Rafael, Pierre Messmer will one day be recognized as one of the most courageous heroes of 20th-century energy, not to mention environmental protection and human rights, to boot.

Messmer and Jean Simon were sous-lieutenants in an ex-colonial French military unit when the Nazis invaded France in World War II. Together, they hijacked an Italian cargo ship in Marseille, sailing it first to Gibraltar then London, where the two joined the French Foreign Legion. Messmer went on to fight in nearly every French military campaign of the war, including D-Day, and after France's liberation was awarded six citations of the Croix de Guerre (War Cross). After the war he ascended the ranks of French politics and was elected Prime Minister in 1972.

At the time nearly all of French electricity was reliant on foreign oil, so when OPEC annnounced its 1973 oil embargo it threatened the country's entire electricial grid. To achieve energy independence Messmer announced, by parliamentary decree, a program aimed at generating all of France's electricity from nuclear power. The massive investment would allow France to compensate for its lack of indigenous energy resources by applying its strengths in heavy engineering, and was summarized in a slogan: "In France, we do not have oil, but we have ideas."

Later known as The Messmer Plan, France was to decarbonize nearly all of its electricity within 16 years - faster than any country then or since. I don't know whether Messmer's decision was motivated at all by environmental concerns; either way the result is the same.

One day Brazil will follow in France's footsteps, but whether it must first be brought to its knees by foreign oil interests remains to be seen.

Is there any national common interest among Brazilians?