blade failed to negotiate a corner, blocking traf-
fic. As vehicles backed up, a pickup peeled out
and turned around, belching black smoke. The
frustrated driver was “rolling coal.” He’d mod-
ified his diesel engine to spew extra exhaust at
the flip of a switch—an anti-environmentalist
protest also known as Prius dusting.
Yet attitudes are changing; Americans
embrace the energy transition when it works for
them. Wandering through the amusement park
glare of Las Vegas, with its illuminated fountains
and floodlights sweeping the sky, I gawked at the
energy profligacy. But a new law requires that
half the state’s electricity come from renewables
by 2030. Next door in equally sunny Arizona, a
utility spent $38 million in 2018 defeating a ballot
initiative with similar aims. This year, though, it
changed course, announcing a goal of
going 100 percent renewable by 2050.
In Colorado we met software engi-
neer Kevin Li as he charged his 2018
Tesla Model 3. He’d just picked it up
in California and was driving home
to North Carolina. When I asked what
role climate change played in his
going electric, Li looked confused. I
repeated the question: Did he buy a
Tesla out of a deep-seated concern for
global warming?
“Nope,” Li said.
Then why?
“Speed,” Li said, smiling. “It’s fast—
really fast.”
In western Kansas we spent a day
in Greensburg, population 790. In
2007 a tornado wiped out more than
90 percent of this farm town, killing 11. When
it came to rebuilding, some suggested Greens-
burg become sustainable—a “green burg.” That
sounded rather hippie to Bob Dixson. “All I could
think about was 1968, powder blue bell-bottom
pants, tie-dyed shirt, big white belt buckle, hair
down to here, maybe on mind-altering chemi-
cals, hugging a tree,” the onetime mayor has said.
But, Dixson told me, he came to see it as
a return to the virtues of his prairie-settling
ancestors. Kansas pioneers built windmills to
power wells, lived in sod houses—early green-
roofed buildings—and stored food in root cel-
lars. Greensburg’s new school uses solar and
geothermal heating, and the rebuilt community
generates electricity from wind. Greensburg’s
grid is now 100 percent carbon free.
IN 2007 A TORNADO WIPED OUT
GREENSBURG, KANSAS. THE REBUILT
TOWN RUNS ON RENEWABLE
ENERGY —A RETURN TO THE SELF-
RELIANCE OF PRAIRIE PIONEERSONE NIGHT IN DES MOINES, Iowa, as I settled
into a hotel room, Guttenfelder texted from
across the hall. An unexpected visitor would be
speaking two hours away the next day: Swedish
teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg. She
was crossing the country in a Tesla too, but in
the other direction.
We pulled into Iowa City as thousands were
gathering. I saw a hand-drawn picture of the
planet captioned “Help Me I’m Dying.” Thun-
berg joined local students on stage. “Right now
the world leaders keep acting like children, and
somebody needs to be the adult in the room,”
she said. The crowd roared.
Thunberg had sailed to the U.S. instead of
taking a plane; one flight can produce more
CO 2 than some people produce in a year. Withclimate stakes rising and air travel increasingly
popular, some Europeans and Americans,
including scientists, have curtailed jet travel.
Guttenfelder and I talked about how deeply fos-
sil fuels permeate our lives.
Earlier in our trip, I’d even flown home for my
daughter’s 11th birthday. I felt guilt at contribut-
ing to a slightly less livable world for her. I felt
frustration at being forced to choose between her
present and future. But the goal has to be to build
a world where people can travel without carbon
guilt. At NREL, teams are researching jet fuels
made from algae or food waste. In December the
first electric commercial airplane, a six-passenger
seaplane, made a successful test flight in Canada.
Across Iowa wind turbines turned in the corn;
tax credits have made them valuable income.
THE ROAD TO 2070 63