I've been travelling in Europe and Morocco for the last month. The energy conversation here is different from T&T. On this side of the Atlantic leaders talk about when economies will be carbon-free. Some technology gurus predict that within a decade solar and wind power will be so cheap that demand for oil and gas will drop, locking the price of oil at US$10 per barrel.
It's so different from the information bubble in T&T which is dominated by oil industry thinkers in Houston and Oklahoma.
People here do not doubt that they will one day drive electric cars and live in energy-neutral homes.
It is part of their expectation. Times are uncertain and maybe Putin and Trump will have their way and derail the renewable energy transition, if even just temporarily.
My mother is Dutch. She lives near the Hague, so that is where I head first. There are some odd-looking metal posts in the street which were not there before.
They turn out to electric vehicle charging stations. At night you see electric vehicles parked by them with charger cables lying on the sidewalk.
My first thought, simple as I am, is "How many people have tripped on these cables?" Less than three per cent of vehicles in the Netherlands are electric, but the country does plan to ban the sale of fossil fuel-powered vehicles by 2025.
At my mum's house the hallway light is blown so I go to the supermarket to buy a new one.
I don't recognise the assortment of light bulbs. There are no incandescent bulbs on offer, only LED bulbs.
These are five-six times more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, which are no longer allowed to be sold in the EU. The one I buy is expensive, nearly 10 euros or TT$70, but they claim to earn back money in one or two years. It's all part of making homes carbon neutral across the EU.
Now I've always been told to stop dreaming about renewable energy for heavy industrial use.
That would be out of reach for decades, or so they said. The Dutch National Railway, one of the country's biggest electricity users, proved that wrong on January 1 by becoming the first national railway system to run on wind power.
That's 600,000 people transported by green energy each day.
These trains do not have sails, nor does the Netherlands even produce that much wind power yet. Instead, the electricity provider buys wind energy certificates from Finland, where an excess is produced.
To solve the wind power capacity problem, the Netherlands is co-building an undersea electricity cable that will connect the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark.
The COBRAcable (Copenhagen-Brussels-Amsterdam) will allow Denmark to export wind energy to the Dutch and Belgians.
It will also connect future North Sea wind farms. It's supposed to conduct enough electricity to power a city the size of Amsterdam.
Understand that this is where Royal Dutch Shell is from.
The Netherlands Government does not try to stop the evolution of its economy to protect one company, even though it a very large one that is part of Dutch national pride and identity.
They understand that carbon emissions need to be reduced and that the real promise is cheap, nearly free energy.
I have to admit that the winter cold got to me, so I decided to make a trip I'd wanted to do for a long time and I bought my mother and myself a 30 euro airline ticket to Marrakech, Morocco.
We take a wind-powered train to a city called Eindhoven and from there an electric bus to the airport.
We feel good about traveling guilt-free. Three and a half hours later we are in North Africa.
We shrug off the thought of having blown our carbon budget on air travel and dream about one day being able to fly carbon free.
Walk through Marrakech's medina and it seems like little has changed since the Umayyad Caliphate that ruled an area spanning Persia, North Africa and Spain.
The touts will test your ability to remain polite to handle personal space invasion.
There is obvious poverty, with per capita GDP at under US$4000 per year.
Morocco, however, is part of the energy revolution. It removed all subsidies on petroleum products and it has launched one of the world's largest solar energy projects, which will cost an estimated US$9 billion. By 2030 Morocco intends to get 52 per cent of its electricity from clean energy.
From where I sit, on a rooftop terrace in a town called Essaouira on Morocco's Atlantic coast, I can see a string of wind energy turbines on the horizon.
Renewable energy follows me everywhere I go on this trip. It is changing the way we must do business in T&T.
Some Trinidadians get upset when I talk to them about climate change and the demise of the global oil and gas industry.
Don't shoot the messenger. Instead learn about what is happening in the world and understand that within a decade or two untapped oil and gas reserves will be worthless.
We are not locked in to an oil and gas economy unless we choose to be.
Note as well that in Morocco water is scarce but I have yet to see a plastic water tank in the cities, you can drink straight from the tap, plastic bags are banned and you can walk through dark, medieval alleyways in apparent safety, despite widespread poverty.