What has to be done today is (1) large-scale conversion (weatherizing , etc.), (2) sharp change in transportation to greater efficiency, like high-speed rail, (3) serious efforts to move to sustainable energy, probably solar in the somewhat longer term, (4) other adjustments that are feasible. If done effectively, that might be enough to stave off disaster. If not, then we can give up the ghost, because there are no alternatives in this world, at least none that I've seen suggested.

That's our nuclear weapons strategy [going to frighten people], as of the early post-Cold War years. And I think this is a real failure of the intellectual community, including scholarship and the media. It's not like you had headlines all over the place. And it's not secret, the documents are there. And I think that's probably the right picture.

Now financial liberalization is just a catastrophe waiting to happen, and there are very well understood reasons for that.

In the sciences particularly the large public universities must and do take an active role in fostering creativity and independence; otherwise the fields will wither, and along with them even the aspirations of wealth and power.

I've been interested in the reports on Rojava. It seems clear that there are positive developments.

A large part of the left is pro-Assad. In those circles, you can't criticize Assad, but you know he's a monstrous war criminal. And anyone who criticizes Assad is joining the US imperialists. That's just ludicrous.

All you have to do is read the business literature. In the 1930s they were very frightened and they were concerned about how the rising power of the masses was hazardous to industrialists.