In The News

Unprecedented Wipeout for Oil: Bloomberg

Catherine Ngai, Olivia Raimonde and Alex Longley April 20, 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic stopped the global economy, and the price of future contracts for West Texas Intermediate crude oil, in May plunged into unprecedented negative territory. Brent and other pricing benchmarks also fell. Energy companies and distributors have no place to store oil, and there is no interest in crude contracts that require delivery, regardless of low price. “Underscoring just how...

Microsoft to Build Planetary Computer: CBR

Ed Targett April 19, 2020
Microsoft is launching a program, Planetary Computer, to aggregate environmental data – mapping trillions of data points to monitor the Earth’s biodiversity, water tables, forestry data, carbon and waste to provide a searchable dataset. “The move is the company’s latest major environmental push, after promising in January to become “carbon negative” by the end of this decade,” reports Ed Targett...

Plan for Future Nobody Can Plan For: Forbes

Alisa Cohn April 18, 2020
The world faces common challenges in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and reopening economies. Executive coach Alisa Cohen urges business and community leaders to develop plans that can handle uncertainty. This requires collecting information and data from diverse sources, being ready for constant changes and the ability to make swift adjustments, perceiving and accepting reality and...

Lives Versus Livelihoods: Japan Times

Gwynne Dyer April 17, 2020
COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, China, and China imposed strict lockdown measures for 70 days. The city has reopened with officials screening temperatures and citizen movements. Other nations, especially the United States, hope to reopen economies after 30 days of lockdown isolation with less stringent measures. “Everybody knows that you can’t shut the economy down indefinitely, but nobody wants to...

COVID-19 and Nature? Project Syndicate

Robert Skidelsky April 17, 2020
Initial news reports on the COVID-19 pandemic focus on prevention, case totals and economic impact. Attention could soon turn to the crowding, lack of biodiversity and climate change that allows pathogens to emerge and spread around dense communities and a human population that approaches 8 billion. Some public health analysts contend that the world can anticipate more epidemics due to...

COVID-19 Reshuffling the Global Power Deck? PRI

Indra Ekmanis April 16, 2020
In confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries quickly abandoned international cooperation and leadership traditions. “A global response is critical to tackling the challenges posed by the virus – from sharing data that accurately models the crisis, to collaborating on a vaccine and its equitable distribution,” suggested Nicholas Burns, former US ambassador to NATO during an interview with...

COVID-19: A View From Latin America

April 16, 2020
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 remain deceptively low throughout Latin America, yet the exponential spread will hit the region hard. A group of former leaders point to uneven policy response and warn that the shock and uncertainty could pose catastrophic consequences for the region. Leaders must move rapidly, prioritizing public health rather than trying to evade the threat with populism,...