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the climate problem, while understood through science, can be solved only through faith. Faith in one another. Faith in our ability to do something bold, together. Faith that the pain of change, that the sacrifices required, will lead to a promised land.

She sees herself more like Cassandra, who predicted the fall of Troy but was not believed, or Jeremiah, whose omens were inspired by selfish kings and cultish priests in ancient Jerusalem. “We are warning people of the consequences of their choices, and that’s what prophets did,” she said, over plates of samosas and grape leaves, and “you get the same thing that prophets have gotten throughout history.”

In the United States, nearly 40 percent of university scientists have a religious affiliation, according to new research by Rice University professor of sociology Elaine Howard Ecklund; for scientists working outside of universities, that percentage jumps to 77. And many agnostic or atheist scientists still see themselves as spiritual, according to Ecklund and Christopher Scheitle, assistant professor of sociology at West Virginia University.

Hayhoe has built followings on Twitter, YouTube and TED.com, where her talk on climate has racked up 1.7 million views. She is also a lead author on the U.S. government’s latest National Climate Assessment, which says that the climate effects we are already suffering from are going to get worse for our health and economy.

I would argue, from my research, that we talk about climate change as something demanded to be addressed by faith, not politics,” Ecklund says. Politics creates boundaries, she says, but “faith is extremely motivating to people.”

When she put the climate problem in terms of the heart and soul, not just the brain or politics, her family started to see. Taking care of the planet was another way to take care of people. Another way to love

In the beginning — if recent history is our beginning — climate change began to make winters milder and heat waves more frequent. In the east, it made storms wetter; in the west, it made droughts drier. Human infrastructure was strained by melting permafrost in Alaska and larger wildfires in California. It was happening now, and not enough people understood, or believed, that they had a role to play in what could happen next.

When the Venezuelans came knocking, Peru opened its doors, offering, until recently, fast-track work permits. It wasn’t strictly humanitarian.  For Venezuela, the loss of highly skilled people  is a crippling brain drain. For Peru, it’s a bonanza.

Peruvian authorities are especially thrilled about Venezuelan doctors and are designing a program to bring them to cities and towns  facing chronic staff shortages in clinics and hospitals. But for the doctors, it costs nearly $200 to take the national medical equivalency test – a king’s ransom for Venezuelan physicians who in many cases earned about $12 a month at home.

Perdomo’s father, an electrician, embraced Chávez. His mother, a teacher, hated him. “She saw through his lies. So did I,” Perdomo said

Cases had grown more desperate as the crisis deepened. He tended to two children who’d died of malnutrition. “We just never had that before, not in Venezuela, not starvation,” he said.   But the case he could not get out of his head was that of Geliana Obregon. Flies had laid eggs in her head. With no medication for treatment and no running water at home – now a constant problem in  Venezuela – maggots had infested the little girl’s scalp.

“I picked 123 worms out of her,” he said.

He got a break the night before. His roommate’s employer, a dermatologic firm, was looking for a clerk at one of their Lima clinics. He’d rushed over for the interview. After 20 minutes, the owner hired him on the spot. The salary: The equivalent of $267 a month. Minimum wage in Peru. An incalculable fortune in Venezuela.

managed to fend off both the French and the British through skillful diplomacy. He adopted many European customs and was intensely interested in European technologies. He also played the British and French off of one another, preserving most of Siam's territory and its independence.

The Ottoman Empire was too large, powerful, and complex for any one European power to simply annex it outright.

the European powers peeled off its territories in northern Africa and southeast Europe by seizing them directly or by encouraging and supplying local independence movements.

the Ottoman government or Sublime Porte had to borrow money from European banks to finance its operations. When it was unable to repay the money it owed to the London and Paris-based banks, they took control of the Ottoman revenue system, seriously infringing on the Porte's sovereignty. Foreign interests also invested heavily in railroad, port, and infrastructure projects, giving them ever more power within the tottering empire. The Ottoman Empire remained self-governing until it fell after World War I, but foreign banks and investors wielded an inordinate amount of power there.

Like the Ottoman Empire, Qing China was too large for any single European power to simply grab. Instead, Britain and France got a foothold through trade

Both Great Britain and Russia hoped to seize Afghanistan as part of their "Great Game" - a competition for land and influence in Central Asia. However, the Afghans had other ideas; they famously "don't like foreigners with guns in their country,

They slaughtered or captured an entire British army

Britain extended its influence into the eastern Persian Balochistan region

This shielded British India from Russian expansionism while leaving Afghanistan more or less independent.

Like Afghanistan, the British and Russians considered Persia an important piece in the Great Game

Russia nibbled away at northern Persian territory

, that gave Britain control of Afghanistan's foreign relations,

Like the Ottomans, the Qajar rulers of Persia had borrowed money from European banks for projects like railroads and other infrastructure improvements, and could not pay back the money.  Britain and Russia agreed without consulting the Persian government that they would split the revenues from Persian customs, fisheries, and other industries to amortize the debts. Persia never became a formal colony, but it temporarily lost control of its revenue stream and much of its territory - a source of bitterness to this

Nepal, Bhutan, Korea, Mongolia, and the Middle Eastern protectorates:

Nepal lost about one-third of its territory to the British East India Company's

However, the Gurkhas fought so well and the land was so rugged that the British decided to leave Nepal alone as a buffer state for British India. The British also began to recruit Gurkhas for their colonial army.

Bhutan, another Himalayan kingdom, also faced invasion by the British East India Company but managed to retain its sovereignty.

they relinquished the land in return for a tribute of five horses and the right to harvest timber on Bhutanese soil. Bhutan and Britain regularly squabbled over their borders until 1947, when the British pulled out of India, but Bhutan's sovereignty was never seriously threatened.

Indian Muslims, whether Pathans from the north-west or Tamils from the south, were all seen by Arabs as “Hindis”

there is little doubt that some Indian ruler, emulating his forerunners, would have done so.

the dismantling of existing political institutions, the fomenting of communal division and systematic political discrimination with a view to maintaining British domination.

Later, in 1857, the sight of Hindu and Muslim soldiers rebelling together,

As early as 1859, the then British governor of Bombay, Lord Elphinstone, advised London that “Divide et impera was the old Roman maxim, and it should be ours”.

The effort to understand ethnic, religious, sectarian and caste differences among Britain’s subjects inevitably became an exercise in defining, dividing and perpetuating these differences.

entire new communities were created by people who had not consciously thought of themselves as particularly different from others around them.

many other kinds of social strife were labelled as religious due to the colonists’ orientalist assumption that religion was the fundamental division in Indian society.

the creation and perpetuation of Hindu–Muslim antagonism was the most significant accomplishment of British imperial policy

The British ran government, tax collection, and administered what passed for justice.

Indians were excluded from all of these functions.

As late as 1920, under the Montagu-Chelmsford “reforms”, Indian representatives on the councils – elected by a franchise so restricted and selective that only one in 250 Indians had the right to vote

Democracy, in other words, had to be prised from the reluctant grasp of the British by Indian nationalists.

British law had to be imposed upon an older and more complex civilisation with its own legal culture

only three cases can be found of Englishmen executed for murdering Indians, while the murders of thousands more at British hands went unpunished.

In his notorious 1835 Minute on Education, Lord Macaulay articulated the classic reason for teaching English, but only to a small minority of Indians

The language was taught to a few to serve as intermediaries between the rulers and the ruled

But the facts are even more damning.

the third-class compartments, with their wooden benches and total absence of amenities, into which Indians were herded, attracted horrified comment even at the time

their Indian mechanics became so adept that in 1878 they started designing and building their own locomotives.

today rely extensively on Indian technical expertise, provided to them by Rites, a subsidiary of the Indian Railways.

The process of colonial rule in India meant economic exploitation and ruin to millions, the destruction of thriving industries, the systematic denial of opportunities to compete, the elimination of indigenous institutions of governance, the transformation of lifestyles and patterns of living that had flourished since time immemorial, and the obliteration of the most precious possessions of the colonised, their identities and their self-respect.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, British shopkeepers tried to pass off shoddy English-made textiles as Indian in order to charge higher prices for them.

there is no earthly reason why this could not again have been the case, if its resources had not been drained away by the British.

Today Indians cannot live without the railways;

As I’ve often argued, you don’t need to seek revenge upon history. History is its own revenge.