Sun Day

Today is Sunday. Sun Day.

President Jimmy Carter designated May 3, 1978 as Sun Day, so this is not a new idea. Many events are taking place today.

The sun is so important to us that we have named a day of the week after it. And another after the moon, which reflects its light.

It’s about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away yet without it we would not exist.

The sun will last rather longer than our fossil fuels and nuclear energy – about 5 billion years. Plenty of time for us to come up with plan B, if we continue to nurture the necessary science. If we don’t, then we probably won’t see the end coming in time to act. Solar sails might enable us to sail away from the expanding sun, for example.

The sun not only gives us light and warmth, but it evaporates water from salty seas, and causes winds which carry it over the land as clouds and fog, where we can collect it to drink and where it enables plants to thrive. Plants need the sun for photosynthesis. Even fungi which don’t, live off matter from plants which do. Fossil fuels are a form of energy that originated as plants which photosynthesized, and the animals that ate them. They took a very long time to create, and we are using them up much, much faster than they can be created.

You can have too much sun – for example falling asleep when sunbathing or living through a drought. But that is true for just about everything (e.g. drowning from too much water, or climate change from too much CO2) so we need to learn to take precautions. But the benefits far outweigh the risks.

The sun does not care if we use its energy. And sometimes it sends storms that interfere with our electronics, so it behooves us to allow for that.

We have the technology to harvest a great deal of solar power, either directly or as wind power, and to store it. For all practical purposes it will never run out. How crazy it is to still burn fossil fuels for energy, when we will struggle to manufacture products such as plastics, fertilizers, cosmetics, and many more when the fossil fuels run out or become uneconomic to extract! How crazy to still have so many cancer alleys!

Every country gets some sun, though those near the poles may struggle to store enough solar power for their winter. Not every country has fossil fuels or tidal power. Not every country can afford nuclear power, and it is not safe (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Zaporizhzhia for example) for them or their neighbours. Solar power can be a great equalizer, both between countries and within countries.

Please participate in Sun Day if you can.