The war in Iran made one thing painfully clear: the modern economy still runs on oil and natural gas. They are our main source of energy, the raw material behind fertilizers like urea, and even a hidden ingredient in copper production — the sulfuric acid that helps turn ore into the metal that carries electricity into our homes. Renewables alone cannot keep a society running. Even China, the world’s solar superpower, depends on hydrocarbons, importing its oil and gas from Russia, Iran, and the Gulf — and feeling the squeeze the moment the Strait of Hormuz closes.
The lesson is not “renewables versus hydrocarbons.” It is balance. Every country can build solar and wind, but not every country sits on oil and gas. And while everyone is eager to develop renewables, far fewer are willing to tap the hydrocarbons or minerals — coal and metals — beneath their own soil. Too often, fashionable but false ideas about the world distort the very balance every nation should be striving for.
That balance is the real foundation of development. Prosperity rests on a handful of essentials: clean water; reliable, affordable energy that can survive both storms and geopolitics; a steady food supply; and the minerals under our feet — the fertilizers that feed crops, the copper that moves electricity, and the metals that build the very panels and turbines we count on to capture the sun and wind.
Here is an inconvenient truth for the industry’s critics: extracting oil, gas, and minerals is done by people — and people can act responsibly when the incentives are right. These are among the most heavily regulated and closely watched industries on earth, which is precisely why their environmental and social costs tend to stay within a reasonable balance against the economic benefits they create. Climate politics paints the sector as villainous. Yet even China, the champion of solar power, leans on it every single day.
Formal mining, in particular, tends to be responsible mining. It does not always make the perfect call for the environment or its neighbors, but it operates under constant scrutiny — from local communities, from governments, and from its own workforce. That visibility is its discipline: formal mining is the most exposed of all to public opinion and to the power of the state. It can even pull artisanal miners into the legal economy when regulations reward formality or when metal buyers go the extra mile to encourage it. Yes, mining is accused of scarring landscapes, polluting water, and sometimes harming health — and those charges are not always wrong. But the answer is to demand good practices and shrink the footprint, not to shut development down. Every industry leaves a mark; that has never been a reason to halt progress.
The belief that humans are driving climate change pushes — or forces — a transition from hydrocarbons to renewables. The logic is familiar: hydrocarbons emit CO2, CO2 drives climate change, so we must build an energy system that emits less of it. One camp holds that human activity is to blame and that only we can avert a looming catastrophe. Another argues that climate change follows the planet’s natural cycles and the influence of the sun, and that our task is simply to adapt. Here is the crucial point: you are entitled to either view — as long as your choices affect only you, and, if you run a company, as long as your shareholders stand behind you. Tellingly, BlackRock, one of the world’s largest institutional investors, recently reversed course and stepped back from the climate cause. What no one in a position of authority has the right to do is impose that belief on everyone else. What is undeniable is that the climate movement has poured money into renewables — yet strangely, not into hydropower, which deserves far more. Hydropower is built largely with local materials, and it can do double duty by supplying water.
We have all been told that hydrocarbons are fossil fuels and that the world is about to run out. But some scientists reject the notion that ancient fossils could ever account for the sheer volumes we extract. They argue instead that hydrocarbons are forged deep inside the planet, where heat, pressure, and the basic building blocks — carbon and hydrogen — combine; by that logic, oil and gas will last as long as the Earth itself. And notably, the long-promised day when hydrocarbons run dry keeps failing to arrive. The likeliest answer is that both theories are partly right — and that, for as long as the planet exists, we will never truly run out.
To be strong, resilient, and shielded from geopolitical shocks, a country must use every natural resource it has as wisely as possible. When international oil prices spiked, it was the producers outside the Persian Gulf who gained the most. And the same war that lifted prices also choked the supply of sulfuric acid — essential to copper mining — while disrupting urea and other fertilizers made from natural gas. Resources are leverage; those who develop them hold it.
Mexico has it all — oil and minerals alike — and it can produce far more gas and oil than it does today. What it needs is a better regulatory framework to attract investment, perhaps a strategic oil and gas reserve of its own, and real room for private capital to grow. So far, nationalizing lithium has done the opposite: it froze the projects already in private hands and delivered no results. And while permits for metal mining have inched forward, the obstacles remain firmly in place.
The Caribbean and Central America hold the same kind of potential — and have barely touched it. Some countries fail to develop it for lack of vision; others refuse on purpose. In Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Panama, internal and external political forces block the way, clinging to comfortable myths. El Salvador is the revealing case: even as it pitches economic development as the path to a better life for its people, it has struggled to convince domestic interest groups of the value of its own minerals. Too often, the agendas of politicians and special interests simply do not match the interests of the people they claim to serve.
The whole region would do well to follow the lead of the current U.S. administration: pump every possible barrel of oil and cubic foot of gas, build the refining capacity to process it, and develop the means to extract and refine the metals our geology holds. Our list of critical metals will not look like Washington’s — we are not at war, and we are not in an arms race, so our strategy can be our own. But the goal is identical: independence.