How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

Tip: Whenever you hear “kilowatt,” think “house.” “Gigawatt,” think “city.” A hundred or more gigawatts, think “big country.”

In the past, we’ve moved from one source to another because the new one was cheaper and more powerful. When we stopped burning so much wood and started using more coal, for example, it was because we could get a lot more heat and light from a pound of coal than from a pound of wood.

With the threat of climate change upon us, it can be hard to be hopeful about the future.

engaging in the political process is the most important single step that people from every walk of life can take to help avoid a climate disaster.

m an optimist because I know what technology can accomplish and because I know what people can accomplish

It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of a problem as big as climate change.

What you can help your leaders understand is that it’s just as important for them to think about the long-term problem of climate change as it is for them to think about jobs or education or health care.

“When we have a fact-based worldview, we can see that the world is not as bad as it seems—and we can see what we have to do to keep making it better.”

What we can do—and need to do—in the next 10 years is adopt the policies that will put us on a path to deep decarbonization by 2050.

The point is that when we focus on all three things at once—technology, policies, and markets—we can encourage innovation, spark new companies, and get new products into the market fast.