Life After Oil and Gas

The New York Times devoted most of the front page of its Sunday Review section to a story promoting the green dream of “Life After Oil and Gas.”

The story cites an article by Stanford engineers published in the journal Energy Policy, titled “Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power.”

According to the lead author, Mark Z. Jacobson, “It’s absolutely not true that we need natural gas, coal or oil — we think it’s a myth.” The authors “suggest producing all new energy with WWS [wind, water and solar] by 2030 and replacing the pre-existing energy by 2050. Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic.”

Jacobsen provides a shopping list that details what will be required to move to a post-carbon future: