BY FRANK DALENE
In my last couple articles, I’ve been discussing the topic of energy independence—a country’s ability to produce multiple types of energy, including energy storage to have energy available to its people even if one or more types of energy becomes unavailable, thereby increasing the country’s energy resilience.
The war in Iran continues to highlight just how important energy independence is. As The Wall Street Journal reports, “Americans have cumulatively spent about $45 billion more on gasoline and diesel during the war with Iran than they did during the same period a year ago, according to an analysis of OPIS pricing data and federal demand figures. … In March alone, U.S. airlines spent almost $1.3 billion more on jet fuel than they did a year earlier, according to the Transportation Department. If gasoline prices stay near their current levels through 2026, JPMorgan estimates Americans will shell out $172 billion more than they did last year. That figure doesn’t include additional diesel costs.”[1]
Meanwhile, the current administration is pulling back dramatically from developing renewable energy. A recent The New York Timescolumn summarized some of these policy changes: in 2025, 61 renewable energy projects were closed, canceled or downsized. At the beginning of 2025, Trump issued a number of executive orders and memorandums diminishing federal support for renewable energy, including a presidential memorandum in the beginning of 2025 that ordered the withdrawal “from disposition for wind energy leasing all areas within the Offshore Continental Shelf” and the “temporary cessation and immediate review of federal wind leasing and permitting practices.” Last July’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act phased out clean energy tax credits and tax credits for wind and solar projects and clean hydrogen production.[2]
According to Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics at the University of California-Santa Barbara, “Trump’s policies will add an extra seven billion tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere through 2030 compared to the U.S. Paris Agreement target. Using the Biden EPA’s own social cost of carbon, that will result in $1.6 trillion in global climate damages.”[3]
All of this, as Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s science office lays out, “has undermined U.S. energy independence (making the country more vulnerable to the kinds of oil price shocks we’ve seen these past two months), contributed to higher energy costs for U.S. households and weakened the country’s global standing and industrial competitiveness.”[4]
But here’s the good news: even though our government doesn’t get it, we as individuals have the ability to become energy independent. That is the beauty of our free market economic system and a Constitution designed so We the People can create change from the grassroots level regardless of our government’s misguided policies.
In this country, great change often starts at the grassroots level. The United States is a country of We, the People. It is structured for power to flow from the bottom up. It’s how the Constitution was written, and from the Declaration of Independence onward, the power has always been with the people. While the system doesn’t always work perfectly, many of the great changes in this country have started at the grassroots level: with We, the People. Throughout American history, we have seen grassroots movements gain momentum until change becomes unstoppable—the Women’s Suffrage movement of the mid-nineteenth century or the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, to name just two prime examples.
The green movement has long been a grassroots movement—and it is already working on a grassroots level. Individuals are taking personal responsibility for being more environmentally conscious—recycling, using reusable bottles and bags, buying electric vehicles, putting solar panels on their houses.
Our house is a perfect example of just how energy independent an individual can get: it is fossil fuel free, with multiple sources of electricity and heat and backup energy. For electricity we have solar panels producing more electricity than we consume—including charging a Silverado EV pickup, plus electrical storage with a whole-house battery backup and an automatic transfer switch which allows the solar panels to remain active with the ability to be off the grid. We heat our entire house with a pellet stove insert in our fireplace, plus we have a solar thermal hot air system backed up by a propane boiler at 98% efficiency rating. Our house is a great example of using multiple sources of energy with an emphasis on renewable energy.
And this grassroots movement has already expanded from the individual level up to the level of towns and municipalities—of which my own town of East Hampton is a perfect example. Our goal of being 100 percent renewable energy prompted neighboring towns and municipalities to adopt their own renewable goals, until the whole state of New York had a renewable energy goal—and the ripples from this grassroots movement have continued to spread.
Change in the US starts at the grassroots level. It starts with individuals installing solar panels, buying EVs, hybrids, and more energy efficient cars, making their homes more energy efficient—which not only saves money, but makes it much easier to be energy independent and resilient in the face of turmoil like the war in Iran.
Frank Dalene, an Amazon Best Selling Author in Green Business & Environmental Economics titled, Decarbonize The World: Solving The Climate Crisis While Increasing Profits In Your Business, and Founder of the Hamptons Green Alliance, a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. Learn more at frankdalene.com and hamptonsgreenalliance.org.
[1] David Uberti, “The Oil Shock Is Causing a $45 Billion Rupture in the Economy,” Economy, Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2026, https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/the-oil-shock-is-causing-a-45-billion-rupture-in-the-economy-938e13c0.
[2] Thomas B. Edsall, “Opinion | ‘This Is All a Scam, a Giant Scam,’” Opinion, The New York Times, May 12, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/opinion/trump-is-fighting-the-worlds-stupidest-culture-war.html.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.