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We've done it before. How Not to Lose Hope in the Fight Against Ecological Disaster by Kate Marvel. Read by Norma Butykofer.

Music by Norma Butykofer. Once upon a time, the world was powered by whale.

Oil made from whale blubber burns cleanly and well,

though it smells strongly of fish.

It was, for a while, the perfect fuel.

To meet the growing demand, whales were hunted almost to extinction.

And then we discovered that oil could come from the ground.

Lamps once lit by rendered blubber were swiftly changed over to run on what Americans call kerosene and the British call paraffin.

Later, those lamps were changed to run on electricity.

And instead of burning oil in the lamps themselves, we began to burn it in power plants miles away.

This is where we find ourselves today. When a fossil fuel is combusted, it releases energy, which boils water, which turns to steam,

which drives a turbine, which generates electricity. This is an almost comically inefficient

process, requiring immense amounts of material, more than 8 billion tons of coal and 4 trillion

cubic meters of fossil gas every year. And given the basic chemistry of

combustion, it's unavoidable that burning all this stuff leads to an immense buildup of carbon

dioxide in the atmosphere. Worse, fossil gas itself is made of methane, shorter lived in the

atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but more than 80 times more potent while it lasts.

Around a quarter of annual greenhouse gas emissions come from using fossil fuels to generate electricity.

To have a hope of limiting warming, this has to change.

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