Hacker News Reader

Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

The Russian government seems very focused on ensuring that the central asian former soviet states remain as client states/economic dependants of Russia. As seen with recent events in Kazakhstan. And the efforts they put forth against anything like having real free/fair elections in places like Uzbekistan.

View on HN

Surely the oligarchs can see the writing on the wall for the fossil fuels industry? I know it will take longer than most imagine for us to migrate, but these are not unintelligent people, are they diversifying yet?

from the point of view of a 55-65 year oligarch, they might be doing blunt math on their own expected remaining lifespan and the comfortable lifestyle they can live for the next 30-40 years, vs. projected future dates of absolute collapse of fossil fuel economy. could be a "not my problem..." approach to it.

Wouldn't they want their kids to live the same life?

The answer is we do plunder the planet like there's no tomorrow, notwithstanding what one ought think.

Surely Western oligarchs can see the writing on the wall about climate change?

There’s no writing on the wall for the fossil-fuel industry. Reality will bite back hard the technocrats who try to imprint said writing, because increasing energy costs and especially increasing heating costs in countries with temperate climate is not sustainable, society-wise.

I mean, the former communist leaders in my country did use to say “put an extra pull-over on” when we went through an energy and home-heating crisis of our own back in the ‘80s but that’s one of the main reasons why we’re now a “former” communist country, turns out people don’t like to freeze out in their own homes.

technocrats makes me think of a rpg I used to play. Called mage - the awakening. Who does it mean in this context? The writing I was thinking of was that new houses are getting those heat pumps that go down to -30c and electric cars are getting normal to see in every parking lot. Then its a matter of swapping the power generation which is happening already but slowly. In other words, I think market forces are the writing on the wall. But the lithium wars for battery production will be interesting.

Kazakhstan is interesting in that it has been right at the borders of Russian sphere of influence. Which Moscow accepted! What recently happened was an internal coup where the number two (Toakev, the president) overthrew the number one (Nazarbaev, First President) along with his family, breaking he power sharing agreement and overturning the country’s constitution.

Moscow came in when called upon, and apparently it was mainly to demonstrate the legitimacy of Mr. Tokaev. And now they are already packing their stuff and leaving (quite possibly without even leaving the airport).

Will be interesting what’s up next, specially since Putin had a warm relation with Nazarbaev (who’s nowhere to be seen ever since the crisis began)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com