solar power

I think we can assess one outcome of this stupid war already: Both the emotional valence and the structural understanding of different energy sources has shifted, and for good. Meaning takes a very long time to erode, but when it does the switch can come quickly; we’re living at a hinge moment, and on the other side of the door is a different world. We tend to think about energy in hard terms—kilowatts, dollars—but in the end our visceral sense of the path forward is what matters most, because attitude informs decision without us even quite realizing it. The world between our ears has changed, decisively, in the direction of renewable power from the sun and wind

Let’s begin by understanding the deep, underpinning role that fossil fuel has played in modernity, both its reality and its psychology. What we call the Industrial Revolution means simply that we learned to control the combustion of coal, then oil, then gas, and in the process gave human life a sweeping set of new powers. Suddenly mobility—the train, the car, the plane—was easy; suddenly muscle power gave way to the genies in a barrel of petroleum, summonable at will to perform endless tasks. Fossil fuel was freedom and power, and this understanding—again, both emotional and structural—set in very deep.