Starting Points: The Persian Gulf

I hope the book helps readers grasp the bigger picture of this extraordinary place. The Gulf is part of a global story that is more than 5000 years old, a story of Africans, South Asians, Arabs, Greeks, Persians, Baluchis, Sufis, Nestorians, Mandaeans and Buddhists. Understanding the diversity of its people, and the long history of mutual interactions reveals that the conflict between Shia/Sunni, Iran and Arabia in the news today was not always the norm. Bridging the Gulf can help us build a bridge at the center of history.—Allen James Fromherz

Horrors of the 21st Century

• Renewable energy systems built on slavery.

The "Sustainable" Slave Economy

“Progress has different meanings for different people… what was progress for white people was enslavement and further degradation for African Americans.”—Prof. Margaret Washington, Cornell University

I am horrified at how many people are lauding the Chinese achievements in photovoltaic and electric vehicles without any commentary on the slave system they are built on. The sustainable energy transition is driving the expansion of the slave system in China, much as the invention of the cotton gin drove the expansion of the slave system in the antebellum United States, and if we don't act now, we are going to end up with a global economy built in part on slavery.