Post · Open Science

In Bill McKibben's new book *Here Comes the Sun*, he frequently laments activists' tendency not to celebrate our wins, a habit that sees us always feeling as though we were losing, even when we're racking up massive victories:

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

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/02/there-goes-the-sun/#carbon-shifting

Bill McKibben

Here Comes the Sun

From the acclaimed environmentalist, a call to harness the power of the sun and rewrite our scientific, economic, and political future. Our climate, and our democracy, are melting down.

A Chinese Communist propaganda poster showing a cross-section of Chinese people waving the Little Red Book. The Little Red Book has been replaced with solar panels. The background has been replaced with the EU flag.

Patrick Leavy

@patrickleavy@mastodon.social replied · 5 days ago

@pluralistic imagine if all that #AI hype money was invested into #solar 🤯

Oggie

@Oggie@woof.group replied · 5 days ago

@patrickleavy @pluralistic
I mean, this isn't realistic.

The cost of fully renovating the entire power grid to solar is far less than the money spent on AI, so we'd need to find something else to spend it on. Housing every person in the US?

No, that's not very expensive either, on that scale. Hmm. Might have to figure something else here ..

Donald Ball

@donaldball@triangletoot.party replied · 5 days ago

@patrickleavy @pluralistic There isn’t really a much better example of how maladaptive capitalism is or at least has become.

Gaëtan Perrault

@gatesvp@mstdn.ca replied · 5 days ago

@donaldball @patrickleavy @pluralistic

Rather than "maladaptive capitalism", I think solar is a great example of how complex it is to get the right balance between public goods and private markets.

"Imagine if these AI investments had instead been put into solar"... People tried to do this. Power companies could not and still can't build the required infrastructure fast enough. And before we blame that on capitalism, the not-for-profit Canadian Crown corporations that run power in several provinces also haven't been able to do this.

The US Interconnection Queue is twice its installed capacity. Billions of dollars have been put into power plants that are just sitting there waiting for local power companies to connect them. But nobody's going to put another $100 billion into building capacity while you're still waiting for the first hundred billion to come online.

Scratching the surface here, but the lack of solar has little to do with capitalism.