Summary
President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on March 28 that Ukraine will reject a proposed U.S. minerals deal if it endangers the country’s EU accession.
A new draft, reportedly granting the U.S. extensive control over Ukrainian natural resources, raised concerns over economic sovereignty.
Zelensky said lawyers will review the agreement, emphasizing it must not conflict with Ukraine’s constitutional EU alignment.
The initial deal would create a joint fund reinvesting extraction proceeds into Ukraine. The White House views it as a way to recoup aid, but Kyiv remains cautious after a prior dispute with Trump.
Nope, we don’t. This talking point is about a decade out of date. The solutions are all sitting right there without building any new nuclear.
https://www.amazon.com/No-Miracles-Needed-Technology-Climate/dp/1009249541
The argument behind this book revolves around cheap, durable, and at-cost managed utilities with the capacity to shepherd renewable energy in a manner that replicates the need for base load.
The problem with this as a solution comes down to an unforgiving contradiction - this solution does not create high rates of profit. Without high-profit public works, you don’t get buy-in from the financial sector. And without financial sector buy-in, you don’t get business administrators willing to engage the private sector in construction, development, and maintenance of these systems.
The book doesn’t mint enough new billionaires, so it won’t be accepted as a solution in a western free market system. It is, incidentally, why nuclear energy is also unpopular in the US. Compared to gas, oil, and coal, the margins on nuclear electricity are too damned low. Green energy only works because it is so intermittent and temporal, allowing energy brokers to trade on the ups and downs of supply as they fall out of sync with demand.
If you make the system efficient, you lose all the opportunities for arbitrage that incentivize private actors to invest and extract wealth.