Prominent Vermont environmentalist Bill McKibben celebrates solar power while endorsing sun-dimming geoengineering technologies

By Paul Bean

Vermont Environmental Journalist and Activist Bill McKibben has been on a nationwide tour promoting his latest book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.”

In the book, McKibben raves about the future of solar energy, claiming that it is “It’s become cheaper to produce power from the sun and the wind than from setting stuff on fire.”

“Solar has become the fastest-growing and most efficient means of powering the world’s economies, and the speed of its adoption worldwide is astounding even its staunchest proponents,” McKibben told Seven Days in the article promoting his book.

“No longer should we refer to it as ‘alternative’ energy that, like Whole Foods Market, is healthy but pricey.” He argues in his book that renewables have become ‘the Costco of energy, inexpensive and available in bulk.”

Putting this into perspective, back in November of 2022 Bill McKibben also wrote this article titled, 

Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet is A Desperate Idea, Yet We’re Inching Towards It.

Sub-title: The scientists who study solar geoengineering don’t want anyone to try it. But climate inaction is making it more likely.

The Washington Post published an article earlier this week titled Private Companies Have Raised Millions to Block the Sun warning that private firms have raised almost $100 million to attempt to spray the upper atmosphere with substances to block sunlight; something which the article reports “could spark real-world wars,” and “kill people by raising air pollution and cancer rates.”

Some other Vermont environmentalists have questioned the seemingly obvious inconsistency between “blocking out the sun will save the earth” and “solar energy will save the earth…” 

How could these ideas simultaneously exist in the mind of a Vermont environmentalist?

Vermonters For A Clean Environment Executive Director, Annette Smith writes to VDC in response to McKibben, “The solar age dawns?  Gimme a break.  I’ve lived off grid with solar panels since 1989.  Wrote a letter to the editor in 1998 saying solar is Vermont’s energy future. Got a new solar array in 2008, the old one is still in service.  Should I have held a press conference to announce my new solar panels?  And yeah it pisses me off when those bluebird sky days turn into white murk and diminish the solar output.  Then I have to run the gasoline generator.”

Annette Smith’s letter to the editor from 1998 is posted at the bottom of this article.

McKibben is also downplaying the environmental harm of solar power, another VCE leader said.

“Sadly, Mr. McKibben has lost the thread. What most likely began as a sincere desire to help the earth has now backfired with industrial scale solar causing devastating destruction to our actual environment,” writes Alison Despathy, Community and Environmental Health Director with Vermonters For A Clean Environment. 

She continues, “His hypocrisy is on full display with his claim to want to save the earth while he simultaneously justifies the need for geoengineering and the release of toxic compounds into our air and environment. There is a name for this, it’s called megalomania. Now we need laws to protect us from the policies and path that he has promoted to ‘save the earth.’ With all due respect, for the health of humanity and our earth, I do hope he has officially retired. Destroying the earth to save the earth is not the answer.”

Co-founder of Chelsea Green and Vermont environmental publisher Ian Baldwin responded to McKibben’s book release writing, “McKibben works for the Rockefellers. He’ll applaud when the Vermont trend to convert all its farmland to solar panels is fully realized…. Margo and I were the 12th homestead in Vermont to install an intertie (an electrical connecting system) on our garage roof and well as solar hot water panels on our solarium roof, with a neat wood stove feed, 30 years ago. But Billy Boy, like Bernie Sanders, is a rock (pun intended) star among our discerning citizens. And neither one can do wrong. Baaaa Humbug!”