Environmentalist Bill McKibben

A few years ago, when I was lucky enough to run into and introduce myself to author, activist, and heavy-duty environmentalist Bill McKibben at a conference of the Bioneers in Northern California, I congratulated him for  his 40 years of writing and speaking on what is arguably our civilization’s most important topic.

Just now, I caught the tail end of an interview he did with NPR’s Marketplace, in which he said a few things that stayed with me:

The United States’ decision to adopt Trump’s “drill baby drill” strategy, removing our subsidies from solar and wind, and handing the vast economy of the energy future to China, is already having catastrophic consequences for our nation.

China is installing a gigawatt (the equivalent of a coal-fired or nuclear power plant) of solar every eight hours.  Yes, that’s right, with the passage of every single day, there are three more.

He predicts that the U.S. will soon become a kind of “museum,” the only place on Earth that still uses the technology of the 20th Century to power its society in the 21st.

He casually mentioned that we love the burning of coal, even though it’s baking the planet and killing more people every year who are forced to inhale its exhaust fumes.   He seems to look at this as America’s “par for the course.”