Our last, best chance to cool the Earth | Bill McKibben

Summary

Podcast Summary: TED Talks Daily

Episode: "Our last, best chance to cool the Earth" | Bill McKibben

Date: August 8, 2026

Host: Elise Hu

Guest: Bill McKibben

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Episode Overview

In this episode, climate author and activist Bill McKibben joins Elise Hu to share a rare dose of climate optimism: for the first time in human history, solar and wind are now the cheapest sources of power on Earth. McKibben’s talk outlines why this moment—the arrival of abundant, affordable clean energy—might be our final, best opportunity to curtail climate change and fundamentally reshape the world. The discussion digs into the real-world impact of this energy shift, the global and political obstacles standing in the way, and the critical role of local and collective action.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Turning Point for Clean Energy

• Solar and Wind Surpass Fossil Fuels:
  • Recently, solar and wind became cheaper than coal, oil, and gas globally.
  • “Let me repeat, we live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.” (Bill McKibben, 00:57 & 05:01)
• Shift in Perspective:
  • Continuing to call renewables “alternative” has slowed public realization of this seismic shift.
  • Clean energy has become common sense, not an “alternative.”

Real-world Evidence of the Energy Transition

• Stunning Growth and Access:
  • The Earth is producing a third more solar power this spring versus last.
  • In Australia, citizens will soon receive three hours of free electricity daily due to surpluses.
  • California now regularly exceeds 100% renewable generation on many days.
  • Pakistani farmers have rapidly adopted inexpensive solar panels, slashing diesel use.
  • “Roughly 90% of new electric generation around the world last year came from the sun and the wind.” (Bill McKibben, 06:55)
• Global Health and Justice:
  • Air quality improvements are visible where renewable adoption is high.
  • Renewables democratize access to power—no more energy empires defined by fossil fuel geography.
  • “Imagine how many fewer wars and coups and terrorist plots we would have seen in the last century if oil had been of trivial value.” (Bill McKibben, 08:13)

The Stakes and Urgency of Action

• The Race Against Time:
  • If transition doesn’t accelerate, a solar- and wind-powered world will inherit a broken planet.
  • “If it takes us anything like 40 years to get there, then the planet we run on sun and wind will be a broken planet.” (Bill McKibben, 11:55)
  • Each tenth of a degree in warming moves about 100 million people out of a safe climate zone. (20:25)
• Political Resistance:
  • Fossil fuel interests are actively fighting the shift in places like the US, sometimes succeeding in slowing the transition, notably under sympathetic politicians.
• Necessity of Collective Action:
  • Individual household changes help, but mass political engagement is crucial:
    • “The most important thing an individual can do always is be less of an individual and join together with others in movements large enough to reshape public policy.” (Bill McKibben, 34:15)

Solar Policy and Movement Building

• “Free the Rooftop” and Plug-in Solar:
  • Bureaucracy, not technology, is the main obstacle to cheap rooftop solar in the US.
  • Australians and Europeans can routinely install rooftop (and balcony) solar quickly and cheaply; Americans face months of red tape and pay 3x the price.
  • Innovative example: “Balcony solar” lets apartment residents plug panels straight into their wall—common in Europe, only recently legal in Utah, Virginia, and Maine; movement underway for national adoption.
  • “By the end of the year, I think a good third of the country you’ll be able to go do this.” (Bill McKibben, 32:03)
• Global Events for Awareness:
  • McKibben cites the “solstice” days of action to spread the message and push policy.

The Geopolitics of Energy Transition

• Wars Are Accelerating the Shift:
  • Oil and gas supply disruptions—first from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, then the war in Iran—have pushed nations to reconsider their energy vulnerability.
  • “We could be witnessing…this catalytic effect on solar.” (Elise Hu, 27:30)
  • “Country after country are making it clear that this is the direction they’re going to have to go in.” (Bill McKibben, 27:19)
• Resource Challenges and Circularity:
  • While renewables rely on mining for materials like lithium, the total resource burden is much less than for fossil fuels, and advances in recycling are closing the loop.
  • “If you took down those solar panels now… the materials in one of those solar panels… would work to make six new solar panels.” (Bill McKibben, 30:38)

Community Resilience and Hope

• Why Community Matters:
  • Safe havens from climate change don’t exist—every place faces risk.
  • What matters: “The place that you want to be is the place with good neighbors. Neighbors have been optional for the last hundred years in the western world, but they’re not going to be optional for the next hundred years.” (Bill McKibben, 01:57 & 36:11)
• Building Movements:
  • Examples: Third Act (mobilizing older generations), Sunrise (youth climate activism).
  • Influence and power comes from collective, community-based organizing.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Crossing the Clean Energy Tipping Point

  • “We live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.”
    — Bill McKibben, 00:57 & 05:01

• The Scope of Impact

  • “Every tenth of a degree that the temperature goes up moves 100 million people from a safe climate zone to a dangerous one.”
    — Bill McKibben, 20:25

• Renewable Solidarity

  • “Solar, by contrast, allows everybody to take control of their energy destiny…there’s plenty for everybody.”
    — Bill McKibben, 23:24

• On the Branding Problem

  • “Solar power and wind power are now the Costco of energy. This is the stuff that’s cheap, available in bulk, on the shelf, ready to go.”
    — Bill McKibben, 22:41

• On US Backtracking

  • “That role as kind of drug dealer to the planet is not a savory one.”
    — Bill McKibben, 25:58

• On Individual and Collective Action

  • “We’re not going to solve this thing one Tesla at a time.”
    — Bill McKibben, 34:15

• On the New Age of Energy

  • “The mantra for this moment is clear: Energy from heaven, not from hell.”
    — Bill McKibben, 13:23

• On Building Resilient Communities

  • “The place that you want to be is the place with good neighbors.”
    — Bill McKibben, 36:11

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Detailed Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:57 & 05:01: Crossing the economic threshold – solar cheaper than fossil fuels.
• 05:17: Examples of real-world solar transformation in Australia, California, Pakistan.
• 08:13: The potential end to conflict-driven by energy resources.
• 11:55: Warning about the risk of a broken planet if transition is slow.
• 20:25: Quantifying the human stakes of every tenth of a degree of warming.
• 22:41: Comparing renewables’ branding to “Costco of energy.”
• 23:24: Solar as a form of global solidarity.
• 24:54: Pakistan’s grassroots solar revolution.
• 25:58: Critique of US policies on fossil exports and tariffs.
• 27:30: Wars, energy chokepoints, and the catalyst effect for renewables.
• 30:38: Advances in solar panel recycling.
• 31:04: "Balcony solar"—democratizing solar access for renters/property-poor.
• 32:09: Policy bottlenecks—why US solar remains expensive, despite technology.
• 34:15: Importance of collective action over individual purchases.
• 36:11: Community and neighborhood as the new survival strategy under climate stress.

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Conclusion and Takeaways

Bill McKibben’s TED appearance brings a crucial message: the world stands at a historic inflection point. For the first time, renewable energy is not just morally imperative but the most affordable choice—if humanity can move fast enough to transform the political, regulatory, and social frameworks that still prop up a dying fossil fuel order. The conversation teaches that the most important climate action is not individual consumption, but joining forces to reshape the system—since clean power, democracy, and resilient communities are entwined.

The episode closes with a call for hope, urgency, and stewardship—a “beautiful, beautiful project for humans to build it out across our hot and tired earth in the next few years.”

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For more on these ideas:

• TED Talks Daily Podcast
• thirdact.org (Bill McKibben's organizing movement for people over 60)
• Sunrise Movement (youth climate activism)

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Ads, introductions, and outros have been omitted for clarity and relevance.

Transcript

[Elise Hu]

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Most of what we hear about climate change is worrying and often bleak. But every once in a while, some good news comes along. And when it comes to energy, this could be one of the more hopeful moments in human history. Author, educator and activist Bill McKibben has been thinking about climate change for decades. His 1989 book The End of Nature is widely considered the first book on climate change written for a general audience. I have been reading his work for years, and for most of that time, the news and Bill's writing has been pretty grim. Our fight to save the planet is an uphill one, so it means something that today Bill's hopeful. And that hope rests on a single, almost deceptively simple fact.

[Bill McKibben]

Earlier this decade, we crossed some invisible line where it became cheaper to produce from the sun than from burning coal and gas and oil. Let me repeat, we live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.

[Elise Hu]

In his talk, Bill argues that solar and wind are no longer the expensive, idealistic alternative. They're simply the best and cheapest way to make power. He thinks we've been slow to notice the scale of this shift, in part because of the words we use to categorize it as alternative energy. He shows why solar power is our last, best chance to cool the Earth if we're willing to reach for it and stick around. After the talk, I got to sit down with Bill to go beyond the ideas he shared on stage, including why he thinks solar power is a form of solidarity, why he thinks recent wars have actually sped up the clean energy shift, and what he tells people who ask where they should move to stay safe from climate change.

[Bill McKibben]

The place that you want to be is the place with good neighbors. Neighbors have been optional for the last hundred years years in the western world, but they're not going to be optional for the next hundred years.

[Elise Hu]

And just a quick note before we jump in. When I sat down with Bill in April after his talk, only Utah, Virginia, and Maine had passed plug in solar legislation, which is mentioned in his talk and conversation. But since then, Vermont, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut and New Hampshire have signed similar legislation into law. New York and New Jersey have passed legislation that are currently waiting on signatures from their governors. His talk and our conversation are coming up after a short break. This episode is sponsored by Defender. Summer is on its way, and now is the time to start planning your Next Great outdoor Adventure if you're setting your sights on higher peaks, deeper rivers and bigger dreams, embrace the impossible with Defender. Built with legendary capability and tested on some of the most difficult terrain, Defender brings the toughness you need in a vehicle to take you to faraway places with the comfort and smart tech that makes the journey feel luxurious. Choose between the sleek two door Defender 90, the purposeful Defender 110, or the Defender 130 with seating up to eight people. For bigger expeditions, Defender's robust materials mean you can adventure without compromise, and innovative driving aids like Clearsight technology help you view the world around you in powerful new ways. With the available three models, you have the potential for up to 89 cubic feet of cargo space this summer. Adventure with confidence Explore the full Defender lineup@land roverusa.com this episode is brought to you by Dell Back to School starts now get long lasting battery life on the Dell XPS laptop powered by Series 3 Intel Core, so you can work from anywhere now starting at $699 with exclusive student pricing starting at 599. And it's lightweight, portable and packed with enough processing power to make multitasking a breeze. So say goodbye to distractions and hello to more free time. Because you finished your work faster, complete your setup with savings on select monitors and more. Must have electronics and accessories, limited time deals and free shipping on PCs and more await [e-mail] deals that's Dell.com deals. This message is brought to you by Apple Card Shave ice by the beach, a trip to the state fair and a throwback flick at the local drive in. There are more than just items to check off the summer bucket list. There are also opportunities to earn 2% daily cash back when you use your Apple Card with Apple Pay. Apply for Apple Card now and use in minutes with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com. And now our TED Talk and conversation of the day.

[Bill McKibben]

The Earth is producing about a third more power from the sun this spring than last. That solar power is suddenly so cheap and abundant that Australians will soon get three hours of electricity free every afternoon. Free. After 400,000 years of working hard for energy, from gathering firewood to paying the power bill, some humans will suddenly have access to this commodity for nothing. California, fourth largest economy in the world, now produces most days more than 100% of its electricity from renewable energy. At night, when the sun goes down, big new batteries on the grid turn dark into daylight. In Pakistan Peasant farmers who used to pay through the nose for diesel power to run their irrigation pumps are using 30% less of the fuel than they were two years ago, in large part because they've imported millions of cheap Chinese solar panels and gone on YouTube to figure out how to connect them up. They often lack the money to build the steel scaffolding we're used to seeing at solar farms. No matter. They just lay them on the ground and point them at the sun. In a world where many, many big things have taken a very dark turn this decade, this is the one big thing that is going right. We have, quite suddenly, the opportunity to build a clean, abundant future if we simply seize it. But most of us don't recognize how huge this moment is. In part, that's because we've spent decades calling this stuff alternative energy. And it's blinded us to the fact that it's now the obvious common sense, straightforward way to power the future. Roughly 90% of new electric generation around the world last year came from the sun and the wind. And that, in turn, is because earlier this decade, we crossed some invisible line where it became cheaper to produce power from the sun than from burning coal and gas and oil. Let me repeat. We live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. If we can keep the staggering growth of the last 36 months going, then we could enter an extraordinary new age. Consider 8 or 9 million people a year die from breathing the combustion byproducts of fossil fuel. That's one death in five on this planet. But the Chinese cities, whose air was so foul a few years ago that you couldn't see across the street, are suddenly much cleaner. Most of the cars sold there now come with a plug, and it connects them to the vast solar and wind farms that the Chinese are building faster than anyone on Earth. More fundamentally, this energy transition is our only real chance of even starting to catch up with the physics of climate change. It's too late to global warming, but it's not too late to shave tenths of a degree off how hot the planet eventually gets. And each tenth of a degree that we raise the temperature moves 100 million of our brothers and sisters out of a safe climate zone and into a more perilous one. This new age would come with one other great bonus. Unlike fossil fuels, which are concentrated in a few places, the sun's energy is available everywhere. Instead of, say, attacking Venezuela to secure its oil or threatening to cut off Europe's gas supply to force the subjugation of Ukraine, we get to imagine a world where hydrocarbons no longer equal wealth and power. Imagine how many fewer wars and coups and terrorist plots we would have seen in the last century if oil had been of trivial value. As this spring has reminded us, humans are all too good at starting wars. But even for us, figuring out how to to fight one over sunshine will be tricky. Sunlight travels 93 million miles to reach the Earth, but none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz. So what? Good news. Unless of course, you own an oil well or a coal mine. Then the rise of clean energy becomes an extraordinary threat, one that mobilizes you to fight back. In the U.S. for instance, candidate Trump told the oil industry that if they donated huge sums, he would have their back. In his first year in office, he shut down huge wind farms off the eastern seaboard, killed solar farms across the country. Now Trump can't stop clean energy single handedly. It's not like he's Jesus or something. Indeed.

Indeed.

The economics are so favorable that even in the US most new electric generation last year came from the sun and the wind. And the biggest growth was in the state of Texas, the home ground of Big Oil. But Trump and Russia and Saudi Arabia and a handful of other world powers may be able to slow that shift. America's Secretary of Energy, against all global evidence, has said there's no climate crisis and we're not in the middle of an energy transition either. So he's been subsidizing coal instead of embracing the clean energy. That would say, let us build any data centers we actually needed quickly and cheaply. As the Chinese have amply demonstrated, solar fields can sprout in a matter of weeks. America's effort to delay this transition is not just economically stupid, it also endangers the last, best hope of co ruling this earth. Sure, in 40 years we will run the planet on sun and wind because it's cheap. But if it takes us anything like 40 years to get there, then the planet we run on sun and wind will be a broken planet. So those of us who hope for a different future need to fight for it. And with the cheap solar panel, we finally have a real weapon in that struggle. We need to push in every country and at every level of government for a faster move toward cheap, clean power. We started Sunday in the US last year on the autumnal equinox. Across the nation, 500 events, from solar powered concerts to the installation of solar panels on Habitat for Humanity homes, helped spread this new energy gospel. We'll do it again on the summer solstice in 2027, and this time we will do it globally. Days like this help us build the political power we need to push these things ahead. Americans, for instance, right now pay three times what Europeans or Australians pay for solar power, mostly because of unnecessary bureaucracy at the state and local level. So free the rooftop is a cry that appeals to conservatives as much as liberals. Utah became the first American state last year to legalize small scale plug in solar, opening the door for the kind of simple installations that have sprouted on the balconies of millions of European apartments in the last three years. Maine and Virginia joined Utah last week. So, yeah, as we push ahead with this work, we need to talk about its scientific necessity and its economic pragmatism. But we have one other ace to play, and that's the sheer beauty of power from the sun. We have a deep human connection to our local star. We don't know for sure how prehistoric people thought about things, because being prehistoric, they failed to write it down. But we do know that every pile of rocks they left behind, like Stonehenge, seems to point to the equinox or the solstice. Do you not break into an involuntary grin when the sun comes out from behind a cloud and hits you on the shoulder blades? If you don't get enough sun, you literally get can get sad Seasonal affective disorder. So the mantra for this moment is clear energy from heaven, not from hell. And with that slogan, what a breakthrough moment this could be. I mean, humans have been burning things since the dawn of time. Darwin said language and fire were the two things that set our species apart. And fire was mostly good. We learned to cook, which gave us the big brain. We could move north and south from the equator. The anthropologists even think that eons of standing around the campfire every night help explain some of the social bonds that mark our species. Think of it as a sort of primitive TED talk. When we learned to control the combustion of coal and oil and gas, that was the industrial revolution and it gave us modernity. But now the cost of those fires has simply grown too high. The very future of the climate on which we depend is being overwhelmed by their smoke. So what sweet relief that in this exact moment, we can, if we want, put out those fires. The big ones in our power plants, the smaller ones in our furnaces and under the hoods of our cars. The sun already gives us light and warmth and via photosynthesis, our supper. Now it is willing to provide us with all the power we could ever need. This gift has come at the last possible moment. It would be an extraordinary sin to waste it. And it would be a beautiful, beautiful project for humans to build it out across our hot and tired earth in the next few years. In advance of your participation in that fight, let me just say thank you.

[Elise Hu]

That was Bill McKibben. Coming up after the break, we discuss what cheap solar means for the balance of power around the world, why we can't fix this one household at a time, and where he finds hope heading into what he expects to be a rough few years of weather. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire, they can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, according to LinkedIn, those hiring with LinkedIn are 24% less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for [e-mail] TEDTalk terms and conditions apply.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

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[Elise Hu]

Bill, congrats on your TED Talk.

[Bill McKibben]

Well, thank you. It was a great pleasure.

[Elise Hu]

How are you feeling now that you're off the stage?

[Bill McKibben]

Well, I'm, you know, it's an audience filled with people who clearly are committed to changing the world, so what a pleasure you get to talk with them.

[Elise Hu]

You published the End of nature in 1989. So nearly 40 years ago, which a lot of people know of or describe as the first book about climate change for a general audience. For much of the last 36 years now, the economics of clean energy have been against you. What was it like to carry that fight when the numbers didn't help?

[Bill McKibben]

Well, you're absolutely right. The first four fifths of the climate fight have been spent in a world where fossil fuel is cheap and renewable energy is relatively expensive. And so the work all those years, in many ways, was to make fossil fuel more expensive. In a sense, that's what carbon taxes were about. It's why we worked so hard in these huge divestment campaigns to raise their cost of capital. It's why we tried to stop many of the pipelines and things, to sort of keep the industry from consolidating its hold. Those things are all important still. But now the force of economic gravity is pulling in the right direction, and that's a huge help. At this point, the fossil fuel industry is on the back foot. They're having to contend with reality, and their only tool really is spending huge amounts of money to game the political system to prevent having to come to terms with that new reality.

[Elise Hu]

What has the shift been like for you as somebody who speaks and talks about these things? Because your newest book and your talk really have kind of a hopeful lens compared to your earlier work.

[Bill McKibben]

I mean, it's obviously hope tinged with great sadness because we've waited too long and much of the, I mean, horrible damage has been done and far more will be. And, you know, it's not clear that we'll be able to really arrest climate change in a serious way at this point. The physical momentum is strong, but we finally have a weapon in this fight. And every tenth of a degree that we can shave off how hot the planet eventually gets will keep, by best academic estimate, about 100 million people in a safe climate zone. Every tenth of a degree that the temperature goes up moves 100 million people from a safe climate zone to a dangerous one.

[Elise Hu]

What's the difference between a safe climate zone and a dangerous.

[Bill McKibben]

Well, I mean, it's, you know, we're now having large parts of the world around the equator where it's just getting too hot for people to be able to work outdoors. You know, the human body is a magnificent machine, but it has tolerances, and past a certain point, if it's, you know, 120 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is high and stuff, you just can't keep working in the field. It doesn't. It's impossible. So that's the basic condition. But of course, there's lots of other places where we're turning things to desert, where we're flooding places as sea level rises, where so much stuff has caught on fire that nobody can go live there again. I mean, there's a lot of that already and there's going to be a lot more. We'll see some of that in the next year because it looks like we're about to have a big, big El Nino on this planet that'll drive the temperature higher than it's ever been in our planet in human history because it keeps just building on the global warming that we've already accomplished. So, you know, it's going to be an interesting 18 months.

[Elise Hu]

Wow. Wow. Back to your talk. It seems like you're saying that we're essentially, we have a branding problem when we call renewable energy alternative, because then fossil fuels are default or normal. How do we fix this branding?

[Bill McKibben]

Well, I think we talk about it a lot and in ways that people can understand. I often say that we're used to thinking of solar power sort of the way we think of Whole Foods, you know, the supermarket. Yeah, it's like nice, but pricey for special people, you know, when in fact solar power and wind power are now the Costco of energy. This is the stuff that's cheap, available in bulk, on the shelf, ready to go. And as people start to understand that their receptivity changes dramatically and sadly, it also gets easier the more that our leaders do really stupid things like launch pointless wars in the Middle East. Around the world, people are showing up in huge numbers in the last little while in EV showrooms and calling their contractor to find out about heat pumps and trying hard to move to electricity off fossil fuel.

[Elise Hu]

You've written that you see solar as a form of solidarity. What do you mean by that?

[Bill McKibben]

Well, the way that things work now. Yeah, as long as you depend on fossil fuel, it's only available in a few places. So it contributes very naturally to the kind of oligarchies and hierarchies in our world. I mean, the very first oligarch was John D. Rockefeller, because he was the first guy to figure out that if you could control the supply of this necessary thing, then you were sitting in the catbird seat. Solar, that by contrast, allows everybody to take control of their energy destiny and beautifully works better the closer you get to the equator. Those are the people most well positioned to take charge of this. There's plenty for everybody. And at Higher latitudes, wind is the perfect complement to solar. It's really just another form of solar energy since the sun heats the Earth differentially producing the breezes that turn those majestic turbines. But. But the idea that the Global south would no longer have to depend on somebody else for their energy is. The cost is staggering. India, now the most populated country on Earth, spends more than 5% of its GDP importing fossil fuel, which is, you know, going to change because they have unlimited amounts of sunshine.

[Elise Hu]

And by contrast, its neighbor Pakistan has seen an incredible transition. Pakistan, few years, right.

[Bill McKibben]

Pakistan, which has a border with China, has been able to import gazillion solar panels cheaply. And it's not been a really a government program there. It's individual Pakistanis fed up with expensive and unreliable electricity who have bought panels, gone on YouTube, watched how to put them together.

[Elise Hu]

We're talking about such an exciting energy transition going on, but at the same time, we're watching US Policymakers take huge steps backward in clean energy transitioning and then heavily subsidizing fossil fuels in order to make that artificially cheaper. How much does it matter that the US Is backtracking on the climate transition?

[Bill McKibben]

So it matters a lot. It's not enough to destroy this transition. At this point, the US is about 11% of global emissions. So a big deal, but not a decisive one. But America is also trying to prevent this transition in other countries. So, for instance, when the president imposed tariffs on places, you could get out of your tariffs if you agreed to buy a lot of US Liquefied natural gas. So Japan and the EU made promises along these lines to go do it. That role as kind of drug dealer to the planet is not a savory one. Truthfully, I think when we look back on this period, we will think that Trump's decision to go to war in Iran was one of the things that turned out to push the renewable revolution faster than almost anything else.

[Elise Hu]

Say more about that.

[Bill McKibben]

Well, everybody in the course of a few weeks figured out that relying on a commodity that had to go through a 20 mile wide channel of water was not something you wanted. And America's been saying, well, import the energy from us instead. Trump keeps telling everybody. But I, you know, I don't think there's that many countries around the world who are eager to tie their future to Donald Trump's moods. You know, so around the world, we've watched in the last six weeks as one statesman after another has said, you know, the president of Indonesia said, we're going to build 100 gigawatts of solar power by 20. The President of South Korea said, I can't sleep at night because I figuring out how we're going to get enough energy. We're committed to our own self sufficient clean energy. Going forward, country after country are making it clear that this is the direction they're going to have to go in.

[Elise Hu]

So we could be witnessing as one of the externalities of war, this catalytic effect on solar.

[Bill McKibben]

It's a kind of perfect storm because remember this has happened twice now in this decade. The first was when Russia invaded Ukraine and gas supplies for especially Europe were cut off. And now this. And they coincide. I mean, 15 years ago it wouldn't have mattered that much because there wasn't an affordable alternative. But now there's something better, cleaner and cheaper. So it should be a no brainer for countries to figure out that this is where they need to go. Just in the same way that, you know, 15 years ago when the price of gas went up, what could you do? But now what you can do is go buy an ev. And people are crowding into EV showrooms around the world. The only exception again is the US where we've made it very, very difficult to do that. Again, it's the US cutting its own throat. The auto industry is clearly going to be owned by the Chinese within a few years.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, yeah, those $12,000, $12,000 nifty cars, right? Electric cars. Both EVs and solar of course require batteries. And what you don't get into in your talk is this debate right around the infrastructure around solar that is also resource dependent in its own way. What needs to happen to support solar at scale?

[Bill McKibben]

Well, I mean, we should say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but there are definitely more expensive lunches and less expensive lunches.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Bill McKibben]

And this is in the latter category. You have to go, say get some lithium to build a battery. So you have to go mine it somewhere. And we should do our best to mine it carefully and humanely. But once you mine it, then you put it in a battery where it sits doing its lithium thing when the battery degrades. Now we recycle it and get the lithium back out and start over again. When you go mine coal mine, what do you do with it? You burn it, burn it the next day and you have to go mine some more, the same amount the next day to keep your system going. There's no recycling it. It just turns into carbon dioxide and heats up the planet. So the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado did a study. Now 18 months ago, estimating that the total mining burden for the renewable battery transition by mid century would be roughly equivalent to the amount of coal we mined last year on this planet.

[Elise Hu]

A fraction of what is mined.

[Bill McKibben]

Exactly. Right. So we're, we're moving to a less resource intensive paradigm. Okay. And one of the things about all this is that because the technology keeps improving, there's a kind of wildly virtuous circle that emerges. So I put solar panels all over my roof 25 years ago, back when they were, are pretty expensive. If you took down those solar panels now, and there's no need to because they're still working fine, but eventually if they degrade and we take them down, the materials that are in one of those solar panels, the, the silver and things would work to make six new solar panels.

[Elise Hu]

Oh, interesting.

[Bill McKibben]

So we can recycle them. That's, that's how much better we've gotten in that quarter century. So theoretically, at a certain point, not that far in the future, this should become a kind of closed loop system.

[Elise Hu]

And I understand you are involved in a movement to get solar installed on US balconies, Is that right? Tell us more.

[Bill McKibben]

So in Europe over the last three years, there's been this explosion of what they call balcony solar. You go to Ikea, plunk down a few hundred euros and you come home with a solar panel not for your roof, but designed to be zip tied to the railing on your apartment balcony or just stuck in the ground or something. And on the back there's just a plug that you just plug into your wall. And there's no need for an electrician or anything. So it's super cheap and super simple. Now these are not huge systems for an average apartment. They'll provide 25% of the power that you use. So not everything, but not nothing either. They're, as I said, become wildly popular across Europe. They're illegal everywhere in the US except the state of Utah. And now we've launched big fight to get that same law passed everywhere else. We've got some got it in about 28 state legislatures. And last week both Virginia and Maine approved it. So by the end of the year, I think a good third of the country you'll be able to go do this.

[Elise Hu]

Very cool. And on this topic of policy and regulation, where do you see the biggest roadblocks right now?

[Bill McKibben]

Well, I mean the biggest roadblocks, obviously dc, they're doing horrible things. They're shutting down wind farms that are working. They're putting federal land off limits to solar panels. It's all just crazy obstruction in the service of the people who gave them large campaign donations. But since we can't affect that for the moment, we're fighting hard to elect new people so we can. But in the meantime, there's a lot that can be done at the state and local level. Americans pay three times what Europeans or Australians pay for rooftop solar. And it's not because the panels are more expensive. It's because we have way more regulation and, and bureaucracy takes months to put these things up in the rest of the world. It's pretty much like buying a refrigerator. You just call somebody up, I want solar on the roof by Wednesday. They're up there hammering. By Friday. You're connected up instead of the months long saga that it is here. And that's why 40% of homes in Australia, 35 or 40% have solar panels on the roof. Which is in turn why Australia is producing so much solar energy that beginning in June they're going to start handing it out electricity free every afternoon for three hours. That's a huge shift. And think of the Americans who would enjoy profit from having some free electricity.

[Elise Hu]

We've been talking about the need for systems change, investment at scale. What's the role of the individual in this transition? What can we be doing individually or at our family level? You know, if we're getting behind you in this fight?

[Bill McKibben]

Well, so individuals of course, can do things in their own home and they should in their own community. I'm proud that I've got solar panels on the roof and happy they connect to an ev. But let's be clear, we're not going to solve this thing one Tesla at a time.

[Elise Hu]

Sure.

[Bill McKibben]

The most important thing an individual can do always is be less of an individual and join together with others in movements large enough to reshape public policy. So we started, for instance, third Act a few years ago that organizes old people like me, anyone over the age of 60. And we've got 120,000Americans now engaged in this. The two things we organize around are protecting the climate and protecting democracy. And it turns out, but older people are fantastic at both these jobs. And so, you know, if you're of a certain age, tell your grandparents about us, send them our direction. There's lots of other groups that are doing this same kind of good, organizing young people at the sunrise movement and things like that.

[Elise Hu]

Those are some great examples of coalition building. What gives you hope as we head into this really difficult 18 months where the weather is going to be as

[Bill McKibben]

unpredictable as ever, we're in for heavy weather the next year and the next, probably the next century. But I do think that we can build with solar power in particular, both energy systems that produce less carbon and are also somewhat more resilient in the face of disruption of all kinds, be it war or hurricane or whatever. And I think that in the process, we bring things down to a slightly smaller scale that allows communities to strengthen. You know, I live in a small state In Vermont, only 600,000 of us, but we spend $2 billion a year importing fossil fuel into Vermont. We just write check to Texas or Saudi Arabia or something every month. So, you know, thinking about what it would mean to have that $2 billion close to home and thinking of the kind of community power that it builds. When people ask me, where should I move to be safe from global warming, which they often do, the answer is there is no place that's safe from global warming. Every place faces its own perils. The place that you want to be is the place with good neighbors. Neighbors have been optional for the last hundred years in the Western world, but they're not going to be optional for the next hundred years. You need communities around you. And that's why I'm in Vermont, where I live. You know, I think it has a strong sense of community, but clearly there are lots of places like that. I mean, think about the beauty we saw in Minneapolis this winter as people came together to defend their neighbors. You know, that's the kind of community you want to be in, because the same community that can stand up to ice can stand up to heat as well.

[Elise Hu]

Bill McKibben, thank you so much for sitting down with us and for all of your fantastic work.

[Bill McKibben]

Well, thank you. What a good conversation and what a pleasure to be at TED and just be surrounded by people who are deeply engaged in what we need to be engaged in.

[Elise Hu]

We're so glad you're part of the family. That was Bill McKibben at TED 2026 and in conversation with me, Elise Hu. The interview was recorded in April of 2026. And that's it for today. If you're curious about TED's curation guidelines, visit ted.comCurationGuidelines TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced by Lucy Little, edited by Alejandra Salazar, and fact checked by the TED research team. This episode was mixed by Xander Adams, and the interview was recorded in Vancouver by Dave Pulmer and Rich Amen of Field Trip. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang Martha Estefanos, Brian Greene, Maria Alexa Kavanaugh, Maren Larson, Emma Tobner, Tanzika Sangmarnival and Lainey Lott. Learn [e-mail] I am Elise Hu. I will be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. But what if the most overlooked space in your home could be the most considered? Kohler Smart Toilet challenges that assumption. Their Vailsmart toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional, it's a philosophy that design changes everything. The kohlervale Smart Toilet is sleek with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing. And it goes beyond looks. The touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness that exceeds expectations. It's all about elevating those ordinary daily rituals into something extraordinary through thoughtful design. Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high performance function that's a long time to get it right, and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find out [e-mail]

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