Here Comes the Sun : A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization
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3.2 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed environmentalist, a call to harness solar power and rewrite our scientific, economic, and political future.
Every eighteen hours, the world puts up a nuclear power plant's–worth of solar panels. At the same time, combustion continues to melt our poles, poison our bodies, and drive our global inequality. And it is no longer necessary: For the first time in 700,000 years, we know how to catch the sun’s rays and convert them into energy.
In Here Comes the Sun, world-renowned author Bill McKibben tells the story of our sudden spike in power from the sun and wind. McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy, which, if it accelerates, gives us a chance not just to limit climate change’s damage, but to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. Getting there means overcoming obstacles like Big Oil, but McKibben sees a chance for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.
Customer Reviews
Cheerleading Successes Absent Good Math
I like cheerleading but for all the vignettes of success and some setback stories, there isn’t a consistent through line of the renewables story or investigative reporting going deeper than a headline. No patterns of success or failure for those not familiar with reneMcKibbeno understand where they may fit or join in. What’s the best way to participate given your circumstances, as an individual, a community, or investor? A good book that says renewables are the future would show what are the conditions dependent and independent of location that manifested the successes and the conditions that cause failure to affirm those conditions of success will continue. What’s the cost of starting? Maintaining? Closing?
I have not seen the rate of adoption in real numbers in the US vs anywhere else. China vs anywhere else either. He simply doesn’t do good math in the book. In many places it’s plain bad math. The book does in minor and piecemeal ways, have stories of success or fail conditions with some detail but analysis, it is not.
The only good part of the book is calling out the successful individuals, towns, countries. But still, how successful are they?
So here’s my conclusion; the book said to me, renewables are the future because a lot of people around the world are doing it and its getting ever cheaper. But you know what? I knew that before I started this book. That it’s the future is McKibbens conclusion, I’m still hoping it’s true. My firm conclusion though is I’m not buying another book from McKibben.