Sunlight doesn't depend on straits

Bill Mickibben is a climate activist, who has been warning about the existential threat to humanity for decades. He is a founder of 350.org and the organisation ‘3rd Act’, which aims to mobilise senior citizens to urge action on climate change on a governmental level. He has played a major role in getting institutions to divest from fossil fuel projects and been arrested on several occasions for nonviolent civil disobedience.

Bill sat down with the Express Tribune and Express 24/7 for an interview. The interview covered a whole host of topics, including the global geopolitical situation with the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea Straits and its impact on clean energy, the role of the United States and China in the transition towards clean energy; specifically how it was the United States that invented the solar panel and got countries to commit to the Paris Climate Agreement, and the damaging reversal of these policies under Trump, and whether a more sane President could see the advantage, not just in terms of climate action, but also self-interest, in transitioning towards clean energy. We discussed the solar revolution in Pakistan, and the future of cheaper batteries. Bill also mentioned his admiration for Pakistan’s internally under-appreciated contributions towards the philosophy and practice of nonviolence, in the form of his admiration for Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan, and how his example has been a major inspiration for him throughout his life.

The interview has been edited for brevity.

ET: What are your thoughts on how the current geopolitical situation in the Middle East will affect climate change and global energy?

Bill McKibben: This was a foolish war for many reasons, and one of them is its impact on the world's energy system. If there's any silver lining, it's that the conflict has reminded many leaders—particularly in Asia—that they don't want their countries' energy security dependent on a narrow shipping lane only a few dozen miles wide. Sunlight travels 93 million miles to reach Earth, but none of those miles pass through the Strait of Hormuz. That's an extraordinarily powerful argument for accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels. It reinforces what we already know from both the economic and climate perspectives: renewable energy offers greater security as well as lower costs.

ET: In Canada there has been a great deal of criticism of the government, yet recently there's been renewed discussion about expanding oil and gas production. The same seems true in the United States. How do you compare what's happening in North America with what's happening elsewhere in the world?

Bill McKibben: Perhaps the most consequential question facing the world today is whether China has correctly understood the future—or whether North America has. The US, particularly under Donald Trump, has embraced the idea of "energy dominance" based on oil production. That assumes the future will look very much like the past.

China has made a different calculation. It believes the future lies in electrifying its economy and powering that electricity with renewable energy. Ultimately, the market will decide between those competing visions. At this point it's becoming increasingly clear that electricity generated from the sun and wind, supported by batteries for storage, is simply the cheapest path forward. I think the US has chosen the wrong direction. Not only are we likely to fall behind in the industries that will define the coming decades, but we'll also face a world in which China enjoys access to effectively unlimited supplies of inexpensive clean energy. That advantage will affect every part of the economy, from manufacturing onward.

ET: A few decades ago the US pioneered solar technology, and it also played a leading role in negotiating the Paris Climate Agreement. Do you think there could still be an American president who restores that leadership?

Bill McKibben: I hope so. But I suspect that by the time American politics comes back into alignment with reality, the opportunity to lead will have largely passed. China has already assumed a leadership position. The technological and economic advantages that come with that leadership are likely to translate into geopolitical influence as well. I certainly hope the United States becomes a serious participant again. The alternative is that America turns into a kind of museum of the internal combustion engine—a place people visit to see how societies once functioned when they burned enormous quantities of coal, oil and gas simply to keep everyday life running.

ET: Apart from the existential threat posed by climate change, the transition to renewables also seems like a matter of simple efficiency. If capitalism is supposed to reward the most efficient technology, shouldn't this shift happen naturally?

Bill McKibben: You would think so. And I'm glad you mentioned efficiency because it's often overlooked. Internal combustion simply isn't very efficient. When you put gasoline into a conventional car, only about 25 to 30 percent of the energy actually moves the vehicle forward. The rest is lost as waste heat through the engine and exhaust.

With electric vehicles—or electric bicycles, for that matter—the situation is almost the reverse. The overwhelming majority of the energy is converted into useful work. The same principle applies elsewhere. Heat pumps are far more efficient than conventional furnaces. Induction cooktops outperform gas stoves. Over time, those efficiency gains translate into enormous savings. You can already see this happening in Pakistan. I've been fascinated by how quickly farmers have converted their irrigation pumps to solar power. In fact, there was a story recently in The New York Times about farmers in Bangladesh struggling because they couldn't obtain enough diesel to run their irrigation systems. My guess is that farmers in Pakistan are facing almost the opposite situation. With access to extremely inexpensive solar energy, the challenge may eventually become ensuring that aquifers aren't over-pumped simply because electricity has become so cheap.

ET: It sometimes feels as though governments remain attached to older models of energy simply because that's how they've always approached development, even when the evidence increasingly points toward more efficient alternatives.

Bill McKibben: One reason is that governments are generally much more comfortable with centralised energy systems—systems they can regulate and control relatively easily. The idea that millions of people could effectively become their own electricity providers is, for many governments, a rather unsettling prospect. I do think governments still have an enormously important role to play. If they're smart, that role is to make decentralised clean energy much easier for people to adopt. Hydropower remains valuable, of course, but in many countries we've already developed most of the best locations for it. Increasingly we're encountering another problem as well. Climate change is producing deeper and more prolonged droughts, particularly in places like the American West, making hydropower less reliable than it once was. The sun, meanwhile, continues to rise every morning. So far, it has proved to be an extraordinarily dependable source of energy.

ET: During floods—which have become increasingly common because of unpredictable monsoons—people often lose almost everything they own. One of the possessions they make the greatest effort to save is their solar panel. Even without batteries, it means they can still generate electricity during the day after the floodwaters recede.

Bill McKibben: Absolutely. The portability of solar technology is remarkable. And no country has suffered more dramatically from climate change than Pakistan. Summer temperatures in some cities now regularly reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The devastating floods of 2010 and 2022 were among the largest flood disasters the modern world has witnessed. That's why it's been particularly inspiring to watch Pakistan become one of the first countries to demonstrate what this new energy revolution can look like.

ET: Many people assume governments must lead the transition. But in Pakistan, because of long-term contracts and entrenched interests in fossil fuels, the government has sometimes tried to slow what has become an organic shift toward rooftop solar. From their perspective that resistance almost makes sense—they have major investments in the existing energy system.

Bill McKibben: Exactly. The fact that someone can buy an inexpensive Chinese solar panel and then watch a TikTok video explaining how to install it is extraordinary. No one is going to build a coal-fired power station on the roof of their house. No one is going to install a nuclear reactor on their balcony. That's what's fundamentally different now. If you asked me what the world should be doing today, my answer would be simple: we should keep Chinese solar factories operating around the clock. We should be shipping panels to every port and rail yard on Earth and making them available to anyone who wants them. We're living through both a climate emergency and a development crisis, made worse by conflict in the Middle East. Rapidly expanding access to cheap solar power is probably the single most effective response to both problems.

ET: Germany invested heavily in nuclear power for decades before shutting many of its reactors down. It then became much more dependent on Russian oil and gas, which created obvious problems after Russia invaded Ukraine. What do you think about nuclear energy in the broader energy transition?

Bill McKibben: If you already have a functioning nuclear power plant, I think it makes sense to keep it operating. But I don't believe nuclear power is going to play a dominant role in the future. The basic problem is cost. Nuclear plants are enormously expensive, highly centralized pieces of infrastructure, and despite decades of promises, they haven't become significantly cheaper. Perhaps twenty years from now we'll have commercially viable small modular reactors or other new technologies. Some people believe that's possible. Twenty years from now is beyond my time horizon. I'll probably be gone by then. What we have today are solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. We know they work. We know they're affordable. And we know they can be deployed quickly. If someone is especially fond of nuclear power, I sometimes point out that a solar panel is simply a local receiver connected to the largest nuclear power plant in our corner of the universe—the sun. So in that sense, we're all already using nuclear energy.

Bill McKibben: It's been a real pleasure speaking with someone in Pakistan. What's happening there is being noticed around the world, and in many ways it's one of the most hopeful stories in the global energy transition.