The last oil war
It’s the last oil war. The Ukraine invasion is not about NATO expansion or political systems. For more than 30 years countries have been refining hybrid market economy/socialist systems and building prosperous economies, with relatively few wars between sovereign nations.
It’s not political, it’s generational -the last gasp from people over 60, clinging desperately and configuring the levers of power, to preserve the oil economy, the fading power of racism, patriotism and religiosity, and a military industrial complex that is inextricably interlaced with the global fossil fuel political establishment of the day.
Putin, Bolsonaro, Johnson, please stop crying like babies. The glory years are gone. Advancing age is for demonstrating wisdom and teaching grandchildren not to be bigots or fight in the playground. When faced with our temper tantrums, the generation moving into power now exhibits quiet tolerance, nods when you say “It’s complicated,” and implements wind, solar, batteries, electrified transportation, buildings, minimum incomes, gender and race equality, even generational guarantees for a bunch of 60-somethings. Do we deserve these?
Those who haven’t learned to behave yet: Please, let’s go quietly to retirement and let younger minds remake the world in the way we always knew it could be.
BF Nagy is the author of more than 250 feature articles on climate solutions and the future, and also The Clean Energy Age, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2018.