In wake of US supreme court decision allowing unlimited corporate cash in elections, progressives highlight Saudi Arabia as a country that will take advantage.
Saudi Arabia’s economy depends on oil exports so stands to be one of the biggest losers in any pact that curbs oil demand by penalizing carbon emissions. “It’s one of the biggest threats that we are facing,” said Muhammed al-Sabban, head of the Saudi delegation to U.N. talks on climate change and a senior economic adviser to the Saudi oil ministry. [...] Climate talks posed a bigger threat, Sabban said, and subsidies for the development of renewable energy were distorting market economics in the sector, he said.”
Presumably because of the Citizens United ruling, Saudi Arabian-owned subsidiaries operating in the United States can now spend unlimited amounts advocating the defeat of candidates who support clean energy legislation. According to a ThinkProgress investigation, foreign-oil backed lobbyists in America are already instigating efforts to kill clean energy legislation.
Juan Cole takes this apart a bit, pointing out some interest in Saudi Arabia for green energy, but I’m skeptical of his skepticism. It wasn’t long ago that he belittled the extremist threat in Pakistan as largely limited to the ethnic Pashtun regions of that country, and that certainly turned out to be wrong (though wrong in service of the greater good of puncturing inflated rhetoric at the time about the Taliban being poised to overthrow the Pakistan government).
thabet, 
bingregory 9:18 pm on February 4, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Cool idea, interesting that it came from Malaysia which is probably the muslim country with the least water scarcity issues in the world. It’s pouring buckets right now, part of nearly 3 meters of annual rainfall we get every year.
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee 9:48 pm on February 4, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This may be more advanced but some masjids already have the sensor driven water savers that some new public bathrooms have in general.
It is a very cool idea. I am sure I do my own wasting of water in some ways (I can imagine few things more pleasant than waking up to a hot shower on these cold Chicago mornings), but one thing that is really hard for me to see is when people are making wudu and they really waste water. They take a while and they have the faucet going full blast the whole time. It would be hard to imagine something further from the wudu of the Prophet (saw). The Prophet (saw) would make ghusl with 10 or 12 handfuls of water, wudu with two handfuls.
thabet 1:22 am on February 5, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Someone once pointed this out to an imam no less; he had the water on full blast while he was just sitting there rubbing his teeth with a miswak stick.
Needless to say the imam did not like being told off about this, and spent the entire first half of the sermon (delivered in the local language) lecturing the worshippers on “evil people” who think they know better than “learned ulama”.
willow 10:08 pm on February 4, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
That’s awesome. I hope they catch on everywhere.