content: I'm for renewable energy as much as the next person, but I'm also pragmatic enough to realize that it can't solve the world's current energy needs. We need nuclear power in addition to renewables+batteries, ideally with the nuclear plants replacing the current fossil fuel plants and then individuals subsidizing their power needs with solar panels. If for some reason the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park were to go off tomorrow, the entire world would be plunged into a miniature ice age by the ashes from the eruption. All solar panels would be rendered next to useless. A lot of wind farms would also be screwed because of ash buildup in their mechanical bits. Nuclear fission/fusion plants would be nearly unaffected, though, and produce far more energy than either renewables or fossil fuels. Another problem I have with the "use batteries" solution is that creating batteries has a very real environmental impact, from mining the metals to create them to transporting said metals halfway around the world to actually build them, to shipping them halfway back around the world to actually sell them.