Abundance

by Ezra Klein

In 2022, the US Energy Information Administration released a report estimating life-cycle costs for new energy installations in the coming decades. Solar was already cheaper than natural gas. Wind was a dollar more. Both were about half the price of coal.19 As the climate writer and activist Bill McKibben put it, “In the place of those fires we keep lit day and night, it’s possible for us to rely on the fact that there is a fire in the sky—a great ball of burning gas about ninety-three million miles away, whose energy can be collected in photovoltaic panels, and which differentially heats the Earth, driving winds whose energy can now be harnessed with great efficiency by turbines. The electricity they produce can warm and cool our homes, cook our food, and power our cars