Bill McKibben: This is how we defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats

[marmar]

This is how we defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats
Bill McKibben

After Hitler invaded the Sudetenland, America turned its industrial prowess to building tanks, bombers and destroyers. Now, we must respond with renewables


(Guardian UK) The pictures this morning of Russian tanks rolling across the Ukrainian countryside seemed both surreal – a flashback to a Europe that we’ve seen only in newsreels – and inevitable. It’s been clear for years that Vladimir Putin was both evil and driven and that eventually we might come to a moment like this.

One of the worst parts of facing today’s reality is our impotence in its face. Yes, America is imposing sanctions, and yes, that may eventually hamper Putin. But the Russian leader made his move knowing we could not actually fight him in Ukraine – and indeed that his hinted willingness to use nuclear weapons will make it hard to fight him anywhere, though one supposes we will have no choice if he attacks a Nato member.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to dramatically reduce Putin’s power. One way, in particular: to get off oil and gas.

This is not a “war for oil and gas” in the sense that too many of America’s Middle East misadventures might plausibly be described. But it is a war underwritten by oil and gas, a war whose most crucial weapon may be oil and gas, a war we can’t fully engage because we remain dependent on oil and gas. If you want to stand with the brave people of Ukraine, you need to find a way to stand against oil and gas.

Russia has a pathetic economy – you can verify that for yourself by looking around your house and seeing how many of the things you use were made within its borders. Today, 60% of its exports are oil and gas; they supply the money that powers the country’s military machine. ...................(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/25/this-is-how-we-defeat-putin-and-other-petrostate-autocrats

[I_UndergroundPanther]

1. Jimmy Carter was right

Imagine if we heeded his words. Developed the technology to get off the oil addiction.

Now we are reaping the horrors of not listening to Jimmy Carter, and the science.

[SheltieLover]

2. Kicking for visability

[JohnSJ]

3. The reality is that cannot happen today, and that is exactly where most of the Western world

economies are moving.

For example, most car makers have said they plan to stop making ICE by 2030, but it is more than just cars. Airplanes will have to be completely redesigned.

Heating, Cooling, electricity generation need to be transitioned to solar, wind, and nuclear.

[Miguelito Loveless]

5. Agreed

Russia is the oil/gas industry personified. It has trillions of dollars in resources to fight us every step of the way, and will not go quietly into irrelevance.

[JohnSJ]

7. Yes. We have to do thing smart, and not cut off our collective noses to spite our faces

[NNadir]

4. Actually the world has demonstrated, at a cost of trillions of dollars...

...tremendous enthusiasm for Bill McKibben's rhetoric.

Vast stretches of former virgin wilderness have been converted into industrial wind parks, and the semiconductor industry is buzzing along turning out solar cells.

This vast expensive exercise has had no effect whatsoever on the use of dangerous fossil fuels. We are currently burning more of them than in any time in history.

McKibben, who is not even close to being either a scientist or an engineer has proved preternaturally incaple of mouthing the word "nuclear," lest he offend any of his supporters.

The world in which we live embraced his failed idea that wind and solar would save the day. They didn't. They aren't saving the day. They won't either.

The answer to these crises is not chanting the same mantra over and over. It involves looking a results and modifying one's ideas accordingly. Germany is one of the prime examples of the foolish embrace of the wind and solar fantasy. They've been Russia's best customer and today they're burning coal.

[Miguelito Loveless]

8. And yet every year in the EU and UK the amount of green power generation increases

Wind power is providing non-trivial amounts of power in red states like Texas and Oklahoma.

You keep saying green power can't work and yet you have been rebutted repeatedly with factual evidence and first hand accounts of the tech actually working.

I have been using solar and EVs for eight years, it just works. 800+ gallons of gasoline a year to zero. I haven't paid for a single kWh of electricity in almost three years.

The tech gets cheaper every year.

[2naSalit]

6. K&R

[Duppers]

9. Hear hear!

McKibben, #1 authority on the planet's pollution harming our environment & what we need to do, knows of what he speaks.