HANGZHOU, China — President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China formally committed the world’s two largest economies to the Paris climate agreement here on Saturday, cementing their partnership on climate change and offering a rare display of harmony in a relationship that has become increasingly discordant. Read more
It’s been disappointing, and a little depressing, to see how parochial and partisan the issue of climate change has become in recent years in Australia, to the detriment of good policy and intelligent national debate. Read more
Political scientist and environmental author Thomas HomerDixon is fast becoming one of Canada’s most valuable exports if judged by the sustained, international success of his writings on the environment and security over the past two decades.
I first came across Homer Dixon’s work in the mid1990s when he had already established himself as a leading researcher in the field. What impressed me was the rigour of his scholarship and a rarely found willingness to cross disciplinary boundaries in search of answers.
The measured prose and bland title of the latest UN report on climate change belie the gravity and significance of its key message: that the earth will soon be a much hotter, drier and stormier place, and there is little doubt our way of life is the cause. This is not a naturally occurring cycle, as a dwindling band of sceptics maintains.
Of particular note is the growing belief among the world’s top climate scientists that it will be virtually impossible to keep the rate of temperature increase below 2C, which is widely accepted as the threshold above which managing the risks becomes progressively more difficult and the consequences more dangerous. It is necessary to bear in mind the unprecedented rate at which the planet is heating up.