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How to defeat Putin and save the planet

It is impossible to predict how the war in Ukraine will end.

I fervently hope that it will be with a free, secure and independent Ukraine.

But this is what I know for sure:

the United States must not wastesr this crisis.

AP Photo/Hasan Jamali.

This is our umpteenth confrontation with a petro-dictator whose viciousness and recklessness are only possible thanks to the oil wealth he extracts from the ground.

No matter how the war in Ukraine ends, it must end with the United States finally, formally, categorically, and irreversibly ending its oil addiction.

Nothing has distorted our foreign policy, our human rights commitments, our national security and, above all, our environment than our addiction to oil.

Let this be the last war in which we and our allies finance both sides.

That’s what we do.

Western nations finance NATO and help Ukraine’s armed forces with our taxes, and since Russia’s energy exports finance 40% of its state budget, we finance Ukraine’s military. Vladimir Putin with our purchases of Russian oil and gas.

Now how stupid is that?

Our civilization simply cannot afford this anymore.

Climate change has not taken a break for the war in Ukraine.

Have you checked the weather forecast for the north and south poles lately?

Simultaneous extreme heat waves gripped parts of Antarctica this month (bringing temperatures there to 70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average for this time of year) and areas of the Arctic (making them more than 50 degrees warmer than average).

Those are not typos.

Those are crazy super extremes.

“They are opposite seasons; you don’t see the North and South (poles) melting at the same timeWalter Meier, a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, recently told The Associated Press.

“It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.”

And last Friday, unsurprisingly, scientists announced that an ice shelf the size of New York City had collapsed in East Antarctica at the start of this strange warm spell.

It was the first time humans observed “that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse,” the AP noted, adding that if all the frozen water in East Antarctica melted, it would raise sea levels more than 150 feet. Worldwide.

For all these reasons, I was disappointed to see the President Joe Biden and the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken doubling our addiction to oil, instead of tripling our commitment to renewable energy and efficiency.

Apparently spooked by false Republican claims that Biden’s energy policies are responsible for rising gasoline prices, his team has gone begging to some of the world’s biggest petro-dictatorships (Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia, in particular). to pump more oil and thus push down fuel prices.

The truth is that even if we allow US oil companies to explore for oil in all national parks, the short-term effect on gas prices would not be that significant.

As CNN Business reported last week, over the past decade, the US oil industry from boom to bust has spent tons of cash to fund full production growth, helping to keep prices down, but “keeping profits proved elusive.

Hundreds of oil companies they broke during multiple oil price declines, prompting investors to demand more restraint from energy CEOs.”

So today, most US oil company executives and investors “don’t want to add so much supply that it causes another glut that drives prices down.

And shareholders want companies to return excess profits in the form of dividends and buybacks, not reinvest them in increasing production.”

The country with the cheapest, freest and most flexible ability to influence world oil prices in the short term is Saudi Arabia.

But Russia is also a great player.

That is why just two years ago, President donald trump was begging Saudi Arabia and Russia to slash their production, because oil had fallen to around $15 a barrel on world markets, severely hurting American oil companies, whose extraction cost was $40 to $50 a barrel. barrel.

The price collapsed because Saudi Arabia and Russia were involved in a price war due to the reduction of market shares in the pandemic.

Now Biden is begging the Saudis to drastically increase their production to lower prices.

But the Saudis are angry at Biden for being angry at them for murdering the Saudi journalist jamal khashoggi and, according to reports, they are not responding Biden’s calls.

But the common denominator between Biden and Trump is the word “begging.”

Is this the future we want?

As long as we are addicted to oil, we will always be begging someone, usually a bad guythat the price goes up or down, because only we are not masters of our own destiny.

This has to stop.

Yes, there must be a transition phase during which we will continue to use oil, gas and coal.

We can’t go cold turkey.

but let’s promise double the pace of that transition, not to double down on fossil fuels.

Nothing would threaten Putin more than that.

After all, it was the collapse of world oil prices between 1988 and 1992, triggered by Saudi overproduction, that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union and hastened its collapse.

We can create the same effects today overproducing renewable energy and overemphasizing energy efficiency.

The best and fastest way to do it, argues Hal Harvey, CEO of Energy Innovation, a clean energy consultancy, is to raise clean energy standards for electric utilities — that is, require all utilities of the US reduce their carbon emissions by switching to renewable energy at a rate of 7% to 10% per year (that is, faster than ever).

Utopian?

No.

The CEO of American Electric Power, once entirely reliant on coal, has now committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, using mostly natural gas as backup.

Thirty-one states have already set ever-increasing clean energy standards for their utilities. Let’s go for 50, now.

At the same time, let’s enact a national law that gives all consumers the chance to join this fight.

That would be a law that would eliminate the regulatory bureaucracy around the installation of solar systemsit’s on the roofs and it would give every household in America a tax rebate to do it, as it has Australia, a country that is now growing its renewable markets per capita faster than China, Europe, Japan and America.

When cars, trucks, buildings, factories, and homes are all electrified and your grid runs primarily on renewable energy, voila! – we become more and more free of fossil fuels, and Putin becomes more and more poor in dollars.

Americans get it.

Electric cars are now rolling out of showrooms.

The largest wind power producing state in the country is politically red Texas, which generates more electricity from wind than the next three states (Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas) combined.

But making this a true national mission would get us to a clean energy economy much faster.

In World War II, the US government asked citizens to plant jvictory yards to grow their own fruits and vegetables, and store canned food for the troops.

Some 20 million Americans responded by planting gardens everywhere, from backyards to rooftops.

Well, what victory gardens were to our war effort back then, sunroofs are to our generation’s fight against petro-dictatorships.

If you want to lower gas prices today, the most foolproof and climate-safe method would be to lower the highway speed limit to 60 mph and ask every company in America that can do it to allow their employees to work in home and do not travel every day.

Those two things would immediately reduce the demand for gasoline and drive down the price.

Is it too much to ask to win the war against petrodictators like Putin, a victory in which the byproduct is cleaner air, not burned-out tanks?

“Clean alternatives are now cheaper than dirty ones,” Harvey noted.

“Now it costs more to ruin the earth than to save it.”

Also “now it costs less to free ourselves from the petrodictators than to remain enslaved by them.”

So is.

The technology is here.

Now we can put Putin on a barrel.

It is just a matter of leadership and national will. What are we waiting for?

c.2022 The New York Times Company

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