I absolutely love that the tyrannical bullying by the US is going to result in a globally-visible solar win.
That being said, now I worry that this administration will simply bomb them from existence to keep it from happening.
There is a dangerous hope of the US admin being just such a fucking heel that the world is forced to be on the side of good in just pure desperation and opposition.
They are killing real people though and we do have to stop them still. The silver lining of mushroom bomb cloud can provide some comfort but if we see it we have still failed.
It is hilarious how America is suiciding itself at multiple levels with its latest dick-wagging:
- It’s seriously pissing off its allies and pushing neutrals away.
- It’s showing the US’ force projection capabilities as a much smaller and weaker stick than they have been boasted as being.
- It’s acceleraring the move away from Oil and the USD status as Reserve Currency is linked to Oil trade and when it ends, well, Helloo hyperinflation!
- It’s acceleraring the move away from Oil when the US is commercially doubling down on Oil, which means that the US is stuck in a commercially fast shrinking market and in developing yesterday’s Technologies.
IMHO, we are right now living the end days of an Empire, something that even in the Modern Era only seems to happen maybe once a century.
You can’t bomb wind and solar since they’re very spread out
see look it’s a revolutions YES YES YES
the commies were RIGHT oh oh oh OHHHHHH
they said the word!
Poor US always on the wrong side recently, and with such good intentions too.
Bwahaha… Good intentions, that’s rich
At what point will the USA admit their embargo was and is a huge fuck-up and an embarrassment? It’s become a symbol of how full of crap we are. Has it been fifty years of this?
p.s. I looked it up because I’m dumb, it’s been SIXTY-SIX YEARS. It’s even older than me.
All the USA had to do for a fantastic ally by now is stop being an asshole. We could at least return the illegally seized Guantanamo Bay, which is kept just to insult them, really.
But where will commit torture in legal ambuity if don’t have a site off the coast on a land that isn’t us jurisdiction but also not the jurisdiction of a country we recognize validty of their human rights laws?
Like it’s a really special plot of land if are really trying to specialize in human rights abuse in internationally and domestically legally dubius ways.
All that say, honest wtf is wrong with some of these people
I mean, if their goal is to increase suffering for the Cubans, than that blockade is working pretty well.
It would be nice to imagine, but unfortunately it’s not like the solar panels are gonna solve all of Cuba’s problems, especially because they don’t have enough money to pay for a full transition.
Funny how the anti-green energy USA is expediting the adoption of renewables around the world due to their moronic laws, policies and wars.
Can’t wait to see them left behind in the past with all that oil they can’t get enough of, when nobody will need it anymore in the rest of the world.
Both heavy and light oil will still be needed for other processes and products that can’t be replaced/way more difficult to replace than fuels. But decoupling oil from energy and transportation will have a huge impact on the market and be better for everyone in general.
Hopefully the quantities will be small enough to make the USA irrelevant for a century, until they catch up again.
It won’t just make the USA irrelevant in the oil domain: it’ll impact the entirety of the OPEC group who’ll have to massively scale back production to keep the price high enough to sustain their economies.
The petro-dollar will be replaced with the electro-dollar (that is if the US dollar remains the world currency). So a different group of rare earth rich countries will emerge that’ll become more relevant than OPEC in the energy domain but not quite to the same extent as countries that are both gifted with geography to make them major energy exporters and have neighbouring countries/super-grid connections/renewable storage export capabilities will emerge as big players as well.
Most countries can produce some oil, and if there’s no demand it doesn’t matter what price they try to sell it at when no one buys it.
And those who can’t produce oil, will find alternatives. Exactly what is happening right now.
If countries become self-sufficient through green energy, which is 100% achievable, there won’t be any electro or petro dollars, making the USA irrelevant. Which is my hope.
Google says 25% of the worlds oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, but it also says 55% off the worlds oil is used for transportation.
We should be able to fairly quickly (ie. Decade) cut oil by double what is impacted in trumps war
It well be needed for awhile still but at reduced quantities.
We NEED to Cumpete with CHYNA! Which is Why we’re doing EVERYTHING to Force OTHER COUNTRIES to do Bizness with CHYNA!
-Republicans!
So they went full solarpunk?
Cuba in Ten Years
no, read the article: they went a smidge solarpunk, are mostly petrolpunk, and often there-is-no-electricity-todaypunk
not the first time for this kind of thing. they have had a lot of things like organic farming to.
Seems like China recognized a pattern about nations that invest heavily in the poorer parts of the world.
That was how USA used China against the socialist bloc after all. Of course they did.
Amazing what a country can do when its continued existence depend on residents doing it.
It’s often best the short and sharp pain of pulling out a tooth than the lesser but chronical pain (and possible nasty eventual consequences) of a rotting tooth.
Insert “good” meme
US: making themselves redundant for any future trading endeavors
God job.
Just give china the keys to the car.
Wise move. 5 d chess thinking right there.
Tell us more about transgenic mice and their secret agendas.
Who is making solar panels?
Does it matter? It’s not the US, they wouldn’t be selling to cuba
And where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego!?
And who…who who whooooooooo wrote the book of loooooove?
deleted by creator
Okay so let me go over this again as I have an idea…
Nation that’s struggling with dependency on petroleum and unreliable supply chain turns to renewable energy. The solar energy is clean, reliable, requires little maintenance, and is helping that country become less reliant on foreign petroleum.
If that works for Cuba, a tiny nation with few resources, perhaps it would work in other more wealthy nations also. Perhaps if a nation were, say, reliant on petroleum to the point that they start multiple multinational wars to ensure their own access to oil, costing literally $trillions, it might be cheaper to put some or all of that money into renewable energy. Presumably China will sell their solar panels to whoever’s buying, yes? So why wouldn’t a larger, more developed country purchase them in great quantity so spending $trillions on military actions in the Middle East would no longer be necessary?
If a country like this has some of their own domestic oil production, wouldn’t it be a desirable future to just walk away from the Middle East entirely, let the oil assholes kill each other without our involvement, and run the country for a few decades on sunshine? Use that money to buy solar panels literally by the boatload / container-ship-load (or buy the tech and manufacture them ourselves), and then national security is improved through removing foreign dependencies?Or is this just crazy talk?
Not crazy talk, Australia currently leads with the highest per-capita uptake of solar panels and it’s having a noticeable impact on our overall energy costs:
https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/household-solar-electricity-generation-australian-national-accounts
We actually produce so much excess solar during peak times that households without panels can opt for electricity plans which offer free electricity between midday and 3pm every day (inc. weekends).
We’re also rolling out a heap of household batteries to better help take advantage of this surplus production and offset peak demand times too.
The world is rapidly approaching a post-fossil fuel world; the transition will be slow at first, and then drastic all of a sudden.
Australia is also central to renewables because of the number of articles on grid storage.
Now add corporate lobbying and campaign donations into this model and suddenly the math will start mathing.
OR, we could build those solar panels right here in America, and not only relieve the pressure on oil reserves, but kick off a new big American industry, backed by a national energy initiative, backed by tax incentives. There would be lots of new small businesses around the country selling and installing solar, creating thousands of new jobs.
We tried that. At least twice. One political party decided that investment was “fraud, waste, and abuse”, and shut it all down, driving manufacturing out of the country.
Good luck with that. Making solar panels is hard, and China is really good at it. Why not pay them?
Yeah, we can do hard stuff, too, and maybe we should start doing the hard stuff here.
We spent decades having to deal with other countries and our oil policies, and it’s been a nightmare of wars, embargoes, etc. Now that we can go down a completely different energy path, why shouldn’t we keep it inhouse? We need to work with other nations, but we don’t have to voluntarily line up to be totally economically enslaved to another country for the NEXT wave of energy.
And this is what every other country should be saying about America. Espically tech we are enslaved to Americans cause let’s be honest there is no multinational companies. They are American companies spread over the world and have to do what America asks even If in another country.
As an American I hate to say it but there’s merit to what you’re saying.
If I was outside the US, I’d be looking at the US as an unreliable partner, given how rapidly the message is changing with things like wars and tariffs. I’d conclude that the US does not have a consistent policy (let alone an intelligent one) and therefore it’s in my best interest to ensure my success doesn’t rely on the US anymore.
it’s really too bad :(
I’m sincerely wishing you good luck. More solar more better.
I’ve been a solar advocate for decades. You got the sun giving off free energy all the time, and all those roofs and parking lots that could be covered with panels to capture that free energy, what’s the problem?
Oh, yeah, the Free part. American Capitalism doesn’t like the sound of FREE.
All oil lobbiests, oil barons, and dipshit right-wingers whose primary source of info is focks nooz, blowroganexperience, and other propaganda outlets: it’d take 30 years to get the infrastructure in place for rEnEwAbLeS!
So what you’re saying is if we started during the oil crisis of the 70s, we’d be celebrating 25 years off our dependency on petroleum? If we started at the turn of the millennium we’d already be in the home-stretch toward completion?
You can’t think that way. Just understand that building clean infrastructure is too difficult and too expensive and will take too long. The electric car is always 10 years away.
(Like the dude or not- this is something you gotta give Elon Musk credit for-- before Tesla the electric car was perpetually ‘10 years away’, Tesla actually went and built one, and a whole fast charging network, with the intended goal of embarrassing other automakers into producing their own EVs and chargers. It worked, and I truly believe without Tesla we’d still be hearing that the electric car is only 10 years away.)
But for real, as a Freedom-loving American- it pisses me off because the sooner we start the sooner we’ll be finished, and then from a national security POV we are MUCH better off as we aren’t depending on shithole sandbox countries with religious dictatorships to provide our fuel.
Ehh, Tesla was building those things before Musk took over. It’s like the Nazis and the autobahn, these people are taking credit for previous good decisions when they take over.
With respect- I have been following Tesla closely since the original Roadster was first in development. Your statement is not correct.
When Tesla started, Elon was one of the first, and biggest, investors. A man named Martin Eberhard was one of the team, he was put in charge of Tesla and wrote a blog that I read religiously. The original Roadster, under Eberhard, had a two-speed gearbox- no clutch, just a synchromesh. This would allow one to select either rocket fast acceleration in first gear, or higher top speed in second gear.
The gearbox however became a significant source of problems. Making a gearbox work at 16,000 RPM is difficult, getting one that shifts under load at 16,000 RPM and will last for 100k miles (without costing a fortune) is a real challenge. And while not impossible, it’s not something that had been done cost effectively for a vehicle before. So Tesla went through several gearbox designs and multiple suppliers trying to make one that was cost-effective and reliable. Demo cars were loaned to reviewers, locked in 2nd gear so they wouldn’t shift.After the 3rd or 4th attempt at the gearbox and a year plus worth of delays, Elon took over Tesla. Eberhard was pushed out. He was salty about that and for a while wrote a blog called ‘Tesla Founders’ which was critical of Tesla. As I recall there was a small legal dispute, it was solved and Tesla/Eberhard went their separate ways.
Anyway, Elon took over at Tesla, and one of his first orders was delete the shifting gearbox, use a simple non-shifting reduction gear (inexpensive and lasts more or less forever if you keep it lubricated), and make the motor bigger to provide more torque. The result was the Roadster. Model S, the luxury production sedan, followed. Then Model X, luxury production SUV, Then Model 3, mainstream sedan, and Model Y, mainstream SUV. All under Elon, as the company grew from a ‘might not make it’ startup to one of the biggest automakers.
I say you’re incorrect because all the ‘good decisions’ Tesla made in the beginning were under Elon, NOT Eberhard.
All of the good decisions?
There were of course other people at Tesla- smart people who made lots of good choices.
I’m simply pointing out that your initial assertion (that other people made most of the good decisions, Elon showed up after those decisions were made and took credit) is demonstrably false, given that pre-Elon the company was proceeding down an ultimately failed engineering path.
Okay, now you are changing what I said to continue to make your point that “Elon saved the company” which is very different from your original claim that “Elon provided the vision”.
Now, just take that analysis a little bit further by adding the consideration that those elected to manage the nation aren’t actually doing that and wondering why.
I bet it will yield interesting results about whose interests such people really serve.
Wait, you’re saying my Congresscritter who only shows up every few years to demand my vote (because it’s ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL THIS YEAR that we defeat the other party) isn’t actually laser-focused on my needs as a citizen?
That seems unpossible.
:P
The only place I’ve ever heard “congresscritter” was Rush Limbaugh or other right wing commenter. It makes me cringe every time.
I thought it was just a phrase in general circulation. I’ve actually never once listened to Rush Limbaugh. I find most political content unintelligent and uninteresting and generally prefer to just read facts and draw my own conclusions. My brain seems to work pretty well and I prefer not to have my conclusions drawn for me.
