Ok, it's going to be hard for me to explain this without quoting Dave's whole post over at Gristmill. So I'll just tell you to go read it and tell me what you think. Oh, and definitely read jimbeyer's comment that Dave points to in his post (I almost didn't). Jimbeyer is a smart, articulate guy.

I was blown away by this post. In a whole new way I really "got" why having a society based on renewable energy was so radical and fundamentally disruptive to our society's current power structures.

Ok, here are a few gems from the post:

"Renewable energy is about the permanent loss of a major source of control of much of modern humanity."

Renewable energy is part of the historical trend putting more and more power in the hands of individuals, fracturing the elites that once held it. That -- not feasibility, or economic viability, or dead friggin' birds -- is the biggest challenge it has to overcome.

Dave goes on and explains how a society based on renewable society would likely function -- primarily in a local, decentralized, sharing-ish kind of way. He and jimbeyer also explain why there's been all this PR crapola about nuclear and hydrogen energy as well as natural gas (to keep things centralized and therefore controllable, of course).

After reading this a couple of times, part of me goes, "duh, of course shifting from our oil economy is going to threaten the powers that be." But then the other part of me thinks, "no, this is cool, I've never had it explained like this before." *shrug* You decide.