In this pivotal chapter, I examine the 1.5°C emissions pathways urged upon us in the 2018 IPCC SR15 report. I compare those steeply plunging emissions pathways to emissions predictions over the next 30 years made by McKinsey and Bloomberg to demonstrate that the IPCC pathways are unlikely to obtain. To devise what seems a more likely scenario, I utilize the McKinsey/Bloomberg scenarios through 2050 and append to them subsequently the sort of emissions plummet that the IPCC would recommend we commence in 2021. Even in 2050, an emissions nose-dive seems an optimistic scenario but it illustrates a pathway to Net Zero Emissions by 2084. I then translate that emissions pathway into a temperature outcome that shows an increase of roughly 2.7°C above pre-industrial temperatures in the Net Zero year. More importantly, I illustrate that after Net Zero, temperatures and therefore resulting climate damages plateau rather than decline. Worse yet, sea levels would continue to rise for centuries. Having undertaken the enormous sacrifices necessary to achieve Net Zero, I assert that future generations are unlikely to find that state of affairs acceptable. They will demand further action to reduce temperatures and climate damages. They will demand climate intervention.

How does nationalization of operations causally increase government revenue? Using the case of oil politics in prerevolutionary Iran, this chapter analyzes production elasticity and reduced informational asymmetries after the Shah of Iran nationalized the oil operations of BP and its partners. The chapter draws on a combination of conversations documented in archival records and quantitative analysis of historical fiscal data from the BP Archive. It begins by explaining the Shah’s surprise decision in January 1973 to reconfigure the National Iranian Oil Company from its role as a passive observer to a fully operational oil company able to set production levels and prices. The chapter then presents findings using BP’s revenue projections as counterfactuals to estimate the causal effects of the Shah’s decision with respect to whether NOC reform increased government take of oil revenues in 1974–1975 and whether revenues collapsed after retaliation by international oil companies in 1976 to strip the NOC of its ability to sell oil on the global market. The chapter illustrates both the nuances and consequences of operational versus nonoperational NOCs for fiscal strength.