Middle East
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Rising commodity prices and extreme weather events threaten global stability
Get ready for a rocky year. From now on, rising prices, powerful storms, severe droughts and floods, and other unexpected events are likely to play havoc with the fabric of global society, producing chaos and political unrest.
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Bicycling to Mecca
"You get an opportunity that traveling by plane or car you don't get. And you learn much more, you discover much more about yourself. It was an existential experience."
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China antes up, bets, and bluffs in the new world oil game
Future historians may well agree that the 21st century Silk Road first opened for business on Dec. 14, 2009. That was the day a crucial stretch of pipeline officially went into operation linking the fabulously energy-rich state of Turkmenistan to Xinjiang Province in China's far west.
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Seven reasons BP would like to forget last weekend
It’s been 81 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in the Gulf.Photo: U.S. Coast GuardIt should have been a good weekend for BP. Its latest plan to staunch the geyser — lowering a tighter cap over the spewing pipe — is ahead of schedule, and its two relief wells, which could stop […]
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We need a declaration of independence from foreign oil
This weekend, our nation will recognize its 234th birthday — celebrating the freedom we have fought for since the first shots of the American Revolution were fired in the town of Lexington, Mass., in the heart of my congressional district. The great American experiment still has battles left to fight, freedoms we must achieve. The […]
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Saudi oil cheaper than American oil
To offshore drilling advocates, the oil-soaked birds washing up on the Gulf shore are a regrettable sacrifice in our pursuit of a higher calling: energy independence. Oil is a nasty business, they admit, but to them, offshore drilling is better than continuing to buy our oil from hostile countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. […]
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Carbon cap would deny Iran precious petrodollars: Over $100 million a day
Cross-posted from Wonk Room. A strong cap on carbon would significantly cut the flow of petrodollars to Iran’s hostile regime, a Wonk Room analysis shows. The economic and political strength of Iran’s dictatorship is a threat to the national security of the United States and the world, and its nuclear ambitions threaten to destabilize the […]
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Water and the War on Terror
While leaders in Washington have been war-gaming the national security risks of climate change, they’ve only started to connect the dots to the closely related threats emanating from the growing crisis of global freshwater scarcity. At first blush, water and national security may not seem to be interlinked. But the reality, as narrated in my […]
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So what if global warming is a hoax?
Maybe they’re right. Maybe the rightwing crazies have a point. Maybe global warming has all been part of vast leftwing conspiracy to stop us from funding terrorist states to the tune of $1 trillion a year through our oil imports; maybe the real agenda of the socialists is to reduce our use of coal, since […]
