Climate Crisis

( Tomdispatch.com ) – What self-destructive creatures we turn out to be! Can you even believe it? Only recently, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, met in Brazil for two weeks. While 194 countries were represented there, the historically greatest fossil-fuelizer on the planet, Donald Trump’s United States, was, of course, missing in […]

Climate Crisis

Rate of Global Heating in the Arab World is Twice the Global Average

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The World Meteorological Organization has issued its annual report on the 22 countries of the Arab world, covering last year, and presents alarming conclusions about human-driven climate change in that region. 2024 was the hottest year on record in the Middle East, around 1º Celsius (1.8º F.) hotter than the […]

Climate Crisis

A Path Away from Fossil Fuels already Exists, COP30 or No

Foreign Policy in Focus

Existing plans to triple renewable energy, double efficiency, and slash methane — coupled with real regulations like the EU’s — offer a way forward. By Daphne Wysham, Trina Chiemi | November 28, 2025 ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – It appeared to be a grim déjà vu when the final gavel dropped in Belem, […]

Climate Crisis

Have we Reached Peak Fossil Fuels? Wind & Solar met all New Energy Demand in Q1-Q3 ’25

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Richard Black and other analysts at the Ember energy consultancy find that all new electricity demand in the first three quarters of 2025 was met by solar and wind, mainly solar. That statistic requires us to conclude that there was no growth in fossil fuels globally during that period. Ember […]

Climate Crisis

Iran’s Capital, Tehran, Faces Zero Day without Water: Climate Change and Bad Policy

The Conversation

By Ali Mirchi, Oklahoma State University; Amir AghaKouchak, University of California, Irvine; Kaveh Madani, United Nations University, and Mojtaba Sadegh, Boise State University; United Nations University (The Conversation) – Fall marks the start of Iran’s rainy season, but large parts of the country have barely seen a drop as the nation faces one of its […]

Arab World

Vanishing Future? The Arab World Faces 2x Global Heating, Corruption and High Tech Divide

Middle East Monitor

By Jasim Al-Azzawi ( Middle East Monitor ) – The Arab world is standing at a precipice. Climate change is accelerating at twice the global average across the region. Water scarcity threatens to erase up to 14 per cent of GDP by 2050. Illiteracy and failing education systems leave millions unprepared for the AI revolution […]

Brazil

Accelerating Climate Change and Global Inequality: Indigenous People were the Heroes of COP30

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Contradictions pervaded the latest UN climate conference (COP30) held in Belem, Brazil. Progressive President Lula da Silva of Brazil proclaimed it would a positive turning point in progress, while he authorized his state-owned oil producer to do exploratory drilling for oil near the Great Amazon Reef System. […]

Climate Crisis

The Hot Tub of Death? Bill Gates, Hurricane Melissa, and a Civilization Under Threat

Juan Cole

Here is my essay for this week’s Tomdispatch.com. Don’t miss Tom Engelhardt’s canny introduction, in which he points to Donald Trump’s climate denialism as a context for that of his “billionaire buddies.” And by the way, it has now been shown that Hurricane Melissa clocked a wind gust of a mind-boggling 252 mph shortly before […]

Brazil

COP30: 5 Reasons the UN Climate Conference wasn’t the Promised “People’s Summit”

The Conversation

By Simon Chin-Yee, UCL; Mark Maslin, UCL, and Priti Parikh, UCL (The Conversation) – As the sun set on the Amazon, the promise of a “people’s Cop” faded with it. The latest UN climate summit – known as Cop30, hosted in the Brazilian city of Belém – came with the usual geopolitics and the added […]