I don't quite follow how a plan to keep up the same life-destroying industrial culture we have created is "forward-thinking." Seems like backward thinking to me. Or status quo thinking at best.

Changing the sources of our energy consumption will not change the consequences of that consumption for life on earth. As we have developed increasingly powerful sources of energy, we have created increasingly massive destruction of living systems. If we had unlimited energy, we'd wreak unlimited havoc. Changing our source of energy does not change what we do with that energy. An addict is an addict, regardless of what particular substance they are using at any given time.

As for 'straw man' arguments - challenges of producing, storing and transporting industrial quantities of hydrogen have vanishingly little in common with the challenges of making toxic little brainwashing devices (commonly referred to as 'smartphones'). "Technology will save us from technology" is empirically disproven at least since the beginning of the industrial 'revolution'.