And why don't we in the west sanction them or refuse to trade with them for this practice? Not only that but we're actively supporting these regimes and selling them cutting edge weapons. Why is that?

'checks notes'

Oh, right, oil.

> And why don't we in the west sanction them or refuse to trade with them for this practice?

I wish we would. Possibly the one good thing coming out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a realization that depending on oil and gas leaves you very vulnerable and that alternative sources of energy must become more common.

There will always be a dependency on resources or products from other countries - especially if we truly respect the rights of self-determination of arbitrarily small nations and city-states. True sovereignty of these states also means that they have the right to not trade with us for any reason, does it not?

There will also always be disagreements on fundamental ethical issues between countries. Even between the states in the US you can see such disagreements.

What we seem to lack is a principle for dealing with such situations. Instead, ad-hoc, inconsistent measures tend to be taken. It seems like if the true principle guiding such decisions were publicly announced, the general public would find it unpalatable. Are we living in willful denial?

Can such a principle then exist, that would both be consistent with our declared values, without compromising our ability to survive and defend ourselves and act according to it?

Most countries on earth simply cease to function as they are doing now with alternative eco-friendly energy sources.

Applying alternative energy sources where it doesn't make sense to do so ends up throwing billions of dollars on having solar panels where they can never generate the energy they theoretically could (Germany, I'm looking at you)

In the long term, most countries on earth will not be able to function as they are now if they don't switch to alternative energy sources.

This will involve a mix of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and nuclear on grids that span continents with massive battery stores to balance supply with demand. Between climate change and petroleum-fuelled kleptocrats, ditching fossil fuels is a necessity, not a choice. And the long term here is on the order of decades, not centuries, so within most of our our lifetimes.

I do not know, whether this is true, but: When I was in school, we learned in geography class, that one could power the whole EU, if we occupied some area of the Sahara desert with solar panels, at least when looking at raw energy output, disregarding day night differences and possibly hot and cold environment that a desert is.

I guess humanity is still not ready for such projects of enormous cooperation between countries, or, that there are too many things in the way, like said temperature rise at day and fall at night, the vast distance the energy would need to be transported (is that a problem?) and maintenance work somewhere in the desert. One can still hope, that some day we will be able to think globally and solve problems that way.

> we learned in geography class, that one could power the whole EU, if we occupied some area of the Sahara desert with solar panels

I sometimes hear that too. The YouTube channel "Real Engineering" did a video about the idea: [1] The TLDR is: the Sahara definitely gets enough sun, but transmitting the power into Europe would be hard.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o

On the contrary, what many people in the West are realizing, is that abstaining from oil and gas leaves you poor or broke.

Yeah our willingness to sanction Russia and all their oil, plunging europe into shortages kinda falsifies that theory. I wonder what the actual reason is :)

You mean everything but their oil?

> Everyone else is tolerated...

The sense of entitlement...

Well we could produce it all locally instead of having the president begging them to pump more

We do, effectively.

North America produces enough petroleum today to meet its own needs[1]. But the rest of the world doesn't, middle east oil is cheap relative to offshore or (especially) fracked petroleum, and at the end of the day fuels are a fungible commodity and our local prices reflect demand in the rest of the world.

The bit about "dependence on foreign oil" you're hearing is largely spin. Supply is not the problem. Pump more and we'll just use more.

[1] Which is not to say we don't import or export any. Markets are markets.

I'm of the impression that we can't use our own oil because our refineries largely aren't equipped to process it (different kinds of oil require different kinds of refineries, which is to say oil sort of isn't fungible), but rather our refineries are equipped to process foreign oil. So we can pump to our heart's content, but without the refineries we aren't able to use that oil.

I mean, someone is using it.

Everything is about cost. Back in the 90's, we couldn't get to our fracked oil because our existing equipment wasn't able to extract it. Then prices spiked and it made sense to build/invent new equipment. Refineries are changing too, to accommodate the state of the market they serve.

The bottom line is that "we" (in the sense the upthread poster meant) have plenty of oil. We pump plenty of oil. People saying we need to pump more oil are ultimately just reflecting the desires of companies who want to pump (and sell!) more oil and not the putative nativist needs of "our" oil consumers.

The bottom line is that no matter what the US does, oil prices are on a steady, inexorable rise[1] as the world exhausts its cheap supplies and needs to transition to difficult sources (again, fracking is the poster child here). Everything else is just crony politics.

[1] Though at this very moment they're experiencing an external shock due mostly to the war in Ukraine.

It’s actually the opposite: our refineries are great at processing shale, and Texas is the best place to deal with Albertan shale oil as well (hence why they wanted keystone XL so badly). We also have enough clean crude that can mix with heavier dirtier crude to enable that to be processed (so Venezuela had to import American oil to process their own). The oil industry is weird.

One thing is that shale oil is expensive to extract and refine. It wasn’t until recently when prices rose again that it became profitable.

< in poor taste, feel free to delete @dang >

Is it poor taste? I certainly have never had any issue complaining. It's widely reporter on in sports journalism, and the BBC etc.

Probably talking about their own comment, pre-edit to current version.

I was referring the original pre-edit although I can't remember what it actually said.

What?

I have the privilege to come into contact with migrants. I have seen things that should not happen in a wealthy European country.

Everything the media writes about Quatar I know is going on right here. The outrage is minimal. As long as desperation for money exists someone will exploit it.

The major difference you left out is scale...

As are the "Western" states; we just mostly keep our slaves in Asia, America, and South America, for efficiency.

I sort of agree on Asia--we shamefully send a lot of our manufacturing over there to exploit their lack of labor or environmental protections, but I don't think the west exploits South American labor to a particularly high degree? And the US doesn't have anything that could reasonably be called "slavery" (I suspect you're conflating poverty or incarceration with slavery, but those are different things).