Here’s a stark example of the transformative power of shale: a Gulf petrostate is mulling American gas imports. The United Arab Emirates lays claim to the world’s seventh-largest proven reserves of natural gas, but it’s finding it difficult to resist the allure of cheap American shale gas.

For more than a month, Iraqi Kurdistan has been piping oil across its northern border to Turkey, against the wishes of the central Iraqi government. Kurdish crude is bringing long-simmering tensions between Baghdad and Irbil to a head, and what happens next will affect Turkish-Iraqi relations for years to come.

The fight over the Keystone XL pipeline may not actually affect emissions or stop Canada’s oil sands from being developed, but darnit it’s been good for the green movement! That’s the gist of the recent New York Times article “Pipeline Fight Lifts Environmental Movement,” which—while careful not to take sides—calls the fight a “boon to the environmental movement.” Here’s what’s wrong with that perspective.

Greetings readers! We trust you’ve had a refreshing weekend. Here’s a look back on the big stories you may have missed over the past week:

Coming soon to British produce aisles: purple tomatoes. Genetic modifications not only change the new type of tomato’s hue, they make it healthier as well.

Late last year the Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge predicted 2014 would bring a “peasants’ revolt against the sovereigns of cyberspace,” and not even a month in we’re already seeing forceful expressions of this backlash on Big Tech. At 7am on Tuesday morning, a group of angry protestors marched to the Berkeley home of a Google X developer, unfurled a banner reading “Google’s Future Stops Here” and handed out flyers featuring the above image and a message to “Fight Evil…Join the Revolution.”

Self-driving cars could be the future of public transportation, but at the very least they will change the logic of and in many ways supplant the need for large public transportation projects. A fleet of robo-cars could one day deliver personalized, decentralized public transportation. But what does that mean for our cities’s buses and trains?

A new piece by the ever outspoken Bill McKibben, co-written with Mike Tidwell, encapsulates the shortcomings of the modern green movement. It has everything you might expect from a piece co-written by one of the leaders of the environmental movement: lurid imagery, emotionally charged NIMBY-ism, mangled science, and a detachment from the considerations that ultimately go into energy decision-making.

Brussels unveiled a new set of climate goals today, and the targets set out sketch a portrait of a continent wary of the costs of green policymaking. Conspicuously absent from this set of targets—which will effectively replace its 2020 counterpart—are any mandatory renewable energy requirements for national governments. Instead, the European Commission is giving governments the freedom to choose the means by which they achieve the required end.

Scientists have discovered a new method for converting plant matter into biofuel that could help undo America’s biofuels boondoggle, and could help bring down global food prices.