This is the first letter I ever wrote to the Times...

The faraway sun is a giant, safe nuclear reactor.

For years and years its fires have given off energy as light. This warming light has heated the air of the earth to make the winds that have turned our windmills and pushed shipfulls of our ancestors to this country, evaporated the waters of the seas to make the clouds that have poured life-giving rain into the rivers we have damned for electricity, hit the eyes in our heads to make the sights that we have been fortunate enough to see, and driven the photosynthesis of green plants to make the fuel in fossils and the food that we and our animals have eaten.

Most of the sunlight that has reached the earth, though, has not been put to work for people. This has been the greatest waste of a natural resource that people have ever seen.

Let's face up to the facts and put to good use the sunlight that we have been most generously given.