Comment by yndoendo
5 days ago
I still find it funny when it comes to oil between the USA and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia started moving the electrical system to renewables where USA is doubling down on fossil fuels.
Saudi Arabia is the drug dealer that knows you don't consumer your own supply unless you must were the USA consumes the crack they sell.
My next vehicle will 100% be pure EV, not Tesla.
> the drug dealer that knows you don't consumer your own supply unless you must
So true. There's nothing incompatible at all with: a) realizing that earth has gifted you with a valuable but limited & polluting energy source b) realizing that you'd be foolish to get you own country hooked on it, but it's not a bad business if you can get other countries hooked on it.
Instead we get oil rich areas seemingly determined to show off how much of their oil they can waste.
Wow, so now the US oil barons who lobbied Trump to kill renewables and EVs are even worse than Mohammed "Bonesaw*" bin Salman Al Saud? That's really something, if you look at it that way...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khashog...
Either you're too smart for me or I just can't follow you, but could you please expand a bit on your comment? I find it hard to link it to the parent, but I realize that may be on me.
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How you use worse implies a wider judgment than how someone behaves on a single issue. Real people are more complicated than Disney characters.
Yes? I don't think you can argue in good faith that the latter causes more total harm and damage than the former. It's really quite something to look at it in a different way..
How many people have Trump’s wars in Venezuela and Iran killed?
The funny thing is the US doesn’t really consume much Saudi Oil. The US is a net exporter of oil, though they do import some specific types of oils and export more of others.
The US’s interest in the Middle East oil is a lot about stabilizing oil prices. At least it used to be when there was a rational policy and competent executors.
Transitioning to renewables makes economic sense for the Saudis because they make more money selling a barrel of oil for transportation fuel and generating power with wind and solar.
The US has vast reserves of coal and natural gas. We generally don't use oil to generate power either -- oil is something like 0.4% of the total power generated, because we have vast amounts of natural gas and coal to use instead.
The situation isn't the result of some crafty master plan on the part of the Saudis. It's jusut what makes sense.
But in the context of the current topic, USA could be demonstrating their technical prowess and running EVs off this amazing coal and gas bounty.
Instead they seem to be in a cycle of buying massive inefficient vehicles and then getting annoyed at gas prices.
Oil is 2/5ths of US energy use.
The oil market is global and the US is a big part of that but it’s not the only one. You can always make changes to energy sources later and as new technologies are unlocked perhaps we can even skip some headaches now. Obviously there’s the geostrategic angle now which you see play out in Iran and Venezuela.
As other countries move to reliance on Chinese rare earth processing for renewable technology, it drives their oil and gas consumption down which means more oil and gas for those who are still using it.
If you really want to look at this analogy about drug dealers then really what you see is that America is the big boss here and an energy and military super power, and Saudi Arabia is just another dealer under American protection and if they don’t do what we tell them to do they’ll get the boot.
Like the drug dealers where I grew up they are making the neighborhood a really terrible place to live. They might have a nice house right now, but the homes around them are burning.
The electrical system is unrelated to oil for transportation.
The US is moving the grid renewable. The guys at top might not think so and yell loudly not to, but they can't stop things, only put the brakes on a little.
They've pumped the brakes pretty hard by cutting EPA standards, subsidizing coal, suing to stop wind and solar projects, cutting green energy grants by $8B, yoinking solar tax credits, trying to rewrite the Clean Air Act to block states from regulating emissions, shield Big Oil from litigation for climate deception, and repeating Big Oil's lies and disinformation.
The economics are against them nonetheless. Solar + battery is seeing massive rollouts.
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