Showing 11 - 20 of 28
Fear at the root of America's race problem
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/06/2020
» It's been a bad week in the United States: six nights of protests, huge anger, rioting and looting in 50 cities, hundreds arrested or injured -- but only six dead over the police murder of George Floyd. The number may have gone up by the time you read this, but it's definitely not 1968 again.
On climate change, take risks or pay the price
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/12/2018
» Global warming is physics and chemistry, and you can't negotiate with science for more time to solve the problem: more emissions mean a hotter planet. Dealing with the problem, however, requires an international negotiation involving almost 200 countries. In big gatherings of that sort, the convoy always moves at the speed of the slowest ships.
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/12/2018
» 'Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made," wrote Immanuel Kant in 1784. It is still true.
Fear of being blunt clouds climate issue
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/10/2018
» They still haven't dropped the other shoe. The 'Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 Celsius contains terrifying forecasts about what will happen when we reach an average global temperature one-and-a-half degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average. (We are now at +1C.) But it still shies away from talking about the feedbacks, the refugees, and mass death.
The Putin factor and Russia's future
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/02/2018
» Why wait another month to report on the Russian election when we can wrap it up right now? Vladimir Putin is going to win another six years in power by a landslide -- probably between 60% and 70% of the vote. The real question is what happens after that, because he will be 72 by the end of his next term and will not legally be allowed to run for president again.
When nature starts to lose the eco-battle
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/12/2017
» Whenever I get the chance, I go diving. The whole family are divers, right down to the grandchildren: It's one of the pretexts we use to get together. And we all know the coral reefs are dying.
So far, so good as it's all quiet on the climate front
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/11/2017
» 'Promoting coal at a climate summit is like promoting tobacco at a cancer summit," said Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, but President Donald J Trump did exactly that. He sent a team of American diplomats and energy executives to the annual world climate summit, being held this year in Bonn, Germany, to extol the wonders of "clean" coal.
Climate change creeps up on us all
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/09/2017
» At least a decade ago, a retired general at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies said to me that the rich countries will never take climate change seriously until some very big and apparently climate-related disaster happens in a first-world country. Hurricane Harvey was not that disaster.
Trump carries on US tradition of abandoning pacts
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/06/2017
» It's not just Donald Trump. The United States has a long record of negotiating international agreements and then running away from them. The rest of the world has an equally long record of heaving a sigh of regret, telling the Americans it will be happy to have them back when they get over it, and carrying on without them. It will do it again over the Paris accord on climate change.
President Trump all talk when it comes to return of coal
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/04/2017
» 'My administration is putting an end to the war on coal," said Donald Trump, surrounded by the usual gaggle of officials and (in this case) coal-miners, as he put his super-size signature on the Energy Independence Executive Order. But coal is dying as a major energy source in the United States for reasons far beyond the reach of executive orders.