A recent report on the humdrum subject of plans to build new coal-burning plants to generate electricity helps to explain why Asia – led by its rising economic giants, China and India – is at the epicentre of concern about global warming and climate change. Policy makers from nearly all of the world’s countries meet […]
Outgoing Chinese Premier Wei Jiabao returned to Beijing this week office after disappointing ASEAN and East Asia summits that failed to live-up to years of diplomatic posturing and positioning, designed to protect his country’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. The pro-Beijing lobby will no doubt praise his efforts in Cambodia where China successfully thwarted attempts […]
Many commentators, both in the US and India, do not believe that President Barack Obama’s victory and his second-term foreign policy will lead to any surprises to US-India relations. They see more of the same. They should be proven wrong. Yes, the last four years have been a period of consolidation in India-US relations. They […]
Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all. Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 […]
Almost 1 billion people around the world don’t get enough to eat. Climate change, which is already contributing to food-price increases in poor and prosperous countries alike, promises to make it even harder to feed a growing population. The world produces enough food to provide its 7 billion people with the roughly 2,700 calories they need daily. […]
How serious is the threat of global warming? One way to figure out is to take your cues from some leading climate scientists: They have moved on. That doesn’t mean they’ve abandoned the issue, but they are looking beyond what all agree is the most obvious solution — decreasing the amount of carbon we spew […]
The world economic downturn and upheaval in the Arab world might grab headlines, but another big problem looms: environmental change. Along with extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels, and other natural hazards, global warming disrupts freshwater resource availability — with immense social and political implications. Earlier this year, the Office of the Director of National […]
The biggest problem facing the global economy is not climate change, trade imbalances, financial regulation, or the eurozone. It is short-term thinking. An epidemic of myopia has swept over the world in the past few decades, and it threatens our living standards like nothing else. t’s an epidemic with more than one cause, and not […]
With Arctic ice melting at record pace, the world’s superpowers are increasingly jockeying for political influence and economic position in outposts like this one, previously regarded as barren wastelands. At stake are the Arctic’s abundant supplies of oil, gas and minerals that are, thanks to climate change, becoming newly accessible along with increasingly navigable polar shipping shortcuts. […]
Not long after a tsunami washed over Japan‘s Fukushima nuclear power plants in March 2011, causing a partial meltdown, it appeared to many that humankind’s half-century experiment with nuclear power might be in permanent jeopardy. Although nuclear energy provides 15 percent of the world’s electricity, all without spewing greenhouse gas emissions, many countries seemed ready […]
looking beyond borders 