...Climate change is now fused with geopolitics. - Calder Walton

The Kremlin has managed to get a candidate who’s very favorable to itself in the White House. It is still slightly hypothetical, because we don’t know the results of the investigation, but the fact that [the FBI] started an investigation at all, and this question had to be asked at all, shows how weird and unprecedented this situation is.

The KGB’s greatest attempt to meddle in U.S. presidential elections in the Cold War was against Ronald Reagan, whom the Kremlin regarded as the greatest single threat to the Soviet Union, which he probably was. So, in his various election bids, they did everything that they could, first, to undermine him, and second, to gather compromising material on him. They tried to dig up anything they could that would blacken his name, but they couldn’t find anything. And when that happened, they tried to do anything they could to support his opponents. Moscow sent a telegram to the KGB officers stationed in the U.S. saying essentially, “It doesn’t matter which party you get an agent in, Democrats or Republicans, but whoever it is must defeat Ronald Reagan.” None of this worked. Reagan won in a landslide. But the Kremlin’s strategy was clear: promote favorable candidates and undermine those hostile to Moscow.

It’s incumbent for assessments /about climate change/ to be as widely read as possible so that we understand this, so that members of the public can hold policymakers’ feet to the coals about making changes. There’s no good if we find out in 50 years’ time, they were being briefed on this. The stakes are too high for that.