ABSTRACT
The time has come to abolish the combustion of coal, oil and gas for energy generation worldwide, along with the nuclear power threat. This is the historical challenge of today. It is unlike any other that preceded it in the emergence of human civilization. It is unprecedented because it involves a collective choice to be made across a wide array of technological, social and economic conditions – to go beyond the slow and messy process of blind evolution. A global renewable energy base is the very foundation of sustainable life on this planet. Only with it, massive afforestation efforts and lifestyle changes to higher quality and dramatically lowered material consumption become the essential elements of hope. A worldwide move to sustainable economic practice beyond green lip service may just still carry this promise: to rebuild the inherited system of wasteful abundance for the few into a basis for sustaining human life in a steady-state economy for all.
