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- [00:01]
Al Letson
Today on More to the Story. It's Earth Day and I'm sharing conversations with three of the most influential environmental activists. I talk with former Vice President Al Gore.
- [00:13]
Al Gore
Fossil fuels are not reliable and of course they're dirty as hell.
- [00:17]
Al Letson
Environmental justice advocate Kathryn Coleman Flowers we
- [00:21]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
can't let people think that because if you are not black and poor, you're not going to be victimized by this. That's not true.
- [00:29]
Al Letson
And author Bill McKibben Solar power is
- [00:32]
Bill McKibben
kind of a miracle. We're talking about energy that essentially the sun delivers for free every day when it rises above the horizon. So that is an extraordinary boon to especially poor people around the world.
- [00:47]
Al Letson
So we've got a great episode talking policy, activism and a possibly sunny future. Stay with us.
- [01:02]
Josh Sanborn
This is Josh Sanborn, producer at Reveal. This episode is made possible by support from the US Climate Action Network. The fight for our planet is too big for anyone to tackle alone. That's why the US Climate Action Network acts as a backbone for the climate movement, from convening strategy sessions to ensuring frontline communities are at the decision making table. Together with their members and listeners like you, USCAN is building a collective force for justice that's far greater than the sum of its parts. Find your place in the movement@usclimatenetwork.org
- [01:37]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [02:01]
Jane Butcher
Want to make a lasting difference to Reveal and protect independent journalism? Right now, it won't cost you a thing. Hi, it's Jane Butcher from Boulder, Colorado. I've spent my life fighting for justice with, which is why I'm a longtime supporter of Reveal and the center for Investigative Reporting. I'm stepping up to protect the future of fearless independent journalism and you can too, by joining CIR's Legacy Challenge. Just let Reveal know you're going to include them in your legacy plans. Provide some basic information, and here's the really exciting part. A generous donor will contribute up to $10,000 now to fund Reveal's essential reporting in honor of your gift. Your legacy gift of any size makes an impact not just in the future, but right now. If you'd like to join me or want to learn more, please reach out to giftsevealnews.org again, that's giftsevealnews.org the Legacy Challenge is only available for a limited time. Stand up for the truth today.
- [03:21]
Al Letson
This is more to the story. I'm Al Edson. Today marks the 56th anniversary of Earth Day, so we're revisiting parts of three conversations with people at the forefront of environmental activism. Former Vice President Al Gore, Catherine Coleman flowers, and Bill McKibben. They share their stories about concern for our warming planet and also hope for our future. After Al Gore lost the presidency in 2000 to George W. Bush through a highly controversial decision by the Supreme Court, he didn't fade away. He worked to sound the alarm about climate change, most notably with his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which came out 20 years ago. Vice President Gore is also the founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, and he rebukes the Trump administration for its cozy relationship with the fossil fuel industry. I spoke with him last month. Mr. Vice President, it is a pleasure to meet you.
- [04:24]
Al Gore
Well, thank you, Al. The pleasure goes both ways here. Thank you for having me on.
- [04:28]
Al Letson
It's been 20 years since your documentary An Inconvenient Truth came out, highlighting the dangers of climate change. And towards the end of the movie, you say, we have everything we need to fight climate change, save perhaps political will. But you know what? In America, political will is a renewable resource. When you look at what's happening in the country today, do you still believe that?
- [04:54]
Al Gore
Yeah, I do. Sometimes the time frames, the time cycles take a little bit longer than we're comfortable with. But I do believe in the resilience of American democracy. And I say all the time that political will is a renewable resource. It is. Look at the special elections this year. I think Democrats have won all of the ones that were contested. Really? Maybe there was one that was too far gone, but the average swing has been 13 percentage points. And this is the kind of cycle that is a 250 year cycle. This is not a temporary phenomena. And it means that the chances are that in seven months, the elections this fall will give the House of Representatives back to the Democratic Party and even could give the Senate to the Democratic Party. The odds are almost even as people are calculating them now. And I think that's a sign of political will being renewed. I think that the odds of a Democratic president in the 2028 election are also quite high because of the same trends and the same underlying resiliency. But to me, the issue is, what do we do after that? Trump didn't come out of nowhere when
- [06:28]
Al Letson
it comes to the environment. I think in a lot of ways, your movie An Inconvenient Truth for a lot of people put the urgency behind climate change and what was going on with our environment. That was 20 years ago. And it feels like we've moved in stops and starts and stops and starts. And now we're somewhat, I would say, at a deficit because of the rules that the administration has laid out. Like they're basically trying to get rid of renewable energy. And I'm just curious, do you think that we have missed the window of opportunity to make change when it comes to the environment?
- [07:14]
Al Gore
No, not at all. I think, unfortunately, our country, the United States, has missed an opportunity to play a leadership role. And I think that missing that opportunity is going to cost us a, a lot of jobs and economic progress. However, for humanity as a whole, for the world as a whole, no, the progress continues to move forward. We have a point of view here in the United States that is understandably, kind of influenced heavily by what Donald Trump is raging about every day. And some of the compliant news media that will report what he tells them to and won't report what he doesn't want them to. We get a skewed opinion of sorts. He wants to stop renewable energy projects here. Well, they're going forward anyway. Although he just agreed to pay a billion dollars to one of the giant oil companies to pay them to stop developing an offshore wind farm. But that's an outlier. Let me just give you the facts, Al. You could say that the tide has gone out where the hunger for new climate policies is concerned. Trump has killed that in the U.S. but the U.S. has been one of only 195 nations to sign the historic Paris Agreement. Only one country has withdrawn from that. And as one of my European friends said, you know, Last I checked, 195/1 does not equal zero. And what he meant by that was, look, the rest of the world is still moving forward. Here's an example. If I asked you, I don't want this to sound like a trick question, but I asked people a lot. What? If you look at all the new electricity generation installed worldwide last year, how much of it do you think was renewable? And a lot of times people will say they know I'm looking for a large number, so they'll say some, what, 30%? Did it get as high as 40%? Well, the answer is 93%. Yeah, exactly. And the reason for that is it is by far the cheapest electricity in the history of the world. The expansion is just unbelievably rapid and it's all over the world. Now, here's a second market. Now, electricity generation is the big, biggest market for burning fossil fuels. Unfortunately, they're still, you know, using coal plants and gas plants to make electricity. But that's beginning to be, that's turned a corner. China's emissions have seemed, seem to have peaked. But the second biggest market is transportation. Cars, trucks and planes. And if you look at the cars today, the last month for statistics I have is that in December, of all the new cars sold worldwide, 29%, almost one third, were electric vehicles. And that's from a standing star just a decade ago. And some countries, like Ethiopia, Nepal, are banning fossil fuel vehicles, gas and diesel, and they're going 100% EVs. And by the way, Al, this recent tragedy unfolding in the Persian Gulf with the shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz, and my hearts go out to the families of the soldiers who've been killed and all those who've suffered. But if you look at the impact on the prices for fossil fuels, and then you remember the impact on the price for fossil fuels when Russia launched its sadistic invasion of Ukraine, and when you look at the mechan, the mechanics behind the takeover in Venezuela, all of those events reinforce the general feeling in the world these fossil fuels are too risky. The price volatility is crazy. It suddenly goes up. You have an interruption of supply in places like Southeast Asia that depend more on the Persian Gulf. Oil and gas, they're shutting down the economy partly one day a week. So far, they're going through a lot of changes, keeping the thermostats at 79 degrees. Well, fossil fuels are not reliable, and of course, they're dirty as hell. And when you burn them, you create all the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing the climate crisis. And that's the focus of this training in Nashville May 1 and May 2. Climatereality.org I want to encourage people to sign up for it. We really need the help of grassroots activists. And that is part of the answer to your question, can the political will be renewed? Hell, yes, it can be. And for those who want to participate in that renewal, come to the climate reality training. Be a part of groups and networks that operate in real life, not just checking boxes on the Internet somehow, but get out there with your neighbors and your pals and make your feelings known. It makes a huge difference.
- [12:35]
Al Letson
Let me ask you this. When I think about renewable energy and where we are as a country, I think about President Trump's disdain for renewable energy and how he has really shut that down. And I think that there is somewhat of an echo chamber that backs him up in media, right leaning media, that they are telling their listeners and their viewers basically that renewable energy is not great, it doesn't work. And I think that that is a large portion of the voting public. How do you crack that wall? How do you get them to understand that moving towards renewable energy actually is A, a national security issue because as we're seeing in the Strait of Hormuz that, you know, getting oil in and out, we're at the mercy of other countries. But B, it's also better for the planet. How do you break through that wall of resistance?
- [13:35]
Al Gore
Well, first of all, let me just digress for a moment, Al, and say that as somebody who worked in the West Wing of the White House for eight years and served on the National Security Council, served on the Intelligence Committee, before that served in the armed forces, I can tell you that all of the war gaming, all of the planning scenarios involving Iran going back at least 47 years, since the seizing of the hostages, of the overthrow Khomeini, every analysis has started with the Strait of Hormuz. What are we going to do about that? Well, here's the reason I bring that up. When the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who from all reports a very competent, good guy, I don't know him personally, when he said, according to the news media reports to the president, you know, wait a minute, before we launch this attack on Iran, what are we going to do about the Straits of Hormuz? You know, that's been the number one question for all the war games and plans for 50 years almost. What are we going to do about that? President Trump said, don't worry about it. We they'll surrender before that comes into play. Well, that was an astonishing mistake, that of the kind that you really do not want the president of your country to make because it has put us in a terrible situation. But I would ask those who listen to Trump say that windmills scare the whales and cause cancer and all this, and that the climate crisis is a hoax, I'd ask you to stop and think and ask this question. Could he be just as wrong about that as he has been in attacking Iran without a plan for the Strait of Hormuz, could he be just as wrong about that as he was when he threatened to invade Greenland, part of an ally that had the highest percentage of combat losses per capita in defending us after 911 as any country? And I could go through the list. What I'm saying is I think that people who are part of President Trump's base. God bless them. I know so many who were just so frustrated that prices going up and the immigration problems that just spun out of control and so many other things. I understand they wanted some relief, but I hear them now saying, wait a minute. He told us prices were going to come down. He told us we would not get into any more foreign, forever wars. He told us inflation was, was going to subside. He told us the economy was going to really boom. None of those things have come true. You know, he told his investors back when he was a businessman, a lot of pleasant stories, too. But he had to declare bankruptcy six times. People have forgotten about that because he went on television on that show, but playing the role of a huge successful businessman. But in any case, I believe that the efforts of the fossil fuel industry to pull the wool over everybody's eyes and pretend that this climate crisis isn't real, of course, are doomed to fail. I mean, people understand that the problem is that the polluters have captured control of the political process to an unhealthy degree. You've seen the videotapes where Trump met in the campaign, met with all the fossil fuel leaders, and he said openly, you give me a billion dollars and I'll get rid of all everything that you don't like. Well, you know, you've heard the phrase he says the quiet part out loud. That's part of his technique. People think, well, if he said it in public, it can't be illegal. It is illegal. This is the most corrupt administration, not only in American history, but more corrupt than I could ever have imagined a president would be able to get away with to the extent that he has. It's shocking to me.
- [17:49]
Al Letson
Former Vice President Al Gore is the founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project. Vice President, thank you so much for coming on and talking to me. It really was an honor.
- [18:01]
Al Gore
Well, I'm a big fan of what you're doing. And keep it up, Al. We owls have got to stick together. And thank you for having me on.
- [18:07]
Al Letson
You got it. Coming up on more to the story, more environmental luminaries, including Bill McKibben and Kathryn Coleman Flowers.
- [18:16]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
Unfortunately, we don't really seem to wake up until the harms are already done and they're irreversible.
- [18:23]
Al Letson
But before we get to that, our sister organization, Mother Jones, puts out the Mother Jones Daily. It's a really great newsletter that includes a Sunday dispatch from our climate desk. To subscribe, just go to mother jones.com newsletter again, that's motherjones.com newsletter okay, my conversations with Catherine and Bill are up next. Don't go anywhere.
- [18:50]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need to check out. Odoo D O O.com that's O-O O.com
- [19:19]
Josh Sanborn
this is Josh Sanborn, producer at Reveal. This episode is made possible by support from League of Conservation Voters. April is Earth Month, a time to honor the natural wonders that define our home and sustain our future. Our public lands should be a living legacy, accessible for generations to come. But right now, they're at risk of being sold off to business for profit. That's why the League of Conservation Voters is fighting to safeguard these treasures. LCV is dedicated to safeguarding our environment for Future Generations. Visit LCV.orgMotherJones to donate today and help keep public lands in public hands.
- [19:57]
Bill McKibben
Storms, floods and fires are ever more extreme.
- [20:01]
Al Letson
And yet the Federal Emergency Management Agency
- [20:04]
Josh Sanborn
is fighting for its life.
- [20:06]
Al Gore
I've never been a big fan of FEMA.
- [20:07]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
FEMA's a disaster.
- [20:08]
Al Gore
FEMA's a dirty word. People are waking up in droves to the FEMA camps.
- [20:12]
Bill McKibben
Can the agency survive the stories that have been told about it?
- [20:15]
Josh Sanborn
And can we survive without fema?
- [20:19]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
The Movement to Kill FEMA is a
- [20:21]
Al Letson
brand new series from WNYC's on the Media.
- [20:24]
Josh Sanborn
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:32]
Al Letson
This is more to the story. I'm Al Ledson. Much of rural America, even parts of US Cities, have infrastructure that's straining with age, especially as climate change makes storms stronger and flooding more likely. Kathryn Coleman Flowers has been at the forefront of these issues for decades. I spoke with Kathryn about her activism at the end of last year. Catherine, how are you doing today?
- [20:57]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
I'm doing fine. How are you?
- [20:59]
Al Letson
I'm good. So in the United States, we are actually dealing. And not just in rural areas, but like all across the United States, we're dealing with issues with clean drinking water, open sewage, all of those things. Can you kind of, as an environmental justice activist and someone who works in this field, can you kind of lay out big picture, like what's going on in America that we just don't talk about enough?
- [21:22]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
Well, first of all, let me just, let me Just expand to talk about what's happening in urban America. A lot of our wastewater treatment systems, the big pipe systems, have only been built to last for 50 years, and they've already gone beyond where they should be in the first place. So a lot of places are having problems now with sewage raining back in people's homes. That's true in Detroit. When it rains a lot in Detroit, people are having problems with sewage backing up in their basements. We saw the same thing in Mount Vernon in New York, outside of New York City. We've been told. We've been contacted by people in the Bronx that talk about when they're weather events, they have sewage running back into their homes as well. So it's not just in rural areas. Our infrastructure has not been designed to keep up with the demands of a changing climate. And some of them haven't been built to keep up with the demands of population growth. And that's a problem as well. So we're finding sanitation issues around the country. And we're not just hearing from poor people in Lowndes County. We're hearing from people in Malibu. We're hearing from people in affluent areas. In Florida. There are people in the Atlanta metropolitan area that own septic tanks. So a lot of people in metropolitan areas that are not deemed rural communities are also on septic tanks. But not only are we finding that as an environmental justice issue, but we recently went to East Palestine and Ohio, where a train derailed two years ago. The area is probably about 95 to 97% white, but they're poor, they're powerless. And consequently, a lot of people that were exposed to the toxins from that derailment are complaining about their health. Their complaint is they still feel that the land and air and water is contaminated. So what we saw there were people screaming for help. They want the same kind of help that people in Lowndes county were asking for. We talk about what's happening in Memphis and what is happening there. When they built a data center that did not deal with the environmental harms that is causing in that community. I think that we have to expand the definition of environmental justice because we can't let people think that. Because if you are not black and poor, you're not going to be victimized by this. That's not true. We all drink the same water. The people in Flint, when I went to Flint and I understood that environmental justice. We can't narrowly look at environmental justice. If you were white in Flint, you drank the same water. It didn't treat you Differently because you were white. Everybody is impacted by it. It's just that the communities that have the greatest impact tend to be those communities that are poor. Yeah. And maybe if you're not a billionaire and you only have a few meetings, you could be marginalized, too.
- [24:26]
Al Letson
In your opinion, what does environmental justice look like under the Trump administration? Is this a partisan issue under Trump?
- [24:35]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
I don't think that environmental justice is a partisan issue. I think that environmental justice under the Trump administration is going to help people to understand why it's not a partisan issue, because a lot of people that will be impacted by no regulations will be those same people that thought that they would benefit from this presidency and the decisions that they are making. I believe that we're going to see more people protesting environmental harms because they're going to see the effects of making decisions without regulations being in place to protect the communities that they live in.
- [25:18]
Al Letson
Who are, what industries do you consider to be the biggest offenders against environmental justice?
- [25:25]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
Oh, wow. There's so many of them. It depends on where you are in the country. You know, who are the biggest offenders? It depends on where you are. If I was in Eastern Carolina, I would say, you know, the factory farms, because they're polluting the air, the water, and the soil. If I was in Cancer Alley, I would say the multinational corporations that exist there that are producing lots of chemicals that are also contaminating the air, the water, and the soil. So it depends on where you're located. And the new kid on the block are the data centers. I don't even think we know the impact of the data centers yet, because that's a new thing. So we're going to have to revisit that to see. Unfortunately, we don't really seem to wake up until the harms are already done and they're irreversible.
- [26:18]
Al Letson
Exactly. I think with the data centers, the only thing that may shine a little bit of light on it is that people are beginning to notice that their electric bills are significantly higher wherever these data centers are. And a lot of times when the middle class or when people who have money, their pocketbooks are affected, suddenly those issues kind of move to the forefront.
- [26:43]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
Yes. I think that whenever people, as you said, their pocketbooks are impacted, then of course, they start asking questions and complaining. Because I read recently that the power that's used to power a data center could power 80,000 homes. But I'm also seeing that there's not an equal way in which they're being built because there's a data center that's being built in Alabama, where a lot of the power is being generated by solar. You know, that's not what's happening in Memphis. They're using technologies differently based on who's negotiating. But apparently whoever was negotiating on behalf of the people in Memphis weren't the people that were living in those neighborhoods that are being impacted by it. And consequently, that's why we got. We got. And I think that what's going to be very important going forward in the future, no matter who's in the White House, is community engagement, so that the communities can be a part of designing what it looks like. The communities would know firsthand what kind of jobs are coming out of this. Are there jobs beyond construction jobs? Because the way they generally sell it to the community is all the jobs that are coming. But how many people are actually going to be employed working at these locations? And who's going to pay the bill? As you've mentioned, in a lot of communities, people start seeing that their power bills are going up. Why. Why are they paying for this?
- [28:13]
Al Letson
And if a data center is making your. Your electric bill go up and they're getting to make all the money off of it, like, they should be breaking you off, like, you should get a check as well. Like, why should they get all the profits and you get nothing?
- [28:30]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
Well, and again, it goes back to how we need to redesign what economic prosperity looks. Part of that should go to the communities. I think they can still make billions of dollars. And communities can prosper as well, too.
- [28:45]
Al Letson
Absolutely. Kathryn Coleman Flowers, thank you so much for coming onto the show and talking to me today.
- [28:50]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
Thank you.
- [28:55]
Al Letson
Veteran environmentalist Bill McKibben isn't known for a sunny outlook on climate change. Bill seems to have turned a corner with his book Here Comes the Sun, A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for civil. It's an optimistic look at a renewable energy solution staring us right in the face. I spoke with Bill last fall. Bill, how are you this morning?
- [29:20]
Bill McKibben
I'm actually pretty darn good, which one feels bad about saying in the midst of planetary ecological trauma and the collapse of our democracy. But it's a beautiful day in the mountains of Vermont, and in the midst of all that bad stuff, I've got one piece of big good news, which is actually kind of fun to share.
- [29:42]
Al Letson
So given all of that and where we are with this administration, kind of, I don't know, taking steps back from the progress that we had made. You wrote this book that is pretty optimistic, which, if I'm being blunt, is a little different because you've been described as dark realism. So tell me why you're feeling optimistic in this moment.
- [30:09]
Bill McKibben
About 36 months ago, the planet began an incredible surge of installation of renewable energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, and the batteries to store that power when the sun goes down or the wind drops. That surge is not just the fastest energy transition play on the planet now, it's the fastest energy transition in history, and by a lot. And the numbers are frankly kind of astonishing. I mean, the last month we have good data for is May in China. In May, they were putting up 3 gigawatts of solar panels a day. Now a gigawatt is the rough equivalent of a big coal fired power plant. So they were building the equivalent of one of those worth of solar panels every eight hours across China. Those kind of numbers are world changing. If we play it out for a few more years and if everybody joins in and you can see the same thing happening in parts of this country. California has not done everything right, but it's done more right than most places. And California has hit some kind of tipping point in the last 11 or 12 months. Now, most days, California generates more than 100% of the electricity it uses from clean energy. Which means that at night when the sun goes down, the biggest source of supply on their grid is batteries that didn't exist three years ago. And the bottom line is a 40% fall in fossil fuel use for electricity in the fourth largest economy in the world is the kind of number that adopted worldwide begins to shave tenths of a degree off how hot the planet eventually gets. And we know that every tenth of a degree Celsius, that the temperature rises, move another hundred million of our brothers and sisters out of a safe climate zone and into a dangerous one. So this is, we're not talking salvation here, we're not talking stopping global warming, but we are talking the first thing that's happened in the 40 years that we've known about climate change that scales to at least begin taking a serious bite out of the trouble we're in.
- [32:28]
Al Letson
Yeah. So I own a home in Jacksonville,
- [32:33]
Bill McKibben
Florida, in the Sunshine State.
- [32:35]
Al Letson
In the Sunshine State, I was planning on getting solar panels for the house, but then I was told A1, it would be really expensive and then B, it wouldn't save me that much on my bill because of the way some local ordinances are configured. And so for me, like somebody who wants to have solar panels and wants to use solar power, you know, it's just not cost effective.
- [33:05]
Al Gore
Yeah.
- [33:07]
Al Letson
So how do we get past that.
- [33:08]
Bill McKibben
Well, there's a lot of ways. One of the ways was what Biden was doing in the ira, which was to offer serious tax credits, probably more important in the long run. And this was the subject of a long piece I wrote for Mother Jones. We need serious reform in the way that we permit and license these things. Putting solar panels on your roof in Florida is roughly three times more expensive than it is to put solar panels on your roof in, say, Australia. To pick someplace with a similar climate, or Europe, someplace with a more difficult climate, cost three times as much here. A little bit of that's because of tariffs on panels. Mostly it's because every municipality in America, they send out their own team of inspectors, permits, on and on and on. It's a bureaucratic mess. And that's what drives the price up so dramatically. There's actually an easy way to do it. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory developed a piece of software called the SolarApp plus that allows contractors to just plug in the name of the type of equipment they're going to put on the roof and the address that they're doing it. And the computer quickly checks to see if it's all compatible. And if it is, they get an instantaneous permit and get to work right away. And then for apartment dwellers, because there's almost as many apartment dwellers as homeowners in this country who don't have access to their own roof, usually we need another set of easy technology. We're calling this balcony solar. And across Europe over the last three years, three and a half, four million apartment dwellers have gone to whatever you call Best Buy in Frankfurt or Brussels and come home for a few hundred Euros with a solar panel design to be hung from the railing of a apartment balcony and then plugged directly into the wall. No electrician needed. Nothing that's illegal every place in this country except that progressive bastion, the state of Utah, where the state legislature unanimously passed enabling legislation earlier this year because some libertarian Republican state senator who I've talked to, an interesting guy, he said, well, if people in Stuttgart can have it, why not people in Provo, you know? And no one had a good reason. So now there's on YouTube lots of videos of happy Utahns putting up their balcony solar arrays.
- [35:43]
Al Letson
So let me just to clarify that, because I never heard of this before you in overseas, in different countries, they can go to, I don't know, an Ikea and grab a solar panel, come home and plug it in the wall to power their apartment.
- [36:02]
Bill McKibben
It often powers 25% of the power that they're using in their apartment. It's a real amazing thing and it's for a few hundred euros and among other things, it really introduces people to the joy of all this. There was a big story in the Guardian following all sorts of people who'd done this and almost to a person, they'd all become fascinated by the app on their phone showing how much power they were generating at any given moment. You know, I mean, solar power is kind of a miracle. It exists in so many different sizes from your balcony to big solar farms, all of which we need. But the thing that's a miracle about it is precisely that it's available to all of us. I mean, no one's going to build a coal fired power plant on their balcony. You know, this is something that everybody can do and it's something that once you've got the panel, no one can control. We're talking about energy that can't be hoarded, that can't be held in reserve, and that essentially the sun delivers for free every day when it rises above the horizon. So that is an extraordinary boon, especially poor people around the world, and an extraordinary threat to the fossil fuel industry, which is why you're seeing the crazy pushback that marks the Trump administration.
- [37:30]
Al Letson
My understanding, and my understanding is definitely dated, which is why I'm glad I'm talking to you. But for a very long time, my understanding of solar power was that it wasn't that efficient, that you wouldn't be able to, to get enough power to really do much of anything versus, like fossil fuels. Is it true that the Chinese have really invested in the technology and really pushed it forward?
- [37:56]
Bill McKibben
Yeah, I mean the Chinese are now you've heard of petro states. The Chinese are the first electro state in the world. This stuff works great and it works great here. I mean, I was telling you about what's going on in California. In some ways an even more remarkable story, given the politics, is that Texas is now installing clean energy faster than California because it's the cheapest and it's the fastest thing to put up. If you're having to build data centers. And God knows I'm not convinced we have to build as many data centers as we're building. But if you do, the only thing that builds fast enough to get them up is solar or wind. You can put up a big solar farm in a matter of a few months as fast as you can build the dumb data center. Your question's really important because for a very long time, all my life we've called this stuff, alternative energy, and it's sort of been there on the fringe, like, maybe it's not real big boy energy the way that oil and gas is. I think we've tended to think of it as the whole foods of energy. It's, like, nice, but it's pricey. It's the Costco of energy now. It's cheap, it's available in bulk, it's on the shelf ready to go. 95% of new electric generation around the world and around the country last year came from clean energy. And that's precisely why the fossil fuel industry freaked out. Donald Trump told oil executives, if you give me a billion dollars, you can have anything you want. They gave him about half a billion. Between donations and advertising and lobbying. That was enough, because he's doing things even they couldn't have imagined. I mean, he's shut down two almost complete big wind farms off the Atlantic seaboard. I mean, it's craziness. We've never really seen anything like it.
- [39:57]
Al Letson
Do you think we'll be able to bounce back? Like, as we're watching all of these forward movements that have happened before Trump came back into office, it feels like he is burning it all down. And not just burning it down, but salting the earth, like nothing's gonna grow there again.
- [40:15]
Bill McKibben
I completely hear you. Yeah. This one possibility. Look, ten years from now, if we stay on the course that Trump has us on, any tourist who can actually get a visa to come to America, they'll be coming here to. You know, it'll be like a Colonial Williamsburg of internal combustion. People will come to gawk at how people used to live back in the olden days. You know, I don't think that that's what's going to happen. I think that at some point, reality is going to catch up with this and everyone's going to start figuring out we're paying way more for energy than anybody else in the world. And that means our economy is always on the back foot. That means that our consumers are always strapped. I mean, electricity prices are up, up 10% this year so far around this country because he keeps saying we're not going to build the cheapest, fastest way to make more electricity. I don't see how that can last. But then I don't see how any of this, none of it. I mean, I confess I feel out of my depth now. The hatred of immigrants, the racial hatred, the insane economic policy around tariffs, none of it makes any real sense to me, politically or morally. So I could be wrong. But I hope that America, which, after all, was where the solar cell was invented and where the first solar cell came out of Edison, New Jersey in 1954, the first commercial wind turbine in the world went up on a Vermont Mountain about 30 miles south of where I'm talking from. You speaking in the 1940s, that we've now gifted the future to China is just crazy. No matter what your politics are.
- [42:03]
Al Letson
The question that comes to mind when you say that is. It's clear to me that what some climate change skeptics and renewable energy skeptics have been able to do is to wrap things like solar power and wind energy and into the culture war. So now that it's a part of the culture war, people just stand against it because, well, they're on the wrong team. Instead of looking at the economic reality that their bills could go down significantly if they dived in.
- [42:44]
Bill McKibben
It's super true. But it's also true that solar power is remarkably popular across less partisan lines. The polling we have shows that, yeah, the Republican voters are less enamored of it now because Trump's been going so hard after it, but still like it by large margins and want more government support for it. I think that what the reason is that there are several ways to think about this. I mean, I'm concerned about climate change. I'm a progressive. I like the idea that we're, you know, networking the groovy power of the sun to save our planet. But I've lived my whole life in rural America, much of it in red state rural America. I have lots of neighbors who are very conservative. There's lots of Trump flags on my road, and some of them fly in front of homes with solar panels on them. Because if you're completely convinced that your home is your castle and that you're going to defend with your AR15, it's a better castle if it has its own independent power supply up on the roof. And people have really figured that out. So this can cut both ways, and I hope that it will. That's that story from Utah about the balcony solar. Like, that's the one place where they people have said, well, you know, there's no reason not to do this. Let's do it.
- [44:10]
Al Letson
Bill McKibben is the author of Here Comes the Sun, A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization. Bill, thanks so much for talking to me today.
- [44:20]
Bill McKibben
Well, Al, many thanks to you and many thanks for really thoughtful questions.
- [44:27]
Al Letson
That was longtime environmentalist Bill McKibben. We also heard from environmental justice advocate Kathryn Coleman Flowers and former Vice President Al Gore, who is also the founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project. If you like this show, I'm going to suggest you check out our new Reveal episode coming out this Saturday. It's about about how the weed killer Roundup is being sprayed throughout California forests and the secret plan that helped make it possible. You can hear that episode on your local radio station or right here in the Reveal Podcast feed. Lastly, to keep up with everything we're doing here, sign up for our free newsletter by going to revealnews.org newsletter and we'll send you the latest from our newsroom in a weekly email. That's revealing. RealNews.org Newsletter this episode was produced by members of the Justice Society, Josh sandburn and Carl McGurk Allison. It was edited by James West, Taki Telenides and Bret Myers. Theme music and engineering helped by Fernando My Man Yo Arruda and Jay Breezy. Mr. Jim Briggs, I'm Al Letson and you know, let's do this again next week. This is more to the story.
- [45:54]
Kathryn Coleman Flowers
From prx.