It’s very very simple: Go green and help the rest of the world do it, too.
Via The New York Times:
MOSCOW — A steep decline in oil prices is straining the budgets of major petroleum-exporting countries around the globe, raising a specter of spending cuts in Russia, where the economy is under pressure from Western sanctions, and posing a potentially grave security challenge for Iraq, which is already struggling to finance its fight against the Islamic State.
From Moscow to Caracas, Riyadh to Baghdad, in Tehran, Algiers, Kuwait City and Lagos, political leaders, finance ministers and central bankers have been scrambling to confront the plunge in prices — roughly 25 percent since a peak in June — driven by increased production in the United States and by projections of sustained cuts in demand in many developed countries, as well as decelerating growth in China.
Sure, we’re flooding the market with American oil but the flipside of that is eliminating demand for anyone’s oil worldwide. Demand is down in developed countries because many of them are embracing solar, wind and other renewables. China’s economy is slowing down but solar panels are being produced at an increasing rate to feed a very hungry market.
If we, as a nation, aggressively pursue renewable energy and entice/blackmail/beg the developing world to come along for the smog-free ride, we will have achieved four very useful goals.
One, we will have crushed several Middle Eastern dictatorships that depend almost entirely on petro dollars without a single bomb. We will have no reason to be there because we won’t need to protect our access to their oil. Then they go on their merry way and slaughter each other without our interference.
Two, we’ll have crippled Russia’s ambitions for becoming a superpower again. It’s hard to continue annexing other countries’ land when you don’t have the money to pay for the military needed for conquest. Also, Putin is a piece of bigoted trash and as long as his country follows his example, they can go scratch.
Three, we’ll have created a great many jobs that can’t be outsourced as well as reduced our overall energy bill. Will it hurt coal miners? Sure. But why can’t we invest the money to retrain them to build/install/maintain solar panels? They’re miners, not stupid.
Four, we’ll have taken a huge step towards reducing the amount of pollution the world produces. It doesn’t matter if you believe in climate change or not; there is no arguing that reducing pollution is a good thing, and it boosts the economy, so even that lame excuse doesn’t work anymore.
We need to move past the death grip the fossil fuel industry has on our politics. Not only are they damaging the planet, leaving us to pay for the eventual clean up, but they’re also crippling our economy and costing us good paying jobs all so they can get even richer.
No comments:
Post a Comment