Juan Cole

As for ExxonMobil and other oil majors, every day they resist investing their obscene profits in truly innovative green energy technology is a day they come closer to future financial ruin. In the meantime, they are, of course, wreaking historically unprecedented harm on the planet, as was all too apparent with the serial climate disasters of 2023, now believed to be the hottest of the last 125,000 years.

Let’s hope that California succeeds in both setting a meaningful precedent and making those companies pay in a big way, ending impunity for the most dangerous and deceitful assault on our environment in human history.

Obama’s relatively lackadaisical approach to climate change was challenged a few days ago by his own office’s report on the problem. It is said that Obama was disturbed by the White House report and feels a new urgency to move on the green energy front.

The threat of economic sanctions would be more realistic if Europe did not depend so heavily on Russia for its natural gas. 40% of Germany’s natural gas and one third of Europe’s natural gas in general is imported from that country.

It’s a policy fierce enough to cause great suffering among Iranians — and possibly in the long run among Americans, too. It might, in the end, even deeply harm the global economy and yet, history tells us, it will fail on its own. Economic war led by Washington (and encouraged by Israel) will not take down the Iranian government or bring it to the bargaining table on its knees ready to surrender its nuclear program. It might, however, lead to actual armed conflict with incalculable consequences.