By Sabrina Zwick | – ( The Conversation ) – Work, education, entertainment, or simply better connectivity all draw people to cities. By the end of this century around 85% of the world population are predicted to live in cities. There are speculations that the COVID-19 pandemic will slow down this urbanisation trend, but I […]
Why We cannot meet sustainable development goals with a sick ocean
By Josep Lluís Pelegrí Llopart | – The United Nations declared the start to the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development earlier this year. Its aim is to promote science-based ocean and coastal management, making healthy oceans one of the pillars of progress for all of humanity. Under the slogan “The science we need […]
The Declaration of Independence wasn’t really complaining about King George, and 5 other surprising facts for July Fourth
By Woody Holton | – Editor’s note: Americans may think they know a lot about the Declaration of Independence, but many of those ideas are elitist and wrong, as historian Woody Holton explains. His forthcoming book “Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution” shows how independence and the Revolutionary War were influenced […]
What the Supreme Court ruling on Arizona Law means for your Right to Vote
By Cornell William Clayton and Michael Ritter | – Arizona may keep two voting laws that Republicans say protect election integrity and Democrats believe will make it harder for some residents to cast ballots. That’s the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, one of the decade’s most important voting rights […]
How the Media manages to Report the Northwest Heat Dome without Mentioning the Carbon Dioxide Emissions that Drove it
By Kamyar Razavi | – ( The Conversation) – New normal. Record-breaking. Unprecedented. In recent days, as Western Canada and the United States have been broiling under a climate-fuelled heat crisis, all sorts of superlatives have been used to describe never-before-seen temperatures: the British Columbia community of Lytton hit a mind-boggling 49.5 C on June […]
Structural racism: what it is and how it works, and why Critical Race Theory Explains it
By Vini Lander | – From the moment it was published, the UK’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities’ report was met with a media storm driven by both its supporters and detractors. Months later, amid continued division over the report’s position that racism isn’t pronounced in the UK, there’s still some confusion about what […]
Nuclear energy isn’t a safe bet in a warming world – here’s why
By Paul Dorfman | – ( The Conversation) – The overwhelming majority of nuclear power stations active today entered service long before the science of climate change was well-established. Two in five nuclear plants operate on the coast and at least 100 have been built just a few metres above sea level. Nuclear energy is, […]
How colonialism’s legacy makes it harder for countries to escape poverty and fossil fuels today
By Patrick Greiner | – ( The Conversation ) – While fossil fuels were powering wealthy nations’ economic growth in the 19th and 20th centuries, many countries across the Global South remained largely impoverished. Today, all that burning of oil, coal and natural gas has warmed the planet toward dangerous levels, and science shows that […]
Right now it Doesn’t Look like we can Keep Global Heating to an Extra 2.7° F.; But we Can Change That
By Christopher Hedemann, Eduardo Gresse, and Jan Petzold | – ( The Conversation ) – If you read the scientific literature, there seem to be countless pathways and scenarios that might lead us to global deep decarbonisation by 2050, allowing us to meet the 1.5°C target. “It’s still possible,” is the message, “if only we […]