Issues

Issues March 10, 2017

January-March 2015 (ONE)

Articles Nuclear

Nuclear power – breakthrough technology or eternal promise?

A new-wave nuclear power that could cut down carbon emissions, according to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, is one of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies that will change the world in 2019. A bold prediction but not ungrounded. Global greenhouse gas emissions…

Articles Climate Change Policy & Strategy

Generations arm wrestling for climate

In February, school students across the UK joined a growing international movement of school ‘climate strikes’, which has seen children skip their Friday lessons to protest over a perceived lack of government action against the threat of climate change. The…

Articles Policy & Strategy

The Green New Deal as a catalyst for smoothing out social inequality

Humanity has a decade to reduce carbon emissions or face climate change devastation, reckons the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The United Nations’ group is dedicated to providing the world with a scientific – that is to say impartial, apolitical…

Articles Climate Change

Alternatives to standard grass lawns

Many people are surprised to learn that current lawn practices wreak havoc on the environment. Chemical fertilizers, pesticides, watering, and lawn equipment such as lawn mowers produce myriads of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Fortunately, there are numerous…

Articles News & Comments Policy & Strategy

Bitcoin’s high energy consumption is a concern – but it may be a price worth paying

Shutterstock Steven Huckle, University of Sussex Bitcoin recently turned ten years old. In that time, it has proved revolutionary because it ignores the need for modern money’s institutions to verify payments. Instead, Bitcoin relies on cryptographic techniques to prove identity…

Articles Nuclear

Next-gen Nukes

Back in 2009, Simon Irish, an investment manager in New York, found the kind of opportunity that he thought could transform the world while — in the process — transforming dollars into riches. Irish saw that countries around the globe…

Articles Policy & Strategy

Better data would help crack the drought insurance problem

While drought policy raises many complex emotional, political and policy issues, it can be helpful to think of it as an insurance problem: how can we best help farmers manage climate risk? Drought insurance has been a long-standing goal and…

Articles Climate Change

Analysis: fossil-fuel emissions in 2018 increasing at fastest rate for seven years

Hopes that global CO2 emissions might be nearing a peak have been dashed by preliminary data showing that output from fossil fuels and industry will grow by around 2.7% in 2018, the largest increase in seven years. The new data, from…

Articles Climate Change Policy & Strategy

Is clean energy funding from the UN’s green climate fund and other sources going where it’s needed most?

Most of rural Africa still has no electricity, and tens of millions of families must cook on open fires and light their homes with candles or a kerosene lamps. But change is coming, at least in several hundred villages in…

Articles Biofuels Green Tech

From fiery ice to sustainable aviation: the biofuel race becomes creative

The search for alternative fuels struck lucky off the coast of Japan recently. Under the water and below the seabed are pockets of methane, trapped in ice. Put a match to this ice back on dry land and it not…