Global warming is no longer a concept. It’s a lived experience, and it’s increasing faster than predicted.
So far in 2025, firestorms have devastated the urban communities of Pacific Palisades and Alta Dena in Los Angeles, leaving in their wake a scorched Earth landscape of truly alarming proportions.
In 2024, Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Devastating wildfires claimed vast portions of the Amazon rainforest; extreme monsoon rains have flooded India. Add a record-breaking heatwave during the 2024 Summer Olympics, deadly flooding in Spain, destructive forest fires in California, New York City, and New Jersey, and we have all the evidence we need. Climate chaos is coming.
According to the UN and a consensus among scientists, burning fossil fuels is the primary contributor to climate change, accounting for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions, making it the largest factor driving global warming. But what most people don’t know is how we get from where we are to where we need to be.
The good news is that a team of scientists at Stanford University, led by Dr. Mark Jacobson, has developed clean energy roadmaps for all 50 states in America and, to date, more than 150 other countries to guide a global transition to powering the world with electricity generated solely by wind, water, and the sun, with storage for everything.
To create the roadmaps, Professor Jacobson and his team first determine how much energy a state or country needs. This is a knowable number, and the numbers vary. New York needs more energy than, say, North Dakota; India needs more energy than Norway. Once the scientists determine how much energy is needed, they determine where the state or country can get that energy from clean sources – wind, water, and the sun.
For example, New York state will get roughly 76% of its energy from two major sources: 40% from offshore wind and 35.8% from solar plants. India will get 36.9% of its energy from onshore wind, 22% from solar plants, and the rest from a combination of offshore wind, hydroelectric (dams), residential rooftop solar, commercial rooftop solar, and concentrating solar installations that use mirrors.
In other words, each energy roadmap is created specifically to serve the energy needs of the state or country for which it’s designed. In the process, the scientists also estimate the number of jobs that will be created to build and install the clean energy infrastructure as well the number of so-called “40-year jobs” that will exist to operate it over time.
Before long, Jacobson’s team will have clean energy roadmaps for all 193 countries on Earth, making 100% clean energy f0r 100% of people 100% possible by 2050. Which means, the transition from burning fossil fuels to powering life as we know it with electricity generated by wind, water, and the sun, with storage for everything, has the potential to slow and stop global warming and clean our air by 2050. At least, it could.
What will it take? Current estimates are that it will take a whole of Earth mobilization and approximately $60 trillion worldwide. Is it possible? In a word, yes. The good news the world deserves to hear is that we don’t have to boil in our own juices in order to have all the things we want and use in the modern world. The world can stop burning fossil fuels and still get all the power it needs, with storage for everything, from clean sources. That’s why sovereign funds, family offices, governments, and global investment funds are lining up to invest in the transition.
Want to know more about Professor Jacobson’s human-saving work? In his book, No Miracles Needed: How Today’s Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Jacobson brilliantly and thoroughly addresses the fear that we don’t have the technologies needed to solve the climate crisis. The truth, he explains and demonstrates, is that not only do we have the technologies, but also, as importantly, we now have the calculations to guide their use in terms of how many wind farms, solar farms, rooftop solar arrays, tidal systems, geothermal plants, hydroelectric installations and so on will be required to power life as we know it with clean energy instead of the dirty, killing kind.
Sadly, as with most dramatic stories, there’s bad news in this one. The bad news is there are powerful forces standing in the way of change. As a result, this is a story about climate solutions versus greed – a modern-day “David and Goliath” story.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say “David” is Dr. Jacobson and the scientists who have been working alongside him for more than 15 years to figure out how to slow and end global warming. And wouldn’t be inaccurate to say “Goliath” is Big Oil which has been lying about the harmful effects of its products for decades and continues to oppose change at every turn.
For example, ever since he succeeded Rex Tillerson, who became Secretary of State in 2017, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods has followed Exxon’s tradition of hiding the fact that burning fossil fuels is the chief cause of global warming. Woods has promised publicly to oppose any legislation that might forward the transition to clean energy, and in 2024, Woods even went so far as to sue his own shareholders to prevent them from introducing a modest clean energy statement at the company’s annual meeting.
ExxonMobil’s not alone. Shell Oil is suing the legacy environmental organization Greenpeace for $300 million for supporting opposition to its Dakota pipeline. By the way, the pipeline runs through indigenous lands where the people were going to oppose it with or without Greenpeace. And so it goes. We know this story. It’s an American story. And if you think it sounds a little like Big Tobacco, you’re not wrong.
Guaranteed to slow things down further is the fact that America now has a President who has called climate change “a hoax.” He pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord during his first term and has done it again. He has pledged to “drill, baby, drill,” eliminate subsidies for clean energy and electric vehicles, and roll back regulations aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions. All while Big Oil is spending billions to extract more oil and gas than ever.
America has an opportunity to lead the world’s transition to clean energy. Under the myopic and ignorant leadership of Trump, however, the opportunity is being squandered. Trump’s America is burying its head in the sand, blind to the inevitable.
Nonetheless, across America and the globe – from Texas to China – the battle between climate science and greed is unfolding. On the battlefield, there are change makers and change deniers, clean energy workers and natural gas frackers, scientists and frontline activists. There’s progress being made by pioneering companies like Vestas Wind Systems and solar energy companies like First Solar that are delivering on the promise of a clean energy future for the world.
There are optimists like energy czar John Podesta who predicts that the transition to clean energy will create the biggest economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution; and there are obstructionists like Chevron’s CEO who has famously said “no” to investing in wind and solar technology, while telling his shareholders, “Let them plant trees.”
We would be smart to listen to intelligent voices like that of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who told the world bluntly in 2022, “We’re on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator. Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising, and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.”
We can also help ourselves by sharing Mark Jacobson’s vital work with the world and by supporting those who are calling for a whole of Earth mobilization to bring about the transition to clean energy. And we should always remember that planet Earth will survive global warming; if Earth gets much hotter, human beings will not.
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Cort Casady has won two Emmy Awards and three NAACP Image Awards for his work as a television and documentary writer-producer. He is currently developing 100% Possible: The Battle for the World’s Energy Future, a documentary about clean energy. An environmental activist for more than 30 years, Cort co-created and launched television’s first weekly, solutions-driven environmental series, Network Earth, which aired for five years on TBS. His original screenplay, LA Underground, about two “environmental cops” investigating the pollution of Santa Monica Bay was purchased by Michael Douglas and Columbia Pictures. Cort also created and co-executive produced a series presentation for CNN Worldwide about the crisis in the world’s oceans and seas. For the past 21 years, Casady has been Supervising Producer of the American Film Institute (AFI) Life Achievement Award tributes to America’s leading actors and filmmakers. He is a member of the Community Advisory Committee to California’s Clean Power Alliance (CPA). For more credits: https://cortcasady.com/tv-film-theatre-credits/
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FOLLOWING ARE LINKS TO GRAPHICS FOR SELECTED CLEAN ENERGY ROADMAPS:
To see the Energy Roadmap for NEW YORK:
To see the Energy Roadmap for INDIA:
To see the Energy Roadmap for TEXAS:
To see the Energy Roadmap for NORWAY:
To see the Energy Roadmap for OREGON:
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