“There is already a lot of good writing on how to ramp up renewables and restore ecosystems and create a cleaner and greener world” says Holly Jean Buck, a sustainability professor at the University of Buffalo. “In contrast, writing on how we go about ending the old is comparatively scarce.”

That’s a statement that is both true and rarely acknowledged. It’s much easier to talk about the new world before us than it is to talk about winding up, decommissioning, and dismantling the infrastructure of fossil fuels. It’s why the Paris Agreement doesn’t mention fossil fuels once. Neither did the US Green New Deal. The focus is on emissions reductions and accelerating clean technologies, and on the positive side of the transition. This book suggests we should be much more purposeful about bringing the fossil fuel era to an end.

Why? Because if we don’t set targets to wind down…