“Eden is burning”. (Bob Dylan)
“Here comes the sun”. (George Harrison)
The record-breaking heat at the end of May in the UK was another warning of where the climate is heading. As heatwaves become the norm in our country, and other parts of the world face more serious challenges such as droughts or enhanced tropical storms, do we have a way out of what seems to be our inevitable journey towards hell on earth? Thankfully, climate expert Bill McKibben thinks there is.
Here Comes The Sun
Imagine a world where everybody has the means to make all the energy they need at a tiny cost, while not harming the climate or the environment at all. We now have a book arguing that such a benign future really can come to pass.
As the climate crisis worsens on a daily basis and the three major petro-states, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States continue to produce fossil fuels at an alarming rate, while blocking meaningful action to prevent climate change, acclaimed environmentalist Bill McKibben has written a book showing us all that there is a way out of the crisis.
As McKibben himself acknowledges, the solution will not provide an end to climate change – it is too late for that – but it can enable humanity to avoid the worst case scenarios and still have a climate that we can live with.
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Solar power
In his new book Here Comes the Sun, McKibben traces the effect of over 200 years of large scale burning of fossil fuels has had on the climate. Having made it clear that business as usual is not a sensible option for humanity in the future, McKibben goes on to reveal how the use of solar power can save humanity.
McKibben expertly takes us through the possible objections to the greater use of solar power and demolishes them one by one. Perhaps the most worrying aspect is not that solar power is too expensive, but on the contrary, in our capitalist run economy, solar power is potentially so cheap that one of the major stumbling blocks with developing it, is that there may be a lack of investors to invest in it because they won’t get the kind of returns they would like.
However, that may not be a big problem. McKibben uses a rigorous examination of the evidence to show the reader that we can afford solar power and that for millions, not only in the wealthier developed world countries, but also people in poorer countries it could be a special boon, as it will provide not only clean renewable energy but cheap energy as well. Indeed, it is already starting to do that.
It is the Chinese who are leading the way and who are going to reap the financial benefits of the coming green revolution; however, it is people in countries like Africa in in areas like Africa and South Asia who will also benefit from cheaper electricity.
McKibben also shows us that not only is there easily enough energy coming from the sun every day to fulfil all our energy needs, but we can also get the materials that we need for solar panels and for batteries. He admits that this will mean some mining and sadly some exploitation of people but rightly argues that any environmental harm or injustice created will still be very minimal compared to the harm created by the continued use of fossil fuels at the level in which we are using them.
Similarly, McKibben takes apart the argument that we don’t have the space to put up solar panels. Already they’re becoming more easily available for homes across the world including in the UK, in the form of smaller panels, which can be plugged in and people in this country are now able to sell electricity back to the National Grid. As for larger panels, McKibben points out that the space used up by them is again minimal compared to the space given over to developments by the fossil fuel industry.
Perhaps most importantly, Bill McKibben shows us how the transition to solar power can take place and indeed is taking place even in his home nation of the USA, despite the presence of Donald Trump in the White House.
The way forward
it is becoming ever clearer but the climate crisis is real, is man made and threatens human civilisation in a way that nothing else has quite done so in the thousands of years of human development.
McKibben presents a powerful argument that human civilisation does not have to succumb to living in a world which is increasingly uninhabitable. It is now becoming also ever clearer that solar power is both cheap enough and easy enough to install to solve many of our problems regarding the climate and while it will not stop climate change it can mean that humanity will live on a planet with a climate to which it can adapt and which in the long run can settle down again.
However, it is also becoming ever clearer that there are wealthy and powerful people in the world who simply do not want this to happen, who want to continue gaining the vast profits that they gain from fossil fuels, oh enjoying the vast power which the concentration of fossil fuels in certain parts of the world gives them.
Solar power is a far more democratic form of energy, which can belong to and be controlled by people across the world and not just in areas where there happened to be deposits of energy because of historical quirks many millions of years ago.
This is why solar power, is so important to humanity and such a threat to certain very wealthy and powerful people in the world today. For the sake of future generations, these powerful and wealthy people must be defeated and humanity must be liberated from a reliance on fossil fuels by the use of form of power which is available to all and can meet all our needs, while not doing the climate or environment harm.
Here Comes the Sun is available here.
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