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.
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."
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.
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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.
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."