Can Solar Energy Save the Planet?

Foreign Policy Live

Foreign Policy

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.1 • 622 Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Climate summits such as the ongoing COP30 conference can often seem like a place where countries agree to disagree and little gets done. But Bill McKibben says there’s one key reason for hope: the sun. New advances in panels and battery technology mean solar power will soon provide a growing share of our electricity consumption. McKibbon is the author of the new book Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization. Plus Ravi’s One Thing on Iran’s water crisis. Nik Kowsar and Alireza Nader: Tehran’s Residents Are Panicking as the Taps Run Dry Christina Lu: How China Became a Solar Power Joseph Rachman and Indra Øverland: A Power-Hungry Southeast Asia Wants China’s Energy Nigel Pruvis: Will Belém Kill Paris? Jason Bordoff and Jack Andreasen Cavanaugh: AI’s Rapacious Appetite for Electricity Can Accelerate Clean Energy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	300 sensors.
0:03.0	Over a million data points per second.
0:06.0	How does F1 update their fans with every stat in real time?
0:10.0	AWS is how.
0:13.0	From fastest laps to strategy calls,
0:15.0	AWS puts fans in the pit.
0:19.0	It's not just racing, it's data-driven innovation at 200 miles per hour.
0:25.4	AWS is how leading businesses power next-level innovation.
0:30.3	Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of
0:34.8	1988 to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control.
0:41.2	There was this joke that said that it was easier to get forgiveness in the Church of Christ for murdering somebody than it was to be divorced.
0:51.4	From Revisionist history, this is The Alabama Murders.
0:55.2	Listen to Revisionist history, the Alabama murders, wherever you get your podcast.
1:01.5	Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policies Editor-in-Chief.
1:05.9	This is FP Live.
1:10.5	The world is in a race against time to reduce global CO2 emissions, but is the solution
1:17.4	staring right at us from the sky above?
1:20.6	This week, as the COP 30 climate conference in Brazil winds down, and countries agree to
1:26.6	disagree on climate financing and reducing emissions,
1:30.0	we're going to look at something altogether more hopeful. We're going to look at the phenomenal advances
1:36.8	in solar energy and battery technology with a terrific guest, the environmentalist Bill McKibbin.
1:43.7	His whole point is that if the world gets this transition right,
	...

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