Three major electricity grid disasters in just over a year are exemplary of the havoc that climate extremes are causing and what needs to be done about it: (i) the howling winds of the 2020 derecho, when hundreds of thousands lost power in Iowa and Illinois in August 2020; (ii) the February 2021 breakdown of much of the Texas grid in the maelstrom of a winter polar vortex; and (iii) the failure of all eight transmission lines supplying a major city, New Orleans, and a near-total blackout in the midst of the miseries of the most intense recorded hurricane to hit Louisiana, Hurricane Ida on August 29, 2021. Such catastrophes often compound the miseries of those who already suffer disproportionately from economic, social, and racial injustices, much as the Covid-19 pandemic has also done. In addition to these debacles, there has also been a startlingly different kind of failure: the periodic, deliberate shutdowns of sections of the grid to prevent fires starting at transmission towers in fire-vulnerable areas in California, which is in the midst of a deep, historic drought. The reason? Transmission-tower-related fires have caused death and destruction in the state on more than one occasion. Deliberate black-outs and periodic misery or death and destruction by grid-triggered fire — those are the current electrical choices in large parts of the country’s most populous state. A large part of the vulnerability arises from the very nature of centralized grid infrastructure. Fossil gas power plants compete for fuel with heating buildings in the grip of extreme cold; nuclear power plants must actually be shut down for safety reasons if there is no grid electricity supplying them, as was the case with the Waterford 3 plant in Louisiana during Hurricane Ida. Large power plants can deliver no electrons when transmission lines are down and distribution lines lie prone in flooded streets, tangled in fallen trees. Homes and businesses that have emergency generators depend on gas...