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WHY THE SOLAR PANEL IS THE 21ST-CENTURY PEACE SIGN  
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Bill McKibben
January 6, 2026
Common Dreams
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_ Every one that goes up incrementally reduces the attractiveness of
the oil that underlies so much conflict and tyranny, including
Trump’s latest attack on Venezuela. _

SunPro Solar Energy specialists, Solar Panel installation on roof of
house, North Carolina A Solar panel installation is seen on the roof
of a house in North Carolina., Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images
Group via Getty Image

 

It’s far too early to prophesy the effects of the American attack on
Venezuela [[link removed]], though recent
history provides plenty of ugly warnings.

And it’s a thankless task to list all the reasons for the attack,
from Epstein distraction to a sphere-of-influence carve up of the
planet (watch out Taiwan) to the basic idea that President Donald
Trump [[link removed]] opposes any and
all restraint on his power. (The United Nations
[[link removed]] charter: “All
Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat
or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with
the Purposes of the United Nations.” The US constitution
[[link removed]]: “The Congress
shall have the power…To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and
Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”)
Also, so much fun playing Army: Here’s the president of the US
Saturday morning: “I watched it literally l like I was watching a
television show. If you would’ve seen the speed, the violence—it
was an amazing thing.”

(I think we can take it for granted that the stated charges from the
attorney general are not the reasons, since pretty much everyone
agrees that that Venezuela is not a big drug exporter to the US and
the president just pardoned the president ofHonduras
[[link removed]] who actually was a serious
pusher. Oh, and “Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices,
and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns” is something we now encourage
for Americans.)

But the following chart is certainly suggestive.

 

 

Those are the countries on Earth with the biggest oil
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without exception the same places we’ve been involved in endless
fighting or, in the case of Canada, endless threatening. (Greenland
[[link removed]], by the way, also has
significant oil reserves; it put them off limits in 2021, banning
[[link removed]] oil
exploration on climate change
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probably don’t care much about human rights
[[link removed]] violations in
Venezuela, because human rights are not currently on the top (or the
bottom) of our State Department’s concerns (except for white South
Africans). But we almost certainly care deeply about that oil. In
fact, it’s not exactly hidden—here’s what Trump said
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in mid-December.

“They took our oil rights—we had a lot of oil there. As you know
they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”

And as he said Saturday morning on _Fox News_, regarding the
Venezuelan oil industry:

“We’re going to be very strongly involved in it.”

I do not, in the short run, know of a way to rein in this kind of
imperialism [[link removed]]. Congress
as currently constituted will not stand up to Trump, and we don’t
get a chance to start reconstituting Congress till November; even if
the Democrats controlled the House and Senate and even if they grew
some serious spine, it’s not clear how they’d prevent this kind of
overreach. Without the two-thirds of the Senate needed for impeachment
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increasingly clear that the Constitution is a nominal document.

But I do know how to dramatically reduce the _motivation_ for this
kind of grab, and that’s to convert the planet off oil as fast as
possible. Oil is unique in being extremely valuable, extremely dense,
and hence relatively easy to hoard and control, and extremely
concentrated in a few places around the world. It is a curse to those
places—look again at the list above, and with the exception of
Canada ask yourself how well they’ve been governed. (And Canada’s
oil wealth may yet be its undoing, as Alberta
[[link removed]] threatens over and over to
disrupt the nation unless it gets its oily way). And it is a curse to
the planet—because of the climate crisis
[[link removed]], obviously, but also
because anything worth this much money will inevitably destabilize
international relations. As the late Richard Cheney, then the head of
oilfield-services giant Halliburton, remarked in a 1998 speech:

The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are
democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States
[[link removed]]. Occasionally we have
to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not
normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is.

But what it it the business wasn’t there any more? What if we could,
simply by supporting an environmentally and economically sound
transition to clean energy, remove the reason for the fighting_? I
don’t know how to stop the bully from beating people up for their
lunch money—but what if lunch was free, and no one was carrying
lunch money?_ Not for the first time, and not for the last, I’m
going to make the observation that it’s going to be hard to figure
out how to fight wars over sunshine.

What I’m trying to say is, if you’re for peace and democracy
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valuable tool (and a valuable symbol, a peace sign for our age). Every
one that goes up incrementally reduces the attractiveness of the oil
that underlies so much conflict and tyranny. Right at the moment
treaties and charters and constitutions offer limited protection at
best; we should work to restore the national and global consensus that
makes them valuable, but we should also work to push out the kind of
energy that can’t be hoarded or controlled.

Why does Trump hate solar and wind energy so passionately? It’s
because they’re somewhat outside his or anyone else’s control. A
nation that builds its prosperity on oil makes itself a target; a
nation that depends on imported oil to survive makes itself a vassal.
A nation (say, China) that rapidly builds out its own supply of energy
from the sun—energy that can’t be embargoed or effectively
attacked, energy that is by its nature decentralized, energy so spread
out that no particular bit of it is all that valuable—is a nation
that can go its own way.

America is, by any definition, a rogue nation as of Saturday morning.
It does what it wants, without effective constraint by anyone. _It, in
the image of its leader, is a bizarrely destructive and absurdly
oversized toddler, unable to reason beyond its own wants and
impulses._ We should try to teach it some manners, but we should also
childproof the planet.

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Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury
College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org.

* Solar Panels; Venezuela; War and Peace;
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