Putin managed to do something similar before. The issue is that high fossil fuel prices also mean massive profits for fossil fuel companies. Since green technologies take time to deploy, this means fossil fuel companies have a lot of money for corruption.
The good news is that there are tipping points. Things like fossil fuel jobs are cut and companies leave countries. For example the UK has no longer coal power plants. So the coal lobby is going to be extremely weak in the UK.
The sales-weighted average for new car sales in the US is $47k. That is a lot of money by global standards. Even in the US you can get something like the 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 6 for less then that and there are cheaper BEVs available as well.
Also car ownership in the US is insanely high.
US EV market share is at 5.7%. That is low compared the rest of the world. Especially since the US is a rich country.
This is just looking at water usage/freshwater available. Australia has fairly large rainforests for example. So a lot of water available. At the same time the population is pretty small for such a massive country. The main issue is that the water is in the “wrong” part of Australia. The UK on the other hand is densly populated. So usage is high, while the land although on average probably wetter then Australia is also much smaller.
You have similar things in other countries as well.
GM is really destroying itself. They sold their European business some years ago and next year their joined venture with SAIC in China is going to end. So the US production is really all they have left and that market just hates EVs. So they probably fail the EV adoption and will last until some strong competitor enters the US market with good EVs. I am not just talking about the Chinese, but also European car companies have some decent offerings these days, with a much better home market.
Online money making apps, which you do for a bit to be able to buy a beer or some other small stuff you might want. Stuff like surveys, tests and so forth.
I disagree with that. High oil prices help to built alternatives, but low ones destroy the oil industry. No profits no new wells. The best thing is to uses taxes to articially create high oil prices, without giving big oil massive profits.
If Iran loses the war, due to either a massive US ground invasion(will turn out bad for the US, but whatever) or them losing control of the country, would add Irans massive oil supply to the global market and lower oil prices a lot. If there is peace in the region, oil prices would also fall. If prices continue to be high, then EV adoption will lower oil consumption. Also shale takes like 3-6months to start a new project. So prices will fall. With $100 WTI, the oil price is also lower then the peak in 2022.
Also Ukraine can hit Russian oil exports as well and has done so as well.
Last December, the European Commission scrapped a 2035 ban on selling new petrol or diesel cars. Instead, under pressure from Germany and Italy, it let manufacturers keep making cars with up to 10% of their current exhaust emissions past that date – in effect, a way to keep selling combustion engines.
I thought the European Commission just presented the law, but it has to pass through parliament and council to go into effect, which to the best of my knowledge has not happened. So the 2035 ban should still be law.
The robot weighs 2t. So pushing it around is not going to be possible for a lot of people.
But also you can just install charging piles next to the parking spots or use fast charging.
Conservative estimates are at 250k dead due to climate change each year starting 2030 and that is going to happen even if we go to zero emissions right now. The more we emit, the worse it is going to get. So far the war is at less then 10,000 deaths total. Obviously it is impossible to predict, but it could well net save lifes if you include climate deaths.
Obviously this should have been done without the war.
The Line is actually a massive success. Saudi Arabia has a massive problem, in that it is dependend on oil and gas, while radical Islam causes a lot of problems for switching to a more sustainable future. Especialls womens rights have improved a lot(still bad, but better). If you ban married women from talking with unmarried men, travel without guardian, drive a car and so forth, you are not using half your potential work force. These sort of strict laws also make the country less attractive to outside visitors. That however is required, when you have business travel and tourism.
If you want to avoid a big backlash, you need to bring the Saudi public on your site and crack down on the most radical faction. A utopian project like the Line is perfect for that. It can inspire the public, while distracting from the crackdowns. It also works as great advertising for tourism. If you are able to deliver something similar, then you have a pretty good product. That is not as true for the Line itself, but for other parts of Neom. A big port in the area makes sense and tourism on the Red Sea is big business in Egypt.
In the EU this is classified as a motorcycle and not a car though.
The crazy part is that you can buy a similar Chinese microcar in europe for half the price.
The bottom is the US having no internal opposition to Trump. One of the biggest differences between the Nazis and the Republicans is, that the Nazis very quickly and violently destroyed the opposition. Somebody like Mamdami would have never been elected under Hitler. The great thing about the US is, that it has centuries of election history. For the most part with some horrible discrimination of women and black people, but still a large part of the population was voting. That is really hard for the Republicans to destroy and that means that there might be somewhat midterms. Obviously the Republicans will make those deeply unfair. However there is a chance of it going the right way.
Just to be clear, this is not going to be easy and the midterms if anything are only a first step.
Oil price is set by supply and demand. Demand is still unfortunatly slowly growing. So if you cut supply, by for example stopping Russian oil exports, you then increase the oil price. The bad part in that is that it probably leads to Russia being able to somehow export oil around those sanctions(like via land to China for example) and actually make more money with it then with sanctions applied. This is made worse by Europe being oil importers, so a high oil price hurts Europe.
Right now a number of things come together. Trump caused a recession in the US(lower oil demand), EVs are growing in sales(lower oil demand), Venezuela Maduro stuff(higher oil supply), OPEC increases oil production(higher oil supply), Trump makes it easier to frack in the US(higher oil supply) and so forth. The only thing increasing the oil price right now, is a potential invasion of Iran. However even that does not seem that likely. In other words cutting off Russian oil supply, is currently possible.
Then Trump seized a Russian tanker and nothing happened and Greenland happened. Therefore Europe knows the risk of doing it are lower then thought and they have to take risks to make sure they do not depend on the US, if Russia starts a war against the EU directly.
Oh and Russia looks weak right now. The economy has some serious problems, so this is likely to really hurt.
She is a hardcore Communist. Her father was a guerilla leader in the Venezuelan jungle. It was obvious to anybody, that she would betray Trump at the first oppurtunity. However being able to sell oil to the US and pay some money to Trump directly via some Qatari payment scheme is still much better then having full blown sanctions on Venezuela. Rodriguez is also a realists and understands that this is actually an oppurtunity to strengthen the country, if it is played smartly.
Last year 30 people died in ICE custody and until January 9th 4 people died. So 2026 is already at the level of Obamas average for an entire year.
It is honestly surprising, that it took so long. China is a massive country, with a large economy. They should be an absolute leader in exporting cultural products. Especially since China inherited Hong Kongs massive movie industry, which decline after the hand over.