As the world slowly emerges from the fog of COVID-19, we have become accustomed to the reports detailing the global economic damage caused by the pandemic. Focusing on the immediate fallout from the COVID crisis, however, may have caused us...
In 2025, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is hit by a killer heatwave. The astronomical temperatures resulting from solar radiation kill 20 million people. In the wake of this climate disaster, a new movement arises in India: an eco-terrorist network called the Children of Kali. The Hindu deity Kali, “She Who Is Death,” is the goddess of doomsday, and her “children” seek, through extremist measures, to avenge the deaths...
These past two years have made the international community finally realize that complex global challenges and crises will not go away easily and are likely to become the norm rather than the exception in this turbulent 21st century. First, the COVID-19 pandemic is obviously far from over. While global vaccine distribution continues to be spotty and a matter of economic and political privilege rather than equality and fairness, new variants...
Let’s start with a tricky question. Is the European Union’s Green New Deal a path toward the world's first climate-neutral continent by 2050, as European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen sees it? Or do you agree with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s view of the deal as a “utopian fantasy”? Whatever interpretation you are leaning toward, the question itself reveals the current polarization across Europe. Why Does the Radical...
The Green New Deal is a progressive wish list that combines the reduction of carbon emissions with investments in Green technologies and Green jobs. In the United States, the Green New Deal has largely remained aspirational: a non-binding resolution that has not yet come to a vote in Congress. In South Korea, on the other hand, the Green New Deal is a policy reality. In 2020, the ruling Democratic Party...
Take a look at the suited people at COP26. Some look inquisitively around as the bill is slipped across the table to them. Others pull out the inside of their empty pockets and shrug their shoulders. Some recall past promises and claim they are still owed money. Others point to someone else’s swelling accounts and insist they have paid more than their fair share. Money, money, money. Why is it...
Global warming is an established ongoing threat, and the Middle East is warming at twice the global average. This summer, Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iraq have experienced temperatures surging above 50˚C. It is quite plausible that temperatures could rise closer to 60˚C over the coming decades. This would be truly disastrous for the region, translating into more heatwaves along with extreme drought or extreme precipitation in some areas...
There is no question about it: Our planet is warming faster than ever before. Having plateaued around 280 parts per million for thousands of years, global CO2 emissions have shot past 400 ppm at the end of the last decade, an atmospheric rise set in motion by the 18th-century Industrial Revolution. Human activity in its myriad modes of creative destruction has led to a global average temperature rise between 1.1˚C and 1.2˚C...
