At a recent solar energy seminar, Michael Dworkin, director of the Institute for Energy and the Environment and professor at Vermont Law School, noted a little-discussed geopolitical advantage that renewable energy holds over fossil fuels. Unlike the latter, it does NOT increase friction between nations over resource depletion.

"Oil bought by the U.S. cannot go to Japan and each cut-off of liquefied natural gas to China cannot be used in India," he said. "But wind and solar energy used anywhere does NOT take it from somewhere else!" Indeed, a distinct point in its favor in a world that often seems to be a conflagration waiting to happen. "And it's not just an oil scarcity we have," he said, "but the prices for metals, nickel, chromium, have all gone up by five times. The scarcity message of the 70s was ahead of its time, but not by too far."