High Gas Prices Are Just the Beginning

Summary

Podcast Summary: "High Gas Prices Are Just the Beginning"
The Opinions, New York Times Opinion
Date: May 9, 2026
Host: Michelle Cottle
Guests: David French (columnist), David Wallace-Wells (science writer)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the consequences of the recent Iran war, its ambiguous aftermath, and, most critically, its profound global economic impact—especially regarding gas prices and broader supply chain disruptions. The panel discusses how this conflict is not just another “forever war,” but an unprecedented “everything war” with implications for energy, food security, and the international order. The hosts also debate whether there are any silver linings amid the chaos, especially regarding the acceleration of the green energy transition.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of the Iran War: Chaos and Uncertainty

(01:18–04:12)

• Ambiguity and Lack of Clear Outcomes:
  David French describes the current state of the Iran war as “a confusing mess,” reflecting the uncertainty on all fronts—military objectives, negotiation statuses, and long-term consequences.

  "I don't think that really anybody can definitively say right now... There’s just an enormous amount of confusion. And at the end of the day, I don't know." — David French (02:05)

• Limited Military Success:
  Of the administration’s stated goals, only the sinking of Iran's navy is unambiguously achieved; reduction of the nuclear program and other aims have not materialized.

2. Economic Aftershocks: The “Everything War”

(04:12–11:11)

• Unexpected Economic Weaponization:
  David Wallace-Wells highlights that Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz has globalized the conflict, tying up critical supply chains (oil, fertilizer, commodities) and risking dramatic economic fallout.

  "We find ourselves as a planet, as a global economy, held hostage by one particular conflict..." — David Wallace-Wells (04:26)

• Lagging Catastrophic Effects:
  Severe downstream impacts are still to come, such as fertilizer shortages leading to global food insecurity and famine, price spikes on everyday goods (e.g., condoms, with implications for STD prevention), and projected deep recessions in Gulf economies.

  "70% of American farmers say that they can't afford fertilizer this planting season... We're talking about tens of millions of additional people suffering extreme hunger." — David Wallace-Wells (06:17)

• Lack of Allied Consultation:
  French critiques the administration for initiating the war without allied support, resulting in shared economic pain but little shared strategy or achievements.

3. Military Lessons: American Vulnerability & the End of Assumed Superiority

(11:25–19:18)

• The New Nature of War:
  The Iran conflict exposed American vulnerability to low-cost drone warfare, eroding the long-held notion of overwhelming US military superiority.

  "Iran has proven itself a much more capable adversary than almost anyone in the military community understood or was properly planning for." — David Wallace-Wells (11:25)

• Implications for China and Global Security:
  The difficulty in protecting US ships from Iranian drones has “spooked” planners regarding potential conflicts with China, especially over Taiwan.

• Arms Race Anxiety:
  World powers (US, China, Russia) are accelerating military spend, echoing the unchecked escalation before World War I, with no clear actor pushing for de-escalation.

  "One of the dynamics that we had leading up to World War I was all of these great powers that were pressing the gas and nobody was pressing the brakes." — David French (19:18)

4. Political Fallout in the US

(21:05–22:47)

• Domestic Discontent:
  Economic pain (rising gas and food prices) can amplify public frustration with leadership, linking foreign policy misadventures with domestic dissatisfaction.

• Potential Political Costs:
  There’s growing risk that the administration will face significant accountability for strategic errors if the war’s economic blowback deepens at home.

5. A Silver Lining: Acceleration of Green Energy

(22:47–27:18)

• Progress Not Stalling:
  Contrary to expectations of a “retreat” from clean energy, green infrastructure is rapidly expanding in the US and globally.

  "Last year, 90% of new energy infrastructure in America was green. 90%... Green energy is absolutely obliterating fossil fuels." — David Wallace-Wells (23:41)

• War as Catalyst:
  The crisis has made clear the vulnerabilities of fossil fuel reliance, pushing countries—especially those directly impacted by energy shocks—to shift faster toward renewables and self-sufficiency. Examples include consumer-driven solar adoption in Pakistan and high EV adoption rates in Nepal.

6. The Nuclear Proliferation Dilemma

(27:59–30:41)

• Incentivizing the Bomb:
  The conflict is driving more countries (e.g., France, possibly Poland, Japan, South Korea) to expand or consider nuclear arsenals, reversing decades of disarmament and heightening global security risks.

  "There is enormous incentive to pursue a nuclear weapon... We were in a disarmament phase... now the great powers are beefing up nuclear arsenals." — David French (28:29)

• Erosion of US Leadership:
  Allies may no longer see the US as a dependable stabilizer, potentially leading to greater global fragmentation and uncertainty.

  "Many of these countries are just not going to be interested in American leadership in the same way, even if a new American president devoted himself to cultivating it." — David Wallace-Wells (30:45)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On strategic failure:

  "You can want something done to Iran and realize that this team, that this leadership is not up to it... you put the wrong plans on the wrong leadership and you've just rendered it a disaster." — David French (08:20)

• On economic interconnectedness:

  "Almost no product that you look at and think this is completely unaffected by the supply of any of the things that are tied up in the Strait of Hormuz." — David Wallace-Wells (07:11)

• On military readiness:

  "We're not ready. And we've demonstrated that we are not ready for this new warfare." — David French (17:28)

• On the possible “August 1914” moment:

  "I'm not saying we're headed in that direction, but... all of these great powers are pressing the gas and nobody is pressing the brakes." — David French (20:37)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:05]: David French calls the war a “confusing mess”
• [04:26]: Wallace-Wells on “everything war” and economic chokehold
• [06:17]: Fertilizer shortages and global food insecurity
• [11:25]: Iranian military effectiveness and the end of American dominance
• [19:18]: Arms race warning paralleling WWI
• [23:41]: Green energy expansion stats
• [28:29]: Renewed nuclear proliferation
• [30:45]: Decline of US global leadership

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Recommendations (Pop Culture/Media)

(32:39–35:12)

• David Wallace-Wells: "What We Did Before Our Moth Days" – play by Wallace Shawn, an intimate take on family and legacy.
• David French: "Rooster" (HBO) – Comedy series about a writer teaching at a college, praised for nuanced student characters.
• Michelle Cottle: Tana French’s "Cal Hooper" trilogy, novel series set in rural Ireland, recommended for immersive writing and strong character studies.

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Tone & Style

The conversation is thoughtful, candid, at times somber but leavened with wit and self-awareness—especially around the magnitude of world events and personal perspectives on hope or pessimism. The hosts balance analytical depth with relatable language, drawing on historical analogies, policy expertise, and cultural reflections.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode paints a picture of a conflict whose ramifications are only starting to be felt. The Iran war, far from being a localized or "skirmish," has triggered a cascade of global consequences—intertwining military vulnerability, economic destabilization, political risk, and even an unintended boost for green energy adoption. Yet, as the panel notes, we are living through a period of increased militarization, eroding international trust, and renewed nuclear anxieties, with no clear off-ramp—leaving both policymakers and citizens with more questions than answers as prices rise at the pump and beyond.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. And I am here today with the fabulous columnist David French and the equally fabulous Times Opinion science writer David Wallace Wells, who writes a lot about climate change, technology and, you know, generally the future of the planet. Guys, welcome. How's everybody?

[C]

Michelle, great to see you.

[D]

Good to be here.

[B]

All right, so it's going to be complicated because I've got two Davids today. So you're just going to have to pay attention. Bear with me. Today we're going to talk about the state of war in Iran, the price of oil, and David Wallace Wells even has a silver lining for us. So we got a lot to cover. Let's get to it. Trump recently referred to the Iran war as a skirmish, which sounds to me a little bit like something that happens at a soccer match. But also this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that Operation Epic Fury has concluded. So, David French, what word would you use to talk about the war right now? Where do things stand? With the usual caveat that we are taping this on a Thursday morning.

[C]

So I'm going to cheat and go with two words, confusing mess. I, I don't think that really anybody can definitively say right now who's maybe even in the government, Right. That who can say what is the status of the negotiations? What are the true sticking points on the deal? What are the actual red lines that the parties have on any given day? We often don't even know if there's any shooting going on. There's just an enormous amount of confusion. And at the end of the day, I don't know. I don't think anybody really knows where we're going to end up. I mean, I've heard everything from, well, we're going to reach an agreement on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which just restores status quo antebellum. But we're going to table everything else for now. Which then leads us into this question of what did we really truly accomplish of lasting value? Of the multiple items that the administration has put forward, ending the nuclear program, ending support for proxies, destroying the missile capacity, sinking the Navy, etc. They seem to have accomplished one of those things, sinking the Navy, but everything else is not been accomplished. So that's all I can think to say is confusing mess as of today.

[D]

David Wallace Wells I mean, one lasting impact that we do seem to have achieved is to have put much of the global economy in a kind of a chokehold. Now, that wasn't the intent at the outset, but I think that might be as lasting an impact as anything that was undertaken by the military directly. And we're, you know, we're a little bit short of seeing the ultimate impacts of that around the world. And in the US Most analysts and experts think that the effects of the closure of the Strait have yet to really hit Americans in particular, but to some lesser extent Europe and other parts of the world. And so it may well be that we haven't even really seen the main story of this war quite yet, and that the economic impacts that do arrive over the next month or several months may loom a lot larger than the hot war that we fought, you know, a few weeks ago.

[B]

Okay, David Wallace. Wallace, I want dig into that because you recently wrote that this is not going to be a forever war like earlier wars in the Middle East. It's going to be an everything war. So let's just, let's just go hard on that. Tell me what this means.

[D]

Well, I think, you know, at the outset of the war, I think that someone who is a skeptic would have said that the worst case scenario was something like the conflicts that we got involved in in Iraq and Afghanistan, that something that we thought was going to be a relatively easy campaign in which American forces just overwhelmed the other side. But then we got tangled up into the political complic of a real mess around the world. That was sort of the worst case scenario. And that hasn't happened. I don't think it's going to happen. But something else happened which is that Iran very quickly demonstrated its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. And the result of that is really quite large and significant. I also think it's kind of profound in the sense that we spent much of the last decade telling ourselves that the era of globalization was Over Covid was supposedly pushing us towards more supply chain resilience. And here we find ourselves as a planet, as a global economy held hostage by one particular conflict in one particular part of the world. And I don't think that anyone in the Trump administration adequately game planned for that, which is a huge indictment of them. But I also think they're still acting as though many of those impacts aren't quite real, because when they look on their Bloomberg terminal, you know, the price of oil is up, but not up that dramatically. The effect on the stock market on some days is visible and some days is not visible. And they really do think that those sort of secondary indicators represent the ultimate economic impact of the war, rather than the on the ground IRL effects that we've already seen in Asia and Southeast Asia and are going to, I think, increasingly be seeing in Europe and the Americas.

[B]

So, because I like to have very specific things to panic about, you want to just give me some of the lagging, you know, like the lagging downstream things that I should be freaking out.

[D]

The thing that's most distressing, I think, is the fertilizer stuff. I mean, I just saw some recent survey that said that basically 70% of American farmers say that they can't afford fertilizer this planting season. Now, I tend to think that surveys like that usually overstate the panic. But then elsewhere in the world where farmers don't have nearly the, you know, the buffer capacity that American farmers do, say across Africa, there's going to be real huge consequences to price spikes for fertilizer. And the effects of this war, the downstream effects of this war are really quite grim. We could be talking about tens of millions of additional people suffering extreme hunger or being forced into or close to famine as a result of this fertilizer consequence, which, again, isn't even, like, on the Trump administration's radar, as far as I can tell. But there are also a lot of more trivial consequences. You know, the world's biggest condom makers are raising the price of condoms.

[B]

This is not trivial. No, no.

[D]

Well, I mean, in a certain way it isn't trivial. Like, the condom maker that most famously raised the price is also one that donates a huge amount of condoms for the prevention of STDs in the developing world. So there may be genuine public health catastrophes that come out of this, but there's almost no product that you look at and think this is completely unaffected by the supply of any of the things that are tied up in the Strait of Hormuz. And that means that to some degree, everything is going to get at least more expensive and maybe somewhat short of supply. Exactly how we manage that is an open question. But the experts are really ringing the alarm and telling us that quite a lot of stuff is going to be quite bad. And the very least, we know that the Gulf countries are almost all of them, maybe all of them, going to be experiencing a recession this year as a result of this war. So, you know, Donald Trump launched a war of choice, basically, in my view, unprompted by or unprovoked by an adversary, and with very little understanding or appreciation for the fact that war is messy. And this war in this place against this adversary would get especially messy.

[B]

David French, did you want to throw in with that?

[C]

Yeah, a couple things here. It's really important to note that we are plunging, potentially plunging, part of the world, if not much of the world over time, into recession on a war of our choice that we did not consult with our allies on. And what's compounding it is we did this to them and right now cannot turn around and look at those same allies and say, well, ultimately you'll thank us, or ultimately, we did you a favor. It would be one situation if the global economy was kind of cracking and there were strains and you'd had a new regime in Iran or total assurance that there was no nuclear program or absolute assurance that Iran was not going to be regionally destabilizing the Middle east anymore. But we've got the instability from the war, but without the victory in the war. And so if you'll notice that the language from the administration is really narrowing. They're really narrowing down to the nuclear program. It's nuclear, nuclear, nuclear. Well, you know, rhetorically, that's a very clever strategy on two fronts. One, nobody wants a nuclear rant, but then, number two, it's nuclear. Iran has been the Lucy with the football for year after year after year after year. We've heard the same thing. Iran is two weeks away. Iran is three months away. Iran is four months away. Nobody knows what's true about Iran and the nuclear program because, remember, we were just told a little bit ago that there was the, that same nuclear program had been obliterated. And there's one last thing on this, I would say, and I have a, you know, I am somebody who, I've long been a hawk on Iran. If you brought the right case to me with the right plan, the right exit strategy, and I was a senator, there are definitely circumstances I would have voted yes, but you can want something done to Iran and realize that this team, that this leadership is not up to it. Right. That you can take something that's a defensible idea in the abstract with the right plans, the right leadership, et cetera, and you put the wrong plans on the wrong leadership and you've just rendered it a disaster. Just a total disaster.

[B]

Thank you. Because I think we've talked about this a little bit before. I was of that mind way back during the Iraq war when the Bush administration did not seem to be making the best possible case for it. And who's doing the work matters. It's not just whether the philosophical concept or.

[C]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Argument is great. Who's actually going to execute is a huge chunk of the game. Come on.

[C]

I mean, imagine a war where, imagine a battle where there is a, an attack on a flank that is necessary and you're a subordinate, you're proposing it to your commander and you say we need to attack the right flank. Okay, who's going to lead the charge? May I introduce you to Bozo the Clown? No, no, no, no. Not that plan. We're not doing that. And who's executing matters? It really matters.

[B]

David Wallace Wells.

[D]

I mean, I'm, I think a little bit less of a hawk on this than you guys are, but I would say that the position that you're describing has also been we've learned something through this war about what was possible six months ago or a year ago or three years ago about Iran. And that is to say Iran has proven itself a much more capable adversary than almost anyone in the military community understood or was properly planning for. And that is not just about Iran itself. I think we're learning something very fundamental about the changing nature of contemporary warfare, which we probably should have learned watching Russia and Ukraine end with the failed American campaign against the Houthis last year, where in a very similar situation we went in with billion dollar military offensive and actually kind of got our butts handed to us by a bunch of people flying low cost drones into our incredibly high priced military material. And I think what we're learning from all of these encounters is that the superiority which Americans used to assume gave them the power, if not the right to inflict military damage on almost any country around the world is not nearly as large. Our superiority is not nearly as clear in many of these conflicts as we assumed. I think the result of that, or what should be the result of that is that we understand that there's a shrinking superpower advantage around the world, that almost any country with a relatively capable industrial base can resist attacks from a major force like America. And in this context, what that means is that whatever the state of the Iranian nuclear weapon, they actually had what the Russian, former Russian president called the Hormuz weapon or the equivalent of a nuclear arsenal in the Strait of Hormuz because they're able to fly low cost drones, which cost them 20, $30,000 into ships that cost hundreds of millions, with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil on them, or as we're learning more and more against American airplanes, American bases. Over the last week we've, we've seen a bunch of news stories coming out about how much more damage the American military has suffered in this conflict than we were told. It's kind of shocking, but we're learning that this fight was not a dominant military performance. And I think what that tells us is that even six months ago, even three months ago, if this plan have been implemented by much more thoughtful, careful planners, we may still have run into the same trouble that we ran into this time. I don't think the planet, I don't think our geopolitics has really reckoned with just how destabilizing that might be to think that many more countries are capable of mounting much more successful counter offensives against the countries that they used to be quite intimidated by.

[B]

Well, I have, looking at just the Hormuz situation, I get the feeling that maybe even Iran was surprised by how effective this was as a weapon. And I'm wondering the rest of the world. The idea of shutting down sea lanes in a global economy seems like something that you don't want people to just start doing as a matter of course. And I'm very nervous about what lesson we've taught them about how effective this is.

[C]

Can I just to put a, to emphasize that we were, we went through in the, in the three, four weeks or however long of intensive combat operations. I don't think Americans realize the extent that we were subject to Baghdad Bobbery from our own government. And if you remember The Iraq War, 2003, Baghdad Bob, he was the spokesperson for the Hussein government. Everything's going great.

[D]

We are destroying tanks, person carriers, killing them, and we will continue.

[C]

And he's saying, you know, Americans are Nowhere near us, etc.

[D]

They are not even hundred miles or whatever.

[C]

They are not in any place. We're not used to having a Baghdad Bob administration. It's not that our governments have always been truthful towards us, they have lied. But these sort of comprehensive dishonesty and this war began with an avalanche of comprehensive Dishonesty, essentially calling this a giant route. Why is the media not reporting more on the incredible success of American arms? When the media was reporting on Americans hitting targets, what we are not reporting on what was. Was what was being withheld from us and is still being withheld from us. It's having to leak out, as David was saying, in other ways, serious damage has been done to American facilities. And this is a new thing. You know, when I was in Iraq, we did worry an awful lot about rocket fire and mortar fire, say, into our bases. We didn't worry about a comprehensive drone threat that could level our buildings. And here's another thing to keep in mind. Russia is looking at this and looking at Iran's drone technology and saying, that's romper room. That's kindergarten compared to what we have right now. Russia and Ukraine are, I would say, are by far, the two most advanced and evolved land armies in the world, to the point where I think if any other land army, and I'm putting an emphasis on that because Russia can't match us in the air, can't match us at sea. But if any other land army that has not been engaged in this kind of drone warfare were to take on Ukraine or Russia right now, it would be horrific what would happen. And so we've got these two adversaries, and we had to call to Ukraine to help. The Gulf countries had to call to Ukraine to help. And Russia's looking at it and saying, you need Ukraine's help to face Iran. Imagine if you faced us. And look, I'm not. Again, I'm not saying that Russia can match us in air force, navy, but it's pretty clear that we're not ready. And we've demonstrated that we are not ready for this new warfare.

[D]

And you're talking about Russia, but, you know, when I speak to military analysts, they say this has really spooked us about China. You know, a lot of brainpower has been spent over the last half, decade, decade kind of war gaming and planning for possible conflict over Taiwan. And they say, how could we possibly pretend to be capable of defending Taiwan when we can't even protect our ships from Iranian drones? The Chinese are, you know, much, much more capable than Iran is, and we'd be exposed in a much more, you know, much more obvious way through any kind of military support we are giving to Taiwan. Now, I don't know how long that this dynamic will last. I expect that the American military is learning these lessons, these hard lessons, pretty quickly.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And that we will be doing a Lot more in sort of low cost. They call it attritable drone technology, like having, having weapons that we're comfortable losing as opposed to needing to fly home because they cost tens of millions of dollars or more. But that's still probably a few years away. And in the meantime, I think we're in a situation where not just the United States, but all of the world's superpowers are looking around thinking, you know, the landscape of warfare really has changed. Some new land has been broken in in the Ukraine conflict, and we're all, we're all just playing catch up.

[C]

You know, you have the, this first, this war between Russia and Ukraine, the, the first war in this very modern era between two advanced countries. And what is one of the first things you learn? You just need a whole bunch of stuff, like a lot of artillery shells, a lot of drones, a lot of missiles. And, and I would question, honestly, if China's looking at what's happening, if they're asking themselves, do we have enough stuff? I think what you're going to be seeing is a lot of powers in the world putting their foot on the gas. You're already seeing it on one of the largest peacetime expansions in military spending that we've seen since before, say, you know, proportionately since say, before World War II. And I'm just wondering, Michelle and David, as all these world powers are pressing the gas militarily, as we've had aggressive warfare in Ukraine, as we've seen this, this war in Iran, who's, who's tapping the brakes? Is anyone tapping the brakes not named Pope Leo? Is anyone tapping the brakes here? And that's what really alarms me, is we're in an arms race, and around the world we have very aggressive. Each one of the three, if you're going to say there's three sort of powers that stand above the rest, Russia, China, United States, each one of them is led by a pretty aggressive, bellicose individual. And this, this worries me. And in August of 1914 sense, I'm not saying we're headed in that direction, but one of the dynamics that we had leading up to World War I was all of these great powers that were pressing the gas and nobody was pressing the brakes. And, and that's what it, that's what the geopolitical situation seems like today.

[B]

So is there a way domestically for the breaks to get tapped? I mean, David, you, favorite French, you follow Trump world and maga. What is the political fallout, if any, that the administration is looking at? Is it anything that they care about, you know, we've talked about all these affordability issues, gas prices, are they suffering any real blowback?

[C]

You know, it's. It's interesting. If people are economically insecure, they get ticked off by everything. So, you know, if you're feeling pessimistic about your personal finances, then all of a sudden you get more worried at what's happening in the Middle east or you're more alarmed by corruption. If you're feeling really great about yourself financially, you have a much higher tolerance for the corruption of your leaders, et cetera. This is a sad reality that we've seen. And so what I would say is Trump's. The level of accountability that Trump will face for his foreign policy misadventures are going to be very much related to the level of satisfaction that Americans feel about domestic policy. And so it's all linked, it's all related. So I think that one of the disadvantages and problems that the Trump administration has right now is this is one of those foreign issues that, as David has written about so well, is going to. And it hasn't fully hit, but it's going to impact that domestic situation in a way that even the Iraq war in 03 or the Afghan war in 01 would not. And so this could be politically a perfect storm for him, a strategic error that results in economic blowback at home, and he'll be held accountable for all of it.

[B]

I want to do one stabilizer at finding a silver lining in this before we move on, which is David Wallace Wells, you've written that one of the potential positives of the war is a boost acceleration in the shift to green energy globally, including in the U.S. are we seeing concrete changes? I mean, do we really attribute those to what's going on with the war?

[D]

Well, I would start where we were before the war, because I think a lot of Americans and probably a lot of listeners think that the Trump victory marked a big retreat on the green transition, especially in the US but to a lesser extent around the world, that this marked a turn away from solar and wind and back towards an embrace of fossil fuels.

[B]

Well, that's because he's like paying them not to do wind farms, right? He's like sending all these signals.

[D]

I think he's paying the wind companies more to abandon their projects then we invest in renewable R and D in total. So, yeah, I mean, Donald Trump is not a fan of the green transition. His administration has not been friendly in general. Although I will say I think the vibe shift here suggested that we had been through a Period of climate alarm, climate action. And now we were turning against that and retreating back into a fossil fuel past. And that that just isn't the case. Last year, 90% of new energy infrastructure in America was green. 90%, which means that for every unit of new fossil fuel infrastructure we built, we built nine times as much green stuff around the world. The share is even larger. It's like 93%, which means we're building so much more green energy than we're building any of the dirty stuff anywhere in the world. If this is a race measured year by year, green energy is absolutely obliterating fossil fuels. And I do think that the war is accelerating that. You see that when you look at the shipment of coal around the world, which was expected at the outset of the war to go up because there'd be the shortage of oil and gas and countries would need to rely more on coal. In fact, it's been the opposite. The shipment of coal has dropped since the war began. And especially when you look year on year, the drops are quite dramatic. The export reports from China of solar powers around the world have seen a dramatic spike. All of these things, we're still working on the margins. The global energy system is still heavily fossil fuel dependent. But if we told ourselves a story a year or a year and a half ago that the progress that was being made in 2022, 2023, 2024 was now going to stop because of political considerations in the US and, and around the world, I think basically the opposite has happened. And we're seeing, I think, most encouragingly that this is happening not just in rich countries who have a lot of cash to spare and kind of indulge their own moralistic energy spending, but in parts of the world that are really pinched. One of the most dramatic turnarounds in recent years was in Pakistan, which had suffered energy blackouts because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the way that that disrupted energy markets a few years ago. And they responded to that not even through public, not through national policy, but at the level of individual consumers buying solar panel imports from China, throwing them on their roofs. And as a result, they basically doubled the electricity capacity of the country, Nepal. 76% of the cars that were sold in Nepal last year were EVs in Nepal. And that really breaks a paradigm that I think many of us in the global north took for granted for a long time, which is that, you know, it was going to be the rich countries of the world that really led the way. And if the poor, if we brought the poor countries along. It would have to be us bringing the poor countries along. And as it turns out, we may be helping them, but we're helping them by staging a war that makes it obvious and, and undeniably expensive to continue to depend on the old fossil fuel systems and suggest very clearly that there are obvious cheap alternatives which in addition to being cleaner and healthier, also mean that your energy supply is actually domestic and domestically controlled. You don't have to rely on tankers coming in, you don't have to rely on coal being shipped in. You can just turn your solar panel towards the sun. And the energy that comes from that is never going to end.

[B]

Okay, there's my silver lining. David French did you want to throw in anything there?

[C]

I mean, I just want to hold out some degree of hope that there will be some military success that matters here, that there will be a, perhaps you can never say permanent but very long term reduction in the ability of Iran to achieve nuclear capability, nuclear weapons capability. I think that's the reasonable best case scenario militarily, is that you, we have in fact substantially degraded their ability to break out for nuclear weapon. But again, I don't know, I don't know that we have. And, and if Baghdad Bob tells us we have, I don't know when to believe him.

[D]

So there's also, I mean, there's a pervers consequence here which is that other countries around the world are thinking, wow, like America really started laying off North Korea when they got their, their nukes. You've heard talk from France, from Poland. There are countries that are restarting, are going to expand their nuclear programs. I think one lesson that countries around the world may take from this is it's really useful geopolitically to get over that nuclear finish line and have the weapon as opposed to be in this limbo where you're constantly a threat from American attack and American pressure.

[C]

Yeah, look, if you are an advanced nation with a capacity to build a nuclear weapon, which is going to be a whole lot of countries, this is 1945 technology here and you've looked, you're looking at what has happened globally in the last five years. There is enormous incentive to pursue a nuclear weapon. And as David said, we're already seeing, for example, France is going to expand its nuclear arsenal for the first time in a very long time. We've seen videos, for example, of France commissioning a new nuclear powered submarine. These are their ballistic missile submarines with, you know, the, the president of France there singing La Mercier. And it's put out as Like a propaganda video. Like, look how great and powerful we are, you know, clearly trying to send a message of French deterrence. But think about how different that is from everything that we've experienced since the end of the Cold War. You know, this is what I'm talking about. People putting their foot on the gas rather than the foot on the brake. We were not rolling out, Western powers were not necessarily rolling out these big propaganda videos about, look at the strength of our nuclear arsenal. We were in a disarmament phase. We were hopefully rolling back from the brinksmanship that each one of us grew up in. Well, David, you're, you're, you may not have had the, the duck and cover kind of drills. You're, you're a little younger than that

[D]

end of the Cold War, kid.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, end of the Cold War. So. But I remember, and Michelle, I don't know if you remember the day after the, the, the TV show that I, you know, about nuclear war, that I went to school the next day and it was like a hushed tone in the halls. People were so stunned and shocked by what they'd seen on television. And, you know, rolling back into that world where the great powers are beefing up nuclear arsenals, other great powers are considering. We're seeing Japan rearming, we're seeing South Korea become a home of naval shipbuilding. We're seeing, it's all over the globe.

[B]

Okay, well, that is certainly uplifting. You want to say one thing else before we go?

[D]

I did want to say one other thing which I, you know, when David was talking about who's going to step in and stand against militarization and stand against geopolitical fragmentation, one of the things that worries me most in that context is that in 2017, in 2018, that Trump administration was doing a lot of similar damage to America's allies and standing in the world. But those countries had a relatively copacetic attitude because they thought this was an anomaly. Yeah, this was going to end. If we wait this out, we can restore the old American led order that we had been living in under Barack Obama. And to some extent, that was achieved under Joe Biden. We could have a whole other conversation about that. But I think the worrying thing now is that many of these countries are just not going to be interested in American leadership in the same way, even if a new American president devoted himself to cultivating it. And where that leads the world, I think is a big open question for some countries. It's a kind of, it may be a happy, opportunistic moment, you Know the. To not live so much under the. Under the watch of the. Of American power. But overall, I think it's going to be quite messy and hazardous. And I don't see an easy way to put the pieces of the puzzle back together again.

[B]

All right, that's it. That's it. I'm calling it no more. Before we, like, lead our audience to just give up all hope, we are gonna pivot to.

[D]

I'm a famously hopeful person.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, you're gonna give David French a run for his money in the area of. Let's go dark. Pivot. David Wallace. Wallace, you gotta start. It's recommendations. Guest goes first. What do you got for us? Watch, eat, read, listen to, talk to me.

[D]

I'm gonna make a somewhat more provincial recommendation, which is for a play that's on the New York, which is a play called what We Did Before Our Moth Days by the playwright Wallace Shawn, who's one of my favorite writers. He's known to most Americans as the Vizzini character from the Princess Bride. As an actor, inconceivable. He was also in Clueless and he does like, I have little kids. And he seems to be the voice in like half of the kids shows on television. He was also the son of the legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn, and has had a fascinating downtown theater life in which he writes a lot and talks a lot about his political awakening. This new play is much more personal and it is really about his childhood, which is to say growing up with a New York famous father who was having a public affair and navigating the, you know, all of the interpersonal complexities of that dynamic. And I found it absolutely mesmerizing, pummeling. And I would extremely highly recommend it, as I would everything that Wally has done.

[B]

Okay, David French.

[C]

I'm going with a comedy. Michelle, thank you. A lot of fun. It's called Rooster on hbo and it's Steve Carell and he is a writer recently. Well, not that recently divorced writer who is kind of coerced into becoming a visiting professor at a small college where his daughter teaches. And it is really well done and it does something that very few college, very few shows set on a college campus can achieve, which is make the students not annoying that because a lot of, A lot of these college shows, all the students are just jammed into a box. You've got your frat guys, you've got your like super woke student, you've got. And they're these one dimensional figures, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Well, you've got your, you Know, you've got your very political students, you've got your frat types, your partying type, but they're richer, more complex humans, human beings and more interesting to watch. And Steve Carell's fantastic. His daughter, I haven't that haven't seen her in too many things. She's really, really, really good. So I highly recommend Rooster. Hbo. Really good.

[B]

Okay, that's on my list. I've been meaning to watch that. So I'm going with a book. Tana French is out with the last installment of what is known as the Cal Hooper trilogy. So French writes these kind of crime novels set in Ireland, and the last three of them have been set in this tiny little town. I think it's Ardna Kelty, and she is sort of a crime writer, sort of a mystery writer, but really she's just next level. These are kind of studies, character studies. It's like the fabric of life in this tiny little rural Irish enclave. This one starts with a missing girl who turns up dead, and then you have to kind of figure out not just who did it or why, but also what the bigger implications are for the entire town. She's one of those writers who, when I start reading the book, I immediately get lost in the writing, but also I immediately start casting for what I hope will be the Netflix miniseries. So get out there, read these books, and then you can hit me with your recommendations for who all should play the characters. And with that, guys, we're going to land this plane. We have covered as much of the Iran war as I think we can for one week. I want to thank you for coming in, David Wallace Wells and solving the world's problems with us. Let's do it again very soon.

[C]

Thanks, Michelle.

[D]

Good to be with you guys. Thanks again.

[A]

If you like this show, follow it on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. The opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishaka Darba, Victoria Chamberlain and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Gillian Weinberger, Jasmine Romero and Kari Pitkin. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Original music by Isaac Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro, Efim Shapiro and Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. The head of operations is Shannon Busta. Audience support by Christina Samulewski. The director of Opinion shows is Annie Rose Strasser. What if you could replace your windows and doors today and not pay a dime for two years? This May renewal by Andersen makes it happen for a limited time. Get beautiful new windows and doors with no money down. No monthly payments and no interest until May of 2028 with a minimum purchase of that's right, install now and pay later. Way later. But this offer won't last. It ends May 31. Visit renewalbyandersonhome.com today and take advantage of this limited time offer.