An optimistic--but realistic and feasible--action plan for fighting
climate change while creating new jobs and a healthier environment:
electrify everything.
Climate change is a planetary emergency. We have to do something
now--but what? Saul Griffith has a plan. In Electrify, Griffith lays
out a detailed blueprint--optimistic but feasible--for fighting climate
change while creating millions of new jobs and a healthier environment.
Griffith's plan can be summed up simply: electrify everything. He
explains exactly what it would take to transform our infrastructure,
update our grid, and adapt our households to make this possible.
Billionaires may contemplate escaping our worn-out planet on a private
rocket ship to Mars, but the rest of us, Griffith says, will stay and
fight for the future.
Griffith, an engineer and inventor, calls for grid neutrality, ensuring
that households, businesses, and utilities operate as equals; we will
have to rewrite regulations that were created for a fossil-fueled world,
mobilize industry as we did in World War II, and offer low-interest
"climate loans." Griffith's plan doesn't rely on big, not-yet-invented
innovations, but on thousands of little inventions and cost reductions.
We can still have our cars and our houses--but the cars will be electric
and solar panels will cover our roofs. For a world trying to bounce back
from a pandemic and economic crisis, there is no other project that
would create as many jobs--up to twenty-five million, according to one
economic analysis. Is this politically possible? We can change politics
along with everything else.
