It's hard to compare a shift in a probability distribution because people will hang on to outliers. We hear this every winter: "all I hear about is Global Warming but look at this record snow". But I do believe the empirical evidence for all this has gone well beyond statistical significance.

The Wire is one of my all-time favorite shows in part because it's a story of institutional failure at every level. The police, the ports, the media, the schools and the city government. That's really what's going on here. Utility companies (in the US at least) prefer fossil fuels because they're more profitable. The wealthy prefer fossil fuels because a mine or an oil well is and always has been a massive wealth concentrator. Build a solar farm and it... just produces electricity. There are far fewer profit opportunities so it doesn't happen. So fossil fuel companies have money to throw at politicians to enshrine their rent-seeking behavior. But most depressing is how many ordinary people buy into this system with some hand-waving about "jobs" even though renewables will be strictly better in basically every way at this point.

Spain could become the energy powerhouse of Europe here. It's one of the most southernmost European countries and has plentiful sunshine. Additionally it has a lot of otherwise degraded land. According to Google, 200,000+ square kilometers. You build endless solar farms and UHVDC transmission lines across the continent and you could massively diminish the dependence on natural gas. All the tech for all of this already exists. It can be added incrementally. There's no 20+ year construction cycle like there is for any nuclear project.

As an added benefit, this would likely help regenerate the soil as China has done.

It's worth adding that the privatization era of the 1980s and 1990s was a massive problem. Every utility in Europe should be nationalized. It's easier to subsidize energy shocks when you own the companies that are profiting from them.

> The wealthy prefer fossil fuels because a mine or an oil well is and always has been a massive wealth concentrator.

lots of wealthy people are anti-fossil fuel.

> Build a solar farm and it... just produces electricity.

it needs land. It increases the value of land. Wealthy people own lots of land.

The main objections for switching to wind and solar are variability in output and the cost of building all the new stuff.

> Spain could become the energy powerhouse of Europe here. It's one of the most southernmost European countries and has plentiful sunshine.

Fine if you are Spanish. Not so good if you are from the north of Europe or somewhere with less spare land.

> It's worth adding that the privatization era of the 1980s and 1990s was a massive problem. Every utility in Europe should be nationalized. It's easier to subsidize energy shocks when you own the companies that are profiting from them.

I think it would have the opposite effect. Its tempting to sustain the profits when you get them.

I wonder whether the British government would be so keen on moving away from fossil fuels if it still owned BP?