Tag Archives: renewable energy

Podcast

Bill McKibben on Solar’s Breakthrough, Anne Fadiman on the Hidden Life of Ordinary Things

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

What if the energy transition is arriving faster than anyone imagined? And what if paying attention to the smallest things can change how we live?

This Earth Day, Writer’s Voice revisits our interview with Bill McKibben about Here Comes the Sun, a bracing and hopeful argument that cheap, abundant solar power could reshape geopolitics, weaken authoritarianism, and help us meet the climate emergency. 

“About five years ago, we crossed some invisible line where it became cheaper to generate power from the sun and the wind than from burning coal and gas and oil.” 

Then, Anne Fadiman turns our attention from planetary systems to intimate acts of noticing. In her acclaimed essay collection Frog, she finds wonder and moral inquiry in a neglected pet frog, the burden of literary inheritance, pronouns, grammar, and other seemingly modest subjects that open into large human questions — along with a good dose of humor.

“I’m interested in writing about things that other people haven’t noticed.” 

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You Might Also Like: Bill McKibben, Here Comes The Sun (full interview), Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows

Tags: Bill McKibben, Anne Fadiman, Here Comes the Sun, Frog essays, solar power, climate solutions, renewable energy, they/them pronounce, literary essays, Writer’s Voice podcast, climate politics, energy transition, literature podcast, interviews with writers, book author interviews, author interviews,

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Podcast

Cory Doctorow on Big Tech’s “Enshittification” & Bill McKibben on Solar Hope for the Planet

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

This episode of Writer’s Voice features two leading voices confronting the defining challenges of the 21st century — corporate monopolization and climate breakdown.

  • Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification, reveals the hidden mechanics behind the digital decay of our online platforms — how they move from serving users to exploiting them, and what systemic reforms, from antitrust enforcement to tech worker unions, can reverse the trend.
  • Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes The Sun, shares an unexpectedly hopeful vision for the climate movement, documenting how plummeting solar and wind costs are reshaping economies worldwide and creating a moral turning point for civilization itself.

Together, these conversations show that both the digital and planetary crises share a root cause — the concentration of power — and that the path forward lies in collective action, technological democratization, and the reclaiming of our common future.

Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast 

Key Words: Cory Doctorow, enshittification, Big Tech, Amazon, Google, Facebook, antitrust, AI bubble, Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFA, digital rights, surveillance capitalism, Bill McKibben, Here Comes The Sun, climate change, renewable energy, solar power, wind energy, batteries, climate justice, energy transition, balcony solar, climate hope

You Might Also Like: Bill McKibben, OIL AND HONEY, Cory Doctorow, PICKS AND SHOVELS

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Podcast

Ali Noorani, CROSSING BORDERS & Andy Bowman, THE WEST TEXAS POWER PLANT THAT SAVED THE WORLD

We talk with Ali Noorani about his book Crossing Borders: The Reconciliation of a Nation of Immigrants. It’s about going beyond divisive polemics to bring a compassionate understanding of the reality of immigration to the public.

Then, we talk with Andy Bowman about how solar power is becoming the cheapest energy source. His book is The West Texas Power Plant That Saved The World: Energy, Capitalism, and Climate Change (Foreword by Katherine Hayhoe.)

Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.

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Podcast

Saul Griffith, ELECTRIFY: An Optimist’s Playbook For Our Clean Energy Future

#ElectrifyEverything! We spend the hour talking with Saul Griffith about his new book, Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook For Our Clean Energy Future.

It’s about how we can solve the climate crisis, live well and save money by electrifying everything—and powering that electricity with clean energy.

In maybe the 1980s or the 1990s when climate change just came to the attention of the general population, you could still imagine that we could get to the finish line with the transition via natural gas or biomass and biofuels. But we’ve left the carbon game so late, we need to get to fully decarbonized infrastructure in our next move…It’s now time that the fossil fuel machine in your life has to be replaced at its end of life with something that’s electric…to meet our climate targets of as close to one and a half degrees as we can get…We just need to make sure that every fossil fuel machine is the last version of itself.     — Saul Griffith

Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.

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Podcast

Suketu Mehta, THIS LAND IS OUR LAND & Lew Daly, FALSE SOLUTIONS

We talk with Suketu Mehta about his powerful book, This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant Manifesto.

Then, we speak with researcher Lew Daly about his report on some of the false solutions being proposed in the Green energy space.

Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use!

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