In the decade since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the response of the world's governments and authorities to the threats to the global environment has been to enforce the reduction of energy consumption and harmful emissions--solutions primarily based around conventional energy resources and conventional thinking.

The question is, though, whether this strategy is radical enough to address the key challenges now facing the environment, and whether it can be effective in avoiding catastrophe on a global scale. For Herman Scheer, the answer is a definite no.

In this fully updated edition, he once more attacks the lack of political will to find answers outside of the conventional frame of reference. Climate change, pollution, deforestation, destruction of the ozone layer, poverty, and the population explosion are all problems created or exacerbated by the use of conventional energy. A decade after the first edition of this book, answers are now more urgently required than ever, as current policies serve merely to alleviate the escalating symptoms rather than find a cure for what could become a terminal affliction.

Hermann Scheer shows that this crisis may yet be reversed – but that this can only happen through a fundamental change in political and economic strategies, paving the way towards a global solar energy economy sustained by new social principles. This book champions the replacement of fossil and nuclear fuels with solar energy as a real solution to the threat to the environment and associated social consequences. Scheer constructs a radical yet innovative political and economic model and argues the case with passion and conviction for the global solar economy as the route to a sustainable environment.

Table of Contents:

Introduction; The Industrial Revolution; Solar Energy; Are there Alternatives to a Global Solar Strategy?; The Potential for and the Keys to a Solar Strategy; Solar Energy's Economic and Social Benefits; The Nonsense about an Energy Consensus; Return to the Sun; The Entropy Tax; From a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to a Solar Proliferation Treaty; The Energy of the People; Notes.