The Sun Shone Across America

Rhetorically, anyway

Your correspondent is…bushed, so excuse typos, lapses of thought, and imprecise prose. But I wanted to tell all of you about how Sun Day played out across the country today before I fell into bed. In a word, spectacular.

You know, from reading these missives, that this day has been in the works a long time; we needed, in the face of massive and bizarre attacks from the White House and Congress on sun and windpower, to stand up for the idea of cheap, clean energy. At nearly five hundred events across the country, that’s what happened. From one corner of the continent to the other (still waiting for pictures to come in from Alaska and Hawaii) Americans figured out dozens of ways to make their hopes for the future felt, even in this darkest of political periods. A remarkable account in the New York Times quoted one organizer, summing it up beautifully:

“I really wanted it to be celebratory and uplifting,” said Laura Iwanaga, who led the organization for Portland’s Sun Day event for the local chapter of Third Act, a nationwide climate advocacy organization founded by Mr. McKibben. “We all know what we’re fighting against but we don’t always think about what we’re fighting for.”

For me, the very first picture of the day came from my grandson, out to greet the rising sun.

Soon they were pouring in from events across the country. Many featured big crowds and important people: I was in New York, where people crammed into a downtown church to hear the city’s comptroller Brad Lander talk about deploying the city’s $300 billion pension fund to back clean energy

and then spilled out into a nearby park for speeches from a U.S. Senator (Peter Welch), the state’s remarkable lieutenant governor (Antonio Delgado), a state assemblywoman (Emily Gallagher), and the ever-present and ever-powerful Rev. Lennox Yearwood. Oh, and a unforgettable rendition of Here Comes the Sun from Sun Day musical ambassador Antonique Smith

Those were powerful memories that will last my life. But I was also taken by the pictures that showed quieter moments—for instance, people huddled in basements so that they could see their neighbor’s heat pumps or solar inverters, demystifying the whole process of converting to clean power. This is from South Carolina—and it’s how we’re going to turn people into solar consumers across the country.

And here are Wisconsites setting out on a solar tour of the state’s capital

Some of the images were spectacularly beautiful. Christal Brown choreographed a dance among the solar panels on the campus of Middlebury College.

And some were literally sweet—here’s someone making s’mores in a solar oven in San Leandro California

Everywhere the beauty of the logo (thanks Brian Collins, Beth Johnson, Eron Lutterman) was on display. (Oh, and read the account of its design from Fast Company)

So many people and organizations helped make the day happen: Fossil Free Media, of course, with Jamie Henn and Deirdre Shelly leading an amazing crew; Solar United Neighbors, the Sierra Club, Mothers Out Front, Climate Revival, Green Faith, Dayenu, a hundred more. My colleagues at Third Act were absolutely crucial: here’s Deborah Moore and Anna Goldstein, who worked around the clock

But everywhere there were kids out enjoying the spectacle. Our great hope is that they’ll grow up in a world where it seems utterly obvious to power the planet with clean energy from the sun, instead of filling the air (and their lungs) with the smoke from humanity’s fires.

For a day it was possible to believe in all of that—and the human energy that belief unleashes allows us to make it happen. Even as the afternoon went on I was hearing of plans to introduce balcony solar laws in half a dozen states (and of plans to take this day global in the years ahead). In some sense the work has just begun

I’ll have many more images and reports in the days ahead—we’ve barely begun to sift through all that’s been pouring in these last hours. But time for a well-earned rest (and I have an early morning trip to Chicago—the beat goes on!). As the sun goes down (and the batteries that have been soaking up sunshine all afternoon kick in) I just want to say: Thank you all so very very much

In other energy and climate news:

+Wildfire smoke in America is now killing 40,000 people a year, more than car crashes. As the Washington Post reports:

“Those are huge numbers,” said Minghao Qiu, assistant professor at Stony Brook University and lead author of the paper published Thursday in the journal Nature. “This is one of the most costly and important climate impacts in the U.S.”

Between 2006 and 2019, the average cumulative smoke exposure across the country each year hovered around 100 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter of air, according to a preprint paper by the same author group that has yet to undergo peer review. But since 2020, Americans have increasingly been bombarded by toxic smoke. In 2023, when a sickly orange glow filled the skies of New York City and other East Coast metropolises, Americans experienced levels eight times higher. The years 2020 through 2024 have been the most extreme smoke years on record.

+New York’s utility regulator has endorsed a new gas pipeline across the Empire State—the residue of a deal by governor Kathy Hochul with Donald Trump

“This is not how you stand up for New York ratepayers, let alone our children and grandchildren who will be saddled with the true cost of this folly,” said state Sen. Liz Krueger, a Democrat from Manhattan who opposes the project.

The pipeline would run under New York Harbor and connect to natural gas infrastructure that’s already in place off the coast of Queens.

A sardonic ad takes on the governor’s trademark weakness

+A big new campaign for public renewable power is underway across the country. Advocates argue that

Traditional for-profit models of renewable energy development are not moving fast enough.

By adding public renewable energy developers, states and cities can accelerate the transition, build projects that otherwise would not get built, cut costs for schools communities, and deploy resources at the scale needed to meet our climate goals.

An early project: a case study on how public power projects have made Connecticut the leader in school rooftop solar.

+Germany’s largest agrivoltaic project has come online. As Sandra Enkhardt reports:

For livestock farming, six mobile chicken coops, each housing up to 2,500 chickens, are planned. A conventional four-crop rotation is also foreseen for arable land. Vattenfall said the modules are mounted on a longitudinal axis and can tilt east-west from a horizontal position. Wider spacing between rows allows access for agricultural machinery.

+Tax credits for EVs are ending in America in ten days time, ten years ahead of schedule (thanks GOP Congress!). But automakers have a plan: much cheaper EV pickup trucks are coming soon, from a start up called Slate, and from Ford. As Kyle Stock explains,

A decade ago, someone in the market for a new car with less than $25,000 to spend, had 43 different models to choose from. Today, there are five, according to Cox Automotive. None is electric.

But stalwarts like Ford Motor Co. and startups like Slate Auto are looking to change that, and they’re focusing on Americans’ favorite vehicle: the pickup.

With President Donald Trump’s tax bill killing EV incentives at the end of the month, the push for a sub-$30,000 vehicle that runs on electrons may help buttress the projected dip in sales.

+Amidst the joy of today’s celebrations, a really sad note. Global Witness just released its annual report on the environmental defenders killed in the past year. I got to lead the ceremony for these dead a few years ago; every year the numbers remind me not to feel sorry for myself, even in newly repressive America. It could be worse.

Last year, 146 people were murdered or disappeared for doing this work.

We acknowledge that the names of many defenders who were killed or disappeared last year may be missing and we may never know how many more gave their lives to protect our planet. We honour their work too.

Colombia (48)

Guatemala (20)

Mexico (19)

Brazil (12)

Philippines (8)

Honduras (6)

Indonesia (5)

DRC (4)

Nicaragua (4)

Peru (4)

Ecuador (3)

Liberia (3)

Argentina (1)

Cambodia (1)

Cameroon (1)

Chile (1)

Dominican Republic (1)

India (1)

Madagascar (1)

Russian Federation (1)

Türkiye (1)

Venezuela (1)

+And now I really am headed to bed. Thank you for being part of this beautiful, sad, necessary fight