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this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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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?
It's infuriating how successful the oil companies have been at turning solar vs oil into a fucking culture war.
If you switch to Solar, THE COMMIES WIN.
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.
Have you even said thank you to the oil companies?!
Good point. They made oil prices so high I bought a Tesla. Thanks guys you really did me a solid, best car ever :D
Out of all EV manufacturers, why tf did u decide to get a Tesla?! Hope you got yourself a used one, at least.
There was a point in time where Teslas really were the only good EV worth talking about.
Unfortunately, that’s arguably still true, in the us. Given the current administration’s desire to roll back the calendar, outside EVs have been effectively banned, and many of the choices we were finally about to get were cancelled.
If I were looking for a new EV today, Tesla is still by far the most compelling choice available to me.
If that's your best car ever, you haven't driven many cars.
It's a 2023ish car so pre-refresh. The suspension is stiff and it lacks a lot of luxury creature comforts. But it's FUN AS HELL to drive, tons of chargers everywhere, the nav system is top notch, and the self driving system is light years ahead of anyone else's. Plus they don't sell their customers data like GM and some others or show ads on the display like Stellantis.
I've said Fuck You, and that's pretty close.
For what? Helping fertilize crops with synthetic fertilizers? Pshaw, all we need is more wind and puppies!
Or said country simply likes killing people around the world and oil is a convenient excuse.
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.
Yes but what about the oil companies’ profits? Have you even considered their feelings?
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.
The US govt has a responsibility to keep the PetroDollar in tact since Nixon killed the gold standard, otherwise the global dependency on USD is no longer maintained and other currencies have a chance to replace it.
This is currently happening, ofc, with ships crossing Hormuz by paying Yuan instead of Dollars.
Now that UAE has shown other countries how to leave OPEC, USD (read: everyday Americans) might be royallyfucked but at least USA might be able to move away from microplastics and pollution.
This 100%.
US Govt is propped up on debt. We have no financial discipline today and none is anywhere in sight. If our currency loses value we're mega-fucked.
If petrodollar goes away, our currency loses a lot of credibility. And we are doing everything possible to ensure that everyone involved wants nothing to do with us.
Great strategy :)
Im sure it'll all work out for the rich people, at least
Now add corporate lobbying and campaign donations into this model and suddenly the math will start mathing.
Yes, it's crazy talk because the sane thing is to have a cabal of pedophiles running your country and then bombing poor defenseless countries around the world to distract people from all the money they're stealing.
This is nonsense. Pedophiles are attracted to PRE-pubescent children, like 0-12 years old.
We have a cabal of hebephiles (11-14yo) and ebephiles (15-19yo) running our country. And they don't bomb poor defenseless countries, they bomb heavily defended countries that have military control of vital trade corridors and nuclear response capability. And they're not just bombing those countries to distract people from the money they're stealing, it's also to distract people from demanding the release of documents proving they all signed up to rape early-teenaged girls.
Trust me, this is MUCH better this way :P
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.
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.
What a bunch of crazy talk. Next I bet you're going to say something REALLY batshit, like we should stop offshoring all our manufacturing to China and build stuff here in USA, right?
Jokes aside- you're quite right, but with one issue- making solar panels has a chemical environmental impact. If China wants to trash their environment to build our solar panels cheap, let them. Other than that I 100% agree we should be buying the tech and setting up our own manufacturing lines.
But like diversified not controlled by a single entity, let's see how the shareholders feel about that first.
But what would the shareholders of oil and MIC companies do if we stopped spending that money on oil wars? Won't someone please think of the shareholders!?