Climate

What America does is not really that important, because America does have sufficient fossil fuel production to satisfy its own energy needs. It has an incentive to continue using fossil fuels, simply because it produces them.

I think it's much more important what the big economies do that don't have that option: Europe, China, India, Africa. They should have electrified a long time ago, but haven't because of a host of reasons, mostly the cost of switching technologies.

A sudden supply shock like this can make you quickly forget costs of switching. Sort of like a catalyst in chemistry: closing the Strait of Hormuz is a little like putting platinum in your exhaust pipe, it makes things happen that wouldn't otherwise (including making them less polluting).

As strange as it seems given the whole, you know, this, the United States is only a small part of the world.

Little Donald ordering closed coal plants to reopen like a Captain Planet villain is only going to impact a relatively small number of power plants - and those coal plants are going to close back down as soon as they're legally allowed to, for the same reason they closed in the first place, because they don't make economic sense anymore.

Meanwhile, the people buying solar because they can't trust oil and gas supplies, and the governments investing in renewables because they don't want to be held hostage the next time the United States gets a bug up its ass about Iran, will still have those solar and renewables long after Little Donald has retired to his private massage parlor in Mar-A-Lago.

i can speak to this drirectly. i spent 10 years from when i was 12 to wheo i was 22 protesting at a century old coal plant that had been designed to run for 30 years. i stopped demanding its closure because it closed. wind power in West Virginia was able to take up the slack. now, 12 years later, the president signed an executive order requiring the power company re-open it. not just a blanket order that included it. it was specifically named. it is now federal policy that coal plants that have already been replaced and shut down be re-opened.

the war against the land has reached a new temprement with those who wage the war switching from passive combat to active combat. but the land will win. in may not be in my lifetime, but almost worse might be if it is. the land is undefeatable. it has existed for 6.4 billion years. humanity has been at war with it for only about 3000. we are bound to lose if we figat against the land simply because the land's victory is inevitable. it will still be here even if everyone of us is dead.

i fight to protect the land because i want to be on the winning side

Currently it’s looking like there’s a big push for renewables due to this. The underlying military threat also makes renewables attractive since their distributed nature makes them very difficult to target, unlike an energy plant.