History and future of renewable solar energy

For many thousands of years the use of solar energy has shaped human settlements and cities, farming and forestry, architecture and buildings, landscapes and territories, religious beliefs and cultures, and social relations and lifestyles on Earth. Cesare Silvi from the Italian Group for the History of Solar Energy (GSES)1 asks whether renewable solar energy could now power the world in this third millennium? He looks at the Earth system and science, ancient and modern solar ages, the nuclear or solar debate in the 1950s and today, and human habitat and agriculture.