How Solar Power is Leading America’s Energy Revolution

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Pictured here installing solar on his own home, Warburg gives voice to those at the epicenter of solar conflicts and points the way to constructive solutions.
Pictured here installing solar on his own home, Warburg gives voice to those at the epicenter of solar conflicts and points the way to constructive solutions.
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Warburg gives voice to those at the epicenter of solar conflicts and points the way to constructive solutions. He answers the questions an open-minded reader would be asking.
Warburg gives voice to those at the epicenter of solar conflicts and points the way to constructive solutions. He answers the questions an open-minded reader would be asking.
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Harness the Sun is an indispensable guide to the technologies that undergird an emerging solar revolution. It describes the business that will profit from it, the interests that will be disrupted by it, and the policies that could accelerate it.
Harness the Sun is an indispensable guide to the technologies that undergird an emerging solar revolution. It describes the business that will profit from it, the interests that will be disrupted by it, and the policies that could accelerate it.
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Despite all this promise, America has some catching up to do. We may have far greater land resources and sunnier weather, on the whole, than much of Europe, yet we lag far behind many European nations in our per capita use of solar power.
Despite all this promise, America has some catching up to do. We may have far greater land resources and sunnier weather, on the whole, than much of Europe, yet we lag far behind many European nations in our per capita use of solar power.

In Harness the Sun (Beacon Press, 2015), Philip Warburg shows how solar energy has won surprising support across the political spectrum. Prominent conservatives embrace solar power as an emblem of market freedom, while environmental advocates see it as a way to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, economic-justice activists celebrate solar’s potential to lift up low-income communities, and Native American leaders welcome the income and jobs that the industry will bring to their communities.

You can purchasethis book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: Harness the Sun.

Solar Energy’s Promising Future in America

Solar energy’s time has come. Just a few years ago, as I was putting the finishing touches on a book about wind power, friends asked if my next would be about solar. I dismissed the idea at the time. If I ever wrote a book about solar, I told them, I’d have to call it “Dim Sun.”

How things have changed! On my computer screen, I marvel at the steady tick of kilowatt-hours produced by our home’s rooftop solar array. It generates about three-quarters of the electricity we need to run our appliances, light up our rooms, and keep a hybrid electric vehicle fully charged. Every year our solar panels spare the globe about 3.6 tons of CO2 emissions from the coal- and gas-fired plants that still supply most of New England’s power.

  • Published on Apr 4, 2016
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