Climate Crisis

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Ours would be the normal story of imperial powers rising and falling on Planet Earth — nothing new there, of course — if it weren’t for one thing: the fact that this world, too, is now falling. Unfortunately, nothing is truly normal about this planet of ours anymore, as the slow-motion equivalent […]

Climate Crisis

Lebanon’s Solar Capacity surged since 2020 to 1.5 gigawatts, as Homeowners tired of Blackouts

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Lebanese Ministry of Energy has let three bids for new solar farms of 15 megawatts each, for a total of 45 MW, which will power 22,000 homes in the perennially electricity-poor country. The bad news is that 11 such bids were accepted in 2022 and nothing ever got done. […]

Climate Crisis

Rivers are heating up faster than the Air − that’s a Problem for aquatic Life and People

The Conversation

By Li Li (李黎), Penn State (The Conversation) – When you think about heat waves, you might picture sweltering cities, shimmering asphalt and unbearable summer afternoons. These heat waves dominate the headlines because we feel them directly. Rivers, on the other hand, are often seen as cool refuges, places to escape the heat of summer. […]

Climate Crisis

An Unquenchable Thirst: The coming Water Scarcity

Frida Berrigan

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The truck wheel’s inner tube was right in front of me, no longer half-submerged in the pond’s late summer muck. After so many hot weeks without rain, the water had dried up and the garbage was completely exposed. My feet barely sank into the mud as I pulled the inner tube […]

Climate Crisis

The Middle East faces Climate Breakdown, but its Media ignores it

The Conversation

By Marianna Poberezhskaya, Nottingham Trent University; Imad El-Anis, Nottingham Trent University, and Marwa Mustafa, Nottingham Trent University (The Conversation) – The Middle East is experiencing a period of intense political and economic turbulence, with several countries in the region embroiled in conflict. These conflicts are taking place against the backdrop of an escalating climate crisis. […]

China

Back to 1984? Trump Sees World Power through Petroleum-colored Glasses

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com ) – That was President Trump’s blunt assessment of global power politics when it came to the United States and Russia following his inconclusive “summit” meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15th. Of all his comments about the meeting, that numerical assessment — made during a post-summit interview with Sean […]

Climate Crisis

Remembering William Blake on our Relationship with Nature in an Age of Environmental Degradation

Mark Vernon

Excerpt from Mark Vernon, Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination (London: Hurst, 2025): We are inclined to forget that this world is a home, not only physically, in the sense that we depend upon planet Earth and its intricate chains of living interaction, but psychologically. We are a part of a totality […]

Climate Crisis

Why Conflict Refugees are Particularly Vulnerable to Climate Risks

The Conversation

By Kerrie Holloway, ODI Global (The Conversation) – After heavy rains, a landslide “completely levelled” a remote village in western Sudan in early September. It was the temporary home of hundreds of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had fled the conflict between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, to what they had […]

Climate Crisis

Trump as a Slow-Motion Apocalypse

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Imagine for a moment a nuclear weapon exploding over… well, you name it: Pakistan, India or, for that matter, Ukraine, Russia, or the United States. I guarantee you one thing: the news headlines would be (and I use the word advisedly) explosive for days (weeks, months?) on end, assuming of course […]