Easiest Way To Counterattack Russia — Go Electric

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I’ve actually had this draft started for weeks, and it rose to the top of the story list today by coincidence — seriously. The only thing I changed in the title was the word “hit” to the word “counterattack,” since the latter fit the day (the start of the 2018 World Cup in Russia), the former seemed too personally aggressive in general, and counterattack really is what we’re talking about here anyway.

As you may have seen, Russia interfered with the last US presidential election via an extensive, nuanced cyber warfare campaign. It sowed strife in the US via all sorts of aggressive, extremist social media campaigns, and it specifically tried to help Donald Trump (aka Don the Con*) get elected.

Russia’s cyber warfare campaigns reached 126 million Americans or more on Facebook alone. Russia also had extensive Twitter and reddit campaigns going, and still does. The result has been extra internal conflict, extra anti-democratic messaging, unusual attacks on our security and investigative bodies, and potentially even an illegitimate president. (Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper believes that he is indeed illegitimate. Former CIA Director John Brennan, meanwhile, believes Vladimir Putin actually has something on Trump since Trump hasn’t been acting innocent and there’s so much lying about sketchy as hell meetings like this.)

It’s frustrating when you’ve clearly been attacked by a hostile foreign country; when your national leader appears to be compromised; and when he is doing one thing after another that benefits Russia over the USA, that favors catastrophe and suffering over human health and comfort, and that subsidizes the oil & gas industry instead of clean energy and electric vehicles.

But that last bit gets to the crux of the matter. Russia is highly dependent on its oil & gas industry. Its economy is already quite weak and its people suffer under a low quality of life as a result, but it’ll get worse if Russia’s oil & gas business is harmed. And, more importantly for the Russian oligarchs running the show over there, it gets much worse for them if they can’t hoard another billion or 10 from oil & gas sales.

Image by ANDREY MOVCHAN, via Carnegie Moscow Center

Russia decided to take the aggressive, anti-democratic step of invading southern Ukraine (Crimea) a handful of years ago, annexing that part of Ukraine for itself. The response from the rest of Europe and the US was quite tepid and lame. (If you’re American, how would you like it if Canada took Oregon and Washington, made the residents there its citizens, and didn’t face any real pushback/resistance from the world?) However, there were some responses, including some notable sanctions on Russia from the USA and Russia being booted from the G8 (of course, Donald Trump is now lobbying for Russia to be added back …).

With all of that in mind, if you’re upset about Russia interfering with US democracy or with various European democracies where it has been doing the same, there is one way for any one of us to counterattack this particular oil & gas mob ourselves — cut our oil consumption.

Put your own sanctions on Russia, as well as on the sketchy, corrupt, humanity-threatening work of US oil & gas companies, European oil & gas companies, Saudi Arabia, etc. Lay a smackdown on these anti-social jacktards to the greatest degree you personally can. Go electric.

Of course, there are already many reasons to go electric. Electric cars have approximately 30 solid benefits over gasmobiles. If we want to stop global warming, cut air pollution, or just have a more enjoyable driving experience, electric transport is the way to go. Nonetheless, it seems we’re often waiting for the 31st reason to go electric, since it takes a great amount of inspiration to get off our butts and make a change to our daily lives.

But conflict has a certain way of moving our blood. Attacks on our society and any traitorous behavior linked to that have a special way of raising our sense of initiative. Even simple competition (like the World Cup) has a way of encouraging us to take physical risks, expend financial resources, and simply get off the couch (er, wait …).

So, just do it. Just get rid of your gas car and get an electric. If you’ve been waiting till your current gas car is “out of date” or the perfect electric model comes along, consider how much you spend on gasoline and how affordable a used electric car can be as a holdover until you can get your Tesla Model Y, Kia Niro EV, Volkswagen Buzz, or whatever.

And think about it: this is your chance to actually counterattack Russia, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and Voldemort all at once. Don the Con can’t make you drive a gasmobile.

* “Don the Con” since so much of his life has been based on conning people, and continues to be based on that.

Top image by T.J. Hawk (some rights reserved)


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7317 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan