» Our High Energy Planet: A Climate Pragmatism Project

by Roger Pielke, Jr., Daniel Sarewitz, Alex Trembath, Jason Lloyd, Lisa Margonelli, Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, Mark Caine, Max Luke, Todd Moss, Joyashree Roy, Mikael Roman, Kartikeya Singh

Breakthrough Institute and Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University, 28 pp., Published April 2014.

More than one billion people globally lack access to electricity, and billions more still burn wood and dung for their basic energy needs. Our High-Energy Planet, a new report from an international group of energy and environment scholars, outlines a radically new framework for meeting the energy needs of the global poor.

According to the authors, the massive expansion of energy systems, mainly carried out in the rapidly urbanizing global South, is the only robust, coherent, and ethical response to the global challenges we face, climate change among them. The time has come to embrace a high-energy planet, they say. Read the full report here.

Climate change can’t be solved on the backs of the world’s poorest people,