The Sun Is Having Its Day
A Matter of Degrees
Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"In the midst of a lot of big, bad things happening, there's one big good thing happening on planet Earth right now."
Today on A Matter of Degrees, we're bringing back the podcast's very first guest — legendary activist and author Bill McKibben. Bill's latest book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, shows how clean energy can create a healthier, safer, more prosperous world.
Bill is also organizing "Sun Day" – a national day of action on September 21st to celebrate the power of clean energy. You can get involved in an event in your area by visiting SunDay.earth
In this episode, Bill takes us through the history of solar – how it became the cheapest energy on earth, its potential to transform our lives, and how we can harness it to heal our planet.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is not the whole foods of energy, nice but pricey. |
| 0:08.0 | This is the Costco of power. |
| 0:11.0 | Cheap, available in bulk, on the shelf, ready to go. |
| 0:15.0 | If we can get that message through, then we win. |
| 0:19.0 | I'm Dr. Leah Stokes, and I'm Dr. Catherine Wilkins. message through, then we win. |
| 0:25.2 | I'm Dr. Leah Stokes, and I'm Dr. Catherine Wilkinson. |
| 0:31.2 | Today on a matter of degrees, we have got a very special interview for you all. |
| 0:40.3 | Yes, we're going right back to the beginning of our podcast with Bill McKibben, who was the first guest on our show, and he's really the original, the OG climate activist. As Bill says in this interview, he wrote a book |
| 0:47.2 | about climate change way back in the 80s. It was the first one, and would that we had done |
| 0:53.8 | a better job of listening and acting? |
| 0:57.1 | So by now, Bill has written a lot of books. |
| 0:59.6 | I think he's up to 20, and his most recent one is called Here Comes the Sun, |
| 1:04.8 | a last chance for the climate and a fresh chance for civilization. |
| 1:08.7 | It came out on August 19th, and it's really about the bright future |
| 1:13.4 | ahead of us. Bill is also organizing Sunday. This is the first National Day of Action to demand |
| 1:19.9 | large-scale deployment of clean energy. That clean energy is already here. It's in hand. It's |
| 1:26.0 | ready to go big. And it's an invitation for all of |
| 1:29.3 | us to join in on Sunday and beyond to make that happen. So Sunday is kind of like Earth Day. It's |
| 1:37.1 | taking place on September 21st. If you want to get involved, you can go to Sunday.Earth. And you're |
| 1:43.0 | going to hear a lot more about it from Bill McKibbon himself in this interview. |
| 1:51.3 | Solar, it's something like magic. |
| 1:54.9 | Would you just start by telling us how the technology actually works and why it's so incredible? Yeah, it is kind of like magic. |
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