George Monbiot: * Starving Putin’s military machine of funds and preventing the collapse of life on Earth: we can do both at once.*

Amazing that many of Europe's reserve gas storage facilities are owned by Russia, which emptied them in preparation for this crisis. European countries put their faith in "the market"; Putin was too clever to make that mistake.

Decisions about state electoral districts seem to be splitting the US Supreme Court along nonpartisan lines.

Moderna is narrowing its temporary pledge not to enforce some Covid vaccine patents. In the latest version, it applies only to half of the world's countries.

• Please do not lump together patents and secrets. They are fundamentally different.
• In particular, please don't use the term "intellectual property", which lumps together those two kinds of monopolies with various unrelated laws.
• And p;ease don't use the word "protect" to refer to imposing an unjust monopoly, which in some cases can kill or impoverish people.

To waive some of those monopolies temporarily would be a step forward, but when it's time to state our goals, we should demand to eliminate them.

After the Fukushima meltdowns, Japan needed to reduce its electricity use quickly. Its methods may be useful now.

What is starting is not a "new cold war", it's a new era of greedy fight for geopolitical supremacy.

I fear that that is exactly the thing to get in the way of cooperation in decarbonization.