Derek Thompson

Tell me if I'm summarizing what you just said accurately, that the Iran war did not just introduce risk into the global transport of fossil fuels.

It also illuminated risks that might last longer than the war itself.

because it's created the situation where now you've got drones flying around attacking ships, and now everybody knows that everybody knows that drones have the capacity to do this.

And so even if the war ends tomorrow, in a week, in a month, in the months and years that follow, maybe people in the global energy community are going to think, we just learned how incredibly vulnerable

global fossil fuels are to drone attacks,

Maybe we should price insurance higher.

Maybe the cost of this overall source of energy is just going to be higher.

And that is going to, on balance, shift energy from fossil fuels towards something that is more local, that doesn't travel on the open seas that are vulnerable to drones.

And that sort of thing is, I mean, it seems to me all things equal, renewables and nuclear.

Is that a fair analysis to sort of layer onto your analysis?

Yeah, it's interesting.

I remember talking to another Aussie, Saul Griffith, about the case for solar and making the case for solar to MAGA conservatives in America.

And he said something that started in a very different place, but somewhat arrived at the same conclusion that you're reaching.

He said...

One thing I might tell them, MAGA conservatives who are anti-nuclear, is when you drive a car that uses gasoline or you power your house with whatever, oil, natural gas, yes, maybe that oil or natural gas came from the U.S., which is a huge energy exporter, but it's participating in a global market of oil that often enriches theocratic tyrannies in the Middle East or Russia.

we don't want our energy markets to enrich our geopolitical adversaries.

We should want the solar panel that powers our car to be on the roof of our neighbor who we love in our good old Republican town.

And so there's a way in which

solar and renewables are kind of small-c conservative.

It's local, right?