Our message to global leaders: we need solar power everywhere by the decade’s end | Open letter — SkimNews
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- The open letter's signatories — including Jane Fonda, Bernie Sanders, Bill McKibben and Christiana Figueres — call on governments, businesses, institutions and the public to provide clean, affordable energy to everyone, everywhere by 2030.
- The letter links war and climate change, stating that "the oil that governments fight over is also the carbon pollution that is warming our climate" and citing the conflict in Iran as evidence.
- California has cut the natural gas it uses for electricity generation in half over three years thanks to solar and batteries, according to the letter.
- Pakistan has installed millions of solar panels in just months, with people relying on social media for installation instructions, the letter reports.
- Sub-Saharan Africa is gaining electricity access for millions of new people each month through home solar kits, per the letter.
- The campaign designates June 20 as 'Sun Day,' timed to the northern hemisphere's summer solstice and the year's peak solar generation, to celebrate and accelerate the energy transition.
- The letter notes that nearly 1 billion people still lack reliable electricity and says $15 can provide clean electricity access to one person for a generation.
Why it matters: The signatories are explicitly demanding that governments stop building coal, oil and gas projects and pivot to clean-energy systems — a direct policy ask rather than a vague pledge. The campaign pins that push to a concrete organizing date (June 20) and a concrete cost figure ($15 per person for a generation of electricity), putting measurable pressure on the roughly one billion people still without power and on the fossil-fuel industry that the letter blames for both wars and warming.
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