And they recently had a big strike here in Canada to change that to getting paid when they start the job. People were very supportive of the flight attendants strike as well once they realized that these people were working for free before the plane took off.
The advantage of unions and labour rights.

Just goes to show that a religious upbringing creates mass murderers. Perhaps something to do with the beatings given to their kids to install obedience.

I said driven to have more money, not would like more money. Many of the people I know who are well off are quite content with their finances, sure they would like more but aren't living to have more when there are other things in life besides work and struggle.

Well, to become a billionaire usually means a lack of morals and a certain type of personality bordering on sociopath. A group of people who have self selected.
I'm not talking about people who were born a certain colour or with weird hormones, it's more like a group like the Mafia. Sure they might be born into the Mafia but it is not inherent in them and I will label Mafioso's as bad people even if the do do some good stuff occasionally.

I think that with most people, once they have more money then they know what to do with, aren't driven to get more money when there is a life to enjoy. And some of the billionaire class do seem to want to make us peasants or serfs. Slaves can be an expensive investment.

People trying to avoid anything American, which lately is much of the world and especially Canadians.

Of course they want the same thing, namely more money. How they accomplish that will vary.

Strong storms like you describe mean no power for a week, using traditional generating plants, hydro here. Just today there are all kinds of power outages with the current storm.
Funny enough the last really big storm seen every highway wiped out from flooding, along with the train tracks and all pipelines shutdown. Gas rationing as it was barged in, yet the lights stayed on mostly.

Gas turbines spin up very quickly and produce electricity, though maximum output, using the waste heat to boil water is slower to ramp up.

They have the one man, one vote thing. That one man is currently Xi.

And how long has it taken China to ramp up its nuclear industry to the point where they can start 10 projects a year? Without looking, I'd say 30+.
For America, one example I heard was simply forging a containment dome takes at least a year and that is the current capability. Need lots of supply chain and educated work force to ramp up nuclear plant construction and thousands are needed if they're the major source of power.
China has a huge advantage when it comes to long term planning, especially as in the west politics gets more polarized.

Look at the history of the neutrino, first postulated because the numbers for fusion weren't adding up so to balance the books was the idea of a dark particle (neutrinos do not interact with electromagnetism) with little or no mass came about. IIRC, it took about 30 years before a neutrino was detected as they do interact with the weak force (or is it the strong force, I get mixed up).
Now it seems the universe is full of neutrinos and yet we can barely detect them.

Are you sure the terrain allows for more suburbs? I don't know about this case but lots of mountainous areas have limited buildable land.

War is a problem with traditional energy too. Dams, pipelines, power plants including nukes are likely targets. The nukes and dams can also become major disasters if targeted.

Depends on where you are. The further north, the more you need power when the sun is not shining. Peak power usage here in my part of Canada is evenings in the winter when a cold spell is happening. Luckily we have hydro so solar/wind means simply turning a tap down and saving the water for evening.