At a federal level the US is moving backwards. But at a local and personal level, for the first time in generation, a huge number are waking up to the direct consequences of their dependency on the global oil markets and it's impacts their daily lives.
People in the US still don't like feeling like hostages, and this episode is a stark reminder of that.
The last geopolitical oil shocks of the 1970s resulted in huge efficiency increases in transportation and energy - this will likely do the same, but with current technologies.
We can go faster, as China demonstrates (~400GW of renewables deployed annually), and as someone who believes in climate change, I personally would like to go as fast as physics will allow.
Solar power is 10000x as hard to permit where I live. I was able to connect to the grid without anyone looking at it. Laterally just hooked up a 200amp secondary connection straight to the grid without anyone from the government batting an eye and on the power in the house went. If I wanted even a 200W solar panel it requires a code inspection, a marked roof plan (my house doesn't even have building plans, so how to even do this?), license, special solar bond, and a special warranty and then clearance from the power company.
Fuck that.
Many counties have made it so that solar only makes sense if you are wildcatting it out in some remote place where the planning and zoning fascists won't find you out. In such case you can install it for an order of magnitude cheaper and then it actually makes sense.
Meanwhile I can build a 200 foot tall oil derrick on my land with NO PERMIT WHATSOEVER because of course the oil companies had the political influence to exempt oil related infrastructure from requirements.
I cannot speak to where you live without knowing where you live, but https://www.gosolarapp.org/ was incubated by a DOE lab to streamline residential permitting with automation, and many states override local planning for permitting and siting utility scale solar.
As always, this is an OSI layer 8 people problem; if you can and want to, get involved.
I've thought about it. My thought was a giant oil derrick with a bunch of utilities on it. I also thought about just making the entire house part of an oil derrick.
Trump might ironically end up being the guy that pushes society over the green energy tipping point.
EVs were all the rage a few years ago, but they were expensive and gas prices collapsed. However if we get another $5-$6/gal gut punch, a lot of people will probably say "You know what? I'm done with this shit."
For much of my late teens and early 20s, I was hearing about people using vegetable oil as a substitute for diesel. If that still works, there may be some additional impact that both limits the fuel price and increases food prices: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/272515844?_gl...
To the point of the comment you're replying to, US cars are infamously inefficient compared to European cars, and also there's that old quote about how "In the US 100 years is a long time, while in Europe 100 miles is a long way", so the US can still get a price shock even with cheaper fuel than the UK/EU.
Vegetable oil will cause long-term damage in modern diesel engines with direct injection or common rail injection systems. Older indirect injection diesel engines could tolerate it much better because of the pre-combustion stage.
Well Trump doesn't exactly have the sufficient work ethic, mental acuity or sense of purpose to as much damage (and hopefully not more than a handful of years left on this earth in general to end up having to shot himself in a bunker).
If a participant in a war, in good faith, wants to negotiate long-term cessation of hostilities, they wouldn't kill the leaders of the other side. Because who the fuck will you negotiate with after? Who surrenders? That's why historically people don't do that in wars. Israel/The US just want to destroy Iran as a nation state. Thinking that there are going to be any talks with someone with a mandate from the Iranian people in weeks or months is misguided. This is a decades-long thing. We better buckle up.
> If a participant in a war, in good faith, wants to negotiate long-term cessation of hostilities, they wouldn't kill the leaders of the other side.
Assassination of leaders is very common in war.
Nobody claims the US wanted to negotiate a cease fire with the old regime, they want to negotiate it with whatever phoenix rises from its ashes.
> Because who the fuck will you negotiate with after? Who surrenders? That's why historically people don't do that in wars.
You negotiate with the power structure that remains, it could be equally oppressive figures from the same organizations, it could be opposition leaders, it could be labor unions, it could be whomever locally consolidates power. Put public keys on the shells and rockets. One can not credibly claim lack of agency while firing rockets and drones. Old enough to fire? Old enough to get hit!
I just described a protocol to identify who is in power, administration-agnostic Pentagon can demand the Iranians hold a crypto party bootstrap their own web of trust and forward the keys through physicists then IAEA. The web of trust can be established before any voting or alliance forming.
If Iran predelegated all hostilities in the event of regime decapitation, they effectively sent their troops (and population) on a never ending suicide mission.
The longer power vacuum persists the more casualties result.
Ultimately it is more in the interest of both Iran regime and population to even bootstrap this web of trust without Pentagon demanding it!
> Israel/The US just want to destroy Iran as a nation state. Thinking that there are going to be any talks with someone with a mandate from the Iranian people in weeks or months is misguided. This is a decades-long thing. We better buckle up.
Why does establishing the local power nexus necessarily take decades? The faster it is unambiguously established, the faster negotiation can actually start.
I believe you are fundamentally misunderstanding the actors and their motivations here, in a similar way to the US administration (which also explains this incredibly self-sabotaging war in the first place).
1) The US and Israel have repeatedly assassinated Iranian negotiators when they did come to the table. Who's gonna want to negotiate at this point and put themselves on the kill list next? The repeated shady dealings have ruined the reputation of the US as a party one can even negotiate with.
2) You have to understand that Iranian leadership (but also big parts of society!) are actually religious nuts. It's not all for show. They believe that their sacrifice on the earthly sphere will be rewarded in the afterlife. Their considerations aren't immediate material wealth and well-being the same way they are for the Americans. They're willing to endure this long-term pain for what they see as the longer-term reward of punishing the Great Satan.
From the Iranian perspective, they are winning and keeping at it is the rational move.
The US navigated itself into a no-win situation, driven by misguided illusions of imperial power, hubris and (in the case of Hegseth) toxic masculinity.
> 1) The US and Israel have repeatedly assassinated Iranian negotiators when they
did come to the table. Who's gonna want to negotiate at this point and put themselves on the kill list next? The repeated shady dealings have ruined the reputation of the US as a party one can even negotiate with.
"coming to the table" is an expression conveying sincere negotiation. One can physically or telecomatically "come to the table" without actually coming to the table!
Consider how North Korea kept pretending coming to the table until it was too late! Perhaps you want another North Korea in the middle east, but I believe most on HN don't!
I would even say that publically confessing what was done to Mahsa Amini (both internationally and domestically) for a prolonged period would be a precondition for accepting ceasefire conditions.
You can not reliably negotiate with a counterparty that is lying in your face.
2) Iranian leadership perfectly understands what they did to Mahsa Amini for example. They can't seriously believe they will go to this afterlife, if they felt they had nothing to hide they would be open about it and portray without shame what they did to her. They use religion the same way the Inquisition used religion: as a loyalty indicator. The actions of such actors in Iran are better explained by those of someone who became complicit (intentionally or by the trickery and pressure of others) and from then on feel aligned by a survival mechanism to keep the skeletons in the closet.
The US can very much find progress, depending on their level or lack of respect for international law, in the sense of civil disobedience (sometimes you break rules to improve a situation): regardless of legality, how would Iranian high society react if US progressively bombs neighborhoods starting from the richest neighborhoods (with sufficient advance warning). As you turn the elites homeless they either display the homeless fate to the next echelon of high society of what would happen to them, or they take the housing of the next echelon of high society for themselves... This puts pressure on exactly the people who were calling the shots in Iran. Legal? not at all! About as legal as signing chemical weapons conventions treaty and then applying hydrogen cyanide on Mahsa Amini...
None of this is relevant, because you still incorrectly assume the US is the one coming at this from a position of strength and capable of extracting concessions.
The world economy, the oil price, the reality in Hormuz and the Iranian regime disagree with you. None of what you propose is capable of changing this.
If the US were to bomb neighborhoods, it would strengthen the resolve of Iranians. Hard power is not an effective solution for the problem the US created.
The inquisition parallel is somewhat apt, but more accurate would be the crusades. Christians took the risk of death because of their religious beliefs, the same is the case here.
Lets take a step back: the reason governments sponsor things like basic science research, solar panel development, space projects etc. Is because they are high risk and capital intensive. The reason industry doesn't do it is because it is too long term. The economy mostly concerns itself with short term incentives and threats. That the world economy votes economically to let Iran be, is just short term financial security, it ignores the threats that Iran poses.
Obviously lots of possibilities exist, for example in the most absurdist scenario, the US demands that Iran evacuates, and announces nuclear carpet bombing plenty ahead of time. Likely? No. Possible? Yes. Iran can not do the same (yet), and the US would like to keep it that way, they don't want another North Korea. They understand the long term price. If other nations refuse to drop their fossil fuel habits, they can either pay the premium price (directly or indirectly by helping secure the Strait of Hormuz) or drop their fossil fuel habits. It's unsustainable in the long run anyway...
What's wrong with another North Korea? They've been much better behaved on the global stage than the US has been. I'd much rather have another North Korea than any state after America's image.
I also strongly disagree with you equating war crimes and R&D.
this isn't a poll about what you or I believe, it's pointing to the existence of at least one lower-noise avenue than the ones pursued
observe that your position is not verifiable by the world at large, while cryptographically signed messages would be veriable by us individuals across the whole world.
one may counter that the US could make up a large number of fake crypto key / Iranian associations; but surely to the extent that Iran has a functioning regime, surely it could use the IAEA as a channel to communicate the Iranian cryptographic key observations like:
* Khamenei confirms meeting Aragchi in person and Aragchi has chosen such and such a public key
* Aragchi confirms meeting Khamenei in person and Khamenei has chosen such and such a public key
* and so on for all players interested in participating in confirming the present regime or establishing a new one amidst chaos.
(if you don't have control over your physicists at a nuclear power plant, then you don't have control over your regime)
I don't oppose anything. The protocol can't be followed if the white house is making things up (which they've been doing since the beginning of this war -- remember we've already "won" multiple times?). It's great that you have a protocol for verifying identity, that's a great cryptography use-case. It doesn't help when the person talking is just lying though, hence there's no proof available, cryptographic or otherwise.
The IAEA is an international body, IF your interpretation was correct and my proposal were followed we'd see messages by Iran that verify such and such public keys for such and such figures and functionaries in Iran (through IAEA), with Trump claiming without proof that they made concessions, since in your scenario it should be in Trumps proclaimed interest to publish such a signed message, so it would help in the case that Trump were lying. Protocol instructs to ignore any communications by counterparty that was not signed. Unsigned communications don't count as happened.
> I don't understand how both the international community as well as say US is dealing with the Iran / Straight of Hormuz crisis.
I don't understand how Americans mistakenly keep referring to the Strait of Hormuz as the Straight of Hormuz in spite of English being their first language.
A comment about ongoing war is replied with spelling pedantics?
Yes while even mapmakers etc during 1500-1700's sometimes used "Straight", the subsequent standardizations in English selected "Strait" as the standard spelling.
How would you know if English is or isn't my first language?
Israel's not even close to being the biggest threat for the way of living in Europe.
This is because Israel's neighbours who they are attacking aren't in Europe, and also there's a lot of tourists in Europe that Israel would like to be visiting them, but the point isn't why, it's just that Israel are not themselves a threat to Europe.
USA's probably number 2 threat after Russia. But neither Israel's nor the USA's belligerence regarding Iran seems to be so much as painting a target on European backs this time around. Which may be because Iran noticed the USA threatening Europe, IDK.
- Israel foments conflicts and urges/pressurizes the US to fight them out on its behalf - already confirmed by General Wesley Clark who talked about the Seven Nation Plan.
- Refugees flee those conflicts and move to the closest nations providing asylum en masse - Turkey and then the EU.
- Israeli and other Jewish NGOs facilitate refugee migrations to Europe in the name of humanitarianism.
The US at least helps/used to help protect Europe via NATO. Israel doesn't.
None of those things are a "biggest threat for the way of living in Europe", which is what I was quoting from the now flagged comment from juliusceasar.
Not even with the asylum seekers arriving via Turkey; though as the Turkish leadership actively tried to use the flow of asylum seekers to extract concessions from Europe, IMO Turkey gets the blame for that.
The US indeed used to help protect Europe via NATO, but even back then (so, two years ago), the much bigger metaphorical footprint of the US vs. Israel means the US posed a bigger threat than Israel currently does just by mis-stepping.
Israel may be important to the US, but the nation is just not that potent in any direction in Europe.
If your energy policy was "hope the Ayatollah doesn't have a bad hair day", you didn't have an energy policy.
Europe could have left their nuclear power plants turned on. Or drilled in the north sea. Or built LNG import terminals. These were all policy choices that had nothing to do with the US or Israel.
EVs are still a bit underwhelming wrt range - ideally either 450miles/700km or 5 minute 20->80% recharge at an acceptable price (35k EUR) should be the norm. For cities it doesn't matter but for longer vacation trips it's a must, nobody wants to waste 3 hours on a 1100km trip recharging. Chinese EVs might be able to deliver it at this price point (BYD) but EU adds additional (up to) 45% in extra fees to penalize Chinese EV makers and to prevent collapse of EU car makers.
117 comments
People in the US still don't like feeling like hostages, and this episode is a stark reminder of that.
The last geopolitical oil shocks of the 1970s resulted in huge efficiency increases in transportation and energy - this will likely do the same, but with current technologies.
https://electrek.co/2026/03/25/eia-new-solar-wind-storage-ca...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy-manufactur...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/balcony-solar-tak...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/were-harvesting-t...
https://www.brightsaver.org/publicly-filed-states
> Solar power makes up 51% of the planned 2026 capacity additions, followed by battery storage at 28% and wind at 14%.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transi...
https://www.cfr.org/articles/china-is-planning-decades-ahead...
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/10/1119941/china-en...
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-renewable-photo-essay
https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202601/30/cont...
The economics of it are just too good. Adding grid connectivity seems to be the bottleneck right now.
Fuck that.
Many counties have made it so that solar only makes sense if you are wildcatting it out in some remote place where the planning and zoning fascists won't find you out. In such case you can install it for an order of magnitude cheaper and then it actually makes sense.
Meanwhile I can build a 200 foot tall oil derrick on my land with NO PERMIT WHATSOEVER because of course the oil companies had the political influence to exempt oil related infrastructure from requirements.
As always, this is an OSI layer 8 people problem; if you can and want to, get involved.
(joking, but wow that really does highlight how absolutely dysfunctional US regulation is, no wonder everyone over there hates their government)
EVs were all the rage a few years ago, but they were expensive and gas prices collapsed. However if we get another $5-$6/gal gut punch, a lot of people will probably say "You know what? I'm done with this shit."
People around me are expecting to see diesel at £2/l soon.
To the point of the comment you're replying to, US cars are infamously inefficient compared to European cars, and also there's that old quote about how "In the US 100 years is a long time, while in Europe 100 miles is a long way", so the US can still get a price shock even with cheaper fuel than the UK/EU.
[1](https://archive.ph/NLJWJ)
The World works in mysterious ways.
> If a participant in a war, in good faith, wants to negotiate long-term cessation of hostilities, they wouldn't kill the leaders of the other side.
Assassination of leaders is very common in war. Nobody claims the US wanted to negotiate a cease fire with the old regime, they want to negotiate it with whatever phoenix rises from its ashes.
> Because who the fuck will you negotiate with after? Who surrenders? That's why historically people don't do that in wars.
You negotiate with the power structure that remains, it could be equally oppressive figures from the same organizations, it could be opposition leaders, it could be labor unions, it could be whomever locally consolidates power. Put public keys on the shells and rockets. One can not credibly claim lack of agency while firing rockets and drones. Old enough to fire? Old enough to get hit!
I just described a protocol to identify who is in power, administration-agnostic Pentagon can demand the Iranians hold a crypto party bootstrap their own web of trust and forward the keys through physicists then IAEA. The web of trust can be established before any voting or alliance forming.
If Iran predelegated all hostilities in the event of regime decapitation, they effectively sent their troops (and population) on a never ending suicide mission.
The longer power vacuum persists the more casualties result.
Ultimately it is more in the interest of both Iran regime and population to even bootstrap this web of trust without Pentagon demanding it!
> Israel/The US just want to destroy Iran as a nation state. Thinking that there are going to be any talks with someone with a mandate from the Iranian people in weeks or months is misguided. This is a decades-long thing. We better buckle up.
Why does establishing the local power nexus necessarily take decades? The faster it is unambiguously established, the faster negotiation can actually start.
1) The US and Israel have repeatedly assassinated Iranian negotiators when they did come to the table. Who's gonna want to negotiate at this point and put themselves on the kill list next? The repeated shady dealings have ruined the reputation of the US as a party one can even negotiate with.
2) You have to understand that Iranian leadership (but also big parts of society!) are actually religious nuts. It's not all for show. They believe that their sacrifice on the earthly sphere will be rewarded in the afterlife. Their considerations aren't immediate material wealth and well-being the same way they are for the Americans. They're willing to endure this long-term pain for what they see as the longer-term reward of punishing the Great Satan.
From the Iranian perspective, they are winning and keeping at it is the rational move.
The US navigated itself into a no-win situation, driven by misguided illusions of imperial power, hubris and (in the case of Hegseth) toxic masculinity.
> 1) The US and Israel have repeatedly assassinated Iranian negotiators when they
did come to the table. Who's gonna want to negotiate at this point and put themselves on the kill list next? The repeated shady dealings have ruined the reputation of the US as a party one can even negotiate with."coming to the table" is an expression conveying sincere negotiation. One can physically or telecomatically "come to the table" without actually coming to the table!
Consider how North Korea kept pretending coming to the table until it was too late! Perhaps you want another North Korea in the middle east, but I believe most on HN don't!
I would even say that publically confessing what was done to Mahsa Amini (both internationally and domestically) for a prolonged period would be a precondition for accepting ceasefire conditions.
You can not reliably negotiate with a counterparty that is lying in your face.
2) Iranian leadership perfectly understands what they did to Mahsa Amini for example. They can't seriously believe they will go to this afterlife, if they felt they had nothing to hide they would be open about it and portray without shame what they did to her. They use religion the same way the Inquisition used religion: as a loyalty indicator. The actions of such actors in Iran are better explained by those of someone who became complicit (intentionally or by the trickery and pressure of others) and from then on feel aligned by a survival mechanism to keep the skeletons in the closet.
The US can very much find progress, depending on their level or lack of respect for international law, in the sense of civil disobedience (sometimes you break rules to improve a situation): regardless of legality, how would Iranian high society react if US progressively bombs neighborhoods starting from the richest neighborhoods (with sufficient advance warning). As you turn the elites homeless they either display the homeless fate to the next echelon of high society of what would happen to them, or they take the housing of the next echelon of high society for themselves... This puts pressure on exactly the people who were calling the shots in Iran. Legal? not at all! About as legal as signing chemical weapons conventions treaty and then applying hydrogen cyanide on Mahsa Amini...
The world economy, the oil price, the reality in Hormuz and the Iranian regime disagree with you. None of what you propose is capable of changing this.
If the US were to bomb neighborhoods, it would strengthen the resolve of Iranians. Hard power is not an effective solution for the problem the US created.
The inquisition parallel is somewhat apt, but more accurate would be the crusades. Christians took the risk of death because of their religious beliefs, the same is the case here.
Obviously lots of possibilities exist, for example in the most absurdist scenario, the US demands that Iran evacuates, and announces nuclear carpet bombing plenty ahead of time. Likely? No. Possible? Yes. Iran can not do the same (yet), and the US would like to keep it that way, they don't want another North Korea. They understand the long term price. If other nations refuse to drop their fossil fuel habits, they can either pay the premium price (directly or indirectly by helping secure the Strait of Hormuz) or drop their fossil fuel habits. It's unsustainable in the long run anyway...
I also strongly disagree with you equating war crimes and R&D.
>
perhaps the White House is making upThere's your answer.
this isn't a poll about what you or I believe, it's pointing to the existence of at least one lower-noise avenue than the ones pursued
observe that your position is not verifiable by the world at large, while cryptographically signed messages would be veriable by us individuals across the whole world.
one may counter that the US could make up a large number of fake crypto key / Iranian associations; but surely to the extent that Iran has a functioning regime, surely it could use the IAEA as a channel to communicate the Iranian cryptographic key observations like:
* Khamenei confirms meeting Aragchi in person and Aragchi has chosen such and such a public key
* Aragchi confirms meeting Khamenei in person and Khamenei has chosen such and such a public key
* and so on for all players interested in participating in confirming the present regime or establishing a new one amidst chaos.
(if you don't have control over your physicists at a nuclear power plant, then you don't have control over your regime)
Why would you oppose a protocol that vindicates the correctness of your interpretation if you are so certain that you are right?
Perhaps because you don't feel very certain that you are right...
> I don't understand how both the international community as well as say US is dealing with the Iran / Straight of Hormuz crisis.
I don't understand how Americans mistakenly keep referring to the Strait of Hormuz as the Straight of Hormuz in spite of English being their first language.
Yes while even mapmakers etc during 1500-1700's sometimes used "Straight", the subsequent standardizations in English selected "Strait" as the standard spelling.
How would you know if English is or isn't my first language?
This is because Israel's neighbours who they are attacking aren't in Europe, and also there's a lot of tourists in Europe that Israel would like to be visiting them, but the point isn't why, it's just that Israel are not themselves a threat to Europe.
USA's probably number 2 threat after Russia. But neither Israel's nor the USA's belligerence regarding Iran seems to be so much as painting a target on European backs this time around. Which may be because Iran noticed the USA threatening Europe, IDK.
- Refugees flee those conflicts and move to the closest nations providing asylum en masse - Turkey and then the EU.
- Israeli and other Jewish NGOs facilitate refugee migrations to Europe in the name of humanitarianism.
The US at least helps/used to help protect Europe via NATO. Israel doesn't.
Not even with the asylum seekers arriving via Turkey; though as the Turkish leadership actively tried to use the flow of asylum seekers to extract concessions from Europe, IMO Turkey gets the blame for that.
The US indeed used to help protect Europe via NATO, but even back then (so, two years ago), the much bigger metaphorical footprint of the US vs. Israel means the US posed a bigger threat than Israel currently does just by mis-stepping.
Israel may be important to the US, but the nation is just not that potent in any direction in Europe.
Europe could have left their nuclear power plants turned on. Or drilled in the north sea. Or built LNG import terminals. These were all policy choices that had nothing to do with the US or Israel.