What choices are available to a nation that, in its quest for modernization, foolishly built a nuclear reactor in a seismically active tsunami zone? The Royal Society reported in 2015 that the disastrous fate of Fukushima in 2011 resulted from a “cascade of engineering and regulatory...
Sometime last week, cold air escaped from the polar vortex, which usually stays high above the north pole. That icy air then traveled down to wreak havoc across Texas, a state geographically larger than France, bordering Mexico. Its nearly 30 million inhabitants are just starting to realize the...
In 1983, long-haired MPs wearing knitted sweaters and carrying flowers entered Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. These obscure and humble beginnings of the Greens as an anti-establishment party are long gone from the German political scene. From 1998 to 2005, the party formed a governing...
For the past year, many commentators have assumed that once the COVID-19 pandemic fades away, the world’s governments will understand that another global task awaits them: addressing the consequences of climate change. COVID-19 has already upset those calculations, at least in terms of timing....
The UK has finally cast off all its shackles and is ready to assert its freedom under the creative leadership of Boris Johnson, the man who made Brexit happen. Things are a little complicated for the moment, but once COVID-19 can be tamed, British creativity will find its cruising speed. Brexit...
Americans like to rate their presidents. In fact, presidential rankings have become something of a cottage industry in political science, ever since the eminent Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. started the tradition in the late 1940s. In Germany, we don’t do that, at least not in a...
It’s called The Line, a spanking new AI city to be built in the northwest of Saudi Arabia as part of the kingdom’s $500-billion NEOM project. The Line will be a “carbon-positive” community “powered by 100 per cent clean energy” strung, yes in a line, from the Red Sea coast into the...
It's time we all make peace with our planet — you and me, parents, professionals, leaders and the upcoming generation. All of us have to make 2021 the Year of Peace. Here's why: We’re at war with our planet. Even if we declare a truce today and start to live more sustainably, it will take...
Two decades into the 21st century, humanity is faced with a plethora of unprecedented global crises. After SARS-1, multiple novel avian influenza strains, and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the current COVID-19 pandemic is by far the most severe and widespread public health crisis in at least...
Joe Biden’s victory in the US election is distressing news for Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's right-wing populist president who admires Donald Trump. Five days after the American media called the race in Biden’s favor, Bolsonaro was yet to congratulate the Democrat. Since Brazil became a democracy...
While the international community’s attention is consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic and a myriad of crisis, from the wars in Syria and Yemen to the Middle East peace process, Brexit and a severe global economic downturn, climate change continues to wreak havoc on societies around the world,...