The climate change dimension in the Venezuela raid
On the surface, the dramatic seizure of Venezuela’s President Nicholas Maduro and his wife on 3rd January 2026 to face drug-related charges in the United States might appear a straightforward issue. Looked at from one of the most hotly debated geopolitical subjects today - the dominance of China in Rare Earth Elements (REEs) extraction and value chains, the events in Venezuela are not isolated. They are part of an emerging frontier around which two global challenges converge: energy scarcity and the climate crisis. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its increasing role in virtually all aspects of life, demand for AI is already driving a huge appetite for electricity for cooling energy-thirsty data centres around the world. This is happening at a time when there is immense pressure pushing countries to shift power generation from non-renewable fossil fuels, of which oil is the main one, to renewable alternatives. In the transport sector, which is one of the most sig...