McKIBBEN: Just possibly it's the oil?"

[Oscar]

McKIBBEN: Just possibly it's the oil?"

QUOTE: "A solar panel is the new peace sign"

Bill McKibben - January 03, 2026

CHART BELOW READS: "Countries with the largest oil reserves" (Oil Reserves in 2025 (Billion Barrels)"

EXCERPT: "We probably don’t care much about human rights violations in Venezuela, because human rights are not currently on the top (or the bottom) of our State Department’s concerns (except for white South Africans). But we almost certainly care deeply about that oil. In fact, it’s not exactly hidden—here’s what Trump said in mid-December: "They took our oil rights — we had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back."

And as he said this morning on Fox News, regarding the Venezuelan oil industry: “We’re going to be very strongly involved in it.” . . . .

Why does Trump hate solar and wind energy so passionately? It’s because they’re somewhat outside his or anyone else’s control. A nation that builds its prosperity on oil makes itself a target; a nation that depends on imported oil to survive makes itself a vassal. A nation (say, China) that rapidly builds out its own supply of energy from the sun—energy that can’t be embargoed or effectively attacked, energy that is by its nature decentralized, energy so spread out that no particular bit of it is all that valuable—is a nation that can go its own way.

America is, by any definition, a rogue nation this morning. It does what it wants, without effective constraint by anyone. It, in the image of its leader, is a bizarrely destructive and absurdly oversized toddler, unable to reason beyond its own wants and impulses. We should try to teach it some manners, but we should also childproof the planet."

[ https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/jus ... dium=email ]