The pattern is this: major powers treat resource scarcity as a security threat rather than a coordination problem. In the 1930s, it was rubber, oil, and grain driving invasions. Now it’s lithium, cobalt, and rare earths, and the scramble looks uncomfortably familiar. Nations claim strategic necessity while calling extraction in their own borders "sustainable" and elsewhere "exploitation." It’s the same old resource colonialism, just with green tech branding. No amount of solar panels justifies replicating the same coercion. If the energy transition looks like the colonial playbook, it isn’t a transition at all.
0