[Added Hillary Clinton comment on Tucker Carlson as a useful idiot (Feb. 11) Note also that my predictions about what Carlson would not cover proved correct.]
Opinion by Mathew Carr
Feb. 8, 2024 — I assume the Tucker interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin may have already happened …
Still … here are some things that famous newsman and podcaster Tucker Carlson should have/should be thinking about as he prepares/d for his Putin interview (but probably didn’t/won’t):
**The invasion of Ukraine is substantially about global climate action — the US and Russia IS fighting over natural gas supply (a cleaner fuel that’s replacing coal in the climate transition) — but it’s only a little cleaner
**The recent decision by @JoeBiden to end US LNG export expansion might also help end the Ukraine war because it removes some economic tension with Putin (and ends the race to use the global carbon budget)
**Given this is a crucial time for an interview … it is important to think about how Tucker seems biased against global climate action because he doesn’t appear to understand it (he thinks it’s a conspiracy against ordinary people).
**By navigating these issues carefully, I reckon Tucker can help end the Ukraine war by showing the world how the US and Russia are substantially the same in their climate recklessness
**Tucker pretends to be for the “common human”, the “working class person” … but he seems to forget that only global climate action can REALLY save the world from heating/disaster … for that ordinary individual.
**The proxy fight between the US and Russia is a key case in point. Had the US aggressively decarbonized as it should have (I contend) … Russia probably would have exploited that situation by massively boosting fossil fuel output (the US might argue this and there is a valid point here).
**Instead, the US massively increased its own production of oil and natgas — to record levels — apparently in a failed bid to try and cower BRICS + countries into submission on climate action.
“If you won’t play ball, we won’t either,” seems to be the US UNFCCC negotiation position
— this strategy was deployed even though North America is MOST RESPONSIBLE for climate change (my home country Australia isn’t much better on a per-capita basis, if at all, by the way … which makes me a credible person to call all this out!).
**Tucker is close to Donald Trump, so it will be interesting to see how Tucker addresses Trump’s involvement in the American geopolitical strategy (which in my opinion covers both Republican and Democratic administrations). I suspect Tucker won’t be brave enough (or not allowed) to really push Putin on Russia’s historical Trump links. Are America and Russia actually frenemies — providing cover for bad behavior for the biggest countries and richest corporations and the military industrial intelligence complex? Is Tucker part of a real conspiracy against the common person around the world — especially the poor? Is Tucker being played as a useful idiot?
[Soon after I published this story an interview was aired in which former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton labelled Tucker a useful idiot for parroting Putin “lies”.
**What Tucker doesn’t appear to understand is that if one or only a few countries tackle climate change then high-emitting business can move to nations that don’t tackle it. (Global corporations can shift capital easily, as I learned for almost 20 years working for New-York based Bloomberg News — I covered energy news and climate action for most of that period …from London)
**I think all countries (pretty much) would have followed had the US aggressively decarbonized 10 years ago around the signing of Paris
**All countries NOW need to cut emissions simultaneously and fast — too fast, perhaps:
**Please Tucker, I implore to you — this need is not about controlling working-class people…It’s about protecting working class people all over the world from out-of-control government (and corporations)…out of control in this case means the need to tackle ANY government or any company in any nation that refuses to quickly decarbonize.
**Don’t get me wrong …I’m not in favor of telling any country what to do…but countries and groups of taxpayers CAN CHOOSE FROM WHERE THEY BUY STUFF — when taxpayers realise they have this choice and why this choice matters, they will choose to buy from countries and companies that are helping to protect their kids from global heating [and their grandkids’ futures …and indeed future generations of all human kind and plants and animals].
**Countries that don’t decarbonize will have fewer economic opportunities to export their stuff …they will get smaller levels of inward investment (search for CBAM on Carrzee.org)
**The reckless US strategy has backfired — because we now have this brutal, greedy grab by multiple countries and groups of nations for the remaining few hundred tons of space (billions of tons of CO2 equivalent, that is) in the global carbon budget set by the 2C limit in the Paris climate deal.
**Russia became aggressive around 2014 partly because it knows that gas sales and land area is key to making money from global climate action … (land is needed for new forests, for cleaner farming, for solar panels, for using soil to absorb more co2 …this is also why the US and other nations have moved to take greater control of oceans around their borders — oceans are key too).
**Clearly Russia is at fault too, for the unfolding climate calamity [Russia probably feels safe from climate change because of its proximity to the North Pole — this will be proven as another miscalculation]. But the US is the biggest petro state by far … larger than Russia, Saudi Arabia and China — and certainly it’s much bigger than India.
**Because of the potential importance of Tucker’s interview (assuming he asks the right questions and Putin is honest)…there’s big potential for insider trading — assuming markets shift after the interview is aired (how many people know what Putin said between when the interview was done and and the broadcast is aired?)
**I also hope Carlson asks Putin about UFOs and the possibility of cheap CO2-free energy.
(more to come…adds how Tucker and Joe biden can help end war)
Tucker’s pic from X
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