If the weather allows today, April Fools Day, four astronauts will set sail on a $93 billion lunar “flyby.” Perhaps for those who recall the optimism of the Apollo moonshot this mission restores feelings of hope in America.
After the first moonlanding, singer Gil Scott-Heron railed against the hypocrisy of far-flung space exploits in “Whitey on the Moon.” (Scott-Heron also wrote songs “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “We Almost Lost Detroit” about the Fermi-1 nuclear reactor’s brush with disaster in 1966.)
For the ⅓ of Americans who can’t pay their energy bills, and as a result, often forgo other critical bills like rent, food, and medical expenses, the 1970 lyrics still ring true.
“The man just upped my rent last night
Cause whitey’s on the moon
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But whitey’s on the moon
I wonder why he’s upping me?
Cause whitey’s on the moon?
Well I was already giving him fifty a week
With whitey on the moon
Taxes taking my whole damn check…
Was all that money I made last year
For whitey on the moon?
How come I ain’t got no money here?
Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon”
There are, indeed, Whitey supremacists profiteering on the moon, as Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’s Blue Origin are both contractors on the 10-day, $93 billion Artemis flyby. (If you need comic relief from this foolery, you might enjoy Peter Mulvey’s folky “Asshole in Space.”)
93 million miles farther than the moon, our closest star provides infinitely more value. As Bill McKibben notes: “we live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.” More than 4 million Europeans are doing just that–from their balconies. In the face of utility and Trumpian assaults on clean energy, balcony solar, which is physically and financially accessible to tens of millions, is “taking [28] state legislatures by storm.”
Our metrics are astoundingly f*%ked up. At some point, $93 billion to check up on the moon may feel like a relative bargain, when the costs of Trump’s unilateral attacks against Iran are tolled.
It is not just that the energy affordability crisis has gotten so out of hand for more than 100 million Americans. It’s that utilities raked in $244 billion in profit last year alone–with an average $300 upcharge for every American family. These same utilities still shut power to upwards of 6 million households who couldn’t pay their bills. For all the Whiteys on the moon shenanigans, American families hardly see a dime come back to them to secure even basic living standards, basic human rights. The Center for Biological Diversity has calculated it would take just 1.4% of the dividends investor-owned utilities paid their shareholders to forgive the debt that resulted in involuntary shutoffs.
Matt Desmond, author of Poverty, By America, notes how simple it would be to simply end poverty. In a conversation with John Stewart, Desmond pegs the figure to end poverty in America at $177 billion annually. This is “so utterly attainable for us” because it could be achieved by solely collecting the taxes that the wealthiest 1% owe but don’t pay. Stewart’s “Wha, wha, what?!” is priceless. Desmond also notes that the wealthiest 20% receive 40% more in government subsidies than the poorest households–before accounting for tax avoidance.
Our tax-evader-in-chief, who moonlighted alongside Mamdani as an energy affordability advocate, has reverted to the status quo of commander-in-chief, with no backing from Congress or the American people, bombing the energy supplies the 99% need to affordably get to and from work and school. This is what mortgaging our future looks like: refusing to legalize balcony solar, blocking solar for farmers and offshore wind, pretending to demand action from utility CEOs, and playing with billion dollar weapons at the behest of Bibi Netanyahu. Just market-rate interest on the $1.7 trillion F-35 jet program could alone eliminate poverty.
People are connecting the dots and becoming more and more intent on breaking the nefarious linkages. It’s not just the Dems–support for solar cuts across party lines. Bill McKibben’s “most hopeful statistic in 35 years” is that solar is actively supplanting gas. Here’s another uplifting stat: the number of people who showed out at the March 28th No Kings protests is estimated to be 8 million at 3,300 sites, the largest one-day American turnout for any cause, ever. Desmond concludes that “Poverty will be abolished in America only when a mass movement demands it so.” (p.185).
Well, this mass movement is upon us, and it is winning. 30 seats in Congress and state legislatures have flipped from MAGAphiles to elected officials who actually believe in equitably fighting climate change, while exactly zero have flipped toward MAGA. Trump himself and his Mar-A-Lago property are now represented by Democrat Emily Gregory, who managed a 20-point swing in an unexpected special election win. Dems won seats on the GA Public Service Commission by similar margins, and affordability advocate Governor Abigail Spanberger created a new Chief Energy Officer position focused on “tackling high energy costs.” In the “data center capital of the world,” this speaks volumes.
Photons take a mere 8 minutes to erase the 93 million mile distance between sun and earth, with the potential to energize arrays of all shapes and sizes poking up like spring wildflowers. With a little creativity and imagination, we can build an energy system that works for all. Let’s stop blowing trillions on war, jets, and moon shots. Collect the damn billionaires’ taxes. Make utility shareholders sacrifice a whopping 2% of their dividends.
Solar, efficiency, and weatherization is the path to lasting affordability for all. Instead, too much has been spent on bandaids with no lasting impact for families. With this political moment, this may be a once in a generation shot to build a system that works for us all. Let’s focus on what’s under every roof, not what’s 230,000 miles away in space.