solar saudi
saudi arabia made two very interesting comments recently. one, they want to get into the solar power business. saudi arabia is a big desert. it's a perfect place to generate solar power. the weird part is they have the largest oil reserve in the world. why would they invest in solar? one could speculate they need to. thinking along the lines of yeah they have a lot of oil. but it's gonna go quickly. and then they'll have a useless desert. or they don't have as much as they say they do. another possibility is that they don't /need/ to switch. but /want/ to. they're sitting on the largest material prize in the history of the world. countries are willing to start wars to have it. that'd be pretty bad for saudi arabia. so it kinda makes sense. also maybe jibes with the second interesting announcement. they don't want the price of oil to drop below $60-$70 because that's the price at which alternative energy fuels become viable. in other words they want to keep prices high so people are motivated to develop something that would compete with their product. weird. altruism? self-preservation? hmm... it's also the price point that maximizes their profits. but that can't have anything to do with it.