In The News

No Boundaries in Fight Against Globalisation

January 21, 2004
In Mumbai, India this week, the annual meeting of the World Social Forum was full-on with speeches, music, and people blasting the ills of 'rapacious imperialism' and globalization. This report from India's Economic Times notes that a variety of ideas for reforming the capitalist world economy are being promoted at the WSF. Wolfgang Sachs said that consumerism and a drive for...

Study Sees Mass Extinctions Via Warming

January 8, 2004
A new report published in the science journal Nature says that over a million plant and animal species are in threat of extinction from global warming. The report's underlying study brought together a team of scientists in 14 laboratories around the globe to study the effects of temperature change on life in six different regions. "We're already seeing biological communities...

Stopping Bioterrorism Before It Starts

Lauren T. Hickok January 8, 2004
The anthrax attacks that came on the heels of Sept. 11 frightened many Americans and added further fuel to calls for a global war on terror. Two years on, how secure is the world's supply of biological and chemical agents? Biosecurity experts Lauren T. Hickok and Reynolds M. Salerno write that although Washington has taken steps to mitigate the bioterrorism threat within the US, much work...

Sending the Best Away

Stefan Dietrich December 12, 2003
Germany was once at the forefront of plutonium technological development, but with the rise of the Green party, the technology was abandoned due to its environmental and health risks. Now one of Germany's unused plants is likely going to be exported to China. Commentator Stefan Dietrich warns that the trade is dangerous for two reasons. First of all, China (as a one-party state) does not...

Jobs Here and in China a White House Topic

Jim Yardley December 9, 2003
As President Bush met with the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao this week, he pressed the issue of American jobs lost to China. But in spite of a recent economic boom, China has its own job-related woes. The country's economic restructuring has caused massive layoffs at older state-owned factories. And the Chinese countryside has too many farmers to fit on a diminishing amount of usable land....

Kyoto's Not Dead Yet

December 3, 2003
A senior advisor to Russia's President Putin, Andrei Illarionov, declared this week that Russia was never going to sign on the Kyoto Protocol that aims to limit greenhouse gases. Fortunately for the treaty, Illarionov does not have the final word, and Putin himself has indicated that Russia would be willing to ratify. It seems likely that the Russians are hesitating on Kyoto out of the...

An Indigenous World

Moisés Naím November 25, 2003
Despite the spread of disease and exploitation, the rise of global forces has not been all bad for the estimated 350 million indigenous people around the world, says Foreign Policy editor Moises Naim. In fact, in can also empower them. Across Latin America, Naim says, "constitutional changes… have given indigenous peoples far more political advantages than ever before." Globalization...