Bill McKibben

One of the advantages of renewable energy is nobody owns the sun nor the wind, and so

almost inevitably, you get a little more small D democracy as you move towards local renewable energy.

And I think that explains why, of all the things that we poll people about in this country, the thing that people find the most agreement on is whether or not they like solar energy and want more government support for it.

I think that conservatives often really like the idea of

their own power plant on their roof and their house really is their castle now.

And I think liberals are like the groovy power of the sun is uniting us all, you know, whatever.

That's okay.

Those kinds of differences one can work with, you know, the differences one can't work with are the ones that were, where, you know, big forces in our society say, pay no attention to physics.

If we do that, and that's what we've been doing, we're going to be in extraordinary trouble.

And

In fact, trouble that there really is no getting out of.

This isn't like other political problems because we're used to political problems that play out over a very long time.

As long as I've been alive in this country, we've been debating whether or not to have national health insurance.

And I think it's a shame and a sin that we don't.

And I know that people die and go bankrupt each year because we don't.

And I trust that eventually we'll join all the other developed countries of the world in providing it.

And when we do, it will not have been made harder by the fact that we delayed 40 years.

But climate change is not like that.

Once you melt the Arctic, nobody has a good plan for how you freeze it back up again.

So our job now is to move