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Benjamin Franklin once observed that the British government of his time was like a desperate dice roller, always gambling their future on reckless endeavors where so much as one failure would result in their total undoing. “Thus empires,” Franklin would go on to say, “by pride and folly and extravagance, ruin themselves like individuals.”

And now my Honolulu friends, let us pause to open this article on our mobile devices, and take a collective field trip outside to the wonderful world that is Oahu. As we stand in the knee-high, uncut grass that is flecked with trash and wrecked shopping carts, let us ponder why the feral chickens passing by pay no mind to us humans, and how the broken public bathroom across the street now has no toilet paper.

Last of all, lift your dejected chin just a few degrees up to gaze upon the brutalist, Honolulu rail structures that tower like the  yet are still not complete after all these years. After taking in these things, let us all let out a collective sigh and say this together: “Oahu has been ruined by pride and folly and extravagance.”

Alas, as bad as things are now for Oahu residents, I am concerned that things are going to get a lot worse before 2045. The next major crisis that looms large over us is how we are going to supply, sustain and pay for energy on the island now that we have committed – or should I say bottlenecked – ourselves to a future that .

Brace yourselves. I’m not going to give some of you a trigger warning, because my purpose is to trigger you into questioning why we do what we do and why we think what we think. This renewable-only strategy is great on paper, but Hawaiian Electric  of our energy came from renewable sources in 2021. And while that may exceed the state’s goal of 30%, there’s more to it than that.

 “Hawaii uses about 12 times more energy than it produces. More than four-fifths of Hawaii’s energy consumption is petroleum, making it the most petroleum-dependent state.” News to state policymakers: Shutting down things to increase percentages isn’t the same as building new things to increase supply.

It is very important for us to reduce pollution and to be mindful of our carbon footprint, but , clean energy is based on an excessively utopian to weaning off fossil fuels. The two most popular “clean” energy sources of solar and wind power are great, but we need a lot of both of them in order to meet the energy demands of the public.

In case you haven’t noticed, Oahu residents are at odds with each other when it comes to this policy. We want to virtue signal as healers of the planet and say “let’s go green,” but then we also want to protest when a giant wind turbine goes up in our backyard. Well, what’s it going to be, folks?

If we are going to go 100% renewable, we’d better change the state flower from the yellow hibiscus to a turbine propeller, because you’re going to need to cover the island with turbines and panels to meet future energy demands.

And how exactly are we going to pay for this? “Clean” energy , rare earth elements and advanced composites, all of which are not cheap thanks to the debasement of the U.S. dollar and global instability. In the case of wind turbines, when it comes to disposing of the worn-out blades.

Now, I know from reading the kinds of histrionic comments that people leave on that some of you actually believe that tiny Hawaii imposing draconian energy bottlenecks somehow has the , , and possibly even .

But for every lump of coal or gallon of gas we stop using, I can tell you right now that plenty of countries manufacturing the very clothes you wear, the cars you drive and the cellphones you use to rant online are burning tons more to fuel the modern West’s consumer needs. We get to pretend to be clean saviors of the planet because poor people in distant places are getting dirty on our behalf. Think about that.

Oahu’s population is increasing. More people are going to be buying electric vehicles, electric landscaping equipment, big screen televisions, gaming computers, cellphones, tablets, you name it. Where is the power going to come from for this? More importantly, where is the money to pay for the energy for all this?

We’re not going to make it to 2045, let alone 2030 with the way that we’re thinking or acting both as a people and as a government. Humans are different than all the other animals because , and having mastered fire, we made technology and science.

We need a free-market approach, not a rigged plantation store when it comes to energy in Hawaii. If energy becomes too expensive, it will become too expensive to live, work and . We need to use all forms of energy production here in Hawaii and stop thinking like we’re .

You’ll hate me for saying this, but I for one think the only way we can meet our clean energy goals is . The rest of the world is because they know the 22nd century needs more energy. Are they wrong? Or is Hawaii wrong?

Either way, the permanent ruin of Oahu just so some elected officials can say they forced us to go green is so not worth it. That’s just pride, folly and extravagance, as usual in Hawaii.