Podcast: Trump, power politics, populism & democracy

After crucial global progress toward tackling the climate crisis in recent years, we are re-entering an era where powerful industrial nations are again resorting to military force to control fossil fuel reserves as both a key aim and lever of geopolitical power.

The United States’ illegal military intervention on January 3 in Venezuela, a colonialist power play for the country’s vast oil reserves, is among the latest outcomes of the dangerous pivot away from global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Days after its military incursion in Venezuela, the U.S. became the first nation in the world to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty ratified by Congress in 1992 that seeks to limit the amount of climate pollution in the atmosphere.