President Barack Obama urged the world to consider the climate talks that kicked off Monday as potentially the last chance to make a meaningful impact on combating climate change. What the world needs to agree on, Obama told the 150-odd other world leaders gathered in Paris for the two-week conference, is “not a stopgap solution, but […]
United Nations climate talks set to begin in Paris next week promise to produce a landmark deal that has eluded diplomats for more than two decades. All of the Group of 20 nations, including the biggest developing countries — China, India and Brazil — have prepared to limit emissions into the next decade. Plunging costs for […]
In December, 196 countries signed an agreement in Lima, Peru, promising to pledge what they can to cut greenhouse gas pollution… To keep these countries on track, the climate change conference agreed that as many nations as possible would submit their proposals before March 31. Most of the world is about to blow past the deadline. […]
The seas’ destruction is much more than an aesthetic problem: the oceans’ economic role is also at stake. Healthy seas provide food, jobs, health, and recreation for countless people. They are also a potential source of clean energy, new medicines, and cures for diseases. Read Here – Foreign Affairs
No country has done more than India to stall progress on international climate negotiations during the past two months. Read Here – Slate
A new dam proposed by Laos threatens further damage to the troubled Mekong and its inhabitants. Read Here – The Diplomat
Ice in Antarctica and Greenland is disappearing faster and may drive sea levels higher than predicted this century, according to leaked United Nations documents. Greenland’s ice added six times more to sea levels in the decade through 2011 than in the previous 10 years, according to a draft of the UN’s most comprehensive study on climate change. Antarctica […]
Earth Overshoot Day marks the moment when, according to Global Footprint Network, an independent think tank based in the United States, Switzerland, and Belgium, humanity’s demand for natural resources exceeds the earth’s ability to renew them in a year. As of today, just 34 weeks into 2013, we are officially in ecological overdraft. Read Here – […]
Is it a Malthusianism catastrophe, or the stuff of farmers’ dreams? With forecasts of Asian food demand doubling by 2050, will the Asia-Pacific’s expanding middle class make agriculture the new oil? Among those answering in the affirmative are commodities traders like Jim Rogers, who has warned of food riots and told investors to buy storable produce. Read […]
The exceptional risk posed by mammalian-transmissible H5N1 viruses justifies exceptional precautions to avoid their accidental release. Until January 2013, influenza researchers observed a self-imposed “pause” on research on these viruses. This moratorium was always meant to be temporary, so a critical question is what regulations on research with mammalian-transmissible H5N1 viruses should now take its […]
looking beyond borders 