U.S. Tries to Convince Arab Allies It Isn't Quitting Middle East - NYT

[rcjordan]

Debbie says we're pulling the plug -perhaps prematurely- now that we believe we're moving away from oil.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/us/politics/us-middle-east.html

[rcjordan]

oil  COBALT! We need cobalt!  Congo, old friend, we've been meaning to come visit you.


Global Rivalries Are Miring the Clean Energy Revolution - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/world/china-congo-cobalt.html

[Brad]

Debbie is smack on.  Timing and pacing are important, but frankly most of the rest of the world that can foresee a post carbon world are glad to be leaving.  However, once we do pull out expect everything to go the way of Syria.

Iran vs. Arabs
Sunni vs. Shia
ISIS type Sunni vs. everyone (this extends outside the ME)
Non-ISIS Sunni Arabs vs everyone (both sectarian and ethnic)
Arab vs Arab border wars because the boarders drawn by the European colonial powers don't make sense.
Revolutions (because most states have governments with little regard for the governed and little political legitimacy)

All these will be in a soup of different factions and temporary alliances, proxies, mercenaries, arms dealers and camp followers, something Americans are not good at parsing out or understanding.  And it's all gonna take decades because we can only convert so fast and the Third World will take even longer to convert from oil.

[ergophobe]

>>COBALT! We need cobalt!

Lots of new battery tech will dispense with cobalt. As I mentioned, we chose non-cobalt batteries for our house battery. Slightly less energy dense at the moment, so not as good for cars, but unlike Li-Cobalt batteries, no thermal runaway.