They get most of their money from oil. Instead of yet another round of ineffective bombing, should we spend the money on alternative energy? If we stop buying oil, the price will collapse and ISIS will be broke. They seem quite excited about dying for their cause, and an American military campaign against them will only help recruitment. I think solar panels and electric cars will do far more damage to ISIS in the long run than guns and bombs.
We want windmills AND fossil fuels
The price of oil today is less than a third of what it was seven years ago. Shouldn’t ISIS already be broke by your logic?
A good blurb about this topic was by Sam Harris
And I want it to be true, but I am afraid we might be past the point where the Saudi Regime could be halted by not having oil revenue. They have built up so much capital and invested so much that the piketty effect might be the main driver of their wealth once the oils gone. Where the returns on capital outstrip more productive endeavors. They could easily have the mother of all sovereign wealth funds, Norway seems to use it to prop up their support to citizens, but Saudi Arabia could use it to persist in Madrases and other radical exports.
Though perhaps once the oil is no longer needed to the same degree after rampant electrification of the transportation sector, we can limit the finances of the Saudis and place sanctions on them for policies we disagree with, just like we do with other less connected groups.
Either way, the best policy is to get off oil and lessen their income.
Im immediately wary when I read the sort of thing in the OP. It sounds like an argument the green lobby would advance for greater subsidies.
All Sam Harris seems to come out with is blurb.
More subsidies for the green lobby and less for the fossil fuel one, sounds OK.
Not being mean, but I’m curious, if I waved a map of the middle east under your nose without labels, would y’all able to point to Turkey within three attempts ? Just asking, I make no judgements.
…God, Harris, talking about addiction to oil, says “roll back fifty years, we didn’t have the alternative to oil, civilization needs petrochemicals to survive.”
It’s like he can’t conceive of any possible alternative to the consumer society - despite years of study in how to make living in a cave with no car, TV or doughnuts a blissful meditative experience.
No, civilization is made by a series of choices, and if that means dependence on Saudi despotism then that’s a choice to have easy energy and wealth, much of which is a waste. Other choices can be made.
Yes. It’s right next to Greece and the roasting pan. 
I really do know where Turkey is.
(maybe I generalise Harris a bit much, overall his point isn’t bad)
Interesting that he says we funding both sides of war on terror, particularly as his audience is full of people who start squawking “conspiracy theory” when they hear claims like that.
But then, I don’t know where Dakota is. It’s the square one near those mountains, yeah ? No, it’s the one with the wiggly bit near the river…
There you go, America, restore your self esteem by asking Europeans to point to Iowa or Wisconsin.
The problem is that that lessens our income as well.
Its amazing that soldiers will join up to die in oil wars when so much of it is squandered, really. It’s not like all oil goes in ambulances and food trucks. Do the marines really die so some guy can trim his hedge with a gas powered trimmer ?
I mean, you have a case for risking your life for essential things, but who wants to die for some guy’s straight hedge ?
Know what I mean ?
If true, that means it would only take 50-100 years to defeat ISIS.
Unless you mean running them over with electric cars. That could work.
I was thinking more along the lines of a solar-powered orbital death ray.
Yeah, I’m pretty confident I could point to Turkey on a map on the first attempt. Would you like to put some money down on this? I can point to most if not all of the other countries in the region as well.
As for the OP:
How would solar and/or wind impact oil? Not only would you have to scale it up to meet demand but then you’d need a paradigm shift to electrical to go along with it as well. Do you have any idea what that would cost??? Or how long it would take to get there?? In the mean time, what’s the plan exactly? We pour money into wind and solar (and presumably everything else except nuclear, since nuclear=bad I suppose) AND into a paradigm shift away from fossil fuel based personal transport and just let ISIS run wild for the decade or so it would take (to be generous) while we create this unicorn utopia? And, what, suck it up when they attack us and our allies because eventually, decades down the road, we’ll theoretically starve them of funds? Or do we simply all stop using oil in the mean time (and make everyone else do the same…good luck getting China to go along with this plan, or India or really anyone else)?? We will save billions and cost ISIS billions while costing us all trillions to do it, but in the end ISIS might just be starved of funds somewhere down the road and will simply go away??
Sounds like a plan!!
Electric cars, hedge trimmers, etc. that are powered with clean energy and don’t need oil changes. I have an electric lawn mower. It didn’t even cost anymore then a gas powered one.
I have one as well…in fact, I have an entire electrical system (Kobalt) that includes the mower, a hedge trimmer, tiller (not Kobalt sadly) and weed wacker. Works great! But you can’t scale this up to replace all the cars, trucks, SUVs and everything else, not on any sort of short or even medium time scale. It will take decades, and you are going to need some sort of battery breakthrough for cost and performance to do it. And this leaves aside the unfortunate fact that solar and wind don’t scale up to meet even our needs today, let alone when we magically switch to this tech for personal transport. Nuclear would, but even there you are talking decades and trillions to build it. However, even if we assume we will just use what we have (i.e. a mix of tech) and scale that up it’s not something that’s going to happen in 10 years or probably even 20. In the mean time, what do we do?
We have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and dirt and filth. Misery on a scale most of us have never seen in person has been on the decline, and a large part of how we were able to do that, was oil.
I am not one of these types that wants us to live like ascetics and whittle the population down to 2 billion to the “cancer” that is humanity can stop being such an invasive species.
I LIKE using more energy, the trick is not living like cave people, it’s finding cleaner ways to use energy and grow food. Then we can both use more energy and have less of an impact on our surroundings.
The earth will be fine, we are not going to exterminate life on this planet by shifting the global mix of energy to cleaner sources over the next 50 years instead of the next 20.
The motivation of ISIL is the fundamental problem, not the particular route they get money. If oil revenues went away tomorrow, they’d accelerate ransoming civilians, maybe deal some meth, steal more stuff, whatever it takes to get more money.
It’s like asking whether we could defeat the mafia by severing the link between corrupt unions and mob bosses. Well, sure, it would hurt, but it isn’t going to literally end organized crime.
The advantage of alternative energy isn’t defeating terrorism. It is the future of our economy, and that’s why we should invest in it. Because ultimately, it will make life for us better.