Where does the climate movement go from here?
Where does the climate movement go from here? by Emily Atkin
In the face of Trump’s climate assault, Bill McKibben proposes a sun-soaked path forward.
With the Trump administration’s attack on America’s climate and environmental protections getting more extreme by the day, it’s easy to feel like there is no path forward for effective climate action in the United States.
But Bill McKibben, the longtime environmentalist and journalist, says that’s only what the fossil fuel industry wants you to believe.
For the last few years, Bill has been immersed in reporting a book on the global solar energy revolution—and he’s convinced this is possible right here, right now. To move the needle on climate progress, he proposes bringing together a broad coalition of Americans to pressure local and state governments to loosen choking regulations on solar, the cheapest energy source on Earth.
In an interview with HEATED, Bill explains why a U.S. rooftop solar renaissance is possible in this political climate; why it would be effective in the fight to slow climate change; and why its success would help topple one of America’s largest oligarchical powers: Big Oil. He also pitches a national day of action to celebrate the power and potential of solar and wind—Sun Day.
This is such an interesting and inspiring piece. I would really encourage everyone to read it. The BC community includes people with all kinds of knowledge and expertise. I would really appreciate it if some of you could explain why was McKibben is suggesting would or would not work in Scotland.
Also – have our elected representatives already looked at these ideas, and rejected them? What do they think? Can we start a campaign that there should be one article every day, from across the on-line media, that citizens nominate for MSPs to read – and for at least one from each party to publicly respond to. This article would get my vote for today. Although, actually, at the moment it would probably be an article on Gaza every day.
Sorry – what McKibben is suggesting…
We need strategic thinking about the dash to renewables which is concerning many communities in Scotland as I outline in Democratic Left Scotland https://www.democratic-left.scot/post/a-just-transition-or-the-industrialisation-of-the-highlands
It would be fruitful if we could spend more effort on mitigating the impact of the climate crisis in terms of better insulation for our housing, flood prevention, and ways in which people in our urban areas can produce and conserve energy. Roof top solar panels (as recently in Kelvingrove), district heating schemes like the one at Newtongrange are potential ways forward. We need to think of energy a bit like we do increasingly about food – to think about where it comes from and how to use it more carefully. There are serious issues down the line, such as data centres consumption of energy and water for cooling and we will need all our ingenuity to deal with them.