• OPINION

  Early extinction of fossil fuels a risk in itself

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/12/2021

  » The "new normal", said International Energy Agency spokesperson Heymi Bahar last May, may be a far faster expansion of renewable energy than expected, driven mainly by market forces. So fast, in fact, that it raises a different kind of risk (but he didn't mention that).

• OPINION

  Winter is on the way in Afghanistan

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/11/2021

  » The first snow of the winter will reach Kabul any day now, and the death rate will start to climb: mostly children, at first, but it will not really be the cold that kills them. The cold will only finish the work that malnutrition began months or years ago -- but the other cause of their deaths will be a different kind of freeze.

• OPINION

  COP26: Mixed bag of hope, despair

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/11/2021

  » It's not too early to assess the success or failure of COP26, the climate summit that began in Glasgow on Oct 31. The first week, while the heads of state are there, is when all the big promises are announced; the second week is devoted to haggling over the details of the deals. So we already know that it hasn't been an absolute failure.

• OPINION

  Hypersonic missiles are a needless complication

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/11/2021

  » 'I saw in some of the newspapers they used the term 'Sputnik moment'," said General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I don't know if it's quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it's very close to that. It's a very significant technological event that occurred."

• OPINION

  Will China actually ever invade Taiwan?

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/10/2021

  » China's President Xi Jinping promised on Saturday that "The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland... will definitely be fulfilled." That was a threat to Taiwan, but a threat without a deadline. However Chinese state media, in the form of the ever-rabid Global Times, warned that war "could be triggered at any time".

• OPINION

  The Quad and the next Cold War with China

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/09/2021

  » The creation of an Australia-United Kingdom-United States military alliance last week caused a tempest in a teapot, but the real action was elsewhere. In Washington on Friday the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue ("Quad" for short) held its first-ever face-to-face summit, and defined the sides in the great-power confrontation for the next generation.

• OPINION

  Norway, oil and the issue of climate change

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/10/2021

  » You can see why Saudi Arabia wants to go on pumping as much oil as it can. Oil exports account for 87% of the Saudi government budget and 42% of GDP. The Saudi population, now 35 million, is growing by two-thirds of a million a year, and the country already imports 80% of its food. They'd be starving in a few years if they stopped pumping.

• OPINION

  China and the US: Too big to be equal?

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/09/2021

  » Never mind the destruction of the relatively free society of Hong Kong (no emergency airlift like in Kabul, Afghanistan, but the number of people fleeing Hong Kong may ultimately be larger). Never mind the persecution of the Uighurs, or the Orwellian surveillance society that the Communist Party is building, or the tens of millions who died in wars, famines and "cultural revolutions" to bring equality to China.

• OPINION

  After Merkel, who will fill her 'sensible shoes'?

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/09/2021

  » Last January Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) were ahead in the German opinion polls by 15 points. She was stepping down after 16 years as chancellor (prime minister), but she was still by far the most trusted politician in Germany. Indeed, she is universally known as "Mutti" ("Mummy").

• OPINION

  Time for a new discourse on Afghanistan

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/09/2021

  » A man is sitting in a train somewhere in Europe, tearing sheets of paper into little pieces and throwing them out the window.

First Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next Last