SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
The most important way you can help is to turn out at a Sun Day event this weekend.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bill McKibben)
This Sunday Is... 'SUN DAY'—Join Us!
The beautiful and liberating power of the sun—instead of being chained forever to paying a bill for yet more fossil fuel—deserves to be celebrated, and so we shall.
Sep 19, 2025
Sunday is… Sun Day, a nationwide celebration of the innovative power of clean energy. We’re working as hard as we know how in these last hours—closing in on 500 different events across the nation. In Virginia, volunteers will climb rooftops to install solar panels on Habitat for Humanity homes, kicking off a national push to put 10,000 systems on affordable housing. It’s part of a $40 million drive to help low-income families save money and gain access to clean energy. In Portland, Oregon there’s a parade across one of the city’s big bridges, with giant puppets, Aztec dancers, and marching bands, followed by a "Sun Ball" celebration. A free concert in Monument Valley Utah, Monument Valley, Utah, with Latigo, an Indigenous country-western band, performing outdoors and using solar panels and lithium batteries to power their sound. (Navajo tacos will be available.) In New Paltz, New York the mayor is inaugurating a net-zero fire station; in New Hampshire the Mallett Brothers are giving a concert powered by the batteries in Ford F-150 Lightnings.
Earlier this morning, we released the documentary you can see below, which will be shown many places—and which will help power this work in the years ahead. Jackson Hyland-Lipski worked overtime to produce this over the past few months; it has beautiful footage from places like Puerto Rican clinics now run by the sun. It also has some great footage of Bernie Sanders in the backyard of his Burlington home, which runs off solar power—and which, his wife Jane rummaged through documents to assure me, means they use 80 percent less power off the grid and “our bill has been reduced by about the same amount.”
If you can, the most important way you can help is to turn out at a Sun Day event this weekend.
Obviously this is hard going—the Trump administration continues its all out war on clean energy (and in the Times eaerlier this week Ben Shapiro told Ezra Klein that Bernie Sanders is “a putrescent Marxist pimple on the posterior of the body politic,” ha ha). But this weekend we get to play offense as well as defense, to remind the world that we now live on a planet where the cheapest way to make energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. The beautiful and liberating power of the sun—instead of being chained forever to paying a bill for yet more fossil fuel—deserves to be celebrated, and so we shall.
I’m traveling out West at the moment, but I’ll be back in New York City for the day itself, where we’ll gather at Stuyvesant Square Park to watch the pictures pour in from around the country.
I want to take a moment to thank some of the many people who’ve helped coordinate this work: Deirdre Shelly, Jamie Henn, Duncan Meisel, Cassidy DiPaola and Tolmeia Gregory at Fossil Free Media, Anna Goldstein, Deborah Moore, and Janina Klimas who have worked tirelessly at Third Act. They’ve enabled a huge crew of volunteers across the country to come up with gorgeous events—David Solnit, as usual, has made sure that there’s beautiful art, much of it drawing on the gorgeous logo that the team at Collins came up with—thanks Eron Lutterman, Beth Johnson, and all your colleagues.
I’m leaving many people out but I want to get this account out while there’s still time for you to figure out where you’re going to be on Sun Day!
I’ll report back with a full account after the big day, but I want to say thanks to this community as well. It was here that I tested a lot of the ideas for Sun Day, and your feedback and support has been crucial. I am grateful for this community every single day.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
© 2022 Bill McKibben
Bill Mckibben
Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org. His most recent book is "Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?." He also authored "The End of Nature," "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," and "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future."
Sunday is… Sun Day, a nationwide celebration of the innovative power of clean energy. We’re working as hard as we know how in these last hours—closing in on 500 different events across the nation. In Virginia, volunteers will climb rooftops to install solar panels on Habitat for Humanity homes, kicking off a national push to put 10,000 systems on affordable housing. It’s part of a $40 million drive to help low-income families save money and gain access to clean energy. In Portland, Oregon there’s a parade across one of the city’s big bridges, with giant puppets, Aztec dancers, and marching bands, followed by a "Sun Ball" celebration. A free concert in Monument Valley Utah, Monument Valley, Utah, with Latigo, an Indigenous country-western band, performing outdoors and using solar panels and lithium batteries to power their sound. (Navajo tacos will be available.) In New Paltz, New York the mayor is inaugurating a net-zero fire station; in New Hampshire the Mallett Brothers are giving a concert powered by the batteries in Ford F-150 Lightnings.
Earlier this morning, we released the documentary you can see below, which will be shown many places—and which will help power this work in the years ahead. Jackson Hyland-Lipski worked overtime to produce this over the past few months; it has beautiful footage from places like Puerto Rican clinics now run by the sun. It also has some great footage of Bernie Sanders in the backyard of his Burlington home, which runs off solar power—and which, his wife Jane rummaged through documents to assure me, means they use 80 percent less power off the grid and “our bill has been reduced by about the same amount.”
If you can, the most important way you can help is to turn out at a Sun Day event this weekend.
Obviously this is hard going—the Trump administration continues its all out war on clean energy (and in the Times eaerlier this week Ben Shapiro told Ezra Klein that Bernie Sanders is “a putrescent Marxist pimple on the posterior of the body politic,” ha ha). But this weekend we get to play offense as well as defense, to remind the world that we now live on a planet where the cheapest way to make energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. The beautiful and liberating power of the sun—instead of being chained forever to paying a bill for yet more fossil fuel—deserves to be celebrated, and so we shall.
I’m traveling out West at the moment, but I’ll be back in New York City for the day itself, where we’ll gather at Stuyvesant Square Park to watch the pictures pour in from around the country.
I want to take a moment to thank some of the many people who’ve helped coordinate this work: Deirdre Shelly, Jamie Henn, Duncan Meisel, Cassidy DiPaola and Tolmeia Gregory at Fossil Free Media, Anna Goldstein, Deborah Moore, and Janina Klimas who have worked tirelessly at Third Act. They’ve enabled a huge crew of volunteers across the country to come up with gorgeous events—David Solnit, as usual, has made sure that there’s beautiful art, much of it drawing on the gorgeous logo that the team at Collins came up with—thanks Eron Lutterman, Beth Johnson, and all your colleagues.
I’m leaving many people out but I want to get this account out while there’s still time for you to figure out where you’re going to be on Sun Day!
I’ll report back with a full account after the big day, but I want to say thanks to this community as well. It was here that I tested a lot of the ideas for Sun Day, and your feedback and support has been crucial. I am grateful for this community every single day.
Bill Mckibben
Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org. His most recent book is "Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?." He also authored "The End of Nature," "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," and "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future."
Sunday is… Sun Day, a nationwide celebration of the innovative power of clean energy. We’re working as hard as we know how in these last hours—closing in on 500 different events across the nation. In Virginia, volunteers will climb rooftops to install solar panels on Habitat for Humanity homes, kicking off a national push to put 10,000 systems on affordable housing. It’s part of a $40 million drive to help low-income families save money and gain access to clean energy. In Portland, Oregon there’s a parade across one of the city’s big bridges, with giant puppets, Aztec dancers, and marching bands, followed by a "Sun Ball" celebration. A free concert in Monument Valley Utah, Monument Valley, Utah, with Latigo, an Indigenous country-western band, performing outdoors and using solar panels and lithium batteries to power their sound. (Navajo tacos will be available.) In New Paltz, New York the mayor is inaugurating a net-zero fire station; in New Hampshire the Mallett Brothers are giving a concert powered by the batteries in Ford F-150 Lightnings.
Earlier this morning, we released the documentary you can see below, which will be shown many places—and which will help power this work in the years ahead. Jackson Hyland-Lipski worked overtime to produce this over the past few months; it has beautiful footage from places like Puerto Rican clinics now run by the sun. It also has some great footage of Bernie Sanders in the backyard of his Burlington home, which runs off solar power—and which, his wife Jane rummaged through documents to assure me, means they use 80 percent less power off the grid and “our bill has been reduced by about the same amount.”
If you can, the most important way you can help is to turn out at a Sun Day event this weekend.
Obviously this is hard going—the Trump administration continues its all out war on clean energy (and in the Times eaerlier this week Ben Shapiro told Ezra Klein that Bernie Sanders is “a putrescent Marxist pimple on the posterior of the body politic,” ha ha). But this weekend we get to play offense as well as defense, to remind the world that we now live on a planet where the cheapest way to make energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. The beautiful and liberating power of the sun—instead of being chained forever to paying a bill for yet more fossil fuel—deserves to be celebrated, and so we shall.
I’m traveling out West at the moment, but I’ll be back in New York City for the day itself, where we’ll gather at Stuyvesant Square Park to watch the pictures pour in from around the country.
I want to take a moment to thank some of the many people who’ve helped coordinate this work: Deirdre Shelly, Jamie Henn, Duncan Meisel, Cassidy DiPaola and Tolmeia Gregory at Fossil Free Media, Anna Goldstein, Deborah Moore, and Janina Klimas who have worked tirelessly at Third Act. They’ve enabled a huge crew of volunteers across the country to come up with gorgeous events—David Solnit, as usual, has made sure that there’s beautiful art, much of it drawing on the gorgeous logo that the team at Collins came up with—thanks Eron Lutterman, Beth Johnson, and all your colleagues.
I’m leaving many people out but I want to get this account out while there’s still time for you to figure out where you’re going to be on Sun Day!
I’ll report back with a full account after the big day, but I want to say thanks to this community as well. It was here that I tested a lot of the ideas for Sun Day, and your feedback and support has been crucial. I am grateful for this community every single day.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.