By Nerilie Abram, Matthew England, and Matt King | – A record start to summer ice melt in Greenland this year has drawn attention to the northern ice sheet. We will have to wait to see if 2019 continues to break ice-melt records, but in the rapidly warming Arctic the long-term trends of ice loss […]
Next, Our Food: Climate Emergency Reducing Crop Yields, Global Food Supplies
By Deepak Ray | – Farmers are used to dealing with weather, but climate change is making it harder by altering temperature and rainfall patterns, as in this year’s unusually cool and wet spring in the central U.S. In a recently published study, I worked with other scientists to see whether climate change was measurably […]
Climate Emergency: Reforestation is no Substitute for Leaving Fossil Fuels in the Ground
By Mark Maslin | – Restoring the world’s forests on an unprecedented scale is “the best climate change solution available”, according to a new study. The researchers claim that covering 900m hectares of land – roughly the size of the continental US – with trees could store up to 205 billion tonnes of carbon, about […]
Vanishing Tropical Rainforests are the Lungs of our Planet: We can Still Save them (and Ourselves)
By Robin Chazdon | The green belt of tropical rainforests that covers equatorial regions of the Americas, Africa, Indonesia and Southeast Asia is turning brown. Since 1990, Indonesia has lost 50% of its original forest, the Amazon 30% and Central Africa 14%. Fires, logging, hunting, road building and fragmentation have heavily damaged more than 30% […]
What Happens when Climate Emergency Drowns Whole Nations?
By Sarah M. Munoz | – Global climate change is endangering small island countries, many of them developing nations, potentially harming their ability to function as independent states. As international environmental co-operation stalls, we must ask what consequences climate change will have on the statehood of vulnerable countries. This is especially important because sovereignty is […]
Great Powers in Latin America have Tried to Make Walls before: It didn’t End Well
By Alberto P. Marti | – Despite the US administration’s renewed interest in Cuba, including new travel restrictions, few have paid attention to a little-known, but telling, historical episode: the island’s 19th-century military “Trocha”. This massive fortified line was a Spanish attempt to contain the Cuban independence rebellion by splitting the island in half – […]
G20: The Real Crisis Confronting Global Leaders is Trump-China Trade War
By Bill Durodie | – On June 28 and 29, the G20 summit will convene for the 14th time in Osaka, Japan. This gathering of leaders from the world’s leading economies, including the EU, plus invited guests and international organisations, ought to offer an important moment for mature reflection and collective coordination regarding the future […]
US-Iran Tensions Keep Growing with No Move to Negotiate in Sight
By Scott Lucas | – Washington and Tehran are locked in a political, economic, and propagandist confrontation – and there is no apparent way out. One route to de-escalation could be direct talks between the US and Iran, either on a bilateral basis or as part of multilateral discussions. When US President Donald Trump stepped […]
Why Trump Can’t Win by Ramping up Sanctions on Iran
By Natasha Lindstaedt | – After Iran shot down a US drone that allegedly entered Iran’s airspace, Donald Trump signed new sanctions against Iran on June 24, including against its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The move came days after the US president took to Twitter to reveal the US had been ten minutes away from […]