China’s new carbon neutrality pledge: what next?
Experts react to President Xi’s statement that China will up its climate ambition by striving for carbon neutrality by 2060. In a virtual address to…
Climate Change
From Dust Bowl to Climigration
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Dust Bowl Ballads by Woody Guthrie. Hurricanes and floods in the Southeast. “When the Levee Breaks” written by…
Is 2020 the Opening for a Just Transition?
As the U.S. considers how to reopen, stimulate, and recover its economy post-pandemic, how radically could it be reimagined? As an archipelago, Hawai‘i was necessarily self-reliant…
Without sustainable cities, global development goals will fail
Cities have been the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic, with little discrimination between more and less developed urban environments. More than 95 per cent of…
Scientists honing new ways to measure a city’s carbon footprint
Boston may be emerging as a model for how scientists and the public can better quantify and understand their city’s carbon dioxide emissions. Millions of…
Biden’s election is good news for the climate. But what comes next?
Few images captured the mood of climate activists last week more vividly than a video posted to Twitter of Christiana Figueres, one of the architects…
Energy-efficient building renovation: a Franco-German challenge
To achieve climate neutrality by 2050, the question of renovating buildings to be more energy-efficient is of crucial importance. More than ever before, it is…
Partying with CO2
Do you fall for fall celebrations? Do they evoke fond memories? Do you look forward to goblins and other Halloween trick-or-treaters and even gobbling up…
These African World Heritage Sites are under threat from climate change
Very few academics or policy makers are talking about the impact of climate change on heritage. Yet heritage is essential for social wellbeing, for identity…
Nothing as it seems
One of the most unexpected gifts of the Covid-19 lockdown: after nearly half a century the Himalayan peaks are visible from Nepal’s Kathmandu valley, 200…
Climate change forces virus migration
“All the world is topsy-turvy, and it has been topsy-turvy ever since the plague.” This quote is from The Scarlet Plague written by Jack London…
Avenger Planet: is the Covid-19 Pandemic Mother Nature’s response to human transgression?
As the coronavirus sweeps across the planet, leaving death and mayhem in its wake, many theories are being expounded to explain its ferocity. One, widely…
Next Up: The Climate Emergency
My new book went to press just as the coronavirus pandemic was starting. If I were still working on The Green New Deal and Beyond:…