If we start to think long term, and I mean decades ahead, I see quasi energy "independence" as a given. Not in the political way the phrase is used, but in a biophysical sense that is inherently local or geographically regional.

Without cheap transportation fuels, wouldn't any economy need to shrink the geographic area in which it extracts and combines materials to make and circulate products and wastes? And wouldn't this area likely be no larger than the size of a major continent such as North America?

Or should I have faith in a global supergrid, where someday I can expect some portion of my electricity here in California to come from arrays dispersed across the Sahara?