PROLOGUE An Energy Primer

Let there be light.

—GENESIS 1:3

WE LIVE IN ELECTRICITY LIKE A FISH LIVES IN WATER. UNTIL a big storm knocks out our power or we blow a fuse by using the microwave and the blender at the same time, most of us don’t think a whole lot about the electricity that surrounds us and powers our modern lives. We pay a monthly bill—usually while grumbling about its expense—and our lights stay lit, our toast gets toasted, and our web extends worldwide. Beyond that? Well, we may have a notion that Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity while flying a kite in a storm (that’s a myth, actually—Franklin may have never flown that kite, though he did do important research into how electricity is conducted). We may have an idea that a few big—and not necessarily benevolent—corporations have a monopoly on our power supply. And we’ve likely heard that the way we currently supply our homes with precious electricity is damaging our environment and endangering our nation’s security.

Yet we haven’t heard much about viable alternatives to this status quo, so we keep paying that monthly bill. We get on-demand light, heat, refrigeration, entertainment, information, blended margaritas, and microwaved pizza. And those corporations keep lining their pockets while our nation and our world are put in an ever-more-precarious situation.

What if I told you that there is a viable alternative—despite what Dirty Energy propagandists would have you believe? There’s a way to power your home that saves you money, that can free our nation from dependence on foreign energy sources, and that’s completely renewable. It’s ready and available right now.

It’s an American invention called solar power. And the ascent of solar—following a Rooftop Revolution—is set to remake our world. To be certain, it’s fighting against some monumental institutions and deeply ingrained behaviors and mind-sets. (If you’re thinking, Oh, solar—it’s just a fantasy some radicals had in the 1970s, the Dirty Energy public relations [PR] machine has gotten into your head!) But recent advances of ingenuity based on solar power’s brilliance have unleashed the creativity of entrepreneurs and capital. These advances are supported by serious social movements—committed activists who seek to break the corporate power of Big Oil and Big Coal and to reduce pollution and corruption. In this book I explain the early history of the Rooftop Revolution as well as what needs to happen next and how you can join the fight.