In recent weeks, European leaders have been debating how to deal with a Russian pipeline project under the Baltic Sea called Nord Stream 2. President Trump came out strongly against the Russian pipeline project at a meeting with European leaders on Wednesday. He’s likely to bring up the issue when he meets President Putin in Helsinki on Monday. On the home front, though, he’s been a strong proponent of new energy pipelines like the Keystone XL pipeline. Columbia Historian Timothy Mitchell has long argued that the health of a democracy has to do with how they consume energy. Jerome McDonnell sat down with Timothy Mitchell, who’s the author of Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil.