Conversation

If I was in charge of energy security for this remote island country, I would be placing an order for some container ships stacked with solar panels, batteries, and the hardware required to hook them up. Today. Get those things on their way here before any more shenanigans ensue.

I'd also get some ships loaded with e-bikes and small, budget EVs. A bunch of electric semi tractors will be needed, too. Not to mention spinning up workshops to retrofit some of the existing fleet of fossil farm machinery with motors and batteries.

But as all that stuff made its way to our ports, I would be starting the work of electrifying rail lines and getting all the engineers with appropriate chops to build us trains and railcars by repurposing stuff that's been mothballed over the decades. It goes without saying that we'd need more buses in service everywhere, too.

Transportation is our biggest vulnerability as we go over the edge of the fossil cliff.

We could have spent the last thirty years planning and executing a transition on the basis of climate breakdown only to find that it also gave us energy independence. Instead, we've meekly allowed the fossil billionaires and their lackeys to keep the cycle of dependency in place, and we're about to find out what collapse might look like.