I coined the term reality-based politics because reality determines where societies go. Human opinion on…

I coined the term reality-based politics because reality determines where societies go. Human opinion on these realities only determines how fast the inevitable changes happen. The corollary of this is something even bigger. /1 https://t.co/jQyFr8KSxK

What it means is there will always be parts of reality where the existing social status hierarchies are hugely vulnerable. Hierarchies that otherwise are impossible to shift, without total catastrophe like world wars, or plagues of mass death. /2 https://t.co/ILNceezG3p

I suggest the weak point of those hierarchies today is energy, and specifically the plummeting costs of solar energy. That one reality-based fact is the key to bringing about a shift to our social status hierarchies, to fix our biggest problems. All of them. /3 https://t.co/qKb5bgBe7k

Solar panels may appear to have no connection to Covid, or inequality, or poor educational outcomes, or lack of funding for hospitals and schools, etc. But reality determines how our societies operate. There will always be keystones, in reality, that determine everything. /4 https://t.co/7KAAI4XUui

Energy, specifically fossil fuel energy, has been that keystone for over 250 years. All of our social hierarchies and the societies they spin off that we live in, trace back to fossil fuel energy. If you can disrupt that, you disrupt everything. And that’s what solar is doing. /5 https://t.co/SgczylRwtb

Households and businesses are falling over themselves to install them, they’re so cheap. Even traditional energy companies. It’s that link to households which is critical. Fossil fuel energy societies concentrate power (in both meanings of that term) in the hands of a few. /6 https://t.co/Jnr4lOTi9f

Again this is about MUCH more than providing cheaper (even free) energy to ordinary people. It’s re-working all of our social hierarchies. If you’re disillusioned nothing is being done about Covid, install solar. You may think that won’t fix Covid. It won’t, immediately. /7

But the people who resist doing anything about Covid are at the same time utterly reliant upon the old fossil fuel social hierarchies. It’s where they get their power. Hit them where it hurts. We’re hugely lucky that this technology is now available, cheaply, to all. /8

An individual or household can now be increasingly self-reliant with energy. Inside 1 or 2 days, all it takes to have panels installed. Add a battery increasingly and that self-reliance is even stronger, you can now even become a wholesale energy trader. /9

The important thing is to not be distracted by this being only about energy. The hierarchies in our societies have been constructed using fossil fuel energy for over 2 centuries. Now you can, as an individual, disrupt and even bypass those hierarchies, cheaply and quickly. /10

A KPI for the truth of this is that installing solar not only saves you money, you are worse off if you *don’t*. There is no greater ROI on your money than installing solar, forget anything else. Payoff times are under 5 years, for systems with a lifetime of 25 years. /11

Even during the payoff period, your weekly cash-flow is healthier even after buying the solar than it would be if you didn’t, because you’re saving more in energy costs than your repayments cost. You lose money by NOT installing it. That tells you you’ve found the keystone. /12

Households in Australia are already doing this. The existing energy infrastructure is buckling under the weight of this disruption. Accelerate this disruption, and watch the flow-on impact to all other areas of our life. /13 https://t.co/6sDhKiWWOV

Only by extracting the 250+ year-old parasitic tentacles of fossil fuel politics from societies will we see meaningful change. It’s why I focus on energy transitions more than anything else, even when Covid is the topic. Extraordinarily exciting things happen every day. /14

And unlike our relative powerlessness to get clean air in our schools and workplaces, something the existing hierarchies have zero interest in, you can strike terror into their comfort zones by backing solar. Everything else can flow from that. /end