Climate finance has grown significantly in recent years, reaching $1.8 trillion in 2023. However, this remains insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement's temperature goals, particularly with net-zero emissions by 2050 requiring an annual investment of $5 trillion. Current investments in renewable energy remain lower than those in fossil fuels, contributing to a substantial global investment gap. While redirecting investments from carbon-intensive sectors could reduce this gap, the remaining shortfall is still projected at 2 percent to 3 percent of global GDP annually. Emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), face greater financial constraints in addressing climate challenges, with most climate finance concentrated in developed regions and China. Despite sufficient liquidity in global capital markets, private sector contributions to climate finance in these regions remain low, often due to limited fiscal space and financing access. Innovative financing solutions and public–private partnerships are critical to mobilize the necessary resources for green investments and climate adaptation in these vulnerable regions.

Emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) face significant obstacles in attracting the capital necessary to achieve climate and development goals, requiring at least $1 trillion annually for a successful green transition. Investment needs escalate further when adaptation and resilience measures are included, placing vulnerable populations at greater risk despite their minimal contributions to climate change. Current climate financing to EMDEs is insufficient, primarily public, focused on mitigation over adaptation, and often delivered as debt. Barriers such as high credit risk and regulatory uncertainties exacerbate the investment gap. Thus, private sector engagement is crucial to meet the Paris Agreement targets. Innovative financial strategies, including blended finance, can mobilize private capital by using concessional funds to enhance project viability. A coordinated global approach, involving partnerships among governments, international financial institutions, and the private sector, is essential for effectively addressing climate investment needs and fostering sustainable development in EMDEs.

Since the early 2000s, substantial progress has been made toward raising awareness about the need for a rapid transition to WWS. A movement toward 100 percent clean, renewable energy has begun. Popular support for such a transition has grown, as have the numbers of laws and commitments furthering that goal. Such commitments have been made by cities, states, provinces, countries, international businesses, nonprofits, community groups, policymakers, and individuals. This chapter discusses my personal journey to develop and implement 100 percent WWS roadmaps, and how these roadmaps and collaborations with other scientists, cultural influencers, business leaders, and community leaders have helped to shape the 100 percent WWS movement.

The transition to a low-carbon economy requires a transformative shift akin to past industrial revolutions. This shift involves three key changes: redirecting corporate investment toward green technologies, reallocating capital from carbon-intensive industries, and adjusting household consumption toward sustainable practices, potentially affecting productivity, growth, and well-being. The process will incur short-term economic costs as investment is redirected, leading to stranded assets and slowed productivity. Additionally, global disparities in transition policies may also distort competitiveness and reshape trade patterns. Despite these challenges, the long-term potential for green growth remains promising, as falling renewable energy costs suggest that sustainable growth could eventually surpass that of fossil fuel-based economies. However, during the transition, the focus on environmental investments may not immediately expand production capacity, resulting in temporary economic and social costs.

The solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security requires not only a technical and economic roadmap but also popular support, political will, and a rapid rollout of the solution. In fact, the main barriers to transitioning to 100 percent clean, renewable energy are neither technical nor economic; instead, they are social and political. People need to be confident that a solution is possible, to understand what changes they can make in their own lives to solve the problems, to make such changes, and to support policymakers in passing laws to speed a transition. Policymakers, themselves, need to understand the urgency, and therefore take bold steps. One of the most important factors leading to a change is education about what is needed and how fast it is needed. This chapter discusses the necessary timeline for a transition, obstacles in the way of meeting the timeline, actions that individuals can take, and policies that are needed to overcome the obstacles to reach the 100 percent goal on time.

A 100 percent WWS energy infrastructure involves electrifying or providing direct heat for all energy sectors and then providing the electricity or heat with WWS. The solution also requires interconnecting geographically dispersed WWS generators on transmission and distribution grids and providing electricity and heat for isolated microgrids. Because electricity and grids are such a large part of the solution, understanding how both work is important. This chapter discusses these issues along with the history of electromagnetism and the battle between George Westinghouse/Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison to determine whether alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC) would predominate worldwide. The chapter also discusses how transformers, motors, and generators work.

During March, 2023, the first edition of this book, No Miracles Needed, was published. The premise of the book was we had 95 percent of the technologies needed to solve the air-pollution, climate, and energy-security problems the world faces and knew how to create the rest. As such, we did not need miracle technologies to solve these three problems, contrary to what at least one well-known technologist and many pundits have claimed and what several industries have pushed for. Fast-forward two years, and what has changed? The useful technologies we need – clean, renewable electricity and heat generators; energy storage equipment; and electric devices, machines, and vehicles – have increased in number, become more efficient, penetrated deeper, and decreased in cost. A path also exists for them to solve 80 percent of the three problems by 2030 and 100 percent by 2035–2050 at low cost while creating jobs and using similar or less land than the current energy system. Meanwhile, proposed miracle technologies, now largely promoted by fossil-fuel interests, agricultural interests, and nuclear interests, have done nothing but delay a solution and simultaneously increase air pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, fossil-fuel mining, fossil-fuel infrastructure, and/or costs. This new edition, which reexamines what we need to solve the three major problems, concludes that fortunately, there are Still No Miracles Needed.

Transportation is the conveyance of people, animals, or goods from one place to another. Types of transportation include skateboards, bicycles, motorcycles, passenger vehicles, sport-utility vehicles, small trucks, large trucks, semi-trucks, buses, forklifts, cranes, tractors, bulldozers, asphalt pavers, backhoe loaders, wheel loaders, cold planers, compactors, excavators, harvesters, graders, off-road vehicles, trains, ferries, motorboats, yachts, ships, helicopters, airplanes, battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, armored combat support vehicles, mine-protected vehicles, light armored vehicles, light utility vehicles, amphibious vehicles, and more. All of these, except skateboards and bicycles, currently move primarily by burning gasoline, diesel, biodiesel, methanol, ethanol, liquefied natural gas, bunker fuel, or jet fuel in an internal combustion engine. These fuels are all derivatives of fossil fuels or biofuels. The cleanest and most efficient method of replacing these fossil-fuel and biofuel vehicles is to convert them to battery-electric vehicles or hydrogen-fuel-cell-electric vehicles. Such vehicles emit no chemicals from the tailpipe aside from, in the case of hydrogen-fuel-cell-electric vehicles, water vapor. If the electricity going into the battery or used to produce hydrogen is from WWS, then the vehicles are emission free in their energy production as well. This chapter discusses these two WWS solutions. Hydrogen combustion is not supported because it results in chemical air pollutants containing, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Ammonia combustion is not supported because it results in similar chemicals plus unburned ammonia, which is one of the most dangerous chemicals in photochemical smog due to its propensity to dissolve in water and form particulate matter.

The chapter explores millennial-scale climate variability during glacial periods and abrupt climate changes known as Dansgaard–Oeschger and Heinrich events. It begins with a description of the classification of abrupt climate changes, detailing their timing, typical periodicities and manifestations in different paleoclimate proxies and geographical locations. Progress in modeling the Dansgaard–Oeschger and Heinrich events is reviewed, starting from the early attempts to model millennial-scale climate variability to recent results from comprehensive Earth system models. This is followed by a discussion of the current state of understanding of the mechanism of Dansgaard–Oeschger and Heinrich events. It is shown that both types of millennial-scale climate variability are likely to represent spontaneous, self-sustained oscillations in different components of the Earth system, although it is possible that some interactions between these types of variabilities could lead to synchronization.

The chapter details recent and future climate changes, primarily caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. This period of time is now commonly referred to as the Anthropocene. The chapter begins with a critical discussion of the hypothesis that anthropogenic activities have already begun to significantly impact the global climate since the mid-Holocene. The climate changes observed during the last century and their attribution to human activities are presented. The concept of anthropogenic emission scenarios and projections of future climate change are then described. The results of several future model simulations are shown, and the most robust aspects of future climate change projections and their potential impacts on natural systems and humanity are discussed. Finally, the possibility of predicting the very long-term future (beyond the current millennia) is discussed and possible scenarios are presented.

Why do we want to transition all of our energy to clean, renewable energy? Why don’t we just continue burning fossil fuels until they run out, which may be in 50 to 150 years? For three major reasons. Namely, fossil fuels today cause massive air-pollution health damage, climate damage, and risks to the world’s energy security. These three problems, which have the same root cause, require immediate and drastic solutions. The longer we wait to solve these problems, the more the accumulated damage. This chapter examines each problem, in turn.

The chapter presents the diversity and mechanisms of climate variability during the late Quaternary interglacials. It begins by describing the nomenclature of interglacials and the difficulties associated with accurately defining their durations. The mechanisms of climate variability during interglacials are explored, with particular emphasis on the role of orbital forcing. The rest of the chapter outlines three of the most prominent late Quaternary interglacials – MIS 11, the Eemian interglacial and the Holocene. The cause for the long duration of MIS 11 is described. The patterns of climate change and the cause for the high sea level during the Eemian interglacial are linked to a strong orbital forcing. The climate variability during the Holocene, including the cold 8.2k event and the “green Sahara” phenomenon, is examined. The comparison between several interglacial periods with weak orbital forcing and their differences is explained using the concept of the critical insolation-CO2 relationship.