For 200 years industrial civilization has relied on the combustion of abundant and cheap carbon fuels. But continued reliance has lead to perilous consequences. On the one hand, the insecurity of relying on the world’s most unstable region--the Middle East--compounded by the imminence of Peak Oil, growing scarcity, and mounting prices.

Yet there is an answer: to make the transition to renewable sources of energy and to distributed, decentralized energy generation. It is a model that has been proven, technologically, commercially and politically, as Scheer comprehensively demonstrates. He shows that the widely advocated return to nuclear power is compromised and illusory.

The energy autonomy route does not just avoid the harm from following business-as-usual, but also offers enormous additional positive benefits. Whole new industries will be created to stimulate the global economy and two billion people, who don't receive electricity now, will have access to it. The advantages are so clear and so overwhelming that resistance to them needs diagnosis, which Scheer also provides, showing why and how entrenched interests oppose the transition and what must be done to overcome these obstacles.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Renewable Energy: The Deceptive Global Consensus; Part I—Sun or Atom: The Fundamental Conflict of the 21st Century; Part II—Blockades to Action: The Unbroken Power of One-Dimensional Thinking; Part III—Energy Autonomy: The Archimedean Point of the Breakthrough to Renewable Energy.