"Burning Questions:" A conversation with Bill McKibben about his new book on solar power
How We Survive
Marketplace
5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A cheap and accessible form of energy lies in a large ball of burning gas 93 million miles up in the sky: the sun. So why haven’t we adopted solar energy more widely? “How We Survive” host Amy Scott recently talked with longtime climate writer and activist Bill McKibben about his upcoming book “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.”
In this exclusive extended interview, McKibben explains how solar power has had explosive growth in the past few years, why it’s not widely adopted in the U.S. (and ways to change that) and offers some hopeful examples of how solar power has been adopted around the world.
Transcript
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| 0:54.4 | everything secure. Hey, how we survive listeners, Amy here. I recently had the opportunity to interview |
| 1:01.7 | the longtime climate writer and activist Bill McKibbin for Marketplace. And I wanted to share an |
| 1:08.6 | exclusive extended version of that interview here. Bill is coming |
| 1:13.5 | out with a new book about solar power, and he offers some hope about climate solutions that are well |
| 1:20.9 | underway. Hope you enjoy. Bill McKibbin has spent the last few decades as a writer and activist getting the word out about climate change and how we can build a more resilient world. |
| 1:40.8 | His latest book, Here Comes the Sun, a last chance for climate and a fresh chance for |
| 1:46.0 | civilization, takes on the topic of solar energy. Bill, thanks so much for joining us. |
| 1:52.2 | Well, what a pleasure to be with you. So why solar? Why is that a last and maybe our best |
| 1:59.5 | chance at avoiding climate calamity? |
| 2:03.2 | You know, I've been working on climate change for a very long time, Amy. |
| 2:07.3 | I wrote the first book for a general audience about what we then called the greenhouse effect |
| 2:12.6 | back in the 1980s. |
| 2:14.9 | And the first hint that we've actually had of something that's scaling fast enough to make |
| 2:21.8 | even a small difference in how hot this planet gets has been the explosion in the last two years |
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