[jgreen10]

As a software engineer, I am seriously considering going back to college and studying nuclear physics.

I believe an abundance of emission-free energy is about the only thing that can move the global economy to where it needs to be. Fossil fuels need to be out-competed with very cheap electricity. Once you achieve that, capitalism will ensure that all fossil fuel burning devices will gradually disappear. Other methods that try to fight capitalism (e.g. CO2 taxes) are ultimately losing battles, because the global political goodwill will never be there.

Solar is great, and cheap, until it's not. You need to cover vast areas of land in solar panels to power the whole country (incl. cars, freight, industry, ...), which is impractical and extremely costly, and still only works part of the day/year. It's an important part of the solution, but not the solution.

Nuclear is about the only thing that can provide continuous abundance at a reasonable cost, though we need new technologies.