‘Solar For All, Everywhere’: Global Leaders Pitch the Sun as a Solution to Climate Crisis in Open Letter

“The path forward is difficult, but the way is clear. We want solar for everyone, everywhere, before the decade is out.”


A man walks along the coast on La Jolla Shores beach near UC San Diego’s Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier at sunset after a series of storms moved through the region on November 22, 2025 in San Diego, CA.
(Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

Jon Queally
Sep 23, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As the world braces for the impacts of what’s been described as a “Godzilla El Niño” cycle—one projected to drive extreme weather events that could kill nearly half a million people in the months ahead—and heat record after heat record is shattered due to rising global temperatures, a group of global leaders published an open letter Wednesday urging people yearning for a solution to the climate crisis to look up—though reminding them to protect their eyes—to see that renewable energy remains the key to humanity turning things around.

Set to be delivered to the United Nations during this week’s meeting of the General Assembly, the open letter—which can also be endorsed by anyone who supports its demands—calls for global cooperation on “universal access” to solar power, one of the three key pillars of the renewable energy triad that also includes wind energy and battery storage.

“That clean energy trinity has broken out of its Chinese base and over the last few years expanded quickly across the planet—from Karachi to California to Cuba, solar panels are going up faster than any energy source has ever grown,” writes author and climate activist Bill McKibben, a signatory to the open letter, in a Guardian op-ed Wednesday.

“At the last possible moment, with backs to the wall, we still have our face to the sun.” —Bill McKibben

The letter speaks of “great fear” matched with “great hope” about whether humanity can or will act in time to avoid the worst impacts of a rapidly warming planet.

The letter states:
Over the last few months, we’ve seen the world set ablaze by both war and warming. From the conflict in Iran, which has claimed thousands of lives and disrupted billions more, to the series of ever worsening climate disasters, from wildfires in Europe to collapsing glaciers in Nepal, the world seems to be falling apart exactly when it needs to be coming together.

We know that these crises are connected. The oil that governments fight over is also the carbon pollution that is warming our climate. The bad air quality in Delhi, the high price of fuel in Vietnam, the cost of electricity in the United States, the terrifying floods in the Himalayas – they all connect back to fossil fuels.

Until we end that dependence, we’ll never be able to address the climate emergency and stop fighting these endless oil-soaked wars. That’s why today we are inviting the world to unite around a common cause: repowering the world with cheap, clean energy.

The signatories call on “governments, businesses, institutions and the public to work together to provide clean, affordable energy to everyone, everywhere by 2030.”

“The path forward is difficult, but the way is clear,” the letter states. “We want solar for everyone, everywhere, before the decade is out.”

As McKibben notes, the coalition behind the effort is international and diverse. The signatories to the letter, he explains,
range from the most popular active politician in the US (that would be Bernie Sanders) to the most morally grounded spokesperson of the global south (Yeb Saño of the Philippines, say, whose witness after devastating hurricanes helped produce the Paris accords). It comes from great diplomats such as Laurence Tubiana (who helped midwife those Paris agreements) and celebrities and activists such as Jane Fonda. There are leaders from the world of clean energy (Danny Kennedy, for instance, the secretary of the Global Solar Council), and stalwarts from the continents most damaged by rising temperatures (South Africa’s Kumi Naidoo, president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative). Clean energy entrepreneurs, such as Muhammad Mustafa Amjad of Renewables First in Pakistan, but also the world’s most famous rock climber, Alex Honnold, who runs his own solar non-profit.

The message of their letter, explains McKibben, “is simple, but its three words convey the solution to so many of the interlocking crises we now face: clean energy now.”

“If a resurgent movement demands action, we finally have the tools to make that demand matter – a working planet that runs mostly on sun and wind is in tantalizing reach,” he concludes. “At the last possible moment, with backs to the wall, we still have our face to the sun.”


The full text of the letter and its signatories follows:

We, the undersigned, write this letter out of great fear and great hope.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen the world set ablaze by both war and warming. From the conflict in Iran, which has claimed thousands of lives and disrupted billions more, to the series of ever-worsening climate disasters, from wildfires in Europe to collapsing glaciers in Nepal, the world seems to be falling apart exactly when it needs to be coming together.

We know that these crises are connected. The oil that governments fight over is also the carbon pollution that is warming our climate. The bad air quality in Delhi, the high price of fuel in Vietnam, the cost of electricity in the United States, the terrifying floods in the Himalayas – they all connect back to fossil fuels.

Until we end that dependence, we’ll never be able to address the climate emergency and stop fighting these endless oil-soaked wars. That’s why today we are inviting the world to unite around a common cause: repowering the world with cheap, clean energy.

We are calling on governments, businesses, institutions, and the public to work together to provide clean, affordable energy to everyone, everywhere by 2030.

From the nearly 1 billion people who still lack access to reliable electricity, to the billions more of us who pay too much for dirty fossil fuels.

We know this world is within reach.

Building clean energy is now the cheapest and fastest way to slash energy bills, reduce pollution, and provide electricity access to the places that need it most.

With cheap solar, wind and batteries, we can create huge and rapid change.

California is already using just half as much natural gas to generate electricity as it did three years ago, thanks to solar and batteries. In Pakistan, people have put up millions of solar panels in just months, relying on social media for instruction. Each month, millions more people across sub-Saharan Africa are getting electricity for the first time with home solar kits.

This energy transition is already moving quickly - but we need it to go much quicker. And so we come together to urge two steps.

First, we must build clean power for everyone. For the first time ever, we can reliably bring electricity to the 1 in 10 people on Earth living without regular access.

We ask everyone who can afford it to donate something so that others can turn the lights on for studying, cooking, and medical care - and never have to think about a gallon of diesel or gas again. It takes just $15 to give access to clean electricity for one person for a generation.

Second, we need to build clean power everywhere, and to make that happen we need to build a movement powerful and beautiful enough to force governments to take large-scale action.

Individual steps alone are not enough: too many of our leaders will resist action, until we demonstrate together how much we want them to move. We must demand that governments stop building coal, oil, and gas projects we no longer need, and start building the clean-energy systems that works - no pollution or wars required.

One important day along this path will be 20 June, as the summer solstice approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, generating the most solar power of any day on earth yet. We will celebrate that day as Sun Day, coming together to celebrate and accelerate this great shift.

The path forward is difficult, but the way is clear. We want solar for everyone, everywhere, before the decade is out.

We know that standing up to the powerful can be scary. But if there is one thing that unites us, it is that we live beneath the same sun. That unity is our strength, and we must use it to act now.
Signed,

Muhammad Mustafa Amjad- Director of Programs, Renewables First
Alyssa Barber - Content Creator, @NewLifestyleABB
Lauren Bash - Content creator and filmmaker
Rachel Bender - Disability rights advocate, @rachcutiepie
Tzeporah Berman - Chair, Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative
Caitlin Blunnie - Content Creator, 2Liberal Jane
Jessica Craven - Content Creator, @jesscraven101
Nick Cutsumpas - Founder @ Farmer Nick
Summer Dean - Founder, Climate Diva Media
Christiana Figueres - Former UN Climate Secretary and Founding Partner, Global Optimism
Jane Fonda - Actor, activist, and founder, Jane Fonda Climate PAC
Nela Cadinanos Gonzalez
Saul Griffith - Engineer and co-founder, Rewiring America
Malynda Hale - Actor, Filmmaker, Creator
Fletcher Harper - Executive Director, Greenfaith
Alex Honnold - Professional climber and founder, Honnold Foundation
Danny Kennedy - Chair, Global Solar Council
Catherine McKenna - Founder, Climate and Nature Solutions & Women Lead on Climate
Bill McKibben - Author, climate activist, and co-founder, Third Act
Kumi Naidoo - President, Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative
Ky Polanco - Co-Founder, @Feminist
Sean Taylor Pugerude - Creator & Community Organizer, @heyseantaylor
Abbie Richards - Researcher and Educator, @abbiesr
Tom Rivett-Carnac - Founding Partner, Global Optimism
Bernie Sanders - U.S. Senator for Vermont
Yeb Saño - Board Chair, Laudato Si’ Movement
Jacob Simon - Creator and Educator - @jacobsimonsays
Laurence Tubiana - CEO, European Climate Foundation

Trump wants permanent daylight saving time —but scientists say it would be a nightmare

U.S. President Donald Trump, next to Ivanka Trump's husband Jared Kushner, salutes as a U.S. flag is raised on a new flagpole installed on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 18, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Samuel Garrett, 
The Conversation 

July 15, 2026 

One of the most intractable, contentious and niche issues in US politics has come back into the spotlight. This week, the US House of Representatives voted to make daylight saving time permanent in the United States.

The Sunshine Protection Act, which the House approved by a bipartisan vote of 308–117, would implement year-round daylight saving time nationwide. This would effectively extend the current eight-month period of daylight saving to cover the four winter months, in which standard time is observed.

Having now passed the House, it will head to the Senate, where it is likely to encounter stiff opposition even from some Republicans.

President Donald Trump promised before his second inauguration to “eliminate” the “inconvenient, and very costly” twice-yearly clock changes.

But it may not be so easy. Debate has raged for decades between sleep scientists and industry groups as to whether the time change should be abolished in favour of year-round standard time (with brighter mornings and darker evenings), or year-round daylight saving time (with darker mornings and brighter evenings).

While it may appear to be an academic choice between the two, they would have radically different impacts on the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Daylight saving’s moment in the sun

The debate over whether or not daylight saving is worth the trouble has progressed little in the past century. Senators as far back as 1919 argued over whether or not the benefits of daylight saving time for urban workers outweighed drawbacks for farmers.

The cost of shifting between the two time zones each year has been estimated to cost the economy over half a billion dollars annually. The time changes cause a rise in heart attacks, car accidents and hospital admissions, though an extra hour of evening daylight can also bring increased leisure time, consumer spending and potential energy savings.

Modern polls consistently show that Americans abhor the inconvenience of the biannual clock change but also that they can’t agree on a permanent solution. According to a YouGov poll in February 2026, while 64% of Americans want to abolish clock changes, 43% want to see year-round daylight saving time and 28% want to see year-round standard time. Almost a third are undecided. In March 2025, Trump himself called it a “50–50 issue”.

During his time in the Senate, Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly introduced the Sunshine Protection Act to make daylight saving time permanent. The Senate surprised many when it passed the act in 2022, though it failed to reach a House vote at the time.

In the past seven years, 19 states have approved similar proposals that would authorise permanent, year-round daylight saving time if permitted by Congress. Proponents of such a system point to possible economic benefits and suggest it could lead to energy savings, lower crime and fewer road accidents.

However, leading sleep research associations such as the American Academy of Sleep Medicine instead support year-round standard time and oppose year-round daylight saving time on the grounds that the increased disconnect between the sun and people’s body clocks in winter would be particularly unhealthy.

Our analysis at the United States Studies Centre in 2024 showed that if clock changes were abolished in favour of year-round daylight saving time, 87% of the contiguous urban US population (around 70% of the total population) would experience sunrise after 8am in winter.

Residents of New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Denver and Tampa, among many others, would all see winter sunrises that occur after 8.15am. Indeed, close to half of the over 2,500 urban areas in the contiguous United States would see sunrise after 8.30am on the winter solstice.

Such late sunrise times are currently almost unheard of in the United States. Just 3% of the contiguous urban US population currently experiences sunrises after 8am.

Sunset times would still be no later than 6.30pm in the vast majority of the country at the solstice under year-round daylight saving time, limiting its winter evening benefits.

The misalignment between clocks and circadian rhythms as a result of artificially dark mornings is associated with a host of negative health outcomes, particularly for adolescents.

Given close to 60% of US workers depart for work prior to 8am, the impacts of such late sunrises on a population level would likely be significant. The average school start time of 8am would also mean most children wake, go to school and start class in the dark in winter.

By contrast, year-round standard time would produce brighter mornings and earlier sunsets than under year-round daylight saving time. However, it would sacrifice the popular extra hour of daylight in summer evenings that is produced by switching to daylight saving in summer.

The current daylight saving regime attempts to strike a balance between the two extremes, with standard time used during the darker winter months and daylight saving time used during summer to capitalise on the longer days.

The lack of consensus over whether this flexibility is worth the cost of resetting clocks twice yearly has meant the system has endured, though 16 US states have considered time zone legislation this year alone.

A recurring nightmare

Perhaps most surprising about the concept of year-round daylight saving time is that the United States has already tried it. In 1973, Congress authorised a two-year trial of year-round daylight saving in an attempt to save energy during the global oil crisis.

Yet initial public support for the trial of close to 80% almost halved by the end of the 1973–74 winter amid safety concerns for children and criticisms from the construction and agricultural industries. The trial was abandoned prematurely, and American clocks have changed twice a year ever since.

Lawmakers now find themselves once again navigating a fierce debate between whether to adhere to year-round standard or daylight time. But with Americans so divided on the issue and historical precedent for how quickly support for year-round daylight saving time can collapse, the Senate would do well to take its time deciding whether to make nine in 10 urban Americans experience winter sunrises after 8am – or whether permanent standard time would instead help the country to sleep better at night.

Samuel Garrett, Senior Research Associate, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.]

 

Bonfires, Maypoles and a saint’s day: How Europe celebrates the longest day of the year

(The Conversation) — Midsummer celebrations throughout Europe coincide with the solstice. Many blend pre-Christian and Christian traditions.

People wear traditional clothes as they celebrate St. John's Day and the summer solstice in Kernave, Lithuania, on June 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

Thomas A. DuBois

June 23, 2026

(The Conversation) — Whether cities or villages, many communities across Europe spend the day and night of June 24 celebrating Midsummer. Congregating around bonfires, or sometimes maypoles, sporting handwoven wreaths of wildflowers or oak leaves, they’ll sing, jump, dance, eat, drink, catch up and celebrate the arrival of the longest day of the year. As a scholar of folklore, I have been to Midsummer celebrations in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania, and I am endlessly in awe of people’s fervent commitment to the holiday and evident enjoyment of it.

From the Mediterranean to Scandinavia and from France to Poland and beyond, Midsummer goes by many names, including the Italian “Festa di San Giovanni Battista” and the Swedish “Midsommar.” It’s “Leedopäev” in Estonia, “Juhannus” in Finland, and “Mihcamárat” for the Sami, the Indigenous people of Scandinavia. Celebrations mark the summer solstice, which takes place in the Northern Hemisphere around June 21.

People gather for the traditional Midsummer celebrations in Gagnef, Sweden, on June 20, 2025.
Ulf Palm/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images

Each morning from the time of the winter solstice to the summer solstice, the sun rises a little farther to the north. As the sun climbs higher in the sky, shadows grow shorter and days grow longer. At the summer solstice, the Sun “stands still” – the meaning of the Latin solstice – and begins its progression back toward the south. Days shorten, shadows lengthen, and the cold and dreariness of winter return.

Europeans across the entire continent have noted this simple and inexorable cycle for millennia. Neolithic monuments such as Ireland’s Newgrange and England’s Stonehenge, both of which date from around 5,000 years ago, were built to mark solstices.

Lighting the bonfire

From the Mediterranean to the northern peripheries of Europe, the summer solstice has long been greeted as a time for rituals to gather luck, tell the future and ward off evil.

In Germany, northeastern France and many parts of Scandinavia and the Baltic, people still build elaborate bonfire pyres to light in the evening and tend long into the night. According to folk belief, stepping or leaping over the flames brings love and fertility, while the height of the flames predicts the coming year’s harvest.

Ukrainians jump over fire during a celebration of Kupala Night, a Slavic midsummer festival, in Warsaw, Poland, on June 21, 2025.
AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski

Traditionally, many Europeans gathered dew, herbs or leaves on Midsummer eve, which was reputed to ensure health, beauty and good fortune. Some brought their cattle close to bonfires to breathe in the smoke, or scattered fields with ashes the next day. Although people today generally regard these beliefs as quaint reminders of the past, often they avidly participate, just in case – tying them to forebears centuries or even millennia ago.

Pagan, Christian and secular

Many of the names for the holiday, such as the Danish “Sankt Hans Aften” or Icelandic “Jónsmessunótt,” are connected with John the Baptist, the Christian saint whose birthday is celebrated June 24. Where Jesus’ birth is commemorated around the time of the winter solstice, the Bible describes his cousin St. John being born precisely six months earlier, at the height of summer. The interest in this connection between Jesus and John explains why the holiday takes place on June 24 – or in some countries, on the nearest Saturday – rather than on the actual solstice.

Medieval Christian authorities did not always relish the “pagan” celebrations of the day and occasionally decried peasants’ dancing, singing and other customs. During the 16th century’s Protestant Reformation, celebrations of Catholic saints’ feast days were suppressed, but Midsummer lived on as a secular holiday.

In places where Protestants and Catholics overlapped, such as the Netherlands, celebrating St. John’s eve became an emblem of Catholic identity. The Feast of St. John is celebrated as the “fête nationale” of the Canadian province of Québec in part to differentiate the province from the culture of its English Protestant neighbors.

Swedish painter Anders Zorn completed ‘Midsommardans’ in 1897.
National Museum of Sweden via Wikimedia Commons

One of the most iconic images of Swedish celebrations of the day, Anders Zorn’s 1897 painting “Midsommardans,” or “Midsummer Dance,” reflects 19th-century anxiety that beloved traditions would disappear. Zorn himself paid for the erection of the maypole depicted in his painting, seeking to preserve the picturesque custom in the region of rural Sweden where he lived.

Yet Zorn’s fears were unfounded. Much has changed, but Europeans remain appreciative of the simple and unchanging rhythms of the natural world, including the coming and passing of the season’s longest day.

(Thomas A. DuBois, Professor of Scandinavian Studies, Folklore, and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

See the world of Stonehenge from your sofa this solstice

The original exhibition ran at the British Museum in 2022

University of Reading

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A new free online experience allowing anyone in the world to step inside the world of Stonehenge exhibition and explore thousands of years of history launches today (Sunday, 21 June). 

The Virtual World of Stonehenge, developed by researchers at the University of Reading and the British Museum, gives users an immersive digital tour of one of the most celebrated museum exhibitions in recent years. The original World of Stonehenge exhibition ran at the British Museum in 2022, attracting more than 190,000 visitors and bringing together over 400 objects from 36 institutions across Europe. 

Timed to release alongside the summer solstice, the new virtual version goes well beyond a simple recreation of the gallery. Users can go inside Stonehenge itself and watch it change through time, explore Neolithic flint mines at Grimes Graves, and discover rarely seen prehistoric objects through animation, soundscapes and interactive content. The experience is free to access via the British Museum website and works on desktop computers, tablets and phones. 

Professor Duncan Garrow, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading, said: "The original exhibition brought together an extraordinary collection of prehistoric objects, many of which had never been displayed together before. Now anyone, anywhere they are, can not only see those objects but understand the world of Stonehenge and experience how it looked and felt thousands of years ago. We hope it brings prehistoric Britain to life in a completely new way." 

Dr Neil Wilkin, at the British Museum, said: “This has been an amazing opportunity to think about the future of virtual museum exhibitions, not just at the British Museum but everywhere across the world”.  

Laser-scanning leaves, bracelets and crumbs 

The project was funded by UK Research and Innovation and builds on AHRC-funded research led by British Museum curator Dr Neil Wilkin, in partnership with Professor Duncan Garrow at the University of Reading. The team worked with the University of Southampton and digital heritage specialists ArtasMedia to transform a 3D laser scan of the original gallery, captured during the final weeks of the exhibition in 2022, into a fully interactive online experience. 

A particular focus of the project was making the stories behind lesser-known prehistoric objects more accessible. These include a 6,000-year-old elm leaf, a woven cow-hair bracelet, and the remains of a prehistoric feast, all of which are brought to life through new digital content developed specifically for the virtual exhibition. 

The launch coincides with the summer solstice, the moment when Stonehenge's alignment with the rising sun has drawn people to the site for thousands of years. 

The Virtual World of Stonehenge is free to access from Sunday 21 June: The World of Stonehenge: University of Reading and British Museum

FOR REPORTERS, USE CLOUD TOUR BEFORE 21 JUNE