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Wednesday, February 18, 2026

18: Iran

the economics of green energy are more favorable than they have ever been. ......... The Trump administration hates science and science-based policies in general; look at its war on vaccines, which will end up causing an enormous number of deaths. Its assault on universities threatens the best scientific research centers in the world. Its irrational treatment of immigrants means the best and brightest from the around the world no longer want to come here. But in the case of energy, its destructive policy largely reflects the corrupting influence of big money. ............ Almost 40 years have passed since James Hansen’s landmark Senate testimony warning about global warming. He was right. Climate science has been overwhelmingly vindicated by reality. .............. In 2009 I wrote that [T]he best available economic analyses suggest that even deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would impose only modest costs on the average family. ............... the costs of limiting emissions would be incurred right away, while the benefits of reduced warming would accrue decades later — and many of them would go to other countries. ............ Then came the renewable energy revolution. Solar and wind power have become cost-competitive with fossil fuels — they are, in particular, clearly cheaper than coal. Huge progress in batteries has rapidly reduced the problem of intermittency (the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow.) There’s now a clear path for a transition to an “electrotech” economy in which renewable-generated electricity heats our homes, powers our cars, and much more. ............. The Trump administration has even introduced a mascot, “Coalie,” in an attempt to make an extremely dirty fuel cute. But coal isn’t cute. Even if we ignore the role of coal in climate change, coal-burning power plants caused hundreds of thousands of excess U.S. deaths between 1999 and 2020. .............

much of what is happening to American democracy has its origins in the long-term strategy of the billionaire Koch brothers.

.............. The Kochs spent decades promoting right-wing politics in general, with a special role in the takeover of the Supreme Court by the Federalist Society. ............... an important part of their agenda, and hence that of the right-wing movement as a whole, has always been to keep America burning the fossil fuels on which their wealth rested. ................... We now live in a time in which U.S. policy is shaped by sheer, naked corruption (enabled in part by the Koch takeover of the courts). ............. Notably, Middle Eastern petrostates, which have a strong interest in blocking the energy transition, have played a huge role in enriching the Trump family. ................ crippling the development of renewable energy is bad for business, and especially bad for the electricity-hungry crypto and AI industries, which ordinarily have a great deal of sway with the Trump administration. But maybe they have decided that special treatment, and especially a green light for their own unethical behavior, matters more than affordable energy. ................. America’s hard turn against renewables and climate action won’t be decisive for the climate future as long as other countries continue to move ahead on green energy, which they are. For the most part, all MAGA will do is help make the United States backward, poorer, sicker and irrelevant.

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