“We want energy, but we don’t want the side effects. The solution to that is primarily tapping renewable energy – wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric power or nuclear energy, which does not have the carbon emissions – and the way to tap those renewable

“We are constantly on the edge of conflict, and unfortunately there is a large arc of violence across Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. I have been very critical of the US approach to that because I think the US has instigated a lot of the violence for geopolitical ambition. That was mistaken. Of course, the US says it’s responding to threats and challenges, but I think the US aims to project power and military bases, without much regard for the consequences. Therefore, we’ve had of course the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but even before that we had the role of the CIA in sending the Mujahedeen into Afghanistan in 1979 and onwards. We had the Iraq War, we had the destabilisation of Syria, which most people attribute to internal protests, but I attribute to the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar deciding to overthrow Assad. This, I believe, was a disaster and put a new proxy war in place. I fault the US, France and the UK for launching the NATO mission in Libya in 2011 that ended with its aim of overthrowing Qadhafi, but created instability that is unsolved.

“So, I believe that the US has tried to achieve hegemonic power in the sensitive regions with poor results. History should have told us that outside empires don’t fare very well. The US is today’s empire and I think it is not to America’s advantage or to the world’s advantage to have this continue. And yet now we see the risks of war with Iran, also a premeditated US-Israel idea, I should say a US-Israel-Saudi idea that Iran is so dangerous it should be confronted militarily. This is also wrong. Iran should be dealt with diplomatically, Iran has all the reason to participate in global

“Of course, the consequences of war are negative for those caught up in the war. Many people are killed, infrastructure is destroyed, lives are shattered, children face a future of poor health, poor outcomes, poor mental health. War is devastating. It’s a failure of human imagination.

“But war spills over across national borders. We have millions of Syrians who have moved out of Syria and this has destabilised Europe. Because of the fact that many Europeans don’t want refugees, and European politics first and foremost is driven by the debate over refugees, its led to the surge of rightwing parties and migrant politics, and loss of faith in the European Union. The rebellion of central European countries, with right-wing anti-migrant parties emerging all over Europe, so that’s a second consequence. Third is that war is expensive, caring for the refugees took away money for the poor people elsewhere. Of course, the direct cost of engagement by the US have been several trillion dollars wasted that should have been used mainly for America’s children and schools, environment and climate change, science and all the positives.

“Then you have the massive cost of rebuilding. The massive cost of the poisons sustained after wars. This is something known throughout human history, how terrible war is, but because of our technological capacity to destroy the places that were preserved for 2,000 years. Palmyra [in Syria] and other places are being destroyed on our watch right now, it’s a shame of our generation.”

“We know that the high level of economic development, which means the kind of prosperity that people seek, depends on a high level of energy use. We need the energy to power our appliances, our buildings, our machinery, our transportation, our cooling and heating. So, there is a direct