The People’s Climate March takes place tomorrow in New York City. The march is sponsored by more than 1,400 organizations and targets a meeting scheduled for later in the week at the United Nations. The UN Climate Summit starts on 23 September against a background of dismal failure by the international community to take effective action against climate change. The American public, in particular, has been generally unaware of the problem of climate change, and the march attempts to change that apathy. It is likely to at least make a lot of noise.
US Secretary of State Kerry has stated that Iran has a “role” in fighting the Islamic State, but that would not be part of any coalition in which the US played a part. Iran has strongly supported the Shia government of Iraq and the Alawite government of Assad in Syria. Thus, the US and Iran agree on supporting the current government of Iraq, but not the current government of Syria. One should suspect that the US and Iran are actually cooperating to a large degree, but that neither government wishes their respective populations to know about the cooperation. It will be interesting to see if this cooperation has any spillover in the current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
We will be reading more and more about the coalition of states that have joined the US to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State. US President Obama is desperately looking for states that would be willing to send ground forces to Iraq and Syria since he has declared that the US would not do so. We should, however, be quite aware of the fact that some states in this purported coalition often work at cross-purposes to US interests. Most notable among these states are Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
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