Politicians from around the world are in Glasgow for the 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change. That the disastrous impacts of climate change are increasingly evident is testimony to many things, not least the practical shortcomings of the first 25 UN meetings. Why are we where we are? The science is clear; politics, much less so.

But do we know what to do? Do we have the technologies in hand to decarbonize economies in ways that are compatible with how people want to live? Can we do this?

Saul Griffith, Australian inventor and engineer—and a past winner of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize—insists that the answer is emphatically yes. We don’t need technological miracles, he says; we have all the technology we need to transform the United States from laggard to leader in the effort to change the arc of the warming climate. And, if the United States can do it, everyone can.