An interesting take.
I respectfully disagree about nuclear power; we humans simply cannot afford the long term costs, which include not just radiation and contamination but the all too ready access to nuclear weapons.
Fusion power is only 20 years away... and it always has been! Maybe we'll get there in my lifetime but it's frankly looking like a long shot.
Solar and wind are HERE, they're NOW, they're cheaper than fossil fuels today and still improving. The only obstacle to powering the entire human race is storage.
Electric cars are the ultimate flexible fueled vehicles; anything that makes electricity can power them. They're also a decent stopgap storage system; Denmark uses its national fleet of electric cars to buffer their own wind and solar powered grid to great effectiveness.
Agreed that we humans need to wean ourselves from the oil teat ASAP, for environmental reasons if nothing else.
My politics are well to the left of the current Democratic Party establishment, so you'll get few arguments from me there. I suspect that both parties will quickly become more responsive to the majority of our population if we can manage to get money out of politics. It's a tall order but I believe it is an essential prerequisite for moving away from oil. After all, it's profitable- and those profits can and are used to buy political control.
Finally, things ARE in dire straits. It's time to get moving right now, long before our kids wake up one day and realize there is no ecosystem left for us to live on.
You can't make bombs from thorium reactors, it is the reason that all the governments in the world have chosen to go for more fissile materials such as uranium and plutonium.
Solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels, with subsidies, and between our electric grid and storage issues, the cost of renovating the entire grid to cater to a full electric society is astronomical, and those costs must be factored in, too, because they will be passed on to the consumer in higher electric rates. Not that I disagree with the need to renovate our electric grid in the States, as well as hardening it, but it is a reality and it must be factored in to the economics of transitioning to solar and wind, which by and large, don't make sense yet. Furthermore, solar requires large amount of land to meet the needs of entire nations, which could lead to deforestation and destruction of habitat, and wind has had unintended side effects as well. Yes, yes, rooftop solar. It's not enough nor is it economically feasible at the moment. Destruction of ocean floors will become more and more common as we move more towards offshore wind turbines, but you won't see it, so you won't care.
Electric vehicles are purely a gimmick. They're blown out of the water by hydrogen vehicles. The materials to mass produce electric vehicles for billions of people are rare and finite, requiring intensive mining efforts to extract, and are located in poor, unregulated countries that have no regard for the environment. When you refer to this administrations lack of regard for the environment, I assure you, these nations which will be exploited for lithium and cobalt make America's political landscape seem as if its ran by the Green Party, and if you think that electric vehicle manufacturers care about the sourcing of their materials, you're living in a fantasy land.
Your comment singling out the lobbying power of big oil is amusing, merely for lack of foresight (and hindsight) that renewable energy companies are doing the same thing, you're just okay with it because you agree with their agenda. Renewable companies have already bled billions and billions from our coffers and haven't paid off any large dividends. It's about money for them, too, and they play by the same rules as big oil, I guarantee you.
I believe you misinterpreted my comment about the average American's political beliefs. You're not in the majority if you're to the far left, as you just claimed to be. Nor are most of the staunch Donald Trump supporters, who are to the far right. The majority of the nation is in between the two, fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I think if you spoke to people who voted for both Clinton and Trump, you'd find that to be largely true, neither had a candidate who represented them accurately which is part of the problem.
Historically the situation in our nation has precedent in the Wiemar Republic of Germany. The Communists were a fringe party to the left, and the Nationalists were a fringe party to the right. Neither side had control of a majority, but each committed actions that pushed more and more to one side or the other, ending up with Hitler finding himself in control of the Nation. This should serve as a warning to our Nation today of what two fringe ideologies can cause.
I'm going to leave you with some reading on thorium reactors, as well as some recent work on fusion, in an effort to hopefully educate you and lift some of your anti-nuclear indoctrination (which ironically comes from big oil lol).
Remember, we don't have to agree upon everything, the only thing we need to agree upon is that we're both entitled our opinions. You won't be more likely to convince anyone of your opinion if you don't show respect to those who disagree with you.
Fusion breakthroughs
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a27961/mit-nuclear-fusion-experiment-increases-efficiency/
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-superconducting-magnets-future.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/04/12/contained-nuclear-fusion-on-earth-isnt-just-possible-its-been-done-repeatedly/#8fd7bfb4cfd5
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/graphene-sieves-deuterium-from-hydrogen/9308.article
Thorium reactors
https://newatlas.com/thorium-reactor-recycle-plutonium/53078/
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-power/
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6262/726.full?ijkey=f/cMPPBEQxEyM&keytype=ref&siteid=sci
