Ben Leffel, public policy professor, was with us last episode to talk about cities making efforts to cut their emissions. Those were the good guys in the story. This week we get to the bad guys: climate lobbyists seeking profits, and climate deniers.

Ben Leffel, who researches climate policy for a living, is with us for two episodes. This is the first, mainly about cities and what city governments can do on climate. It's probably more than you think. These are the good guys in the story. Next week's episode features the bad guys.

This week we complete our conversation with Shooka Bidarian, Environmental Correspondent for Marjan Television, an Iranian news network not based outside of Iran. We hear about that time that every Democrat in the U.S. Senate voted against basic climate action - that was the Kyoto protocol. And another extreme weather event, this one in British Columbia. It was the most expensive natural disaster Canada has ever seen.

Besides the war, Iran is in deep crisis over climate change. Climate is severely impacting the country ecologically and politically. Our guest is Shooka Bidarian is Environmental Correspondent for Marjan Television, a Farsi-language network based in London. She received the Alfredo Sirkis Memorial Green award for her work on our climate crisis. With Shooka, Alycee and Matthew explore how global heating is affecting Iran as well as the Iranian regime's reaction to both climate change and climate activists. We'll also hear about the documentary our guest produced, the first major documentary on climate change in the Farsi language.

In this episode we further reflect, process, try to comprehend how the President's threat to wipe out an entire civilization has weakened the United States and the world. It's weakened it economically, militarily, but above all morally. No one thinks he was joking. What does it mean for humanity that the threat to wipe out a civilization has occurred by someone who has the power to do it? Where does the United States go from there? Where does humanity go from there?

Let's pose the question: What is more unstable? The mind of the President of the United States, or the global supply of fossil fuels? Recent events have shown that both are highly, highly unstable. The President's profanity-laced social media posts threatening to wipe out an entire civilization comes at the very same time as the real possibility that Australia or Asian countries will run out of fuel. Both of these instabilities have dire consequences. We explore them in this episode.

In this episode we talk about some expected and unexpected bits of fallout from the climate crisis. One unexpected bit is what could happen to coffee shops and the social interaction that happens around them if, as expected, we lose a huge amount of the viable land that goes toward coffee cultivation. This isn't just a worry for latte-sippers. Cafes are almost the only indoor daytime social spaces in cities. Losing them could get even more lonely than we already are.

This installment in our occasional series on climate disasters covers the early part of winter 2025 into 2026, including the massive winter storm that pummeled and froze solid the eastern half of the United States"yes that was linked to climate change, including Iran literally running out of water long before the current war, and much more. Storm after storm, flood after flood, wildfire after wildfire is our current reality.

A big grant for J.D. Vance's favorite Ohio factory to convert from one fossil fuel to another, warming oceans so soup-thick with mucus that sunlight can't penetrate them, police attacking migrant small boats utterly failing to understand the problem, and much more in this commentary on climate news.

Many analysts predict that oil prices and general inflation will go back down after the Iran war ends. This episode argues that's wrong, for three main reasons: First, a hostile posture will continue for the next generation even if the bombing stops. There is no real off-ramp into long-term peace. Second, world authorities have already tried unprecedented measures to hold prices down and failed. Third, governments and major corporations will now want their own petroleum reserves, which will take years to build up, so there will be extra buying for a long time, pushing up prices.