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It’s official: The world can easily make the switch to renewable energy if it wants to.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just released a report stating that energy from clean sources could account for four-fifths of the global supply within a few decades-if governments show the necessary will.

Far from being a wild-eyed organization the way right-wingers portray it to be, the IPCC is actually a very cautious institution that works through the consensus of its 194-member countries. The report’s summary had to be agreed on unanimously, word by word, line by line, The Guardian reports.

“The report shows that it is not the availability of [renewable] resources but the public policies that will either expand or constrain renewable energy development over the coming decades,” said Ramon Pichs, co-chair of one of the working groups of the organization.

There’s some really promising data in here. For instance, almost half of new capacity added to the electrical grid in 2008 and 2009 came from renewable sources. And to reach the target that the IPCC deems doable would cost a negligible 1 percent of the global GDP each year.

The report is a vindication of what many environmentalists have been claiming all along: that the transition to a clean energy future is not only desirable, but also extremely feasible. Nation columnist Mark Hertsgaard (whose new book is reviewed in the June issue of The Progressive) has been saying this for years.