Climate writer Bill McKibben says the future is solar — with or without the U.S.

Climate change and its cause — the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas — are problems that surround us as much as the air we breathe. A new book by the father of popular climate writing, Bill McKibben, offers a simple solution: harness the power of the sun.

McKibben first popularized the notion of climate change in his book, “End of Nature,” back in 1989. “I wrote the first book about what we now call climate change, what we then called the greenhouse effect, back in the 1980s when I was in my 20s. And so I've been following this story as long as it's been a story,” he said.

In that time, he has published more than a dozen books and founded nonprofits 350.org and Third Act. The latter is a push to bring older generations into the fold of climate activism.

“It turns out that your walker is an excellent platform for hanging signs off as you go to demonstrations and things,” he said.

In the 1980s, he predicted many of the environmental catastrophes that have since come to pass as our planet warmed. His latest book, “Here Comes the Sun,” presents a more hopeful look at the Earth’s energy future and a possible solution.

McKibben was an early adopter of solar electricity, installing expensive — and comparatively inefficient — panels on his home in Vermont in the early 2000s. But much has changed in 25 years. Panels are not only getting more efficient, but they’re also requiring less to build. He writes that these original panels, when they reach the end of their life sometime in the mid-2030s, will contain enough material to create 10 new panels.

The cost of solar isn’t the only record McKibben sets straight. He also addresses questions about the technology’s reliability, safety and productivity. In 1954, the first photovoltaic cells only converted about 6% of the sunlight they received into energy. “In the time since, the efficiency of a solar cell has quadrupled,” McKibben writes, “from 6% to about 25%.” Some experimental panels are nearing 40% efficiency.

Burning coal or oil is about 30% efficient, but that’s where it tops out. Not to mention the energy required to extract and transport coal, oil, or natural gas from mine to power plant.

He spoke with WFAE's Zachary Turner this week about his newest book and why there's cause for optimism. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Bill McKibben: In May, the Chinese were building three gigawatts worth of solar panels a day. A gigawatt is the rough equivalent of a coal-fired power plant. So they were putting up a power plant's worth of solar panels every eight hours.

Zachary Turner: One of the major themes of this book seemed to be dispelling misinformation and recontextualizing renewable energy in a world where it's both cheaper and more productive than it used to be. In doing research for this book, were there any biases or misconceptions that you didn't realize that you were still holding on to?

McKibben: One of the things that was most interesting to me was getting to write about land use. I'm spending my life in the outdoors. That's my world. I was always like, “well, it's too bad that this takes up land.” But as it turns out, in certain ways, that's one of its great blessings.

I live in corn country, in the Champlain Valley of Vermont, about half the corn in this country is just grown for ethanol. We're just growing gasoline, and it's unbelievably inefficient. You take an acre of corn and it produces enough ethanol to drive a Ford F150 about 25,000 miles. You cover it with solar panels, and it produces enough electricity in that same acre to drive the Ford F-150, lightning about 700,000 miles.

Turner: The good news, McKibben writes, is that reaching these targets is possible with the existing solar, wind and battery technologies we’re already producing. To raise awareness of the imminent need for a quick, clean energy transition, a portion of the proceeds from “Here Comes the Sun” will go toward funding an international day of activism, which McKibben calls Sun Day.

In North Carolina, we recently eliminated our 2030 carbon pollution reduction target, sensibly, in the name of rate savings, though there's been a lot of debate on that front. Why is 2030 an important target in its own right and not just a checkpoint that we're trying to tick off on our way to 2050?

McKibben: Well, sadly, because the climate crisis is now playing out very much in real time, and it's happening with extraordinary speed, and we seem to be passing, or at least approaching, irrevocable tipping points. For me, the scary revelations of the last few years are less about the fact that warm air carries more water than cold. We knew that for a long time, and so you know what's happening with things like Helene are entirely predictable, but we're now seeing damage to very deep earth systems, the jet stream, which works because of the temperature differential between the poles and the equator is is now gets stuck in these strange, high amplitude patterns because that temperature differential is much smaller. We've melted so much ice in the Arctic, and that's leading to these intense periods of either drought or flood, depending on which side of the jet stream you find yourself on.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said a few years ago that we needed a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 to have some hope of staying on the pathway we set out in Paris (The Paris Climate Accord). If what you want to do is get to zero by 2050, you can't just run the system like we have until 2049, and then stop it short. You actually have to do this work, and you have to do it, understanding that you're triggering really, really serious changes.

Turner: Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you would like people to know about your book?

McKibben: I borrowed the title of the book from George Harrison and and noted in so doing that it's by far the most popular of all the Beatles' songs, if you go to Spotify and see what people are streaming, and there are, turns out, there are literally hundreds of great songs about the sun and extraordinary artwork dating back to the caves and, you know, up through Van Gogh. And if you stop to think about it, there really aren't a lot of beautiful odes to fracked gas.

Sun Day, a play on Earth Day, is Sept. 21. McKibben’s book, “Here Comes the Sun,” is out Tuesday.