Nutshell of the very worthwhile TED talk above: If you purchase a bunch of solar panels from China, you are not beholden on China the way an oil dependent country is beholden to, say, OPEC.
Or US LNG if you like.
If the oil, or gas, is cut off, you are immediately in deep shit.
If someone cuts off solar panels, you continue as before, just look for another solar panel supplier, since the sun will always be there.
Which is a big clue as to why the Republican Party, a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry, is working so hard to destroy democracy and consolidate power that cannot be controlled or questioned, and at the same time, dismantling of clean energy infrastructure at home, and powerful elements of the US military deploying in the Caribbean theater.
Estimated at 303 billion barrels (Bbbl) as of 2023, Venezuela is home to the largest known reserves of oil.
Saudi Arabia ranks second with 267.2 Bbbl, followed by Iran at 208.6 Bbbl and Canada at 163.6 Bbbl. Together, these four countries account for more than half of global oil reserves.
The United States, by comparison, holds about 55 Bbbl, placing it ninth globally. This means that Venezuela’s reserves are more than five times larger than those of the US.
Globally, proven oil reserves, which measure the quantities of crude oil that are economically recoverable with current technology, total approximately 1.73 trillion barrels.
The U.S. military has killed at least 21 people in recent strikes on small boats that it says were smuggling drugs off the coast of Venezuela.
President Trump justified the attacks by saying the United States is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and vowing to “destroy Venezuelan terrorists and trafficking networks.”
But Mr. Trump’s focus on Venezuela is at odds with reality: The vast majority of cocaine is produced and smuggled elsewhere in Latin America, according to data from the United States, Colombia and the United Nations. And Venezuela does not supply fentanyl at all, experts say.
In the 1980s and ’90s, the Caribbean was the main route for smugglers taking cocaine to the United States. Now, most of that traffic moves through the Pacific.
The Caribbean remains a pass-through point, however. And some countries in the region say that in response to an increased U.S. military presence on the water, some traffickers have started flying their product through the area.
But in recent years, top U.S. officials have rarely mentioned cocaine as a priority. Their focus has been on fentanyl, the drug tied to a national overdose crisis.
Venezuela plays essentially no role in the production or smuggling of fentanyl. The drug is almost entirely made in Mexico with chemicals imported from countries in Asia, including China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Justice Department and the Congressional Research Service.
Describing the boats destroyed by the U.S. military off the coast of Venezuela, Mr. Trump has said they carried enough drugs to kill tens of thousands of Americans. He did not specify what drugs.
Vaca Muerta is a geological formation located in the Neuquén Basin in northern Patagonia, Argentina. It is a late-Jurassic or early Cretaceous formation known for its significant shale oil and shale gas reserves. Discovered in the early 20th century, it has recently become one of the world’s largest shale oil and gas reserves. The formation’s exploitation involves advanced hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques to extract the hydrocarbons from the shale rock.
“The dollar always talks in the end,” Donald Trump wrote in his 1987 bestseller The Art of the Deal.
Javier Milei’s surprise triumph in Argentina’s midterm elections – after Trump bailed him out with 40bn of them – suggests there may be some truth to that assertion.
The US president had vowed to jettison his South American ally if, as widely predicted, the radical libertarian fared badly in Sunday’s make-or-break legislative vote. “If he doesn’t win, we’re gone,” Trump declared when Argentina’s shaggy-haired president visited him in Washington earlier this month to plead for economic help.
The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, the Pentagon announced Friday, in the latest escalation of military firepower in a region where the Trump administration has unleashed more rapid strikes in recent days against boats it accuses of carrying drugs.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to the U.S. Southern Command region to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on social media.
Major elements of the US fleet have been deployed for 2 generations now in the Middle East area, to protect the flow of oil and gas resources, much of which is not destined for the United States.
The importance of the Middle East as an oil and gas resource has been at the root of major wars the US has fought in the last 35 years.
The redeployment of major forces to the Caribbean is a change in theater, but not in fundamental mission, which will be, I would assert, to further the interests of the fossil fuel industry.
Understanding the big picture outlined in the links above is a Rosetta Stone for understanding the Trump administration’s foreign policy, the ongoing attacks on anonymous boats in international waters, its continuing bailout of an authoritarian Argentinian regime, as well as its war on clean energy at home.
Thank you for this..
“Rosetta storm” in the first sentence, last paragraph. Was that deliberate? It seems appropriate.
I suspect his fingers just automatically typed “storm,” for the same reason that Pascal programmers make integeresting typos.
auto correct at work? thanks for flagging