Climate Change | Cheap Oil Sabotaging America's Green Future, Costing Trillions
Make America Grow Again Series | Episode 6 | Refusing to price carbon and doubling down on petro-state addiction is killing renewable innovation.
This isn’t about saving Earth.
It’s about preserving the narrow, fragile set of physical conditions allowing human civilization, supply chains, food systems, and economies to exist.
Physics does not negotiate.
Thermodynamics does not care who you voted for.
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Stop Trying to “Save” the Planet
The arrogance is breathtaking.
We run around screaming that we need to save the Earth. We print it on tote bags. Put it on bumper stickers. Make it a campaign slogan.
Let’s get really uncomfortable: the planet is fine. The people are the problem.
We’ve been here a blink of an eye—maybe 200,000 years. In the last 200, we started burning things we dug out of the ground. And now we act shocked that physics is doing what physics does.
We’re like tenants who trashed the apartment and now worry the building will collapse. The building isn’t going anywhere. You’re just getting evicted.
The Earth Doesn’t Care About Us
It survived massive asteroid impacts.
It survived magnetic storms.
It survived total glaciations.
It survived continental drift tearing the land apart.
It survived Religion causing hatred and Wars for thousands of years without a break… it'll certainly survive our dumb asses.
And we think we can destroy it with plastic straws and denial?
The Earth will shake us off like fleas. The air will clear. The water will purify. The plastic will eventually become sediment in a new geological layer. The planet will heal. Without us.
Physics Does Not Negotiate
This is the failure of our political conversation. We treat climate action like a budget negotiation. We think we can compromise with the atmosphere. Kick the can down the road.
Nature doesn’t have a political party. It doesn’t care about quarterly earnings. It doesn’t care if the transition is “too expensive” or “inconvenient.”
The climate will not wait for us. It will not compromise because we aren’t ready.
Stop talking about “saving the planet.” Start talking about saving our own skin.
The uncomfortable truth: the planet isn’t going anywhere. We are.
The Core Truth Everyone Dodges
Climate change is not:
A science problem
A technology problem
A messaging problem
It is an incentives problem.
And incentives do not respond to speeches.
They respond to prices.
America didn’t fail because it didn’t know better.
It failed because fixing this would require breaking an oil‑built lifestyle powerful people were comfortable protecting.
The Geopolitical Addiction
Petrodollars, Venezuela, and the Illusion of Morality
Turn on the news and Venezuela is always there.
Sanctions. Migration. “Democracy promotion.” Hand‑wringing op‑eds.
Ignore the words.
Look at the geology.
Venezuela holds about 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the most in the world as of the latest Energy Information Administration data, far more than any other country.
When the U.S. tolerates worse behavior from oil‑rich allies while fixating on Caracas, that isn’t hypocrisy.
It’s dependency.
Oil is the world’s most powerful hall pass.
If Russia exported kale, Putin would be a regional nuisance with a bad haircut.
If Saudi Arabia exported hummus, its monarchy would not be a “strategic partner.”
Oil turns authoritarian regimes into “complex allies.”
It turns murder into “geopolitical reality.”
America’s moral compass bends at the exact viscosity of crude.
The U.S. Military: Oil’s Global Bodyguard
The United States spends tens of billions annually securing sea lanes, chokepoints, and pipelines so oil stays cheap — a cost hidden from consumers at the pump.
This hidden subsidy is part of the broader petrodollar system that keeps oil priced in dollars, reinforcing U.S. financial power but chaining policy to fossil fuel markets.
The Venezuela Lesson Americans Hate
Venezuela is not a mystery.
It is a warning label.
For decades, oil revenue funded everything while crowding out diversification. When prices fell, the system collapsed.
Here’s the uncomfortable part:
America is not Venezuela by export share.
America is Venezuela by infrastructure, incentives, and political capture.
We built:
Highways instead of transit
Suburbs instead of density
SUV fleets instead of rail
Foreign policy muscle instead of energy strategy
A society that only works if oil stays cheap forever, then acted stunned when reality disagreed.
Systemic Failure: Why We Race Toward the Cliff
We’ve had warnings for fifty years. Emissions are still rising.
This is not ignorance.
It’s design failure.
Externalities Are Theft, Not Efficiency
Modern capitalism pretends you can dump waste into the atmosphere and call it “cost‑saving.”
Profits rise.
Someone else pays.
That isn’t efficiency.
It’s theft with spreadsheets.
Fossil fuels treat the atmosphere like an open sewer, privatizing profits and socializing damage.
Recent estimates show global climate change costs could reach tens of trillions of dollars in damages by mid‑century if unchecked — more than any carbon pricing regime costs.
Subsidy Insanity
We don’t just allow pollution.
We pay for it.
According to the International Monetary Fund, fossil fuel subsidies reached about $7 trillion in 2022 when you include environmental and implicit costs: more than 7% of global GDP.
Taxpayer money artificially cheapens the very thing destabilizing the climate, the economy, and geopolitics.
This isn’t a market failure.
It’s a rigged one.
The Comfort Problem
America is not stupid.
It is comfortable.
We do not lack solutions.
We lack tolerance for inconvenience.
Any reduction in convenience is framed as oppression.
Any long‑term planning is framed as tyranny.
Climate change isn’t left or right.
It’s a systems problem.
And systems do not care about ideology.
The Fix That Actually Works
Price the Poison
The policy fossil interests fear most is also the simplest:
A steadily rising carbon fee at the point of extraction, with all revenue returned directly to citizens through dividends.
No guilt campaigns.
No lifestyle micromanagement.
Pollution becomes expensive.
Clean energy becomes profitable.
Under this design, markets reward decarbonization and innovation faster than any regulation alone could.
Global carbon pricing mechanisms raised over $100 billion in revenue in 2023 and cover roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, proving carbon pricing already works at scale.
Devil’s Advocate, Answered
“Carbon taxes hurt the poor.” Only if designed badly. Rebates make them progressive.
“America acting alone won’t matter.” False. Border adjustments force compliance and innovation follow global price signals.
“Technology will fix it eventually.” Technology follows incentives. Cheap pollution kills innovation.
“This will hurt growth.” Disasters and volatility hurt growth. Carbon pricing stabilizes markets.
Carbon pricing fails only when politics sabotages economics.
Nuclear Is Not Optional
Solar and wind matter.
They are not enough.
Modern nuclear is the only proven carbon‑free baseload that scales fast enough for the timeline physics demands.
Fear of nuclear is emotional.
Fear of unchecked warming is rational.
We need both.
Adaptation Is Not Surrender
Some warming is already locked in.
That means investment in:
Grid hardening
Flood retreat
Heat‑resistant crops
Water redundancy
Ignoring adaptation isn’t optimism.
It’s negligence.
How Fix #6 Strengthens the 25 Fixes Tree
Climate is the trunk. Oil dependence is the rot. Carbon pricing is the pruning.
This fix directly reinforces:
#2 Healthcare Cost Control → Pollution and disasters drive massive hidden health costs (heat, air quality, emergency response)
#4 Income Inequality → Progressive rebates deliver net gains to lower/middle-income households.
#14 Public Infrastructure → Shifts incentives to green grid, transit, broadband modernization.
#15 Rural Economic Development → Manages transition for fossil-dependent communities with new clean energy jobs.
#18 Social Security & Medicare Protection → Avoids trillions in future disaster debt straining safety nets for aging populations.
Even if models are off by half, benefits remain: energy independence, efficiency, disaster savings.
This isn’t ideology. It’s maintenance.
Rxan Smith's Reality Check
If you’re still calling climate change a hoax, you’ve outpaced flat‑earthers. The science isn’t debating. It’s screaming while we argue about culture war noise.
The same politicians yelling “freedom” at carbon pricing are quietly handing trillions to fossil interests to externalize costs onto your kids.
That isn’t freedom.
That’s subsidized denial.
Price carbon.
Build nuclear.
Harden infrastructure.
Stop letting addicts run the rehab clinic.
Thermodynamics doesn’t care if you’re woke or based.
It just keeps collecting.
The roots are rotting.
Fix them, or the tree falls.
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Segment 7: Criminal Justice Reform & Prison Industrial Complex
If climate is the slow‑motion disaster we refuse to price, mass incarceration is the fast‑motion one we refuse to humanize.
Private prisons. Asset forfeiture. Plea coercion. A bipartisan profit machine hiding behind slogans.
Next week, we dig.
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Credits – Substacks that Provided Wisdom (Go Subscribe)
Ruy Teixeira & John Judis book – Where Have All the Democrats Gone? Ruy Teixeira
The Liberal Patriot Substack – Ruy Teixeira’s archive on working-class shifts: liberalpatriot.com
Richard Hanania – “Why the Political Realignment Is Permanent”: Read Here Richard Hanania
Richard Hanania Newsletter: richardhanania.com
Matt Yglesias – “The real reason Democrats lost”: Read Here mattyglesias
Slow Boring Substack: slowboring.com
Nate Silver – “How Trump Won” autopsy: Read Here Nate Silver
Silver Bulletin Substack: natesilver.net
Zach Goldberg original “Great Awokening” thread (2019): Read Thread Zach Goldberg
Zach Goldberg Twitter: @ZachG932
John Burn-Murdoch FT piece (working-class realignment chart): Read Here John Burn-Murdoch
John Burn-Murdoch Twitter: @jburnmurdoch
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I'm reminded of an interview Arnold Schwarzenegger had regarding his views on Climate Change and he said that the problem with not getting enough support for green energy policies is due to the lousy marketing around it. He disregarded the use of terms like Global Warming or Climate Change and just referred to the crisis at had as Unmanaged Pollution, which gets more attention. Once again Orwell was right that PC jargon will trick the audience into not caring about a serious moral failure of society.