In one of the gigglier moments in modern movie history, Dr. Evil, awakening from thirty years of cryogenic sleep, threatens the world with utter destruction unless it pays him…one million dollars. (His criminal accomplices explain inflation to him, and he ups his price to $100 billion; happily, Austin Powers saves the world, and the cash).

Donald Trump has his own number—a clean billion, which is what he told fossil fuel executives they should pay in return for giving them literally anything they want in his next administration. That they would use that power to once-and-for-all overheat the earth is a given; the level of corruption and danger here is so over the top that it almost seems like a movie—but not a comedy, unless you run Exxon.

That’s not the only valuation we’ve gotten in recent weeks. In a largely overlooked story a few weeks ago, a Reuters team obtained the report that Citibank had prepared for the Federal Reserve, outlining its exposure to climate risk—or, […]