" the entire world needs to be watched"
It is perfectly legal to spy on the entire world outside of the US as far as the US is concerned.
Do you think the US is going take Russia or China to court for using SIGINT systems?

But you do have conversion losses at each stage.
The big benefit is that electric cars use less power over all because they have no idle along with charging over night when you are using surplus power.

You left out nuclear. A good bit of US power still comes from Nuclear which is low carbon "No power source including Solar is carbon free".

No the you will just have tin foil hat/hipsters beating the daylights out of you for having a camera...
See every discussion of GoogleGlass on Slashdot for proof.

The biggest help is Nuclear power. But the Greens are fighting it.
Germany is a prime example. Sure they have built out a lot of Solar and Wind but they are replacing Nuclear with COAL!
The say in 20 or so years ago they can replace coal with "renewables" which is just pushing it off and pumping out carbon.
Solar will not work because of storage.
And no Tesla has not solved that problem. Vermont Yankee which was a small nuclear plant produced on average 4703 GWh per year. It would take 1,287,612 Tesla power walls to provide a 24 hour reserve. The cost would be 4,506,642,000 and that is just for a 24 hour storage system. In the winter you could have many areas where solar output is close to zero for more than a day but if you want cut that in half and put it at 12 hours. And that is JUST the battery costs. Add in solar and wind turbines to match the 4703 GWhs and the math gets super ugly very quickly.
And Vermont Yankee was a small plant. BTW it is has been replaced with carbon producing fracked natural gas... Yea... Yell the greens!
BTW the Saint Lucie Nuclear power plant in Florida which is far from the largest produces just under 3 times as much power. So figure about 3 million power walls.

"Ah, the old "the system will never be perfect, so we might as well not try to improve it" argument."
Sure but this is not an improvement. I am all for increasing taxes for school and frankly even for more federal aid for areas that have low incomes but a centralized system for all funds will have a negative impact and is unworkable.

But for all practical purposes Tokyo is about 70 years old.

"As opposed to London, Paris, and Tokyo, which were designed and built during the last 50 years, and thus are more efficient."
Paris and London are both very old and they were not "leveled" during WWII.

I find people so amusing.
Why would anyone have any doubt that the NSA is using the best tech available? The majority of people seem to be happy with what is going on. Frankly if you voted for President Obama you voted for mass surveillance. He knows all about, he authorises it, and he supports it.
Frankly I am all for people pushing for better laws and regulations but the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over it when they voted for it is just over the top.
Grow up people. Every nation will spy on every other nation to the best of it's ability. Only laws can restrict them from local surveillance and only your spies can protect you from the other nations spies.

The local climate is South Florida.
So what you want to do is restrict people from being active in their community and improving their community. I guess things like Beach Cleanups should also not be allowed since only rich people can spend the time cleaning a beach?.....
Yeah Sorry but what you are proposing is a totalitarian system where the central government mandates everything. The funding would never be "equal" because you would not have unlimited resources so those areas that lean one way or the other would be starved for funds and swing areas would get more resources. So school in Utah where it is both very hot and very cold that needs AC upgraded would have to wait while a School in Ohio would get a new football stadium.
It can not work and is a terrible idea.

You left out
1. Wireless will never have the bandwidth of fiber.
2. They will be limited to very close to line of sight. Sucks to have national park, state park or even a large farm in the way.

"IF traffic were spread evenly across the network, there wouldn't be a problem, but it's not. So you kind of need a backbone of some sort."
In theory caching would work but that would have issues with syncing.

"The difference between WW2 codebreakers and today's NSA and what have you being, of course, that WW2 codebreakers were used against to crack the communications of a defined enemy. So yes, it's perfectly reasonable to object to a practice that considers literally everybody, civilian or not, foreigner or not, to be an enemy."
Actually the spying was on all nations. It was only after the US started Lend-Lease that the spying was restricted by the US. The USSR spied on the US all through the war even when they where our "friend". Frankly that action is why the spying on "friendly" countries became common. For example during the Yom Kippur war the US spied on Israel to and made them live up the the cease fire.
The US was spying on Germany and German companies long before 12/7/41. They spying on Japan also predates the war.
Sure work to put laws into place and make them good ones to protect US citizens but also understand that every nation will spy to the best of it's abilities. If you thin Nations in Asia, the EU, South America, or Africa are any different than you are simply fooling yourself.

Citation?
Cuban Missile Crisis

" I am torn between admiration of the technical brilliance of building software like this and horror as to how it is being used."
Why? Over most of history spying has saved lives more than taken them.
I find it so odd that people on Slashdot sing the praises of the "Codebreakers" of WWII but are shocked and freaked out that they are still around today.
BTW the US and Britian both spied and used code breaking before the war started so... Yes they were spying in peacetime!!!!! Shocking.

Sigh... You really need to go back to your Logic class...
A false dilemma fallacy requires that the choices be limited. I did not say that those were the only two options. You have many good and bad options to the dilemma. What I was showing was simply that a much better option was available and that they the one being defended was not a good option.
Yes there are worse options but the one your are defending is very far from a good one.