Out Of Time

                                                                                          written 12 July, 2026

                                                                                      published 19 July, 2026

 

            "Out of time" can mean "running out of time", which is what the Republicans are facing right now.

            Three weeks ago, with the triumphant announcement that the war on Iran was "over" and the Strait of Hormuz was open, the economic system responded like the worries were over: oil prices dropped and stocks rose every day.  We now see that reaction was premature.  Even during that brief pause, shipping traffic was only a quarter of prewar levels, which means the world has at least 10 percent less oil every day.  With no real solution, we are living on borrowed time, daily depleting strategic reserves, ignoring the continued shortfall of the energy source that powers most of the global economy.

            The president started this war as a distraction from his personal political problems, expecting a quick victory, much like Putin did when he invaded Ukraine over four years ago.  Instead, having spent billions of dollars and depleting critical weapons stockpiles, we have a stalemate in the war, a ticking clock on when energy shortages hit home, broken trust with our allies in the region, and only 16 weeks before the midterm election.  

            Even if the Democrats take the House, and possibly the Senate, this president has destroyed so much in America that it will take a long time to repair the damage.  It looks like everything is falling apart, or being corrupted: unaffordable health care, housing, food, fuel, pandemic unpreparedness, disastrous public infrastructure upgrades, defunded national parks and energy efficiency standards.  The list is long, and new disasters make the news each week.  Even Republicans are getting concerned.  It's enough to make people despair. 

            But perspective affects conclusions.  Consider a caterpillar's metamorphosis in the cocoon into a butterfly.  From one perspective, it is death and decomposition, from the other it is assembly and birth, both part of a complete cycle of life.  This can be viewed as the falling away of one form, naturally making room for a new one.

            What is unfolding globally looks like a similar process.  The old pattern is separation, exclusive gain, and domination.  Having existed for thousands of years, it looks like "that's the way it is".  It has failed repeatedly, because the long-term trend is toward inclusion.   

            The miracle of America is the aspiration that all people are equal under the law.  We know this is still a long way from being universally true, but in just 250 years we have included more people: women, non-whites, and the original inhabitants of this continent.  Some still fight to get back to when only white men of property set the rules, but this is so retrograde the country will tear itself apart before that happens again.  The driving force here is not just the ideals of our founders, but the power of the natural world, just like the force that changes the caterpillar into the butterfly.

            The core of all spiritual traditions, as opposed to the dogmas of their religious organizations, recognizes the unity of nature.  Beginning a century ago, even western science came to understand this truth, with the rise of quantum mechanics.  Matter, the foundation for all things, is a form of resonant energy, appearing as individual energy peaks arising out of a vast ocean of energy.  Even though we don't normally experience that truth directly, the resulting powerful technologies have transformed our world.   

            One of the mind twisting elements of quantum mechanics is the concept of non-locality: matter is not bounded by the four-dimensional limitations of space/time.  Sunlight, consisting of photons which have no mass, can only exist at the speed of light, and therefore experience no time or distance, yet is fundamental to all material life.  Reality seems to exist everywhere all at once.

            The antidotal evidence that consciousness is non local has existed for centuries.  While not included in the dominant western culture, it has been part of aboriginal cultures everywhere.

            This current period has been foretold as a time when consciousness evolves, awakening to its unity nature.  Our culture of separation, in the name of ignorant dogma and economic profit, is killing the planet and all life living here.  This exhibits no more wisdom than beer yeast, which overpopulates and dies in its own waste.  

            We can do better.  By consciously choosing love and gratitude in every moment, and opening to non-local processes, such as synchronicity and inspiration, we can experience our unity reality.  We begin to step "out of time".  

 

An Inconvenient Truth

                                                                                            written 5 July, 2026

                                                                                      published 12 July, 2026

 

            On July 1st, 2026, the Ukiah Daily Journal published a critique of Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", written by Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a visiting fellow at the Stanford Hoover Institute.  The Hoover Institute is an American public policy think tank which promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and limited government.  The Copenhagen Consensus seeks to establish priorities based on rational prioritization by economic analysis, assuming the validity of free markets to achieve the best outcomes.

            The article stated that Gore's climate concern was fear based, leading to wasted climate investment, which has produced no discernable benefit.  It acknowledged there is some change in climate, but proposed solutions like sea walls, drought tolerant crops, and early warning systems, while investing in "advanced nuclear" and fusion to be able to undercut fossil fuel prices.  It touted as fact that climate change might reduce global GDP by a few percent by 2100, and a UN report that by that time an average person will be 450% richer.  Nothing to worry about here.

            However, money is a societal convention, while the environment is the reality we inhabit.  It is understandable that monied interests downplay climate concerns, because money is easily divorced from reality, as the long history of financial bubbles demonstrates.  Consider the concept of a "limited liability corporation", which makes financial sense for the corporate owners, but allows unlimited damages to be pushed off onto others, who don't gain any profit from the business.

             It should be remembered these are the folks where gushing about Enron right up until a few weeks before it declared complete bankruptcy in October, 2001.  These were also the people driving the subprime housing boom that crashed in 2007.  That little mistake cost about 40% of GDP in production and income losses, and took 7 years to regain job losses.

            Even if wealth for the average person grows, there is no indication it will be evenly distributed.  With a trillionaire and almost 500 billionaires, income inequity in the U.S. is now 3 times greater than the Gilded Age in the late 1800's, while 60 percent now live pay check to pay check.  

            Furthermore, stock market levels don't tell the whole economic story.  Almost half of S&P 500 valuation comes from AI companies, most of which have yet to show a profit.  In the last 4 years, AI power demands have increased by 40 percent, much faster than the grid can expand production.  The AI economic bubble is vulnerable, running up against real world power and water limitations.  

            Beyond the questionable economics presented as the foundation of the article, we have real world information about the increasing climate impact.  Last week, extreme heat made global headlines.  Europe, now warming faster than other parts of the inhabited planet, had two heat waves so far this summer.  The last one killed 1,300 people and forced several nuclear power plants to close during the peak power demand.

            In the U.S., fourth of July was the hottest on record, with half the country experiencing extreme heat.  The heat index (temperature and humidity impact) was 113°F in Washington, DC, forcing the Great American State Fair to close midday, and extreme rains delayed the fireworks by two hours.

             Fire dangers are increasing, along with fire insurance bills.  This year in the U.S., over 35,000 fires burned 4,700 square miles, exceeding the 10 year average.  The atmospheric content of carbon dioxide keeps increasing every year, guaranteeing this kind of fire damage will get worse over time.  

            This is a direct consequence of the big money interests focusing only on short term profit, with no regard for larger impacts or long-term consequences.  Within economic thinking, the future is devalued relative to the present.

            There was a recent report that the worst case scenario for future climate impact had been downgrade a bit.  The president, in his infinite wisdom, claimed this proved the entire climate crisis is a hoax.  However, what the report actually recognized was the impact of the global investments away from fossil fuels.  Despite American's head in the sand approach to the issue, the world sees renewables as the path forward, not primarily because of the climate crisis, but because renewables with storage are already cheaper than fossil fuels.  By renewables I mean wind, solar, geothermal, and storage, not the still fictional fusion, nor any form of nuclear, which has a waste problem that hasn't been addressed for 80 years.

 

Lurking In The Depths

                                                                                          written 28 June, 2026

                                                                                         published 5 July, 2026

 

            Once upon a time, a king commanded the tide to halt.  The king knew the limits to his power, and was trying to teach his foolish advisors about those limits.  However, our "king" is the fool, believing he is the boss of reality.  Perhaps this comes from his upbringing by a sociopathic father, or a life of being catered to as a very rich man, or his decades as a reality TV character.  He acts like he is playing president in a reality show, where he gets to decide all the plot twists, just on his say so.

            In fact, our distractor in chief is skilled.  Witness the still unresolved war on Iran, the "vandals" in the reflecting pool, the "taxpayer free" multi-billion dollar ballroom, the constant effort to restrict voters, the quest to fund his goon squad, and the new fear of "godless communist Democrats".  These are all efforts to hide his pedophile involvement with Epstein, and his massive family corruption.  However, behind all the political posturing, there is an even a more profound issue being ignored: the growing climate crisis.

            With the foolish idea that what you don't know can't hurt him, the president has devastated most of the climate science systems in the U.S., pushing climate out of the daily news cycle.  Despite this, there have been a few small victories.  His defunding of the Global Ocean Monitoring network, a valuable, decade long system of tracking what is happening out of sight of land, was reinstated by judicial order.  Motivated individuals have saved vital climate data sets from destruction.  

            The AI economic frenzy, which is driving the stock market to new highs every day, proposes construction of hundreds of data centers.  Whatever the eventual social benefits, if any, the demands for massive amounts of electrical power and cooling water have created public pushback across the country.  The power demands are supposed to be solved by onsite natural gas, or diesel, generators, accelerating the climate crisis, assuming the AI bubble doesn't pop soon.

            But reality doesn't care what foolish humans think or do.  This summer could be an extreme fire hazard.  U.S. acres currently burned are ahead of normal.  Locally, the June like heat in March dried things out, disrupting the normal spring cycle of flowers budding and pollinators hatching.  Last week, temperatures in London were 97°F and France reached 111°F.  Most of Europe doesn't have air conditioners.  Several hundred people have already died of the heat.  The oceans are warmer, stressing food chains, adding more moisture to any storms, and fueling stronger hurricanes.

            The Arctic Ocean has less summer sea ice now than ever previously recorded.  Northern nations are positioning themselves to take economic advantage of newly available Arctic resources, and quicker shipping across the top of the planet.  But less sea ice has decreased the nutrition of that ocean basin, adversely affecting global fish stocks.  

            A more serious concern is lurking in the Arctic Ocean floor: 200-10,000 gigatons of frozen methane.  Dark open ocean water absorbs more solar heat than reflective white ice.  The Arctic basin is relatively shallow, meaning heat can more easily reach the sea floor.  Methane changes directly from solid to gas at -32°F.  Methane is 100 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, over the time frame of a decade.  When enough heat warms the Arctic Ocean floor, massive amounts of methane will be released into the atmosphere, rapidly heating the air, increasing the methane release, potentially building to a catastrophic heat pulse.

            Over the last 200 years, combustion from the industrial revolution has added about 1,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, raising the global temperature almost 3°F.  If just one percent of the frozen Arctic methane is released, we would experience double that additional heat rise in a few months.  New reporting is that the Arctic could be ice free next summer, much sooner than previously expected, as planetary heating is increasing.  That isn't to say the methane burst will happen that soon, but having no summer sea ice is a worrying precondition.

            We just celebrated 250 years of American existence, founded on the radical aspiration that all people deserve respect, not just wealthy men.  Today we are challenged to embrace another radical aspiration that all living systems deserve respect, not just wealthy humans.  If our country, or even our species, expects to survive another 50 years, we need new leadership, not another self-centered rich man.

 

The "Deal"

                                                                                          written 21 June, 2026

                                                                                                for 28 June, 2026

 

            Decades ago, when one of my nephews was a very little boy, he played with matches on his bed, setting it on fire.  Being immature, his response was to quietly close the door, returning to the living room to watch TV with his folks.  Eventually, the adults realized the house was on fire and evacuated everyone in time, but their home was gutted. 

            Our president is just as irresponsible.  He unilaterally welched on an international agreement in 2018, when he withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran.  Eight years later, after four months of war and economic stagnation in the Strait of Hormuz, the president announced a new "deal" had been reached.  Claiming it was almost total surrender by Iran, the president promised the Strait of Hormuz is open again, oil would immediately begin to flow again, and gas prices will drop very soon.  Just in time for the mid-term elections.

            Stocks values rose and oil prices dropped upon this joyous news, as the global economy believed we have avoided an energy shock not seen in half a century.  Even the president acknowledged this concern as justification for the "deal". 

            After days of secrecy surround the details, last week the world saw the actual document: a two page, 14 point Memorandum Of Understanding, with further negotiations expected to follow.  

            There is to be a regional ceasefire.  The U.S. promises to immediately remove their blockade of Iranian shipping.  Iran promises to allow toll-free shipping through the Strait for the next 60 days, but expects to collect tolls after that.  Iran gets some financial rewards immediately upon signing, and the promise of removal of all economic sanctions and hundreds of billions in rebuilding funds.  There is no mention of regime change, Iranian missiles, or proxy groups.  The entire uranium issue is pushed down the road.  This is a world away from the president's boasts early in the war, yet he is claiming victory.  His style is to take credit, but never any responsibility.   

            The "deal" expects Israel and Lebanon to end all fighting, yet Israel wasn't involved in the process.  Within 24 hours, Hezbollah and Israel had attacked each other again.  The Iranians claimed this was a breach of the "deal", withdrawing from further negotiations for the moment.  As I write this, the Strait is closed again.

            Even assuming the "deal" will eventually hold, experts who know the reality of the world say the flow of oil will not resume immediately.  It will be weeks, or even months, before oil shipments return to prewar levels.  Clearing the Strait of mines will take time.  Moving ships stalled in the Persian Gulf for four months will take time.  Restoring the production facilities that have been war damaged or shut down during the stalemate will take time.  Restoring confidence in the shipping insurance industry will take time.  Meanwhile, the world is living on rapidly depleting stored oil reserves.

            Among the kindest responses to the "deal" were concerns that it is far from a final agreement.  Critics of this "deal", many of them Republicans, say this is a surrender by the U.S. to Iran.  The London School of Economics reported, "there is a relative consensus worldwide, even in the U.S., that Iran won the war and President Trump lost the war."

            In 2015, the nuclear agreement was working, as verified by international inspectors.  Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz was free flowing.  We now have no nuclear deal.  Iran knows the U.S. won't honor treaties.  The Strait is under Iranian economic control.  All this "gain" at the cost of almost ten thousand lives, and over $130 billion dollars.

            But people still believe the president, whatever insanity he spouts.  

            My primary issue is the changing climate.  I trust the science.  The president, by his own admission, doesn't feel secure around people smarter than himself, which explains the cast of characters in his administration.  It also explains his complete denial of the climate crisis, and his war on science.  He believes that if nobody knows what is going on, he is safe.

            Since I know he lies about the climate, I distrust most of what he says.  His claims about the Iran war are more of the same.  But now people close to him, or who expected him to enrich them, are losing trust.  His only loyalty is to himself.  Not to them.  Not to this country.  He is not a leader, but a dangerous reality TV character.

 

 

Ukiah's Annexation

                                                                                          written 14 June, 2026

                                                                                      published 21 June, 2026

            

            Last week I attended the recent presentation of the proposed annexation for Ukiah.  It was a modest turnout, less than 75 people.  The City staff opened with several requests that everyone be respectful and not interrupt, shout down, or disparage other speakers.  I went to learn about the subject, and to experience the mood of the crowd, many of whom have been adamantly opposed to annexation since the first effort was presented over a year ago.

            The City of Ukiah has ground water rights to the abundant geologic water reserves under the City.  Adjacent water districts to the north and south didn't, and struggled to serve their customers during drought years.  Under pressure from the State to address regional ground water resiliency, the Ukiah Valley Water Authority was formed 2 years ago, joining the City of Ukiah with the Willow, Millview, and Redwood Valley water systems.  The current coordinated water system means everyone has access to sufficient water.   

            For decades, the City of Ukiah has owned and operated the only sewer plant in the valley, servicing the customers within the city limits, while contracting for treatment of sewage from customers outside the city limits.  

            Nine years ago, the City of Ukiah fire department signed a joint powers agreement with the Ukiah Valley Fire Protection District to become the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority, covering the needs of the entire Ukiah valley.

            The parcels proposed for annexation are already served by the expanded water and sewer districts.  The annexation will bring in revenues from those areas to help support services they already receive.  This also shifts some responsibilities from the County budget to the City budget, specifically road maintenance, police protection, and planning decisions.  While the County will lose some revenue, it also loses some obligations.

            The revenues from the annexed areas are: property taxes, sales taxes, and Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT).  The annexation plan spreads revenue changes over time, accruing short term City loses to ease the County pain, modifying the fiscal shock.

            Property taxes are a large part of the County income.  The County will keep 100% of the existing property tax income, but portions of the future increases will be shifted to the City, starting at about 3% the first year, increasing each year to a cap of 50% 15 years from now.  Property tax rates are set by the State, and fixed at a 2% per year increase, which will be unaffected by the annexation.

            Sales taxes are a minor part of the County income, but a significant portion of the City income.  That revenue will be shifted over 5 years, with little citizen impact.  TOT taxes mostly affect travelers, not local residents.

            Despite those reassurances, many attendees voiced concerns annexation would increase their taxes.  Others feared unrestrained development, but were told zoning for the area will stay the same and County and City development procedures are similar.  Some were just resistant to any change, yearning for the "good old days".  A common unstated assumption was that government of any kind is a problem to be avoided.

            In my opinion, good government balances the social needs of the whole with the needs of individuals.  Without a doubt, bad government is appalling, just look how one man's inflated ego has damaged our entire economy through his ill-advised war of choice in the Middle East.  But local government is more accessible.  Here in Ukiah, we can personally know all of the decision makers in the City, and we each have direct impact through election of the entire City Council.  Even the County is too big for that level of connection.  If the people of this small city can't come together for a workable solution, how can we expect much from our larger society?

            We have massive threats to our way of life.  Despite presidential denial, climate change is real.  This summer is projected to be a bad fire season.  Fire insurance is getting more expensive, if even available.  Water determines where life flourishes, and the rain patterns that deliver that water are changing.  The county economy was built on a resource extraction, but most of those resources have been depleted. 

            Make no mistake, we are all in this together, like it or not.  Only fools think they exist completely independently.  At the very least, we all breath oxygen that none of us make ourselves.  Local resilience is becoming more important every year. 

            It's trite but true.  United we stand, divided we fall.

 

 

Our Energy Choice

                                                                                            written 7 June, 2026

                                                                                      published 14 June, 2026

  

            Energy systems have two basic elements: the hardware needed, and the energy source.  

            A standard nuclear reactor can produce 24 gigawatts hours of power each day.  The solar powered equivalent is a 6 gigawatt array and a 20 gigawatt hour battery.  Big numbers, but larger solar and battery projects already exist, and are under construction, around the world.  

            Hardware costs for a large nuclear reactor range between $9-$20B, and construction can take a decade.  The solar and storage energy equivalent can cost $9B for the array and another $5B for the battery, in the same cost range as the reactor, while construction times can be much shorter.

            The solar array takes more land than a reactor, but the land can have multiple uses.  Agrivoltaic, combining an array with agriculture, benefits from the shade provided by the array.  Land around a reactor must keep people away, to protect the facility against attack and to protect civilians in case of a radiation event.

            The real economic difference between the two energy systems is the cost of the energy source.  Solar energy is free and nuclear fuel is not.

            The most economical uranium ore contains less than 0.1 percent uranium.  Producing a pound of uranium generates a ton of tailings, usually left near the mine site.  This slightly radioactive, toxic material, contaminates mine workers, local ground water, and areas downwind.  All uncompensated costs.

            Uranium is primarily two isotopes.  99 percent is relatively stable U-238, and only 0.7 percent is radioactive U-235.  Reactor fuel must be enriched to 5 percent U-235.  Each pound of enriched reactor fuel generates seven pounds of "depleted" uranium.  There is no commercial use for this material, now stockpiled at taxpayer expense.

            Large reactors hold 100 tons of enriched uranium.  Because the fission process quickly degrades the economic functioning of the reactor, 25 tons are replaced each year, yet only 5 percent of the fissionable U-235 has been consumed.  This "spent fuel" is extremely radioactive, lethal to life for hundreds of thousands of years.  There is no safe, long-term storage for this material.

            Therefore, each year, a single reactor produces 25 tons of the most long-lasting toxic material even seen on the planet, an additional 175 tons of "depleted" uranium, and 250,000 tons of toxic tailings scattered around the countryside.  

            Adding to the problem, our primary suppliers of enriched uranium fuel are China and Russia.  

            As our president kills domestic solar and pushes new nuclear construction, new domestic uranium enrichment facilities are being construction.  But in the interim, they are considering reprocessing the 92,000 tons of highly radioactive "spent fuel", to recover the useful U-235, creating thousands of tons of radioactive liquids, with no means of safe disposal.

            Domestic civilian reprocessing has been tried three times.  The first, in West Valley, New York, opened in 1966.  It was uneconomical, went bankrupt, and closed 6 years later.  For 46 years, the State of New York has used public funds in the ongoing cleanup of the most toxic site in the state. 

            The second effort, the Midwest Fuel Recovery Plant in Tennessee, opened in 1974 and closed one day later.  The site is still contaminated today.  In 1977, the third effort, the Barnwell facility in South Carolina, was never even completed, because the entire operation was uneconomical.

            New reactor designs are being built, which promise to be cheaper, but none are currently in operation.  Some use higher temperatures, different cooling systems, and different fuels.  One fuel is tri-structural isotropic (TRISO), millimeter size pebbles of reactor fuel fabricated with protective layers to prevent meltdown under high temperatures.  This costs ten times more than conventional reactor fuels.  Another fuel is high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), uranium enriched to 20 percent U-235 for greater power in small modular reactors.  Bomb material is enriched to 90 percent.

            America has 40,000 pounds of plutonium, resulting from dismantled nuclear bombs under the START treaty.  This was produced at the Hanford, Washington facility, which was shut down in 1971.  The cleanup there continues to this day.  Plutonium is naturally radioactive.  As little as 11 pounds will make a bomb.  It can be mixed into fuel for high temperature reactors.  But there are concerns about making plutonium a marketable commodity in the energy business.

            All this is to avoid collecting the free energy from the sun.  Nuclear energy is not about energy.  It is about centralized control and financial power.  But the world is shifting.  We are the ones being left behind, going bankrupt.

Crying Wolf

                                                                                          written 31 May, 2026

                                                                                        published 7 June, 2026

            Everyone knows the story about the "boy who cried wolf".  Because he was bored, or wanted attention, he falsely claimed a wolf was attacking the flock of sheep he was supposed to watch.  The villagers rushed to defend him, only to realize there was no wolf.  After this happened several times, the people of the village began to distrust the boy, so when a wolf did appear, the boy got eaten.

            Similarly, the president every so often declares an "agreement with Iran has been reached".  So far, this keeps Wall Street and the oil markets relatively calm.  The stock market drooped when the war first started, but is now higher than ever as some still profit from disaster.  Crude oil prices are about 50 percent higher than before the war, but holding relatively steady, taking a slight price dip whenever an "immanent agreement" is announced, before creeping higher again.  Gasoline prices get everyone's attention, but there is still gas to be pumped.

            But whatever the president announces, Iran soon sets him straight.  There is no deal.  The Strait is still closed.  

            As the closure drags on, shortages of fuel and raw materials are being felt around the world, with disproportionate impact.  Asian nations from Japan to the Philippines, being hit hardest, have implemented a four-day work week, reduced speed limits, and curtail private driving while pushing for working from home.  Thirty nations from Norway to Zambia, are spending billions on fuel subsidies, with many declaring "states of national emergency", reducing air conditioning and subsidizing public transport. 

            None of this addresses the underlying cause: the stalemate with Iran.  Now into the fourth month, there are no indications it will end any time soon.  Once the stored oil reserves are depleted, which is now well under way, prices are expected to jump at least another 50 percent, perhaps even double.  America we will probably start seeing this by July, which will impact the midterm elections.

            The president has created an insoluble disaster.  No other countries will help force a change, because he has alienated them.  Resumption of war risks further long-lasting destruction of regional oil production.  Negotiation is time consuming and requires respect between participants, but he is impatient and inclined to bully people.  Voters are losing confidence in White House happy talk, as demonstrated by his declining poll numbers. 

            But the president doesn't let impending economic and political destruction slow him down.  This week we saw self-serving corruption of unprecedented scale.  The president sued himself for $10B over leaked tax returns, then came to an arranged settlement with himself, magnanimously dropping the lawsuit in exchanged for a $1.8B tax payer funded slush fund, to be distributed in secret by five men he picks, with no public record of who gets how much.  The original judge is now considering this as a fraud.  Additionally, he and his family are immune from tax audits for life.  What an exemplary statesman!

            But this may be a bridge too far even for Congressional Republicans, who are resisting signing on.  The Republican led Senate decided to leave town rather than vote.  The president's revenge attacks on any Republican insufficiently loyal to him has already created several lame duck Senators, now able to vote their personal ethics rather than submit to the bully-in-chief.  The House has similar problems.

            Regular readers know I am appalled by our president, seeing him as corrupt, incompetent, and demented.  But I have to give him credit where it is due.  He has accelerated the global shift away from fossil fuels into renewable energy.  Of course, this was never his intention, but that has been the effect of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, for which he is totally responsible.  

            The entire planet now has a pocket book experience of the perils of depending on fossil fuels, totally independent of the fact that they are killing life on Earth.  When the core energy system of your economy can be affected by one insane individual, the incentive to change is dramatic.  This is not to say that the renewable shift is complete, or anywhere near sufficient, but the tide has inexorably turned.  There is nothing the president can do, short of global thermonuclear war, that will stop what in now in motion.

            Even though the U.S. is racing backward as fast as possible, and China is the global energy provider of the future, we may avoid toasting off the planet for profit, thanks to our president.