The Republican party is almost unique among major political parties across the world in its overwhelming skepticism of the science of global warming. […] It poses an enormous problem to the leaders of the world’s other major powers, and there is almost nothing they can do about it.

[…] Imagine the world’s major powers sitting down in the early 20th century to negotiate a treaty on the law of the sea, only to have one of America’s major political parties vow to defeat any settlement, on the grounds that the world is in fact flat.