVi-vBsOEzArBz5VnChpoJEf4DQCgvG
In order of their appearance in the Podcast.
1. This is the most important, revolutionary change for the human race and is not covered hardly at all in the mainstream media. The social implications are as profound as the physical implications.
2. Bill McKibben's latest book is Here Comes The Sun A last chance for the climate and a fresh chance for civilization. This podcast is based on this book.
3. Over the past 36 months or so, the deployment of renewable energy kit has gone exponential.
4. Half a gigawatt, is about the power of a coal fired power station. This May (2025) the Chinese were installing 300 gigawatts per day.
5. The Nuclear 'Renaissance' might provide half a gigawatt by 2035.
6. California has reached a tipping point. Now almost every day, more power is produced for long stretches of the day than is used. The excess goes into charging batteries which extend the time that no fossil fuel has to be burnt. California in 2025 is using 40% less natural gas to produce electricity than in 2023.
7. Every tenth of a degree that we warm the planet, moves another 100m people out of a tolerable climate zone.
8. California is being outdone by Texas in adopting solar and wind energy - Texas, the center of fossil fuel production and refining!!! Solar is being installed in Texas at a phenomenal rate because it is so financially advantageous. The Texas government tried to put a bill into place that if you installed 5mW of solar, you also had to install 5mW of natural gas development. People started to appear in Austin from all over Texas telling the government to back off. This is how we finance our schools, elderly care and so forth and the government backed down.
9. Pakistan is importing masses of solar panels from her neighbor, China who has excessive manufacturing capacity. Staring about 18 months ago, the amount of energy been drawn from the grid began to decline. Google earth gave the answer. Solar panels were being installed like mushrooms coming up after a rain. In an 8 month period, individual Pakistanis installed an amount of solar capacity equal to half the electricity from the grid. They found out how to install them from tick tock. The biggest adopters were farmers who traditionally would use diesel generators to pump up their water from their wells. Now they use electricity from their solar panels and the import of diesel oil has fallen by 35% in a one year period.
10. We almost were launched onto this trajectory back in the early 1980s when the Democrat, Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House as a signal of his intentions and in his last budget included research money to push the necessary research for the adoption of renewable energy. Of course he was succeeded by Regan (the great orator) who ripped the solar panels off of the roof of the White House, signalling his intentions. (sounds like Trump doesn't it)
11. Around 2000, the Greens held the balance of power in Germany and in return for their co-operation, insisted that people with solar panels on their roves werd given good rates for the power they sent to the grid. This really pushed the installation of solar in Germany and the increased demand allowed China to ramp up her production efficiency and research, bringing down the price of solar panels for Germany but also for the rest of the world.
12. Every time we double the production of solar panels the price is slashed in half.
13. About 5 years ago (2020) the line was passed in which electricity from solar panels and wind turbines was equal to the price of burning stuff. From then on, it has just came down.
14. June 2023 was the month when since then, monthly temperatures have been great than at any time since the Eemian interglacial, 125k years ago.
15. As for an equivalence in planet degregation that the critics try to draw between fossil fuel and renewable energy, the mining of iron, for instance, remains about the same in either case. We use iron for a huge range of uses. Fossil fuel, we mine or drill for and burn it. We then have to mine some more. Resources such as lithium, Rare Earth Minerals and so forth, we mine and first off, they produce power for, say, 25 years. Then they are recycled and used again and again and again. There is no comparison.
16. The volume of Lithium we will have to mine for the whole battery transition is less than the volume of coal we mined just in 2024. (ps. and coal mining is already in decline. What would the comparison be if we looked at 'peak coal')
17. Picture a ship crossing the ocean carrying solar panels. Over one life time (before they are recycled) these panels will produce 500 times as much energy as the coal that the same ship could carry.
18. Besides the health costs of burning fossil fuel which is about 20% of the deaths that occur, much of the nastiness of our present zeitgeist is due to the value of fossil fuels and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few countries and individuals. Just think of the Koch Brothers and the way their wealth has polluted democracy in America for instance. With energy generation dispersed and owned by all, this is no longer possible.
19. Following the start of the war in Ukraine, Europe has suddenly realized that they must transition to Renewable Energy and stop buying fossil fuel from Russia which she uses to finance the war. Trump is trying to pressure Europe with tariffs to buy American liquefied natural gas. (quid pro quo for the American fossil fuel industry supporting his election.)
20. Indonesia has just announced plans to install 100gW of solar power over the coming 10 years. Indonesia is the 4th most populated country in the world.
21. Batteries, of course, give us power when the sun goes down. Wind turbines sometimes give power at night but on average less than during the day and we are not going to run out of Li. There is lots of it. But the new EVs from China are using sodium ion batteries and we have an ocean of sodium plus mineral deposits of NaCl all over the world. (ps. Look at this site. Batteries may not be the only solution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-cOgrBIAuc&t=7s)
22. The Texas institution that is responsible for the supply of energy from their grid has announced that they don't believe there will be any black or brown outs over the coming year because they have now got enough renewable energy and batteries in the mix to mitigate this. This from the fossil fuel state of the USA.
23. Half of the corn that is grown in the county were Bill lives in Illinois is grown to make ethanol which is used, along with fossil fuel, to power vehicles. A farmer pointed out to him that in a single acre he can grow enough corn to power his Ford F150 pick up (the most popular truck in farm country) 25,000 miles. If I cover that same acre with solar panels, I can power my Ford 150 Lightning (the electric version of the F150 Pick Up) 700,000 miles. (I hate to say this but there is a bit of a fallacy in this argument. See if you can spot it)
24. In the field with the solar panels, half of the field is still usable and there is a new science developing called agro-voltaics - the science of growing crops under solar panels. And there are surprises. In France one study found that the yield of grapes increased in fields with solar panels. And in Vermont, some areas with solar panels are being planted with wild flowers and the insect population is up 100 times. Nearby orchards are getting much better fruit set because of the pollinating insects. (ps. Have you oldies, like me, noticed that the windscreen of your car and your radiator no longer is splattered with insects when you drive on a summer day like it used to be around 1950.) And in a warming world, a bit of shade is reducing the evaporation of water from fields with solar panels.
25. The whole supply chain of the supply of fuel to a vehicle is incredibly complicated and messy. The supply of electricity from solar panels incredibly simple and clean. You must do some extraordinary drilling and fracking, transport the raw fossil fuel to a refinery, apply energy and chemistry to the oil to produce the types of fuel you need, transport this fuel to a distribution point and put it in your tank. Then only, at the best, 30% of the energy is transformed into work. The rest goes off in unusable heat. And at the same time it pollutes our air.
With photovoltaics, the electricity is converted to Alternating current at the appropriate voltage, transported to your home or charging station by power lines and used to charge your car. 90% of this energy is converted to work. (powering your vehicle)
Add to that, if you are looking at the use of corn to power your vehicle, that only, at best, 1% of the sun's energy is converted to biomass in the corn field and much of that is the foliage, not the corn while solar panels typically convert 20% of the energy falling on them into electricity.
26. The war by tRUMP on wind and solar power and his pulling our of COP30 that is taking place in Brazil this year, is the greatest gift that he could have given to China. It will establish the technical superiority of China over America and her political influence in the world. Trump's policys are monumental stupidity. In his campaign for reelection he said to the fossil fuel industry, Give me a billion dollars and you can have anything you want when I am elected. They gave about half a billion and Trump is giving them everything they want.
If this trend was to continue, America would become a back woods theme park in which people from around the world would come to see how they did it in the olden days with internal combustion engines. Joe Biden did his best to set in place measures that would allow America to catch up to China. Trump has and is destroying all those efforts. (ps. When are Republicans going to wake up to the fact that at least for one election, they have to switch allegiance and vote Democrat. Otherwise their country is finished in any form that they would like it to be.)
27. Sun Day is going to be on Sept21 when all over the USA, people will be demonstrating for the use of renewable energy instead of fossil fuel.
28. 40% of the households in Australia have solar panels on their roves.
29. Much of Europe has balcony solar. You buy a panel, hang it on your balcony and plug into the nearest plug point. This is illegal in all but the state of Utah which has legislated that this is legal.
30. My favorite. There are hundreds of songs on the internet about the sun. Find me one on fracking. Note the words of the song 15 tons. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-lm&q=song+15+tons#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:95fdd6f7,vid:BSvORvIjZiU,st:0
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