A MORATORIUM ON FIRE It is time for a pause. For thousands of years, we've rushed headlong into the use of fire without ever stopping for a full accounting of its consequences. The record is appalling. Fire kills people and wildlife. It destroys homes, businesses, forests and entire communities. It consumes staggering quantities of wood, coal, oil and gas. It fouls the air, releases carbon dioxide, scars landscapes and consumes resources that cannot be replaced on any human timescale. Its appetite is virtually unlimited. Fire drove deforestation, smelting, industrialization, mechanized warfare and the mass production of weapons. It powers engines of destruction. It has burned cities to the ground. Entire civilizations have watched their accumulated wealth disappear in flames. And the employment consequences have received remarkably little attention. Fire helped replace human and animal labor with machines. Steam engines emptied occupations. Internal combustion engines eliminated entire transportation systems. Industrial furnaces displaced generations of skilled workers. The social disruption has been enormous. Defenders point to cooking, warmth, sanitation, transportation, manufacturing and electricity generation. Those are real benefits, and they deserve acknowledgment. But benefits are not a substitute for accountability. After thousands of years, we still can't guarantee that fire will remain where we want it. We can't guarantee that it won't kill. We can't guarantee that bad actors won't continue to weaponize it. We can't even guarantee that its consumption of planetary resources is sustainable. No responsible society should continue deploying a technology of this magnitude merely because we've become dependent upon it. Dependence is not evidence of safety. At minimum, uncontrolled access to fire by unlicensed individuals deserves immediate reconsideration. We need a pause. We need independent studies, environmental reviews, labor impact assessments, resource limits and licensing requirements. We need a comprehensive governmental framework to determine where, when, how, and even if fire should be permitted. Until those safeguards are in place, continued expansion is irresponsible. The time has come for a moratorium on fire.

Back when I was a teenager Carroll Shelby shoehorned a 427 cubic inch American V8 into a British sports car chassis. Even with that big 7 liter cast iron V8, a Shelby Cobra only weighed about 2,500 lbs (1,136 kg). At the time $7,495 could buy you the fastest road-legal 0–60 mph vehicle available in the United States. I had a poster on my bedroom wall. I wanted to someday have one. That dream never came true, but a greater undreamt dream has. My dual motor Cybertruck is faster and far more spacious. Instead of the Cobra’s roughly 10 miles per gallon, at my home electricity rate my more powerful truck travels about 80 miles for the price of a gallon of gasoline. Admittedly I don’t have the sound of a big American V8 spinning toward 7,000 rpm. Instead, I have active noise cancellation and a sound stage of 15 speakers, including two subwoofers, to deliver the world’s greatest music at my spoken command. Nor do I have 4 gears to manually shift. That is replaced by smooth turbine-like continuous G-force. Oh, I’m not saying that the ’66 427 Shelby Cobra isn’t a glorious machine. It was. Restored examples bring $2–3+ million dollars. But, If somebody offered me either and said I had to actually live with one of them, I’d choose the Cybertruck. To have and use every day, I wouldn’t trade my Cybertruck for the best 427 Shelby Cobra on earth.

I was worried that our Tesla home solar system was performing less well over time. It went from making 100% of our electricity in 2022 to 75% in 2025 and 78% so far this year. A little investigation revealed the culprits. Us. My wife and I have steadily increased our electricity usage, while solar generation has remained roughly in the same range. We didn’t have an EV when we got our Tesla home solar system. First we got a Model Y, and then we traded it for a Cybertruck. Our gasoline expense went to ZERO, but we use more electricity. Some of the increase on the electric meter is energy that used to come from gasoline. We are old and getting older. Never going to a gas station is wonderful. We keep our home cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than many people do. We have an 80-gallon water heater that supports what we consider hydrotherapy—long, soothing showers. We also have a small pool that is passively solar heated, but the filtration pump needs to run quite a bit. In short, we use more power than the average American home and we're okay with that. Electricity buys us transportation, comfort, a lot of hot water, recreation, and something particularly valuable where we live in Florida: resilience. Hurricanes and thunderstorms take down the grid every year. The longest outage in our neighborhood was two and a half hot and humid days. We were fine. The takeaway here is that home solar is great. Energy independence is marvelous. And if you’re sizing a new solar system, I suggest installing more capacity than you need now. Don’t size it just for the lifestyle you have today. Think about the electricity-consuming life you may have ten years from now. See the chart. Our solar generation didn't collapse. We made virtually the same amount of electricity in 2025 as we did in 2022. Our need for electricity grew.