In The News

The IPCC: The Science Is In on Climate Change

April 21, 2008
Rajendra K. Pachauri, director-general of the Energy Research Institute, was elected chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2002. For that work, he was co-awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace. In this interview with Nayan Chanda, Pachauri explains the IPCC’s purpose of collecting and disseminating science. Climate change affects countries in many different ways, and...

Global Approach Required to Tackle Food Prices

Dominique Strauss-Khan April 21, 2008
Warnings about climate change, biofuels, use of agricultural land for other purposes and the herd mentality of the financial markets have been ample over the past year. Still, food shortages, rising prices and the resulting humanitarian crisis have come as a surprise for some governments. The managing director of the International Monetary Fund calls for immediate global planning. “Unless we act...

Clock Running Out on Irreversible Climate Change – Part II

Bo Ekman April 18, 2008
The coming negotiations over the successor to the Kyoto Protocol appear doomed as states express more concern about their narrow rights than the planet’s health. Bo Ekman, founder of Tällberg Forum, argues for developing fallback policies that global citizens must consider in the event of failure of the Copenhagen Process. Ekman fears that the “world will descend into eco-protectionism, where...

The Age of Nonpolarity

Richard N. Haass April 18, 2008
US dominance of international affairs is becoming increasingly archaic, asserts Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Rather than a multipolar model of states balancing power, Haass sees the 21st century segueing into a nonpolar international system, where the United States is joined by increasingly powerful states as well as centers of power “from above, by regional and...

Clock Running Out on Irreversible Climate Change – Part I

Jim Hansen April 16, 2008
The goal of slowing climate change takes on urgency with growing populations, increasing emissions and melting polar ice that would irrevocably change the global environment. Energy suppliers often fend off worries about climate change by suggesting that the facts are not all known. The same could be said about industry estimates on oil, gas and coal reserves, suggests Jim Hansen, director of...

America for Sale: 2 Outcomes When Foreigners Buy Factories

Peter S. Goodman April 16, 2008
The debate over globalization’s effects on the US economy has become a focal point of the presidential campaign. Outsourcing jobs is a major concern of voters, and with good reason. In Michigan alone, as New York Times’ writer Peter Goodman notes, more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost to foreign competition during the last eight years. Yet globalization encourages foreign investment...

Outpacing Resources

Nayan Chanda April 15, 2008
In 1798, economist Thomas Malthus predicted that population growth could lead to declining resources and catastrophe. The global population was then less than a billion, and critics dismissed his concerns. Now, the human population has grown more than sixfold, and is estimated to reach 9 billion in less than 50 years. Shortages of basic resources, including oil, food and water are not uncommon in...