Definitely not at the bar of HN in any case.

I know HN allows non tech news of global significance but I definitely don’t think 4 month lows of the stock market counts.

Trump simultaneously says fossil fuels are the future while showing how sensitive oil is to geopolitical shocks.

  > maybe it will force some countries to take climate change seriously.

lol, rofl even.

Why didn’t anyone take climate change seriously during any of the previous years-long periods when oil was over $100 and why would now be any different?

"... take climate change seriously" is such shallow terminology. Economically this points to a tip of the proverbial iceberg. Economics in a modern State may be compared to gravity itself. Whatever the changes to the players and the playing field, economics adds to the calculus. WHO pays WHAT price is the start of the conversation.

We need to think that there is two oil prices. one the producer gets and another the consumer pays. High producer price is the worst thing that can happen from climate change perspective. That means also the more difficult to extract oilfields become profitable and then oil in also those will be extracted and burned. If we get the producer oil price to say $5 per barrel, I guarantee you oil production will collapse to almost nothing. Obviously consumer oil price can't be $5 unless there is something still cheaper and better (hard) or taxation/emissions trading schemes that make consumers pay much more than what producer gets.

Pretty sure the US already does that. Every once in a while you'll hear about a strike on ISIS etc.

And I'm guessing there's lots of operations you don't exactly hear about.

The US most certainly does not, nor ever will need to do anything so horrifying and cruel.

That's like saying "ugh, now I need to beat my son every day, or he won't do what I tell him". Sure, if the only tool you think you have in your arsenal is violence, that seems like something you "need" to do, but in the real world, we have many other tools that are much much more effective at achieving our goals. They just...might require actually caring about other people, and treating them with respect and human dignity, and *gasp* possibly even acting like something other than the most absurd caricature of a "manly man" to ever man.

Now, what's abundantly clear is that nothing like that will ever happen as long as any party that remotely resembles the current Republicans is in power in the US. So hopefully that can be another good reason to get them out permanently.