One of the main reasons renewable energy is going to triumph in the end is, IMO, not well understood by the general populace, so here's a quick on it. Over time, the price of fossil fuels is determined by two forces pulling in opposite directions. On one hand ...

... there's the physical resource itself (oil, gas, or coal), which, all things being equal, will drive costs up. Why? Simple: it is finite and we harvest the easy stuff first. As time passes, we have to dig or drill deeper & exploit lower quality deposits.

This is why "peak oil" has been such a persistent concern over the years -- it's based on the (true) notion that oil is getting harder to reach & refine. But it keeps not happening. Why? Because of the other force: the advancement of the technology used to exploit the resource.

Even as the FF deposits get deeper/more difficult/lower quality, the tech we use to drill & mine continues advancing. Just in recent history, we saw advances in fracturing & lateral drilling opening up *huge* new deposits of fossil gas. Peak oil/gas/coal keeps receding.

Over time, these two forces -- resource getting more difficult; technology getting better -- have approximately balanced out. Though FF prices swing like crazy (wreaking havoc on our economies), the inflation-adjusted price of FF energy is ... roughly what it was a century ago.

Now, consider the analogous forces for wind & solar. On one side, the resource is ... effectively infinite. It is not getting more difficult to obtain over time -- it is free & abundant now & will be free & abundant forever.

On the other side, just as with FF tech, the tech used to harvest the resource is getting cheaper & cheaper, more & more effective. This is something in which we can have great confidence: we're good at technology. We solve tech problems over time. Tech gets cheaper.

So, to summarize: For FF, resource costs rising, tech costs falling, net price remaining, through all the fluctuations, roughly steady. For RE, resource costs are zero, tech costs falling, net price falling.

This explains why, ever since we got serious about researching & developing them, wind & solar costs have gone down, down, down. There's no resource cost, there's only tech cost, & like I said, tech costs go down. We're good at tech.

Now, of course, it's not an absolute cosmic rule that wind & solar costs only decline at all times. Building the tech itself requires resources & some of those resources (say, silicon, or lithium) can bite -- short-term shortages or price spikes.

But those resources are not essential to the process (the way oil is to, uh, oil). Markets are very, very good at dealing with tech resource costs--we either find more ("the cure for high prices is high prices") or we substitute something else (say, zinc or sodium for lithium).

The shorter way of saying all this is, FF = a resource + tech problem, whereas RE = just a tech problem. So while FF prices can be expected to fluctuate wildly but remain roughly steady over time, RE prices can be expected (with smaller fluctuations) to fall over time.

This is why RE is going to triumph over time. But this isn't just "good for greens" or whatever. It's good for humanity! We're climbing off the resource roller coaster & onto the tech escalator! Energy -- the core of human prosperity -- is getting more predictable & cheaper.

All the short-term noise & culture-war stuff around energy is obscuring the fact that humanity is transitioning into a new era of clean energy abundance. It's amazing & thrilling! We just need to get there before we fuck the planet up too badly. </fin>