I'm only a few chapters into Bill McKibben's stupendous new book Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization and I already know it's going to change my outlook forever:

https://billmckibben.com/books/here-comes-the-sun/

McKibben is one of our preeminent climate writers and activists, noteworthy for his informed and brilliant explanations of the technical limits – and possibilities – of various climate interventions, and for his lifelong organizing work.

Here Comes the Sun is a capstone on several years' worth of surprising, infuriating and inspiring newsletter articles, particularly about the unheralded, unanticipated, and unbelievable growth of solar. Everything else might be utterly fucked, but solar is going great.

In McKibben's telling, everything about solar is going better than anticipated. Solar efficiency is increasing exponentially with prices falling through the floor. The material bill for solar is also in freefall. Everything surrounding solar is going amazing, too. Battery capacity is improving even faster than solar generation, and the best new batteries use the incredibly abundant element sodium (not lithium) to store those useful electrons. Long-haul transmission lines are crisscrossing the world.

. . .

That's the good news. You probably know about the bad news: Donald Trump explicitly promised the fossil fuel industry legislation that he would kill renewables if they donated $1b to his campaign, which they did:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/

He's doing his damnedest to make good on his promises, with incredibly wasteful, job-killing project cancellations:

https://stateline.org/2025/09/16/trump-has-crushed-offshore-wind-plans-but-states-havent-quite-given-up-hope/

But, as McKibben told David Sirota in a recent Lever Time podcast, reality has a stubborn pro-renewables bias:

https://podcastaddict.com/lever-time/episode/206986172

. . .