This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

Later published in the journal Energy Policy, the road map is one of several credible studies that have come out in recent years that show how wealthy countries and regions can shift all, or almost all, of their energy infrastructure to renewables within a twenty-to-forty-year time frame.18 Those studies demonstrating the potential for rapid progress include: • In Australia, the University of Melbourne’s Energy Institute and the nonprofit Beyond Zero Emissions have published a blueprint for achieving a 60 percent solar and 40 percent wind electricity system in an astonishing ten years.19 • By 2014, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had concluded from its own extensive research into weather patterns that cost-effective wind and solar could constitute nearly 60 percent of the U.S. electricity system by 2030.20 • Among more conservative projections, a major 2012 study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory argues that wind, solar, and other currently available green technologies could meet 80 percent of Americans’ electricity needs by 2050.21 Most promising of all is new work by a team of researchers at Stanford, led by Mark Jacobson (who coauthored the 2009 global plan). In March 2013, they published a study in Energy Policy showing that New York state could meet all of its power needs with renewables by 2030. Jacobson and his colleagues are developing similar plans for every U.S. state, and have already publishe...