BY ALLISON MACFARLANE To address the climate change crisis we need both short term and long term solutions that will reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide (CO2). At the same time, there is a growing global need for more energy resources to provide for development of many of the world’s population. [...]
BY PHILIP AUERSWALD In the past century of dramatic political and technological change, the centrality of oil in foreign policy has been a constant. Political leaders and governments of all types have been compelled to ensure the reliability of oil supplies for military use, to reduce the potential vulnerability of their economies to fluctuations in [...]
BY LISA BREGLIA Across the frontlines of energy production in the Global South, an oil crisis is long simmering. This is not an oil crisis as we already know it: in other words, a crisis stimulated by market models of supply and demand, or a crisis abstractly negotiated by giddy futures speculators, or even a [...]
BY KAREN AKERLOF AND EDWARD W. MAIBACH The United States has now formally acknowledged climate change as a threat, and it appears that our nation is poised to begin the process of formulating a response. Many of our peer nations reached this point years earlier. Their experiences to date may have value in helping us [...]
BY ERIC MCGLINCHEY The local impact of global climate change is suddenly acutely present in Central Asia. A coincidence of extended drought in Central Asia and Australia and the transfer of food crops to ethanol production have resulted in a dramatic spike in commodity prices throughout Eurasia. Importantly, Central Asia is not alone in confronting [...]
BY MARK N. KATZ Saparmurat Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan from its December 1991 independence that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union until his death in December 2006. Although Turkmenistan has enormous natural gas reserves, Niyazov—who styled himself “Turkmenbashi” (leader of the Turkmen)—kept most of his citizens impoverished, uneducated and in fear of his security [...]
BY DAVID W. WONG Two recent events attracted different levels of attention nationally and globally. After several decades of debates and rigorous research, and the discovery of hard evidence, climatologists and Earth scientists have come to the conclusion that global warming is not a hypothesis anymore but a fact. Global warming has triggered various policy [...]