And why don't we in the west sanction them or refuse to trade with them for this practice? Not only that but we're actively supporting these regimes and selling them cutting edge weapons. Why is that?
'checks notes'
Oh, right, oil.
'checks notes'
Oh, right, oil.
I wish we would. Possibly the one good thing coming out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a realization that depending on oil and gas leaves you very vulnerable and that alternative sources of energy must become more common.
There will also always be disagreements on fundamental ethical issues between countries. Even between the states in the US you can see such disagreements.
What we seem to lack is a principle for dealing with such situations. Instead, ad-hoc, inconsistent measures tend to be taken. It seems like if the true principle guiding such decisions were publicly announced, the general public would find it unpalatable. Are we living in willful denial?
Can such a principle then exist, that would both be consistent with our declared values, without compromising our ability to survive and defend ourselves and act according to it?
Applying alternative energy sources where it doesn't make sense to do so ends up throwing billions of dollars on having solar panels where they can never generate the energy they theoretically could (Germany, I'm looking at you)
This will involve a mix of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and nuclear on grids that span continents with massive battery stores to balance supply with demand. Between climate change and petroleum-fuelled kleptocrats, ditching fossil fuels is a necessity, not a choice. And the long term here is on the order of decades, not centuries, so within most of our our lifetimes.
I guess humanity is still not ready for such projects of enormous cooperation between countries, or, that there are too many things in the way, like said temperature rise at day and fall at night, the vast distance the energy would need to be transported (is that a problem?) and maintenance work somewhere in the desert. One can still hope, that some day we will be able to think globally and solve problems that way.
I sometimes hear that too. The YouTube channel "Real Engineering" did a video about the idea: [1] The TLDR is: the Sahara definitely gets enough sun, but transmitting the power into Europe would be hard.
North America produces enough petroleum today to meet its own needs[1]. But the rest of the world doesn't, middle east oil is cheap relative to offshore or (especially) fracked petroleum, and at the end of the day fuels are a fungible commodity and our local prices reflect demand in the rest of the world.
The bit about "dependence on foreign oil" you're hearing is largely spin. Supply is not the problem. Pump more and we'll just use more.
[1] Which is not to say we don't import or export any. Markets are markets.
Everything is about cost. Back in the 90's, we couldn't get to our fracked oil because our existing equipment wasn't able to extract it. Then prices spiked and it made sense to build/invent new equipment. Refineries are changing too, to accommodate the state of the market they serve.
The bottom line is that "we" (in the sense the upthread poster meant) have plenty of oil. We pump plenty of oil. People saying we need to pump more oil are ultimately just reflecting the desires of companies who want to pump (and sell!) more oil and not the putative nativist needs of "our" oil consumers.
The bottom line is that no matter what the US does, oil prices are on a steady, inexorable rise[1] as the world exhausts its cheap supplies and needs to transition to difficult sources (again, fracking is the poster child here). Everything else is just crony politics.
[1] Though at this very moment they're experiencing an external shock due mostly to the war in Ukraine.
One thing is that shale oil is expensive to extract and refine. It wasn’t until recently when prices rose again that it became profitable.