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Other nations can use their resources to accelerate forward by building the infrastructure needed to extract and refine resources, ending further ahead over all due to all the other industries that are enabled. It’s not a simple game of who-wastes-theirs-first.

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> It’s not a simple game of who-wastes-theirs-first.

For the wealthiest nation, it certainly is. Anything technological advantage that is developed can be bought. While there is a first mover advantage, excess capital has always trumped it (serious apologies, as no pun intended). Long term thinking has dominated US behavior in certain respects. Resource conservation, couched as environmentalism at times, is one of them. I could be wrong, but it makes sense to me.

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