international politics

Rights of humans, rights of nature

Two items I’ve been tracking while away for a blissful two weeks of vacation here on the Atlantic shore, one hopeful, one awful: Hopeful: Ecuador is poised to grant rights to nature and ecosystems in a referendum this month. The idea originated in the U.S. — in Pennsylvania — as some small towns fought odious […]

Why Biden is such an important pick for those who care about the climate

Catastrophic climate change is the primary preventable threat to the health and well-being of all Americans — as readers of this blog already understand and as pretty much everyone else will figure out in the coming years. Keeping total planetary warming as low as possible — ideally below 2°C, which it turn requires keeping atmospheric […]

Either we’ll be green or we’ll be poor

The United States trade deficit is threatening to upend globalization as we’ve known it. The rise in the price of oil has been leading to a similar result: an international trading system in which there is much less trading. Now, that may actually be a good thing, in the long-run, but in the case of […]

Time to choose between a new cold war with Russia and a new cold war with Iran

It seems that centrist Mark Kleiman thinks continued Iran bashing is a bad idea because it is time “to give a hard time to” Russia. This belated opponent of the Iraq war seems to think that the point of ending that bloodbath is to turn our firepower against the appropriate new enemy — to be […]

Oil wealth contains the ‘seeds of its own destruction’

Originally posted to the NDN blog. The reappearance of a belligerent Russia on the world stage, buoyed by high oil prices and newfound wealth, would appear to signal a new era in global politics. For anyone still clinging to the idea of the unipolar moment, the spectacle of Nicholas Sarkozy brokering a deal between Russia […]

Oil geopolitics of the Georgia pipeline

I’d like to be a fly on the wall for the upcoming talks between Condoleezza Rice and the Russian leadership. From The New York Times, May 6, 2006:  A day after chastising Moscow for its use of oil and natural gas as "tools for intimidation or blackmail," Vice President Dick Cheney visited Kazakhstan on Friday […]

Re: the Russia-Georgia unpleasantness

Let’s not forget that recent fossil fuel prices have boosted Russia’s power considerably, and without any of the messy work required to empower an independent judiciary or build democratic institutions. Let’s also not forget that Georgia houses two large oil pipelines. If John McCain really wants to constrain Russia, he’ll help lead America and the […]

The ‘psychological effects’ of threatening war with Iran

Steve Clemons makes a point worth repeating — if you’re worried about "psychological effects" on oil speculators, perhaps a better strategy than hyping offshore drilling is dialing back the warmongering rhetoric toward Iran.

Extreme exceptionalism

“America is the most selfish country. From the way they talk, Americans believe even if the world disappears, America wouldn’t disappear.” — Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, on the U.S. not joining the Kyoto Protocol