Celebrating Sun Day 2025

Earth Day is widely known as an annual event first held on April 22, 1970, and observed on that day every year since. But this year, Sun Day will be observed/celebrated in the U.S. for just the second time. It will be part of a global day of action focusing on solar energy and other forms of clean energy. 

The first Sun Day was celebrated on May 3, 1978, when Jimmy Carter was President. It was proposed by Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) and Rep. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), then President. Carter threw his support behind it.

Before that first Sun Day, Carter created the Department of Energy and pushed tax breaks for clean energy in 1977. Two years later, he famously put solar panels on the White House roof, calling them a symbol of America’s future.

Sadly, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan, and during his two terms, Reagan gutted the renewable energy programs, killed the tax incentives, and in 1986 had Carter’s solar panels removed from the White House.

The promoters of Sun Day 2025 hope to revitalize what Carter started nearly fifty years ago.

Sun Day 2025 will be celebrated on September 21, the day before the autumnal equinox. Bill McKibben has been the primary proponent of Sun Day 2025, and his new book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, was released less than a month ago.

McKibben (b. 1960) is widely known as one of the leaders in the founding of 350.org in 2008. It quickly became the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement.**

Nearly ten years earlier, McKibben wrote The End of Nature, one of the earliest warnings about climate change. That book of “dark realism” helped establish McKibben as a leading voice in environmental activism long before he founded 350.org.

Now, though, McKibben says on the first page of his new book, “for the first time I can see a path forward. A path lit by the sun.” He concludes his Introduction with these words: “Our species, at what feels like a very dark moment, can take a giant leap into the light. Of the sun.”

So, Sun Day 2025 especially stresses the importance of solar energy, although wind energy is also acknowledged.

Solar energy is widely considered the best form of clean energy when factoring in both cost and limitless availability.

Regarding cost, solar photovoltaic (the term that describes the process of converting light directly into electrical voltage) is now less than half that of producing electricity by fossil fuels. For homeowners, solar panels drop electricity bills to near, or even below, zero during the hot summer months.**  

Not only is there an outstanding cost advantage, there is also an unlimited supply of solar energy. The sun delivers more energy to Earth in one hour than humanity uses in a year, and scientists indicate that that will continue to be true for the next five billion years.

Moreover, solar energy produces no negative impact on the environment. There are no emissions of harmful substances, and neither is there any noise pollution. In addition, there is minimal land disruption compared to wind farms (windmills/turbines used for wind power).

Finally, solar systems are quick to install, scalable (=easily able to be changed in size or scale) from rooftops to utility-scale farms, and increasingly paired with battery storage to provide power even when the sun isn’t shining. What could be better than energy that is cheap, clean, abundant, and scalable?

Have you taken the “giant leap into the light” that McKibben wrote about? If not, isn’t now the time to do so? Indeed, we all need to latch on to this “last chance for the climate” and this “fresh chance for civilization.”

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** The name 350.org comes from McKibben’s view that the world will not be safe from global warming unless the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere falls to 350 parts per million or below.

** My wife and I had solar panels installed on our house in 2019. This year, our electricity bills for the summer months of June, July, and August combined showed that we were given more than $26.50 of “overgeneration credit.” Thus, rather than paying high electricity bills for air conditioning in addition to normal year-round charges, we were paid for producing more electricity than we used. (Here is a link to “Let’s Go Solar!”, the blog article I posted in February 2019.)

 

Let's Go Solar!

Even though it was cold (in the upper teens) this past Monday morning, the workers came as scheduled to install solar panels on the roof of our house and to convert our usage of electricity almost completely to solar energy.

Our Decision

About three months ago, I saw an ad about a local (Kansas City, Kan.) firm that was wanting to talk with people about the possibility of installing solar panels. I had given this some thought previously, but not a lot. Still, it seemed like something worth considering.

On Dec. 5 a salesman from Smart Home Innovations came to talk with June and me, and before he left we had ordered the solar panel system for our house—and written him a check for $10,000.

It took more than ten weeks for them to get everything surveyed, planned, and designed, but, as indicated, installation started on Feb. 25 and was completed the next day.

Time will tell whether we made a good decision on that Dec. 5 morning.

Our Purpose

Perhaps most people have solar panels installed in order, over the long haul, to save money on their electricity bills. Given time, that will surely happen. Given June’s and my age, however, I am not confident that we will ever break even, let alone save money.

If we don’t live in our current house long enough to break even, though, the likelihood of the increased value of the house when sold (by us or our heirs) will quite certainly make the installation of the solar panels a good investment.

Nevertheless, regardless of financial considerations, our purpose for going to solar panels is for the sake of the environment and to make a public statement (some of the panels are clearly visible on the front of the house, although we had most panels installed on the back side, as you see from the following pictures).

 

Whether anything like the Green New Deal (which I wrote about, here, earlier this month) ever comes to fruition or not, June and I think that switching to solar panels is one small step we can take to help stem the steady, and deadly, advancement of global warming.

Our Plea

It is our considered opinion that global warming is a clear and present danger to the future of human life on earth. It is an urgent issue which, inexplicably, is not only downplayed by many people, it is even denied by others.

If adequate response to the current climate crisis is to be made, it will have to be made with massive governmental decisions—which makes it distressing that the White House now seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

According to a Feb. 24 Washington Post article, “The White House plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet.”

Evidently, this ad hoc group would seek to combat the government’s report, issued last November, which delineated the increasingly detrimental effects of climate change in the U.S.

Soon after that report was released, DJT was quoted as saying (see here), “a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” in the content of the report.

There are many reasons to be negative about the Trump administration; its almost certain wrongheadedness about environmental issues is one of the main reasons for my negativity.

So while it is not much, individuals beginning to use alternative energy is a small but definite step in the right direction.

Let’s go solar!