With predictions about climate change growing direr every week, geoengineering (which includes everything from fertilizing the oceans in an attempt to cajole great blooms of carbon-sucking phytoplankton to spraying particles into the upper atmosphere to make the earth more reflective) is starting to look more attractive. But the science still lags behind the ambitions. To […]
The current crisis offers China and Japan an opportunity to create a framework for discussion that will allow their leaders to talk and meet. Read Here – Japan Times
THE border between Yunnan province and northern Myanmar (formerly Burma) has always been porous. To the people who live in the region, the border is a crooked mark on other people’s maps, an arbitrary boundary snaking its way 2,400 kilometres through rugged and wild terrain. The authorities in Beijing have seen the same land as […]
No decade in history has experienced such an increase in urban population as the last. From Tokyo-Yokohama, the world’s largest urban area (population: 37 million) to Godegård, Sweden, which may be the smallest (population: 200), urban areas added 700 million people between 2000 and 2010. Nearly one in 10 of the world’s new urban residents were in […]
Goopy smog may have smothered Beijing this week, but optimism among foreigners is shining a bright light across China. A temperature inversion resulted in, literally, off-the-charts pollution in the Chinese capital, and the country’s leaders quickly reacted to universal criticism of their decades-old environment-be-damned policies. “Chinese media is all over the story in a remarkably […]
Earlier this month the National Intelligence Council released its Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report — a document that comes out once per presidential administration — mapping out likely geopolitical trends over the next two decades or so. As usual, it’s a must-read, offering comprehensive analysis of the disparate factors that will drive global politics through 2030. […]
After the Queen’s visit to the Foreign Office this week, Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that the southern part of the British Antarctic Territory will now be known, at least on British maps, as “Queen Elizabeth Land”. Within hours of this announcement, made in acknowledgement of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee and her service to the […]
An understanding of demographic trends can assist governments in targeting policies for the future and saving money for education, retirement, taxes, healthcare, distribution of natural resources, and more. More importantly, targeted policies can ease resentment emerging over demographic imbalances. The globe can anticipate an additional 1 billion people by 2025 – a total of 8 […]
WHEN Superstorm Sandy roared ashore in late October and the lights of lower Manhattan went out, New Yorkers were given a stark vision of a possible future. Climate-change science is still a realm of great uncertainty but there is consensus that the planet is warming dangerously and that people are to blame. A recent report […]
From space, the idea of a global water crisis may seem perplexing: 75 percent of the planet’s surface is blue. But usable fresh water is a tiny fraction of what we see – only 2.5 percent of the water on Earth. And two-thirds of that fresh water is locked away in glaciers, icecaps, and permanent […]
looking beyond borders 