Talking about climate change can feel hopeless. Even the good news, on the rare occasion we get some, feels hollow.

But for the most part, it’s bad news. The planet keeps heating up. So many of the disasters we were warned about years ago are starting to pile on. Meanwhile, the oil keeps flowing, the politicians keep punting, and the systems meant to save us keep failing.

Now we’re staring down the barrel of another Trump presidency and the potential unraveling of what little climate progress we’ve made. But there’s a twist: Solar and wind are booming, and they’re now the world’s cheapest energy sources. Many cities, towns, and in some cases countries are running almost entirely on renewables. That is all great news.

But what does it actually mean? Is it too late to turn this thing around?

Bill McKibben is one of the most influential voices on the climate over the past four decades. He sounded the alarm in his 1989 book The End of Nature, which many consider a foundational text of the modern environmentalist movement. He’s also founded organizations like Third Act and 350.org, the latter of which remains one of the biggest climate activist groups in the world.

His new book, Here Comes the Sun, is about the revolution in solar and wind power and it might be the most hopeful thing he’s ever written. And that’s because we now have the tools we need to tackle this problem. The question is, do we have the political will to do it?

I invited McKibben onto The Gray Area to talk about that and the many possibilities in front of us. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This book is much more optimistic than I expected. It doesn’t feel forced; it feels like you’re genuinely excited about what’s possible.

It’s an odd moment for me. Much of what I’ve been describing since The End of Nature in the late ’80s is now happening in real time. We’re watching the climate system come apart. Politically, I don’t think I’ve lived through a bleaker period. And yet, at the same time, I have news of one big good thing: a transformation in how we make and use energy that’s actually moving fast enough to matter. So I get to be the bearer of some good news, for once.

You’re clear that we’re past being able to “stop” global warming. So what’s the plausible goal now?

Stopping warming entirely isn’t on the menu. What might still be on the menu is stopping it short of the point where it cuts civilization off at the knees. That’s the goal here. Recent science about the jet stream, the Gulf stream, and the atmosphere’s moisture content is scary. These are enormous systems with momentum. But every tenth of a degree matters. Each tenth we avoid keeps tens or hundreds of millions of people within a livable climate zone. That remains the biggest task humans have ever had: keep the damage within survivable limits.

Right — this isn’t binary. Degrees matter. Fractions of degrees matter.

That’s why the clean energy........

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