Here Comes the Sun
Stain glass windows in a structure at the Knoll, Middlebury College organic garden
Looking for good news these days is a welcome practice. We need good news to balance the pretty terrible things that are happening globally and in our beloved country. The story of solar energy is part of that good news for me and for all of us.
Our Vermont neighbor and leader in the climate and solar world, Bill Mckibben, has written a new book, Here Comes the Sun.
On McKibben’s website, you will find this description:
“Here Comes the Sun tells the story of the sudden spike in power from the sun and wind—and the desperate fight of the fossil fuel industry and their politicians to hold this new power at bay. From the everyday citizens who installed solar panels equal to a third of Pakistan’s electric grid in a year to the world’s sixth-largest economy — California — nearly halving its use of natural gas in the last two years, McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy. And he shows how solar power is more than just a path out of the climate crisis: it is a chance to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. You can’t hoard solar energy or hold it in reserves—it’s available to all.
Banners at Sun Day in Middlbury, Vermont, September 21, 2025
We heard Bill speak several times this summer at book launches and celebrations about his new book. And we heard him yesterday as a participant in a conference that is happening this weekend at Middlebury College called, What Works Now. The conference is a gathering of alumni who launched and worked on 350.org, “a movement of ordinary people working to build a world powered by clean, affordable, renewable energy,” as a banner reads on their website. Several alum of Middlebury, Phil Aroneanu and Jamie Henn, are speaking this weekend. They both stayed after they graduated in 2007 and worked with Bill Mckibben to get 350.org up and running. Our son, Chris, who is not here this weekend, but graduated in the same year as Phil and Jamie, has worked in the renewable energy sector since he graduated from Middlebury.
For the last 20 years, Middlebury has played a leadership role in educating for sustainability and providing a vision and course of action for our planet. Bill McKibben serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and has contributed immeasurably to this effort. Bill is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has won the Gandhi Peace Prize as well as honorary degrees from 20 colleges and universities.
Thank you Notes to Bill McKibben at Sun Day in Middlebury
In his review of Here Comes the Sun, Sam Matey-Coste writes.
Bill McKibben has devoted his life to desperately fighting for a stable atmosphere to safeguard the future of human civilization and its biosphere. When he starts writing that it’s time to celebrate and that climate activists are now on a winning team, the situation has really, genuinely changed.
There’s a gigantic amount of work to do to stabilize Earth’s climate and power human civilization with clean electrons, but it actually looks clearly doable, even probable or maybe even eventually inevitable in a way that it really didn’t until very recently.
The New York Times reported on over 500 events on September 21st celebrating the sun and solar and renewable energy all around the country and abroad. Bill McKibben and Third Act, an activist group of citizens over 60, envisioned Sun Day as a celebration day for all that has happened already and is building momentum very fast. Solar power is no longer the ”Whole Foods of energy — nice but pricey,” Mr. McKibben said. Instead, it’s become the “Costco of power — cheap, available in bulk, and on the shelf ready to go,” he said. Maybe five years ago, we crossed some invisible line where solar became cheaper than burning coal and gas and oil. So, this is a different world than the one we’ve lived in.”
Sun Day, Middlebury, Vermont
We were part of the organizing group for our Sun Day celebration on the town square and park in Middlebury. We thought it would be a good idea to write thank you notes to Bill McKibben and the sun. More than 50 children and adults wrote and drew notes to Bill and the sun which we packed up and delivered to him. During the conference this weekend, Bill thanked me and said how much he loved receiving them.
“We’ve been given one last chance…a chance to restart civilization on saner ground, once we’ve extinguished the fires that now both power and threaten it.
If we’re to do that, we’ll have to turn to the daytime sky. And to one star in particular. Our star.”
Bill McKibben
