Hi, I'm Ira Flato, and this is Science Friday.

Since President Trump returned to office, his administration has been aggressive in rolling back clean energy initiatives.

Trump's big, beautiful bill, and did tax credits for solar panels and electric vehicles.

And according to reporting from the New York Times this week, the EPA is moving to cancel

$7 billion in federal grants that were intended to help low and middle income families

install solar on their homes.

But that isn't the whole story, because Texas, California, and other states are bringing

so much solar and battery power online that in March, fossil fuels generated less than half the

electricity in the U.S. for the first time ever. And internationally, solar has gotten so cheap to build and install

that it's fundamentally transforming many countries' power grids. So despite all the clean energy

rollbacks on this side of the pond, where exactly does solar adoption stand in the U.S. and across

the world right now? Do we still need the

defunct solar tax credits? And is it enough to have a meaningful impact on our climate? Climate

activist Bill McKibbin has written all about this in a book released in 2025. It's called

Here Comes the Sun, a last chance for the climate and a fresh chance

for civilization. We talked to him from Middlebury, Vermont back in August. Welcome back to the show.

Nice to have you. It's always good to get to talk with you, Ira, over the years. Thank you. All right,

let's get into the... Is this rapid world adoption of solar surprising to you?

It's what we've been hoping for for a very long time, but it's happening very fast. You'll recall that June 2023 was the month that climate scientists really started freaking out about this sudden spike in

temperatures. They said we were seeing the hottest temperatures in the last 125,000 years. And every

month since then has been the hottest August, the second hottest June, whatever. That same month,

June 2023, was the moment when human beings started installing a gigawatts

...