We begin Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson not with policy, but with a morning.
“You open your eyes at dawn. You turn in the cool bed sheets.
A few feet above your head, on the top of your roof, a layer of solar panels is blinking in the sun.
Their power mixes with electricity pulled from several clean energy sources.
Towering wind turbines to the east.
Small nuclear power plants to the north.
Deep geothermal wells to the south.
Forty years ago, your parents cooled their bedrooms with jewels dredged out of coal mines and oil pits.
They mined rocks and burned them. Coating their lungs in the byproducts. They encased their world, your world, in a chemical heat trap.
Today that seems barbaric.
You live in a cocoon of energy so clean it barely leaves a carbon trace and so cheap you can barely find it on your monthly bill.
The year is 2050.”
The opening chapter reads like science fiction, but it is grounded in engineering, economics, and policy pathways that already exist. It is not escapism.…
