Good climate news
Tomorrow will be sunny, Bill McKibben with Alan Alda (yes that one) | Clear + Vivid Podcast
Bill McKibben shares some optimistic, but happening, updates on how we are reducing our dependence on petrochemical energy:
This stuff that we spent 40 years calling alternative energy is suddenly the common sense, obvious, straightforward way to make power.
For the very first time, fossil fuel was accounting for less than half of our electricity. Around the world, 95% of new generation last year came from renewable sources.
Ethanol, is not the answer:
"In our country, when we think about land, our biggest crop is corn.
We grow 60 million acres of it. 30 million acres of that, half, is grown for ethanol, grown for gasoline. That 30 million acres provides about 3% of the energy that America uses.
If you took just those 30 million acres and covered them in solar panels, they would produce not 3% of America's energy, but about 100% of the energy that we currently use.
Now, that's not how we want to do it, because you don't want to just Iowa stem to stern solar panels. We have lots of other places and rooftops and things where we can put a lot of it. But that's certainly where we can put some of it."
An acre of corn, or an acre of solar panels...
"I'll tell you a story.
I was in a field in Illinois last summer, summer before last, with a farmer who was converting his land.
And he said, look, here's one acre of corn.
It's being grown to be used for ethanol.
If I put the ethanol from that acre in my truck, my Ford F-150, it would give me about 25,000 miles.
This acre over here, I'm converting to solar panels.
They'll produce enough electrons to drive my Ford F-150 Lightning, the EV version of the same truck, not 25,000 miles, but 700,000 miles.
Wow.
And, as he pointed out, I'm only using half the land.
I've got all that room in between the solar panels to do something else."
"Agrivoltaics"
"And this is what we're calling agrivoltaics, not a very good name, but it's this new human endeavour of what you can grow in between solar panels."
Bill McKibben: Tomorrow Will be Sunny
A confident prediction from the man who first brought our warming planet to public attention some 35 years ago. Energy from solar and wind is now cheaper than traditional fossil fuels and is being rapidly adopted across the world. The exception is the US where the federal priority is planet-warming coal, oil and gas. But even in the US, local action, prompted in part by McKibben-backed organizations like Third Act and 350.org, is promoting innovative uses of solar power. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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