Bill McKibben on Social Trust, Science, & Cryptocurrency — CleanTechnica Interview
This is the third article in a three-part series based around my recent interview with Bill McKibben, a legend in the world of climate activism and climate communication. In the first part, McKibben talked about climate grief, the climate crisis, climate activism, and US climate policy. In the beginning of the second episode, we talked about Tesla, unions, and Elon Musk. This article is about the same episode, but the second part of it, where we focused more on social trust, cryptocurrency, and Libertarianism. Personally, this was my favorite portion of the interview and I think the most important portion. (This portion of the interview starts at 13:07 into the SoundCloud and Spotify embeds below.)
In this part, I started off by asking McKibben to talk about how broken US society’s understanding of the scientific method is. I noted that we long saw this as a climate-specific problem, but that the pandemic highlighted how much it’s a broader problem, especially in times of crisis. Interestingly, McKibben quickly reframed that in an interesting and useful way:
“If you think about it, it’s not really a deep understanding of science that’s required, because I’m not sure people were way more scientifically literate in the ’50s when everyone lined up quite happily to get a polio vaccine. They were just more willing to trust in the sort of social structures of their world. And, you know, I get a front row to see what that old world kind of looks like ’cause I live in Vermont, which has the highest levels of social trust in the country, by all the ways that social scientists measure this. We’re very — you know, it’s a state full of villages. [It’s] the most rural state in the union, so people are used to governing themselves through things like town meeting every spring and things.
“Well, one result of this high level of social trust is that, despite the fact that it’s a rural state, with older people, with a Republican governor — all the things that should’ve led to big problems with COVID, it’s done a better job with it than just about any place in the world. Everybody went and got their vaccines. Everybody wore masks when they were supposed to. Those questions of social trust are really important, and they go back to some of these questions we were talking about when we were talking about, like, multi-zillionaires and things. You have to build societies that work reasonably well for everybody if you want to be able to make progress at all. Otherwise, you’ll end up in these worlds where people are full of rage and resentment and it turns to craziness — you know, someone tells them that it’s because Hillary Clinton eats babies or something, and then before long you’re off to the races. That’s the point I was trying to make before about how things are linked together.”
We talked a bit about how this attack on social trust goes back decades. I brought up former President Ronald Reagan and his attack on institutional trust with the line “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” McKibben recalled the whole line: “The nine scariest words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” (I’m finding via Google that he said “most terrifying” rather than “scariest,” which is even more dramatic, but I assume he used both — and they are nearly the same, of course. Also, I guess just be repeating them here we are, to some extent, reinforcing the fear mongering.) With his literary talents, McKibben then stated, “It turns out that the scariest words are ‘we ran out of ventilators or the hillside behind your house just caught on fire.’ And those are things you can’t address by yourself. That’s why you need working governments and working societies.
“Forget Elon Musk, the really dangerous billionaires in our society are people like the Koch brothers, who just have spent their entire lives working to make sure that we don’t have working societies, working governments — and have undermined that so deeply that it’s very difficult now to make the progress we need when we’re faced with an existential crisis.”
I couldn’t have said it better.
I then took that into the topic of “the cryptocurrency craze,” since I think those efforts are a big factor at play here. “It’s basically saying, ‘Let’s drop social trust and trust in governments, and go to a much more energy-intensive system because we don’t trust each other.’” I should give credit where credit is due here and recommend strongly that anyone curious about this matter read: “Why Bitcoin Truly Is Bad For The Climate & Environment, And Counter To Tesla’s Mission” and “How Does Bitcoin Work? What Is Bitcoin Mining? What Is Bitcoin Backed By?” (the former of which was written by the same author who predicted far in advance that Tesla would shift to much greater use of LFP batteries, based on his thorough first-principles analytical nature).
I said, “I mean, yeah, governments are not perfect, unions are not perfect, but they’re better than a free-for-all, don’t-trust-anyone society where we don’t put trust in each other. These all link together.”
McKibben added, “Cryptocurrency’s actually a beautiful demonstration of that, because it’s precisely — the log behind it, the stated logic behind it, is precisely what you said. We don’t want to have to trust anyone, so we trust this strange algorithm or blockchain that almost no one can actually explain to anyone.”
Before changing topics, I just felt a need to put extra emphasis on the inconvenient truth of Bitcoin and similar such systems that many fans of the concept would like to ignore: “It’s not a comparable system to like ATMs, banks, and whatnot. This is specifically a highly, extremely energy-intensive system, and even if it’s using renewables, you’re taking renewable energy potential away from other uses, and every single plan that tells us how we deal with the climate crisis says — you need a huge growth in renewables, electric vehicles, and a huge cut in energy use. …
“And you saw Tesla adopted it, saw humongous spikes in energy use and coal use — I don’t know where they found that data, but they did — and said, ‘okay, we’re not doing this any more because we saw the results.’”
McKibben rightfully and insightfully circled back to the political predecessors to this. “Your remark about Reagan before and that whole ‘the government is the problem’ thing — that’s the most important thing that happened in our political lives, in my political lifetime — the rise of this Libertarian notion that we should all just look out for ourselves — turns out to be the most dangerous of ideas, and it’s incarnated in things like Bitcoin that are quite clearly about not wanting to trust anybody else. And the fact that you have to burn a huge amount of energy in order to make it happen is just sort of the cherry on the top, you know.
“But it is unbelievably aggravating to think of people trying to desperately win this race to get more low-carbon energy out there and having, by now, non-trivial amounts — one, two percent or something of the planet’s energy — you know, the equivalent of a Scandinavian country worth of energy — being used for no good reason.”
Indeed.
McKibben also talked a bit further about the deeper history of Libertarians like the Koch brothers buying their control of the Republican Party, and the party’s now total blockade of good climate and energy policies. He also made an interesting comparison by pointing out that although those old oil, gas, and coal guys have very little in common with the Silicon Valley community, “the one place that they overlap is in this devotion to the idea everything would be better if government would just get out of their way. And everything isn’t better when government gets out of the way.” It’s an insightful link, and it does of course bring to mind Tesla’s recent decision to move its HQ to Texas, something that had not happened at the time of this interview. Texas, the land of — “We will take away voting rights. We will take away companies’ rights to mandate that their employees be vaccinated. We will take away basic rights of women. We will make it easier and incentivized for women who have been raped to also be criminalized. We will block human rights. But we will let corporations pollute as they wish and do whatever they want just as long as it isn’t too progressive.” But let me get back to what McKibben was saying:
“Yes, government is annoying, other people are annoying some of the time. Here’s a way to think about it that I try to think about it sometimes — when you think about this basic question of whether you want other people around, or whether you want to go off in a space capsule. Most people will tell you that college was maybe the best years of their lives. That’s what all the old alumns who come back to the college where I teach are always going on about. It’s not because, you know, they loved Sociology 101 so much. It was because it was the only 4 years in an American life where you actually lived the way that most people have lived for most of human history — in close physical and emotional proximity to a lot of other people. And that’s annoying. Sometimes the guy down the hall has the stereo on too loud at two in the morning. But it’s also deeply gratifying. There’s always people around to bounce ideas off of, do things with. You have a community, you know.”
I’ll leave it there. To hear more, listen to the full podcast.
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See part one of the Bill McKibben interview here: “Bill McKibben On Climate Crisis, Climate Grief, Climate Action, & US Climate Policy — CleanTechnica Interview.” See part two here: “Bill McKibben On Unions, Tesla, & Elon Musk — CleanTechnica Interview.”
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For most of human history, currency was a direct claim on tangible, productive output. Before the abstraction of government fiat or cryptocurrency, value was stored in things that required real work and resources, bushels of grain, livestock, gold, assets with their own direct productive output: horses, and tragically, slaves.
These were the foundational assets of economies, representing a direct link between labor, resources, and stored value.
As we accelerate into an all-electric, all-digital age, this fundamental link is re-emerging, but with a new unit of account. The 21st-century economy, defined by automated industry, robotic, electric transport, and now power-hungry artificial intelligence, runs on a single, non-negotiable input: electricity. In this new paradigm, the real base currency, the ultimate representation of productive capacity, is the kilowatt-hour (kWh).
The kWh is the new economic base layer.
Last week, I was in Bijiashan Park at night overlooking Shenzhen, arguably the most technologically advanced city on earth, built over the previous few decades, partly on cheap electricity, cheap labor, and manufacturing innovations.
I could see the giant high-voltage power lines coming over Yinhu Mountain to power the constant light show that is Shenzhen at night. I couldn’t help but think about how cheap electricity and a strong grid have been critical to China’s exceptional economic rise.
As you stroll around the city, you see power everywhere. There are charging stations at every corner, including insane 1 MW charging posts, electric cars and trucks, trucks that carry batteries to electric scooter shops, which are also literally everywhere.
Everything moves on electric power. Industries are powered by electricity, and now, with the advent of AI, virtually everything is increasingly processed by LLMs, which are ultimately powered by electricity through power-hungry data centers.
In a world where everything runs on electricity, electricity itself becomes the currency of civilization.
It is measurable, divisible, storable, and universal – all qualities that a currency needs, but unlike fiat and crypto, it’s actually directly linked to productive output. No politics. No inflation. Just physics.
This concept is not merely academic; it appears to be the quiet, guiding principle in China. While others debate the merits of decentralized digital tokens, China is executing a multi-pronged strategy that treats electricity as the foundational strategic asset it has become.
First, China is building the “mint” for this new currency at an incredible, world-changing scale, and it has retained absolute state control over its distribution. Its deployment of new electricity generation, particularly from renewables, is staggering. The country met its 2030 target of 1,200 gigawatts of renewable capacity five years early, in 2025.
In 2024 alone, renewable energy accounted for a record 56% of the nation’s total installed capacity, with clean generation meeting 84% of all new demand.
Here’s a comparison of electricity generation between China and the US:
If this chart doesn’t scare the West. I don’t know what will. The trend is not reversing any time soon. In fact, it appears to be accelerating as China is doubling down on solar and nuclear.
State-owned monoliths manage this entire system, primarily the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), the world’s largest utility. For better or worse, this centralized control allows the state to execute massive national strategies impossible in a liberalized market, such as building an Ultra-High-Voltage (UHV) grid to transmit power from remote solar and wind farms in the west to the power-hungry industrial hubs on its coast.
Second, China wields its control over the grid as a precision tool of industrial policy. China’s average electricity rate of $0.084/kWh is cheaper than most of the rest of the world, but its power lies not in the base price but in its strategic application. The government deploys a “Differential Electricity Pricing” policy: a “stick” that penalizes low-tech, high-consumption industries with higher rates, and a “carrot” that provides preferential pricing to incentivize strategic sectors.
The most potent example is in the AI sector. China is now offering massive electricity subsidies, cutting power bills by up to half, for data centers run by giants like Alibaba and Tencent. The condition for this cheap power is that these companies must use locally-made, Chinese AI chips, such as those from Huawei.
China is spending its “electricity currency” to directly fund the growth of its domestic AI chip industry and sever its dependence on foreign technology. This same logic applies to its global dominance in green tech, where state-subsidized firms like BYD benefit from a state-controlled industrial ecosystem built on reliable, managed power.
Third, and possibly the most explicit exemplification of China viewing electricity as the base currency is its moves against cryptocurrency.
In 2021, the government banned all cryptocurrency transactions and mining. While the official reasons cited financial stability, the move might have had a deeper, strategic intention.
From the state’s perspective, it was a tool for capital flight, allowing wealth to bypass government controls. But in a world where electricity rules, cryptocurrencies are, in effect, a competing “currency” that burns the foundational asset (electricity) to create a decentralized store of value.
By banning crypto, China simultaneously reclaimed its monopoly on economic control and shut down a massive, “wasteful” leak of its most precious resource. It freed up that generating capacity to be strategically allocated to its preferred industries, like AI and manufacturing.
China’s actions, viewed together, are a clear and coherent strategy. By massively investing in and securing total state control over its domestic electricity supply (the “mint”), using its price as a tool to fuel strategic industries, and banning decentralized competitors that consume the same resource, China is making a clear bet. It has been recognized that in an age where all productivity is powered by the grid, the ultimate source of national power is not gold, fiat, or crypto, but the state-controlled kilowatt-hour.
The Blockchain and Crypto: Ledger vs. Furnace
This perspective brings a critical nuance to the role of blockchain technology. In an economy where electricity is the base currency, the blockchain makes perfect sense, but only as a ledger, not as a store of value.
A distributed ledger is the ideal technological layer to act as the accounting system for this new economy. It can track the generation, transmission, and consumption of every kilowatt-hour with perfect transparency. It can automate complex industrial contracts and manage the grid’s load balancing without a central intermediary. In this sense, blockchain is the “banking software” for the electricity standard.
However, “Proof of Work” cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin face a fatal contradiction within this paradigm. They aim to serve as a store of value by burning the base currency (electricity) to secure the network. If the kilowatt-hour is the 21st-century equivalent of gold, then Bitcoin mining is akin to melting down gold bars to print a paper receipt. It destroys the productive asset to create a derivative token.
Bitcoin is quickly losing credibility as a classical safe store of value. It trades like a security, at least over the last year, and its value is only whatever the next moron is willing to pay, with no valuable asset behind it.
China’s strategy reflects this precise understanding. While they ruthlessly banned Bitcoin mining (the “furnace” that wastes the asset), they have simultaneously championed the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) and the Digital Yuan. They have embraced the ledger to track and control their energy economy, while rejecting the supposed asset that destroys it.
This is a trap that crypto fans often fall into. They recognize the value of the blockchain, which is real, but they mistakenly broadly assign the same value to cryptocurrency, which is simply an application of the blockchain.
Electrek’s Take
What I’m trying to explore in this op-ed is the idea that if the present is electric and the future is even more electric, then it makes sense for electricity to be the foundation of the economy.
If electricity is the backbone of global trade and the metric of productivity, the kWh ultimately becomes the real currency of a truly electrified world.
And I think China has figured this out, as evidenced by its new electricity generation surpassing the rest of the world combined and by its ban on cryptocurrency.
They are going to let the rest of the world hold the crypto bag while they have more electricity generation than anyone to power their industries, which are already taking over the world.
I think the rest of the world should learn from this. Instead of pouring capital into meme coins and made-up stores of value, we should invest in electricity generation and storage.
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![Classic Jeep Grand Wagoneer gets a battery electric makeover [video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/11/grand-wagoneer_EV_2.jpg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Texas-based tuning firm Vigilante 4×4 is known for its wild, high-horsepower Jeep SJ Hemi restomods – but they’re more than just a hot rod shop. To prove it, they’ve developed a bespoke, all-electric skateboard chassis designed to turn the classic Jeep Grand Wagoneer into a modern, desirable electric SUV.
The scope of the Vigilante 4×4 electric chassis project is truly impressive. More than just a Jeep SJ frame with an electric drive train bolted in, the chassis is a completely fresh design that utilizes precise 3D scans of the original SJ Wagoneers, Grand Wagoneers, and J-Trucks to establish hard points, then fitted with low-slung battery packs to give the electric restomods superior weight balance, a lower center of gravity, and objectively improved ride and handling compared to its classic, ICE-powered forefathers.
The result is a purpose-built platform that delivers power to the wheels through a dual-motor system – one mounted in the front, and one at the rear – to provide a permanent, infinitely variable four-wheel drive system that offers both on-road performance and the kind of off-road capability that made the Grand Wagoneer famous in the first place.
Vigilante 4×4 electric Jeep SJ
“This isn’t a replacement for our Vigilante HEMI offerings,” reads the official copy. “It’s a total revisit of the Vigilante platform under electric power.”
The company emphasizes that its new chassis is still in the prototype stages. As such, there are no specs, there is no pricing, there are no range estimates. Despite it all, the response from Jeep enthusiasts has already been strong. “Keep in mind this is our first prototype,” a spokesperson said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done – but the journey has begun.”
Electrek’s Take
Retro done wrong – think the Dodge Charger Daytona EV or VW ID.Buzz – is a disaster. Always. If that nostalgic tone is just a little bit off, the song doesn’t work. The heartstrings don’t pull. Done right, however, the siren song of nostalgia will have you putting a second mortgage on your house to put a Singer Porsche or ICON Bronco in your garage.
It’s too soon to tell what side of that line the Vigilante 4×4 Jeep SJ will eventually fall, but one thing (at least) is certain: it’s closer to the mark than that Wagoneer S.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Vigilante 4×4, via Mopar Insiders.
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