because Providence has seen fit to identify the world's most dangerous regions by locating oil beneath them,

To be fair, that applies more to the Europeans (except for the British, Dutch, and Norwegians after the North Sea fields were found) and Japanese than it does to the US. The US was blessed with some pretty massive oil fields, like the East Texas fields (which allowed the US to provide the lion's share of oil consumed in World War 2).

The main problem was that once the domestic supply of oil began running down, and it became cheaper to import it than make the efforts to get more oil from remaining sources in the US, we decided to simply go with the flow and join Great Britain and others in the Oil Power Politics game rather than seriously shifting away from oil consumption.

However, two real issues loom. One is how to safely dispose of spent fuel, a dilemma still hotly debated by environmentalists. And another is how to ensure the security of the fuel at every other stage of its life cycle, particularly in comparatively cash-strapped emerging countries, which are often in regions scarred by instability and home to terrorist organizations with their own nuclear ambitions.

The first is more myth than reality - the actual dangerous part of the waste is pretty small, stored easily on site, and can be recycled into almost pure useful fuel using breeder reactors. Same goes for the rest of the waste, which is much less dangerous and easily stored (Yucca Mountain would have worked quite well).

The second is an issue, but keep in mind that the uranium fuel used in power plants usually can't be used in bombs without significant enrichment (which is what the Iranians are doing). If need be, you could even run Thorium-reactors, which would eliminate the threat of weaponization.

I'm all for a mass nuclear expansion in the US (I'd like for it to be essentially the steady-state power source in the US, supplemented by regional power bonuses like solar in the Southwest and wind in the Central States), but there is one other issue. Nuclear plants take a lot of freshwater (which they recycle back into the source harmless but warmer), or at least most of the current plants do. If we go nuclear, we need to make sure that we use designs like the Pebble-Bed Design the French are moving towards (which uses gas as a coolant rather than water). We also need heavy standardization among plants.

both because of the new value it will have and the new conflicts it will generate.

We could always revive the scheme to tow icebergs northward. The Saudis tried that once, if I recall correctly, but it was abandoned due to cost and environmental concerns.

It so happens that about three quarters of the world's known lithium reserves are concentrated in the southern cone of Latin America-to be precise, in the Atacama Desert, which is shared by two countries: Chile and Bolivia.

Most of it is in Bolivia's part of the desert (unlike oil, God really must have been laughing at us Westerners with that, assuming he exists), and they know it. That, incidently, is why development of it is going tepidly at best - the potential investors know the Bolivians will just nationalize whatever they build in Bolivia, and the Bolivians have more or less said they will.

On the brightside, perhaps it's better that Bolivia be the equivalent of a petrostate in the 21st century for the US than the Middle East states.

So, lithium will make Latin America the next petro-state zone? Too bad Latin American countries inevitably end up ruled by either ruthless fascist oligarchies or incompetent Marxist governments. Neither is good for the hapless inhabitants of the 'lucky' countries that have a natural resource to exploit. The US backs the fascist oligarchies, which inevitably sets us up to be the bad guys when that leads to incompetent Marxist governments.

"It's fast dawning on some Indians that their government's tough stance (resisting mandated emissions caps and offering only to keep India's per capita emissions at or below the average emissions in developed countries) could effectively keep it from having a seat at the table when the core elements of a global deal are worked out in the conversation between the world's two leading emitters and a handful of others."

This is a serious misreading of the situation. We can agree or disagree with their stance in the negotiations, but India is the world's second most populous country and one with both a fast-growing economy and greenhouse emissions, a political struggle over the direction of climate policy, a recent warming of relations with the US, and a good many local, regional and national initiatives to go in a non-carbon development direction.

I've met with the leaders of India's climate negotiating team, and their capabilities are quite evident. Nobody who actually knows anything about the UN climate negotiations could imagine India being kept from "having a seat at the table" under any circumstances.