Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
For many years, even decades, before the current global pandemic, environmental advocates have waged a war against single-use plastic. We’ve been winning that war. More and more consumers are carrying reusable bags for groceries and other shopping items, asking restaurants to use more...
It is hard to think of impending natural hazard-related disasters in the middle of a global pandemic. But it is absolutely essential that policymakers do so. This year, due in part to climate change, scientists predict one of the most active Atlantic hurricane seasons on record. In fact, nine...
The heads of state and government of the European Union propose introducing a “carbon border adjustment mechanism” from 2023, to charge imported goods according to the CO2 emitted during their production. At their recent summit, they decided to use the ensuing revenues to boost the EU’s...
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is “living through an unrivalled drop in carbon output.” According to the International Energy Agency, global use of energy will drop 6% in 2020, an amount that equals India’s total energy demand. Worldwide demand for electricity has already fallen 5%,...
Despite more than 3,000 years of Chinese history, many of the world’s countries had little to no direct experience with China or Chinese investment prior to the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). There was a presumption on the part of many governments that international best practices...
In India, many people blame the communities living in and around the forests for exploiting natural resources. They are held responsible for forest degradation and deforestation. Communities who live in the Himalayas are no exception. Today, the once-pristine Himalayan mountains are littered with...
Today, the world faces one of its most challenging crises of the 21st century. A tiny yet powerful virus has been able to shed light on a number of questions we all knew but might not have truly comprehended. First, we are incredibly interconnected, from Wuhan to Milan to New York. Second, we are...
All that is old need not be dated. Take for instance, our ecological heritage. It has been rightly proposed by scholars that countless enlightened ideas may be drawn from old precepts of previous civilizations, especially from ancient India. More than that, knowledge may also, in today’s...
It should be apparent to most observers of international relations that the Chinese government wants the world to play by its own set of rules. Beijing appears to believe that China’s rise and its assumption of global leadership positions are an inevitable extension of earlier periods in its...
Economists like to think of the wreckage caused by stock market downturns, widespread bankruptcies and corporate downsizing as “creative destruction.” As it destroys the old and the dysfunctional, the capitalist system continually spurs innovation, much as a forest fire prepares the ground for...
You pay little attention to the systems of your body — circulatory, digestive, pulmonary — unless something goes wrong. These automatic systems ordinarily go about their business, like unseen clockwork, while you think about a vexing problem at work, drink your morning cup of coffee, walk up...
