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Comment by buboard | Hacker News Reader

Just about every architectural firm has made big bucks by selling glorious empty buildings to those oil barons. It's almost comical to hear them talk of "sustainability" in the world's least sustainable place and autocracy, where the coming tourism collapse collides with decades of unprecedented real estate waste, borrowed money and oil drying up.

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"These oil barons"? Dubai is not oil rich. That is why it has built its economy on trade. I could understand people misunderstanding this in the early millennium when Dubai was just starting to rise to its global importance, and they had only Arabian-peninsula stereotypes to go by. But it baffles me how people don't know this by now. They most might have learned it, for example, from the fallout of the 2008 crisis which hit Dubai's trade and real estate-based economy and forced it to turn to other parts of the UAE which do have oil.

What is your basis for saying this? The UAE has the third highest oil production per capita in the world.

The contribution which oil makes to Dubai's economy has been in the single-digit percentages for many years.[0] While the UAE overall is known for oil output (though this chart[1] states that it is lower per capita then you suggested, at least for 2017), the UAE is an only loosely joined federation, and so the oil output of other emirates is not reflective of Dubai.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-01-14/dubai-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...

LOL

This sounds like the USA, or any other country when they are still growing and developing as it sounds like the UAE.

Did the industrialists in the UK care about sustainability? Did the European colonialists care about sustainability?

Only now that our countries somewhat have our shit together we start caring about how clean our air is, how long our stockpile of resources/money lasts and how good and kind we are to our earth.

When your biggest struggle is having enough money to eat. That's your priority. Later on when your biggest issue is pollution because it will shorten your lifespan that's what you fight for.

The UAE is not struggling to have enough money to eat. It's spending money to spend money because they have extensive oil and gas resources (and at least the wisdom to diversify their economy to enable them to better survive oil shocks).

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