Editor's note: Today we bring you an excerpt from Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA which envisions a world of clean, renewable energy, conservation and environmental stewardship. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. writes in the introduction to the book that Solartopia “is the good, brave renewable world of sustainability, dignity, prosperity and freedom… It is beautiful, tangible, credible, necessary, and do-able.”

SOLARTOPIA: So-lar-to-pi-a. (accent on the first and third syllables): A once-futuristic vision, now the term attached to our global society of 2030, whose totally green hyper-efficient energy economy is supplied primarily by the "Solartopian Trinity" of wind, solar and bio-fuels, but which also embraces hydroelectric devices, wave and tidal harvesters, ocean thermal and geothermal sources, among others. Power is carried primarily by hydrogen, especially in the transportation system, and by electricity.

Bye-Bye King C.O.N.G.

In the Age of Nukes and Oil, the natural bounty and cerebral alchemy that gave Solartopia its long-overdue birth were widely dismissed with skepticism and scorn.

Even as eco-disaster engulfed the planet, nay-sayers harped on "insurmountable" technical barriers and "impossible" political hurdles. For "King C.O.N.G."---Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas---there were, above all, investments to protect.

What we now call King CONG was a corporate cabal of desert sheiks and petro-sharks, military madmen and jihad fanatics. With grim disdain for life itself, the monster they created coated the planet with fossil filth.

The "March of the Melt-Downs" added a catastrophic glaze of radioactive poison. Its silent death toll still kills millions.

Multiple crises in air and water, food and climate, poverty and filth, plunged us toward a ghastly end.

For some, the Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl rang the wake-up bells. For others, it was the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, followed by 2005's global-warmed Hurricane Katrina and the monumental incompetence that sank New Orleans.

Amidst the chaos, it dawned on our species that we were on the brink. And that going green might be better for business than dropping dead.

Few understood that the seismic shift to green technologies would transcend even the transformation sparked by personal computers and the worldwide web that made it possible.

The energy giants and their bloviating minions dismissed it all with searing contempt...at least in public.

In private, some weren't so sure. As the tipping point became clear, King CONG developed a lethal schizophrenia. With their immense resources, some fossil/nuke giants pioneered many of the breakthroughs that made Solartopia possible. But they also quietly grabbed up and buried key patents, delaying their development. Some of these advances were their very own, like the infamous Electric Vehicle (EV) developed and then destroyed by General Motors.

Meanwhile they washed themselves in green, advertising an affinity for solar energy and boasting of a commitment to a clean planet.

It was a confusing charade, meant to deflect the anger of an alarmed populace while buying time to wring the last few dimes out of their obsolete inventories.

When push came to shove---no matter what they said in public---most CONG corporations fought the decentralized nature of renewable energy.

Above all, they knew that as long as there was no true accounting for the damage they did to the public health and environment, fossil and nuclear fuels would appear to be "cheaper" than renewables. Nuke power's taxpayer-financed protection from true liability for catastrophic accidents and terror attacks was the ultimate symbol of this lethal dysfunction.

But some of the wiser CONG companies---the ones that survived, at least in part---also realized that Solartopia was inevitable. As was the transformation of the corporation.

When the moment came, some were ready....or so they thought