Yeah I watched a cspan question and answer session and one dinosaur-aged Republican representative from West Palm Beach Florida sounded so backwards. He was saying that we shouldn’t transition to green energy because of all the coal miner jobs that will be displaced by green energy jobs. It seemed like he was just being difficult or corrupt because Florida doesn’t even have any coal mines or coal mining jobs! Also, it’s not like people can’t go get new income sources or start new businesses.. I think the issue is that many of these retirement-age folks don’t care because they aren’t expecting repercussions or negative externalities in their remaining short lifespan.
The situation around global warming would be a lot different if the environmentalist Al Gore hadn’t lost to conservative George Bush. The election hinged on a narrow Florida Supreme Court decision of 5-4 over the votes and controversial butterfly ballots. Based on that decision, Bush won the USA presidential election by only 537 votes. The 3rd party spoiler effect from the Green Party was also to blame since Florida isn’t yet advanced enough to have ranked-choice voting.
And there's a very good chance the entire world look different if Gore won. There may have not been a 9/11, for one. There would have certainly not been an Iraq war.
We’ll never know for sure, but this seems like revisionist history and motivated reasoning. Gore and his advisors supported regime change in Iraq when he was in office and intelligence failures didn’t suddenly start in early 2001, nor were they restricted to the United States.[0]
It’s possible that the tone around climate change would have been different under a Gore administration, but the entire composition of Congress would also have looked different after the mid-terms in response to a Democratic president making sweeping changes to the economy (as it was republicans already controlled the Senate for half of Bush’s time in office, and the house for three quarters). The fiscal conservatism of 90s republicans may have stayed intact instead of accepting large deficits as they did under Bush.
The feature and bug of the US system of democracy is that radical change is hard to do and disagreements can’t be steamrolled over. Sometimes the right person can have an enormous effect on the course of history (Washington, Lincoln, FDR), but it’s unlikely Gore was one of those people.
It was not intelligence failures that got us into Iraq. The politicians lied us into the war on purpose and hid, obstructed, and made up the intelligence as they saw fit. One of the biggest crimes in American history should be remembered correctly.
It was exactly what is stated in the article: shortage of energy. US consumes several times more energy per capita than even Europe. At the same time industrial output of US is small and diminishing with every year.
US needs more oil. Hence all the wars. Iraq - oil. Libya - oil. Syria - oil (US occupied all oil deposits in Syria where and extracts it without giving anything back to the people of Syria).
Afghanistan - I'm not sure, but considering that during US occupation, production of heroine in Afghanistan went up orders of magnitude, and many visitors to Afghanistan reported that US guarded poppy fields, probably it was due to drugs. Kill two birds with one stone: get rich from selling drugs, finance other wars and coups with drug money, and flood geopolitical enemies that happen to be located next to Afghanistan borders with the most powerful drug.
The next target will be also rich in oil, although it would be definitely said that it's only because of lack of democracy in the said country.
In two decades of reading about it I've seen this oil theory many times but I haven't seen anything that convinces me that it was the real motivation. The closest strategic explanation was the neocons' PNAC letters which were basically just bravado about America throwing its weight around to maintain their global dominance. Reprehensible stuff.
If it wasn't the real explanation then nothing America does makes any sense. There have been a notable lack of invasions of African, Asian, European or South American countries. The Middle Easterners aren't that different from everywhere else - except they have lots of oil.
Military industrial complex?
“Alleged” weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Islamic extremists?
Politicians wanting to appear tough on crime?
Avoiding another 1970s energy crisis?
Islamic suicide bombers / terrorists?
The next victim of US military incursion will be oil rich country. There's no reason for incursion if it is not going to be profitable for the US.
If there's "no democracy" in some country but also no valuable natural resources, it's not worth spending expensive missiles and bombs. E.g. dictatorship in Cambodia would be always safe as there're little gains in occupying Cambodia.
Same for Haiti. It doesn't mean that US won't intervene with cheaper methods like assassinations and/or propaganda.
US literally prints money, it's very easy for them to set up media outlets publishing propaganda non-stop 24/7 in almost every country on Earth.
FAANG monopolies are also a big part of this picture. They all censor all anti-american views and push propaganda. E.g., if you're from Russia, and you register on YouTube, you'll see Navalny channel in recommendations for months, even if you explicitly block his channel and channels of his associates. Facebook regularly blocks pro-Russian persons, groups and posts (including published in Russian in Russia). Many Netflix series (and Hollywood movies) continue to picture US as the exceptional country with exceptional people ("chosen by God") while all the rest are third-world worthless thrash (see Narcos, for example). Also, almost all the villains in Hollywood movies are Russian (Tenet is the recent example).
It takes a while to plan and execute something like 9/11. This is not one guy with an IED in Kabul. The pilots got their licences for that specific purpose. That alone takes months.
Bush became president in January 2001. You think Al Qaeda was like "oh no, Gore lost? Let's proceed with that airplane plan" right there and then? Like they even remotely care if it's a dem or Rep.
But US intelligences services might have caught it, by sheet chance if history was to replay with slightly different variables. Just saying, they got lucky.
Consequences of 9/11 certainly could have looked different, if the US was less focus on oil and less concerned about confronting the Saudis.
For sure. Obama played kindly with Putin, no worries about Ukraine invasion in Europe. He prevented a global conflict for sure, thanks to his kindness and openness /s
And not just the hanging chads, right? I don't think it's controversial, in hindsight, to say that Jeb Bush conspired with GW to steal the election. [1]
I’m not so sure. A lot of people don’t remember this, but GW Bush ran to the left of Al Gore on climate policy in 2000. Bush proposed using the clean air act to reduce the CO2 output of power plants to voters in September 2000 [1].
Christine Todd Whitman was nominated as administrator of the EPA to enact the policy. Lobbying by the fossil fuel industry changed the direction of this policy and because of push back, Bush took the opposite direction of the policy he campaigned on.
If Gore won there would be no global warming movie and the movement might not have taken off. Gore would have been to entangled in 911 make global warming a priority.
The green party not winning is the shame. Never blame a third party for a majority party not winning. If they caused Gore to lose hopefully he tries harder to win over 537 people next cycle.
The situation around global warming would be a lot different if the environmentalist Al Gore hadn’t lost to conservative George Bush. The election hinged on a narrow Florida Supreme Court decision of 5-4 over the votes and controversial butterfly ballots. Based on that decision, Bush won the USA presidential election by only 537 votes. The 3rd party spoiler effect from the Green Party was also to blame since Florida isn’t yet advanced enough to have ranked-choice voting.