Peter GleickMar 9
Interesting to think that Donald Trump may have, completely inadvertently and at a horrific cost, finally woken up the world to how urgent it is we get off our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.
Electrify everything.
Ban the production of gasoline-powered vehicles.
Tax oil companies dry.
Subsidize all renewables and EVs.
Show threadAndrew ZonenbergMar 9

@petergleick I don't understand why more governments around the world don't see "our entire economy revolves around an expensive quantity in limited supply, primarily found in one of the most war-torn and politically unstable regions in the planet" as a serious national security risk.

Like, forget all of the environmental concerns, if your country were utterly dependent on corn or steel or any other commodity only found in a region that was constantly at war causing random price spikes, you'd think you'd be making removal of that dependency a nationwide priority.

Show thread"Mediocre Bunny" EvelynMar 9
@azonenberg @petergleick
But (and I am not enough of a political scholar to really know this), isn’t it the dependency of powerful nations on a crucial commodity in less powerful nations that leads to a lot of that political instability?
A global switch to renewable energy (which, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for) could be expected to heighten tensions in areas rich in say, lithium, while some oil-rich areas might finally cool off.
Show threadAndrew Zonenberg

@Gorfram @petergleick to some extent but the 3 major abrahamic faiths have been at each other's throats over the region for millennia (I won't even get into Sunni vs Shiite infighting etc). The tribes of Afghanistan haven't got along for ages either although I don't think the conflict is quiiite as old.

Adding oil disputes to the mix is just another match on a dumpster fire that's been burning for generations. The region would have been a massive supply chain risk no matter what.

Mar 9 at 11:31amWeb