This is why I’m a big supporter of renewable energy, and an even bigger supporter of nuclear energy. We need to get off all of it. Why keep risking our economy on something so volatile and so easy for dictators and terrorists alike to manipulate?
If the American energy grid and transportation system were largely electric and powered mainly by nuclear, with wind and solar adding support, this current crisis would not hit nearly as hard outside of a few niche areas like aluminum. Even there, we get much of that from places like Greenland rather than the Middle East, so the overall impact on us would be limited.
The left frames renewables the wrong way. They focus on climate change, but that argument clearly does not move most or the right people. What actually gets attention is energy independence. That is what policymakers take seriously when the issue is presented as reducing dependence on a volatile and easily manipulated global energy market. We should have moved toward nuclear and renewables a long time ago.
If I remember correctly, powering the entire U.S. grid with nuclear would not require some impossible number of plants. If I remember would be somewhere around 100 to 150 new plants would need to be built, possibly far fewer with newer and larger reactor designs.
If the money and political will were there, the U.S. could become entirely nuclear in just a short few decades.
it will take the sting out of global shocks much more dramatically. But not entirely of course.