The Big Switch

Climate change is an emergency that calls for immediate action, and Australian scientist Saul Griffith offers a practical way forward. Rather than counsel despair, he lays out a roadmap that is hopeful yet grounded in what can realistically be achieved, arguing that the same effort could generate millions of jobs and a healthier environment.

Griffith spells out what the transformation would take. He examines the physical infrastructure that powers modern life, the electricity grid that connects it, and the ways ordinary homes would need to change how they use energy.

He also contrasts the choices of the very wealthy, some of whom may dream of leaving a worn-out planet for Mars on private rockets, with the path open to everyone else, which is to stay and work for a livable future. Griffith writes as an engineer, inventor and father who wants his children to inherit a better world, and he maintains that the evidence still makes hope a reasonable stance.