That slightly out-of-focus picture shows the gritty, common-sense (and also transcendent) mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, with her 3-month old daughter Mira. A few minutes earlier, from the pulpit of Old North Church in Boston, she’d flipped a switch to light the green lantern you can see glowing in the steeple behind her. At the same time green lights—all sustainably powered—came on top of many of the city’s buildings and bridges, all to mark the official launch of organizing for September’s big SunDay celebrations/protests/teach-ins. At the same time, a gorgeous new website went live, so people could start registering actions and getting involved.

I’m going to update you regularly on SunDay in these pages as the day approaches, because I think that our job is not just to understand the climate catastrophe but to prevent as much of it as we still can. And I think that there’s really one main, scalable, timely path to doing that: the rapid deployment of sun, wind, and batteries. It’s happening (in China, the use of coal for electricity generation fell five percent in the first quarter largely because of surging deployment of rooftop solar) but it’s not happening fast enough—and especially not here, where the Trump administration is doing all it can to slow the energy transition. (Last week it set tariffs on solar panels from Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia at 3,521 percent).

So we have to make the case for sun and wind and batteries, and we have to do it now—seizing the opportunity to change both local laws and the national zeitgeist. That’s what SunDay is all about: in September it will feature rallies and concerts, e-bike and EV parades, teach-ins about heat pumps in the homes of owners. You name it—indeed, you think it up! This will be a largely DIY day of action, in every corner of the country, and if it works then when we’re done no one will ever talk about ‘alternative energy’ again. Everyone will know this is the normal, obvious, beautiful way forward.

SunDay will have not just a technical heart, but an emotional one—lots of art and music, and if you’re into that sort of thing a certain amount of divine inspiration. The latter was on display in Boston, when the mayor’s lantern-lighting was proceeded by a multi-faith service at Old North, still a working Episcopal church, presided over by Boston’s bishop Julia Whitworth and the church’s gracious Vicar Rev. Matthew Cadwell. Thanks to Fletcher Harper, the indefatigable head of GreenFaith, and Revs. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas and Jim Antal, the service featured voices from Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Protestant traditions—and there was Grammy-nominated Antonique Smith, the head of Climate Revival which works to spread the message in black churches, singing her indelible version of Here Comes the Sun.

Lots of big-time partners are already engaged in this work—I had the pleasure of meeting with all the Sierra Club’s leaders on Friday in Tennessee, and they seemed excited to go to work. (Shoutout to Emily Gorman who is heading up the SunDay work for the club.) My colleagues at Third Act are hard at it, led by Anna Goldstein and Deborah Moore. Solar United Neighbors, which has put panels on countless rooftops, is playing a big role; Rev Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus was on hand for the Boston launch, as was Kelsey Wirth, founder of Mothers Out Front. Local groups, like the Better Future Project in Massachusetts, are playing key roles already. But our hope is that it will, like the sun, blaze up into something larger and more beautiful than we can imagine. That won’t happen automatically—there’s a small but talented central staff hard at work, led by veteran organizers Deirdre Shelly and Jamie Henn. Henn, especially, has been deeply engaged in most of the important and successful battles of the climate era, but always behind the scenes: it was fun to hear him talk at the Boston ceremony, and fun to hope this will be a chance for others to appreciate just how talented he and his colleagues are.

At any rate: we’re going to play defense against Trump and his insane cuts for all we’re worth. But we’re going to play offense too. As we’ve all known, at least since Nosferatu, vampires can’t flourish in the sunlight. So that’s what we’re going to bring. Help us!

Teaser image credit: Author supplied.