The islands face several difficulties with power. Generating electricity with fossil fuels in Puerto Rico is expensive, since coal, gas and petroleum have to be imported by sea, which ratchets up their price. Once installed, solar panels plus battery storage are much cheaper, and about 80,000 Puerto Rican households have put in the panels.

Even more motivating than the high price of fossil fuels is the destruction wrought by hurricanes Maria (Sept. 2017) and Fiona (Sept. 2022). After Maria many families had no electricity for a couple of months, or even six months and more in some instances. People just can’t trust the islands’ grid, and they are hedging their bets on it by buying solar panels and household batteries such as the Powerwall.

Then President Trump famously neglected Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and at one point contemptuously threw toilet paper in their direction at a news conference. No wonder they are determined to get off the electric grid and become free of the constraints of people such as Trump.

The IEEFA points out, “There are now more than 400 megawatts of solar and rooftop storage systems connected to the grid in Puerto Rico, with approximately 2,000 more connected each month. The [household] systems now represent a greater part of the island’s electricity consumption than solar energy at the utility scale.”

Dan Avery at CNET explains that putting up the solar panels, however, entails a substantial up front cost of $10,000 to $12,000, which most Puerto Rican families cannot afford. Some families can afford to buy them on time, and the solar companies offer such deals, but at an average annual income of only $21,000, most Puerto Rican families cannot afford to buy panels even on time. In the continental US, the 33% tax credit from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has helped impel people to get the panels. Many Puerto Ricans, however, don’t pay federal taxes, so they can’t get the rebate.

Government subsidies will be required to allow most people to adopt solar plus battery, even though that combination is cheaper than importing coal or fossil gas. Timothy Gardner at Reuters reports that Congress appropriated $1 billion to provide rooftop solar panels to Puerto Ricans, and that Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm wants to ensure this aid helps the most vulnerable. The $1 billion will put panels on 50,000 homes, but that leaves 350,000 which will still need it. The population of Puerto Rico is estimated at 3.2 million.

In 2022, Gardner says, Puerto Rico installed 163 MW of solar capacity, putting it in the top half of US states and territories for renewable energy.

Avery at CNET observes, “In January 2022, there were 42,000 homes and businesses with solar-plus-battery projects in Puerto Rico, more than eight times the number before Irma and Maria. This summer, that number is nearing 80,000.”

The good news is that both panels and batteries are falling in price because of technological advances, and there is every reason to think that Puerto Ricans will continue their solar insurrection. Solar plus batteries allow people to gain independence from the grid. If it advances fast enough, it may even lead to lots of cord-cutting from the utilities with their vulnerable above-ground poles and wires. The latter are especially vulnerable to climate change phenomena such as fiercer hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires. Some may even cause wildfires, as in Maui.

Puerto Rico is not only forging its own energy path, it may be telling those of us on the mainland what our future is likely to be.

The ESA panel array, a little more than half a mile long, would generate 2 gigawatts of electrical power. That electricity would then be converted to microwaves at 2.45 GHz, and beamed to a relay station on the earth’s surface called a “rectenna.” There it will be converted back into electricity and would power about 1.5 million homes. That would make it equivalent to a sizeable nuclear power plant.

H/t ESA

This plan would address some issues with terrestrial solar panels. So far, the panels are relatively large (we have 16 on our roof and they cover a lot of it). So you need a lot of land for them. Some of this difficulty can be addressed by putting them out in a desert, but then you have the problem that you have to build high density transmission wires to take the electricity they generate to cities, the major customers for it. So you need a fair amount of land, and you need transmission capacity. Then, the panels don’t generate electricity at night, so they really need to be paired with batteries or other energy storage, which is another expense.

A solar array in space that could transmit energy in the form of microwaves would solve all three problems. There is plenty of room in outer space, they can transmit to anyplace (including to the planned moon colonies of both NASA’s Artemis program and the Chinese space program). James Purtill of the Australian Broadcasting Co. explains that the panel array can be put into an orbit such that it is always receiving sunshine, even during the earth’s night.

One reason this idea, which first originated in the mid-twentieth century, is being considered seriously again is that the cost of payloads into space has fallen dramatically, partly because of the rise of reusable rockets. Purtill says that the cost has fallen nearly 20-fold in just twenty years, and the panels have gotten lighter. ESA says that it will nevertheless take more trips to build such an array than it took to build the International Space Station. That took over 40 missions to set up.

Getting to zero carbon pollution by 2050 is a challenging task for the world, and we could use some breakthroughs. This one would be the equivalent of President Kennedy’s moonshot, though in some ways it is even less challenging in principle, since all the elements of this technology are proven and in principle we know how to do it.

President Biden has already entered the history books for being a pivotal president in the energy revolution, with his Infrastructure Act and the IRA. But if he inaugurated a program to put solar arrays into earth orbit, that would add an exclamation mark to his legacy.

Although the milestone lasted only for a brief time, it points to a future in which California runs on 100% wind, solar, hydro and batteries, a future that will certainly arrive even faster than the state plans. As it is, California is ahead of its green energy goals.

The implication of these plans is that California intends to phase out methane gas as a source of power. The state is also trying to electrify transportation. A world of 100% green energy and electric cars is not only a healthier and more comfortable world, it is a world where oil and gas dictators like Vladimir Putin are defunded.

Based on the performance of these energy sectors in 2019 and 2020, California now gets about 60% of its electricity from low-carbon, non-fossil fuel sources.

Over a third of the state’s electricity is generated by wind and solar, and between 14% and 17% by large hydro, depending on how severe the droughts are. Some 10 percent comes from nuclear plants.

The Golden State has also made enormous progress in garnering more battery power for back-up. By the beginning of this year it had 2.1 gigawatts in battery capacity, an 8-fold increase over the amount available in late 2019. Christian Roselund at PV Magazine points out that if we look at green energy projects in the pipeline, 533 of them are for batteries, aiming for 135 gigawatts. There are 282 projects that involve solar energy, aiming for 76 gigawatts. So battery generation is outstripping solar. Batteries are also key to providing electricity at night or when the wind falls off. Since they can scale up and down quickly, they are highly compatible with renewables.

A bill has been introduced in the California legislature by Henry Stern (D-LA) that would require the state to put in 6 new gigawatts of renewable energy annually, beginning in 2025. Sammy Roth reports at the LA Times that this is the pace necessary if the state is to get to 100% renewables by 2045. The state has only been averaging 1.5 new gigawatts of renewables annually for the past decade, so this measure, if adopted, would up Sacramento’s game substantially.

Roth says there are 25 climate bills looking to pass in the state legislature. Some want to help fossil fuel workers transition to other jobs. Others want to help bury electrical wires, which cause wildfires or are knocked out by wildires when above ground. Others back the building of necessary new, high-desity transmission wires. Yet others aim to push utilities to develop geothermal, battery and hydrogen power to provide baseline energy generation when intermittent renewables fall off.

Other bills aim to cut out the permitting and paperwork burden for installing solar panels, or to provide ways for lower-income families to get them.

If anyone is listening, what we really need is national financial instruments allowing families to pay off solar panels over time. Few people just walk into a dealership and plunk down cash for a new car, but most consumers are expected to do that with solar installations for their homes. The big difference is that whereas a car loses 50% of its value when you drive it off the lot, solar panels will go on saving people loads of money on their electrical bills for 25 years and will also fuel their electric cars.

The report warns that the drastic changes in our climate that we are inflicting on ourselves by burning gasoline, methane gas and coal will stress the military by causing “energy and water scarcity; damage to installations and infrastructure; displacement of and disruptions to operations, supply chains, and logistics; and imperiled Soldier health through exposure to airborne irritants like smoke and dust, disease vectors, and temperature extremes.”

The Army’s response to these challenges is in part to model climate action, setting these goals:

• Achieve 50% reduction in Army net GHG [greenhouse gas] pollution by 2030, compared to 2005 levels
• Attain net-zero Army GHG emissions by 2050
• Proactively consider the security implications of climate change in strategy, planning, acquisition, supply chain, and programming documents and processes

The Army produces greenhouse gases through base consumption of electricity generated by fossil fuels, through heating and air conditioning, and through transportation.

In accordance with the Biden administration’s emphasis on moving to electric vehicles, the Army is urgently greening its transportation: Not counting military vehicles like tanks and armored vehicles, the Army has a lot of passenger cars. It announced a goal of “fielding “an all-electric light-duty non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2027.” That is a short deadline, only five years! It also wants to electrify the tactical vehicles by a few years later.

The US military maintains a fleet of 170,000 non-tactical vehicles. President Biden wants them all replaced with EVs, and the Army is gung-ho. The more EVs that are bought, the cheaper and more efficient they will get, so the Army’s purchases will help drive improvements in electric vehicles. These vehicles will increasingly be charged with carbon-free electricity.

Among the Army’s most ambitious just-announced goals is, “Provide 100% carbon-pollution-free electricity for Army installations’ needs by 2030.”

The challenges here are substantial. There are 1.9 million active-duty military personnel, 480,000 of them in the Army. The military maintains over 450 bases in the United States.

Another ambitious goal is to halve carbon dioxide and methane emissions from Army buildings in only a decade, as the report says: “Achieve 50% reduction in GHG emissions from all Army buildings by 2032, from a 2005 baseline.”

The report admits, “The Army purchases over $740M of electricity from the national electric grid every year. In 2020, this electricity added 4.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide, and other GHGs into the atmosphere.”

But the Army wants to change all that in the coming decade: “Going forward, the Army will actively pursue carbon-pollution-free electricity production and storage to and on its installations. The Army looks to its real property assets to continue providing space for new renewable energy projects that both reduce GHG emissions and increase energy resilience.”

So it sounds like some of the land the Army has on and around its bases is going to be dedicated to solar and wind farms, so that it will become a green energy generator itself. It is also going to play hard ball with the electric utilities that supply power to the bases, demanding they purvey green electricity. In some parts of the country, the impact of this Army policy could be substantial.

Over six years ago, I covered a climate crisis conference in Hawaii for The Nation in which the US Army participated and I wrote then:

“Amanda Simpson of the Army Office of Energy Initiatives told the summit that Army bases throughout the United States have seen a quadrupling in electricity outages during the past decade, some of them caused by more frequent extreme weather events, others by aging equipment and infrastructure. It seems clear that Hawaiian bases want back-up solar farms and biofuel plants in case the civilian grid falters. Simpson pointed out that all Hawaiian energy plants presently are on the coasts and so are vulnerable to a tsunami or to rising sea levels caused by the melting of polar ice because of global warming.”

The very security and functioning of Army bases are threatened by the climate crisis. It is indeed an existential crisis. The response will be to be “Army Strong” by going green.

The conflict has an energy dimension, since Europe depends on Russia for about 35 percent of its natural gas. Natural gas prices have quadrupled this winter, making it expensive for people to heat their homes already. If Russia boycotts Europe over the Ukraine, it will create a massive energy crisis on the continent and make it difficult for US allies to be completely supportive of the Biden line that Russia must cease meddling in Ukraine affairs or trying to detach pieces of it. The admiral who headed the German navy just had to resign because his remarks became public, that Russia doesn’t want bits of the Ukraine, it just wants the respect owed a great power. Observers worried that a lot of Germans high in the government might think that way and decline to back Washington’s hard line.

I was watching Farid Zakaria’s GPS 360 on Sunday, and his guest, the distinguished journalist and historian Ann Applebaum asserted that Angela Merkel had made a major error in closing down Germany’s nuclear plants. Her point was that in the absence of nuclear power, Germany became more dependent on Russian natural gas for heating and electricity.

I respectfully disagree with Applebaum’s assertion. Nuclear only provided 11.9% of Germany’s power production as of 2021. In contrast, 40.1% of its power comes from renewables. Natural gas is only at 15.3%. Clean Energy Wire provides this nice chart:

It seems obvious to me that Chancellor Merkel’s mistake was not at all in closing the nuclear plants. Those plants were aged and had to be closed for safety reasons. Merkel correctly took the lesson from Japan’s Fukushima catastrophe in 2011 that this technology is simply not human-friendly or reliable. New plants could have been built, but nuclear plants are extremely expensive and take a very long time to build, and their electricity costs 15.5 cents a kilowatt hour. They produce toxic radioactive waste that will remain radioactive for a very long time and for which no good storage options exist. And they sometimes blow up or come near melting down.

If what you wanted was energy independence for Europe on the off chance that Russia’s gas might become a chess piece in geopolitics, which is actually an odd thing to want, since Europe never had it for the entire Cold War, then Merkel’s error is obviously that she did not do what Scotland did, and go for 100 percent renewable power by 2020. That would be a harsh and unjustified criticism, since Merkel did more than any other leader in the G7 to push for green energy and to address the climate emergency. But even Merkel herself, as she looked back on her career last September, recognized that the pace of installation of renewables would have to be vastly accelerated to avoid a climate disaster. The unprecedented flooding last summer helped her come to this conclusion.

She did not go bigger into renewables in part because she ran up against the coal industry and workers. Coal is still 28 percent of Germany’s power production and there have been lots of equivalents of Joe Manchin on the German political scene jumping up and down and screaming about the unfairness of disadvantaging German coal. It is mined in the country and directly employs 25,000 people, which is like 75,000 in US terms.

As it is, Germany has made strides in getting off coal. Coal provided half of power production in 2000, and is now down to about a little over a quarter. And Germany has done more to put in renewables, with its “Energiewende” or Energy Switch, than any other large industrialized nation. The new Social Democratic government, which is in coalition with the Greens, plans to put enormous amounts of new renewables in every year until 2030, projecting that by that date, 80 percent of Germany’s power will come from renewables.

In contrast, the US only gets about 20 percent of its electricity from renewables and has slacked off majorly in this area compared to Germany and China, because of the influence of Big Oil and initially of Big Coal. The only reason that the US itself is not more dependent on imported natural gas (as it was only a decade ago, bringing a lot in from Canada) is that its energy industries have gone in for hydraulic fracturing in a big way. This is an earth-killing technology, not only highly polluting in itself but also a source of massive methane leaks, and the natural gas itself, though better than coal, is also a greenhouse gas that is cooking the planet.

So Germany is dependent for some of its natural gas on Russia not because it closed down old, dangerous nuclear plants but because it did not build out its renewables even faster than it did. Also, even though Germany’s dependence on Russian gas may be an annoyance to Washington in January of 2021, it actually would have been better if all coal had been replaced by natural gas by now, since it has half the carbon dioxide emissions as coal.

And despite what K Street and the Pentagon think, saving the planet is more important than Washington’s sphere of influence politics with Russia.

Washington has been trying to find a substitute for Russian natural gas in shipped Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) from other countries. I wrote to an email list I’m on, however:

Whatever the solution might be to a Russia gas interruption to Europe, I don’t think it is LNG in the short term.

The US government met with gas majors recently and they said the market is tight & they can’t replace Russia in Europe

Qatar is increasing production substantially. But it will take a while, and 10- year deals are already signed with China via Shell. Shifting things around is not easy given long term contracts

The US LNG export capacity will increase this year but that expectation is already baked into the market. It cannot come close to replacing Russian supply this year

As for Germany, if things got dire they would just turn back on the coal plants and take the reputational hit. The nuclear closure was domestic green politics for SPD coalition gov’t purposes and not done with an eye to grand strategy.

If the crisis can wait four years, big increases in wind and solar power will replace most NatGas.

The IEA site reports that, “The agency says that between 2020 and 2026, renewables will grow by another 60 percent to over 4,800 gigawatts, which is roughly the size of the capacity of all fossil fuel and nuclear [electricity] power plants combined. Over the next five years, renewables will capture 95 percent of the growth in the electricity sector.”

This is the first time on record that renewables were the second-largest generator of electricity in the U.S.

Renewables overall increased 9% between 2019 and 2020. About half of US clean energy now comes from solar and wind, and the other half from hydroelectric power.

Wind generation increased by 14%.

Solar rocketed up even more, with utility-scale solar projects of 1 megawatt or more growing by 26%.

Small-scale solar such as rooftop installations like the one we have increased by 19%.

The Clean Power Association says that America put in 26 gigawatts of renewables electricity plants in 2020 — 80% more than in 2019 — bringing total US renewables capacity to 170 gigawatts.

In the US, some 78% of all new electricity generation was from wind and solar, which are clearly the future of the American grid.

American renewables beat out coal, now only 19%, and nuclear, at 20%. Coal is dirty and expensive, and coal power plants have been replaced in droves by wind farms and by natural gas. It was the largest generator of electricity in the US until 2016, and has gone into a tailspin because renewables and natural gas are much cheaper.

h/t EIA

Natural gas, which is only half as carbon intensive as coal, is now the leading generator of electricity in the US, at some 40%.

Coal electricity generation fell 20% from 2019 to 2020.

Between renewables and nuclear, 41% of American electricity generation is now low-carbon or no-carbon.

While the increase clean gigawattage is impressive in American terms, China added 136 gigawatts of new renewables capacity in 2020, dwarfing the US effort. This massive lead that China has in wind and solar translates into advantages in manufacturing, distribution and sales of equipment like solar panels. The US, for all that it is finally making some strides, is going way too slow if it wants to be a leader in these industries and if it wants to do its part to keep global heating below an extra 3.6 degrees F.

California is the world’s fifth largest economy.

The main grid does not cover Los Angeles County. On the other hand, these figures do not include the electricity generated by the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which is not counted as renewable but which is also very low-carbon.

Roth says that for much of Saturday afternoon, solar and wind did the heavy lifting in making the state’s electricity, with a lesser contribution from geothermal, hydro and biomass. It was mainly solar that generated 17 gigawatts for several hours straight from about 11 am until 6 pm.

California has a power-sharing deal with nearby states, but that afternoon the Golden State became a net exporter of electricity, borrowing none from neighbors.

The spring is easier for the California grid. It is pleasantly warm but not scorching hot and there isn’t as much air conditioning use. August through October are more challenging, and last year there were rolling brown-outs because demand outstripped supply for a short period. California officials have ordered that the grid capacity grow 8% to avoid a repeat.

David R. Baker at Bloomberg writes that the state has swung into action, aiming to put in 1.7 gigawatts of battery storage. The latter will allow it to save some of the electricity generated by sunlight during the day for the late afternoon and evening, when the blackouts were worse last year. That is more battery capacity than is possessed by the entire country of China.

For all the progress it has made, California’s energy is still quite dirty. Electricity is only one sort of energy. Most of California’s cars burn gasoline and it has a lot of diesel back up generators. It is the country’s seventh-largest producer of petroleum.

Governor Gavin Newsom, however, has announced a ban on hydraulic fracturing for 2024. He wants all California oil production to cease by 2045 (which isn’t soon enough).

Governor Gavin Newsom’s climate goals are ambitious. So too are those of many California municipalities. Sacramento, for instance, aims to get 90 percent of its electricity from renweables by 2030, which will involve closing two natural gas plants and replacing them with wind and solar. The city will make a big push for rooftop solar. Sacramento has some of the dirtiest air in the nation, and at the moment 50% of its electricity comes from fossil fuels.

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Bonus Video:

KCRA News: “How a study says California can save water — and generate electricity”

Everyone has a different Doomsday scenario for Afghanistan once U.S. and NATO troops withdraw by September 11.

The Taliban will take over and reimpose their repressive social agenda. Al-Qaeda will multiply rapidly and again become a global threat. Rival warlords will split apart the country. Another wave of Afghan refugees will overwhelm Europe.

And then there’s the scenario in which China basically takes over the country, or at least the most sought-after parts of the country: the resources that lie beneath Afghan soil.

“Afghanistan is one of the richest mining regions in the world, holding untapped mineral wealth and rare Earth elements estimated at roughly $3 trillion,” writes Chris Dolan in The Hill. “Competition with China over mineral wealth is intensifying and Afghanistan presents China with a new opportunity to expand its mining and transportation projects in the Belt and Road initiative.”

So far, the China “threat,” like all the others, is hypothetical since Beijing has been hesitant to invest a lot into the war-torn country. In 2007, China contracted to build a large copper mine at Mes Aynak but has done so little to set up operations there that the Afghan government is considering retendering the contract to another investor. The Chinese have their own complaints about the Mes Aynak arrangement particularly around security and renegotiating some of the terms of the contract. Other than the stalled copper mine and some oil exploration, Chinese investments in the country have been minimal compared to what Beijing is pouring into neighboring Pakistan.

Whether to block China, thwart al-Qaeda, or muscle through a power-sharing deal with the Taliban, the United States has no plans to abandon Afghanistan completely. The Biden administration is looking to move U.S. bases there to another country, perhaps in Central Asia. In the meantime, Washington will maintain its air war from aircraft carriers or from more distant points in the Middle East, and it will continue to train and provide financial support for the Afghan army.

As for ensuring that Afghanistan rises from the bottom of the world’s social and economic indices—currently it’s the least peaceful, one of the most corrupt, and one of the worst-off countries in terms of human development— the United States appears to be washing its hands of any responsibility.

So much for the Pottery Barn rule. From Washington’s perspective, Afghanistan was broken long before the 2001 invasion.

Mission (never-to-be) accomplished.

Indeed, in his remarks last week on “the way forward in Afghanistan,” President Biden had very little to say about Afghanistan itself, aside from its military and the various threats the country poses to the United States. He said virtually nothing about the Afghan economy, Afghan society, or the Afghan people. At most, the United States appears to be bracing for the worst-case scenario and preparing to minimize the impact on U.S. national interests.

A Different Future for Afghanistan

When Seth Warren Rose looks at Afghanistan, he doesn’t see red, he sees green: the green of money, yes, but more importantly the green of environmental sustainability.

“I grew up with Vietnam being considered a war not a country,” he told me. “Afghanistan is the same. Americans think of Afghanistan only as a war. But there are 30 million-plus people living there.”

Rose’s outfit, the Eneref Institute, is gathering support from Afghan politicians for a bold initiative to make Afghanistan carbon-neutral. “If you look at the carbon footprint of Afghanistan, it’s minimal,” Rose continued. “They haven’t really industrialized. Obviously they’ll let the world in once they establish a peace. But why don’t they establish a mechanism, as long as they’re selling their resources, to do so in a way that’s non-toxic, energy-efficient, and net-carbon zero?”

As Rose explained to me, Eneref’s proposal is to keep Afghanistan’s oil in the ground but to develop methods of extracting other valuable underground resources in an environmentally more sustainable manner. In this way, the country could “use its mineral wealth to leapfrog industrialization.” This Lead the Leap campaign has lined up a number of prominent Afghans as advisors and secured the support of the Afghan Senate.

Extracting Afghanistan’s mineral wealth in a carbon-neutral fashion is easier said than done. Extractive industries are notoriously dirty, responsible for 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity loss and half the world’s carbon emissions (and that’s just in the extraction process!) Workers die in large numbers in the mining sector, whether immediately in accidents or through exposure to dangerous substances over the long term. Communities around mines have to deal with often-horrifying pollution in their air, land, and water. And wherever mines extract valuable substances, conflict is sure to follow (see, for example, “blood diamonds”).

Nor is it so easy to leapfrog over the extraction industry into a clean energy future. Many Green technologies, such as solar panels, are dependent on an array of minerals like copper and zinc, while wind turbines and electric vehicles require inputs like cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements.

Eneref’s bid to green Afghanistan’s mining sector is part of a much larger effort to make the entire production chain of the extraction industry sustainable. The World Bank, for instance, has launched a Climate Smart Mining initiative that focuses on using renewable energy in mining operations, preventing deforestation and promoting sustainable land-use strategies, and reusing minerals to minimize waste.

The mining industry is also responsible for its share of “greenwashing,” making only cosmetic changes before proceeding with business as usual. Civil society organizations, shareholders, and committed politicians can put pressure on companies to adhere to international regulations and corporate codes of conduct. But particularly in poor countries like Afghanistan, which are desperate enough for revenue in the short term to overlook longer-term environmental consequences, mining companies are more willing to cut corners when it comes to carbon emissions.

But there’s another option.

The Next OPEC?

Afghanistan has little leverage over mining operations beyond the $3 trillion of natural resources beneath its soil. That wealth is useless, however, if Afghanistan can’t get it out of the ground. Perhaps the Chinese reluctance to invest more into copper extraction is a godsend. China, after all, pays little attention to sustainability in its extraction operations overseas.

Many countries, like Congo and Venezuela, are in the same position as Afghanistan. If they rebuff China or any other potential investor, the latter can turn to more amenable investment opportunities elsewhere.

Unless, of course, all mineral-rich countries form a new cartel.

Let’s call this cartel OMEC, the Organization of Mineral-Exporting Countries. This mineral-version of OPEC could impose its own carbon-reducing restrictions on the extraction industry.

“No one country has the wherewithal, the power, the influence, to demand that Russia, China, and the United States follow carbon-neutral rules,” Rose concluded. “So, let’s gather a third of the world to create a union.”

Remember: OPEC wasn’t just a mechanism to extract more money from the petroleum-desperate. It was originally designed to restrict oil production. As Lester Brown recounts in Building a Sustainable Society, the founder of OPEC, Venezuelan Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso believed that “his mission in life was to stop the waste of valuable energy resources. When describing his early vision of OPEC, he said, ‘Most people see OPEC as a way to raise oil prices, but I see it as a way to lower the use of energy.’ Shortly before he died in late 1979, he referred to OPEC as the ‘leading ecology group in the world.’”

OMEC could similarly perform a valuable ecological function by regulating the extraction of minerals to keep the price high, reduce waste, and help turn countries like Afghanistan into the mineral equivalent of a Gulf State. Of course, to avoid the “resource curse,”OMEC members would have to submit to serious anti-corruption programs, devote profits to communal advancement rather than individual wealth, and set aside a portion of proceeds to future contingencies (like Norway’s Oil Fund).

But most of all, OMEC members must leverage their relatively small carbon footprints into economic advantage. I’ve written elsewhere about how a country like North Korea, which lags far behind South Korea on virtually every economic and social indicator, could parlay its single advantage of a smaller carbon footprint into a clean energy future that would lead the Korean peninsula and the region. Like Afghanistan, North Korea has significant mineral resources that could finance such a transformation.

For decades, countries like North Korea and Afghanistan were promised material advancement—leading perhaps someday to membership in the club of richest nations called the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development—if they just followed the conventional path of industrialization. The poorest of the poor haven’t made much progress in the last couple decades, and that industrial model has proven disastrous on a number of levels. Perhaps it’s finally time for them to band together according to an entirely different model of economic cooperation and development.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “Mining Afghanistan’s mineral wealth”

Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen explained that cutting fossil fuel subsidies would realize a revenue for the government of $35 billion over ten years. The exact subsidies to be cut were not identified, but an important one would be the provision that allows oil companies to write off the cost of new drilling. Keep it in the ground!

Reuters explains that Biden’s plan will instead extend tax credits to wind, solar and battery storage all through the 2020s, and will also incentivize the building of new high capacity electricity transmission wires. It will also push airlines to develop and use more sustainable fuel. Air travel produces about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

So, why can we tie these changes in taxes and subsidies to jobs? Because Biden is backing the winners.

The 2020 US Energy and Employment Report shows that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are on to something with the Green New Deal, and that President Biden’s adoption of elements of it is a promising step for the US economy.

As Karin Kirk at Yale Climate Connections points out in her canny survey of the implications of the report, politicians are all about jobs.

The figures are through the end of 2019, before the distortions of the Covid year of 2020.

There were nearly a quarter million jobs in the solar sector of electricity production, up by nearly 6,000 jobs, almost 3 percent, since the previous year. This 248,000 solar jobs demonstrates the dynamism of this energy sector. They amount to 27.8 percent of all the 896,800 electricity sector jobs in the United States, over a fourth.

Solar accounted for twice as many jobs as natural gas, which surprised even me. And whereas it added 6,000 jobs in a year, coal lost 7,000. We can see the future.

Wind energy companies employed 114,800 workers, nearly as many as did natural gas, and the sector grew by 3.2 percent year over year.

Together, wind and solar account for 40 percent of electricity sector jobs in the United States.

These two sectors saw a job growth total of over 10,900 new hires that year, more than for natural gas.

Some 2.4 million Americans worked in the fields of the transmission, distribution and storage of electricity. Since President Biden wants to build out a high capacity grid, that sector is likely to grow. It was relatively stagnant in 2019.

Then there is the necessary greening of transportation. The production of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids employed 242,700 workers. Unfortunately, this sector showed a slight downturn in jobs year over year. President Biden wants to turn that around.

Kirk points out that many states are leaving jobs on the table by not developing renewable energy even when they have the capacity. I’d add that much of the South has enormous solar potential but that Republican politicians, often funded by Big Oil, often put in punitive fees to discourage it. Some of the states in the Great Wind corridor are also seeing moves in state legislatures to favor fossil fuels and punish wind. (I’m looking at you, Wyoming). It may be that federal policy can help get the ball rolling in some of these states, where ordinary people will suffer a polluted environment, sea level rise, superstorms, and other ill effects of fossil fuel-powered climate change and pay more than they should for the electricity to boot.

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Bonus Video:

PBS NewsHour “Breaking down Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan to give U.S. ‘innovative edge'”