Your range of stories is always impressive Will. This one is at the good end of the scale, you are pointing out some truths here that not many seem to have accepted yet, but have to. The thing I see missing is the technical solution, there really is a system solution to the whole business, but it is going to take a lot of folk seeing it and understanding it to make it clear.
Domestic and community solar hydrogen is where it has to go, the earlier this is accepted, with the economic change required with it, solar indexed stimulus, the less pain we'll see and the more quickly we'll see things turned around.
What is happening, and nature will push this one way or another, regardless of human pain, is we are switching our energy dependence from Earth to sun.
It is physically impossible for us not to do this, we will self exterminate before we can stop it happening, it would be like a plant that refused to use the energy of its leaves after those first formed, to grow more and move on to becoming dependent on the energy of thr sun.