If you were God for a day, what kind of energy would you choose to power civilization?

Looking at the planet God created, the choices currently being exploited seem few and largely unappealing. Oil, natural gas, coal: These provide comparatively abundant energy, but are terribly polluting and non-renewable: finite—here today, then gone forever. Peak oil is becoming increasingly evident, and civilization is about to be altered.

Thus, many people are looking to renewable energy sources to stave off economic and societal collapse. But they face an incredible challenge.

As Peter Haug, secretary general of the European Nuclear Society, pointed out years ago, most experts agree that technical limitations prevent renewable energies like wind, solar, hydrothermal, and geothermal power from ever providing more than 15 to 20 percent of the world’s energy needs.

The best rivers and lakes are already dammed. Windmills are becoming more efficient, but still struggle to produce electricity at rates comparable to fossil fuels. Solar technologies are capturing, concentrating and storing ever more of the sun’s energy. Economies of scale are kicking in and costs are coming down, but still, solar doesn’t come close to the return on energy investment of coal or natural gas.

The green revolution is a dud so far—even from an economic perspective. As the Los Angeles Times recently said, “The ‘greening’ of the country, including the creation of green jobs, has proved unworkable and expensive.” Even the New York Times admits that government records show the effort to stimulate green jobs has “largely failed.”

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The world desperately needs a source of clean, abundant, inexpensive energy.

If it could find one, it would revolutionize the lives of everyone on the planet.

So what would you do to solve the world’s energy problem? Instead of asking yourself what you would do if you were God, why not consider what God did do?

Put on some sunglasses. And look up.

Controlling the power of the sun, the energy of the stars themselves, has been a goal of both scientists and dreamers for centuries. And today we are scratching a little deeper than the surface, with huge advances being made in a field of physics, developments once thought to be closer to science fiction than science.

But what if instead of just harvesting the rays of the sun that make it to the surface of the Earth, the physics behind the sun’s incredible energy output could be replicated here? What if scientists could imitate the sun fusion process and cause two hydrogen nuclei to combine together to create helium, giving off colossal amounts of heat energy in the process?

Scientists are already doing it—albeit on a much smaller scale, and for very short periods of time.

The lure of commercially viable nuclear fusion power generation is compelling. It produces zero “greenhouse gasses.” No radioactive waste is produced. There is no chance of a catastrophic Fukishima-type meltdown. It is a million times more efficient than today’s nuclear power plants—and a trillion times more efficient than fossil fuels.

Best of all, the hydrogen needed to power this reaction can be obtained from the oceans—the largest geographical feature on the planet.

Commercial fusion has some governments and private investors salivating. When professors Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox were asked to name the most pressing scientific challenge facing humanity, they both gave the same answer: producing electricity from fusion energy. The prize? A source of clean, inexpensive, limitless energy to power human development for centuries.

But here is the catch, and it is a big one. Replicating what happens in the heart of a star isn’t an easy task. Governments have spent billions trying to do just that, and the best they can show for it is the ability to produce and sustain 16 million watts of energy output—for one second.

Producing energy for a second may not sound like much, but consider that back in the 1970s the best that could be achieved was one tenth of a watt, produced for a fraction of a second. That is a billion-fold increase, notes the New York Times. Do that again, and we are in business.

While the physics of nuclear fusion is well understood, the engineering requirements to control the process are very challenging. For example, how do you handle the gas-like hydrogen plasma formed by the colliding hydrogen nuclei when it routinely reaches 150 million degrees centigrade? It literally melts away anything it touches.

But advances in technology are now close to overcoming this problem. Some scientists are using advanced magnets to not only suspend but deftly manipulate the almost unfathomably hot plasma. Others use lasers to control how many hydrogen atoms are allowed to fuse, vastly lowering temperatures.

Challenges remain, but a race is on. The first nation to develop a viable fusion power station could literally write its own check. The ability to build minivan-size suns able to supply the energy needs of whole countries—for thousands of years—holds the potential to change the balance of power and the world forever. It would make the holders of that technology unfathomably rich. If used properly, this alone could virtually eliminate poverty.

The European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have all teamed up to work toward developing a fusion power prototype by 2020.

“Now some people are cynical about that,” says Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York. “They say, ‘Hey, give me a break. We’ve been there. We’ve heard the claims. Every 20 years they say that fusion is 20 years from now. Twenty years come, and we’re still no closer to fusion.’ There is a difference. This time we physicists think that we have the technical problems licked.”

Yet, if there is a race for fusion, according to the Times, America is lagging. The most advanced research facilities today are in Europe and Asia. And the world’s first operational fusion power plant is scheduled to be built in France in 2019.

The prize is enormous: The sun produces enough energy in one second to power the world’s current needs for a million years.

It is dazzling to think about what the world would be like with virtually unlimited amounts of inexpensive, nonpolluting energy. And what if the people in control of it were unselfish and generous and shared this radiant power with all of mankind? What a luminous world!

Believe it or not, the Bible describes a time when the world will not face energy shortages—nor the dark manifestations of human nature often associated with them. This 1,000-year period, described in Isaiah 11 and Micah 4, commonly referred to as the Millennium, is described as a time of peace and abundant prosperity. It is a time period in which God will intervene to solve mankind’s problems.

This utopian time, depicted in Zephaniah, will also be a time of one language. Scientists will then be able to truly collaborate on blazing, Earth-changing advancements. And it will be a time of cooperation, not competition. As physicists from each nation understand and implement God’s physical laws, these awesome advancements will be shared with all.

Scientific understanding will be illuminated like never before. “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

Look forward to that dazzling day. Glittering cities with light to spare; zero-pollution, high-speed transportation systems; clean, powerful industries, and who knows what else we might achieve using God’s awesome laws? Stay hopeful. That incandescently happy time is coming soon.