The World Economic Forum—the gathering of power glitterati each year in Davos—has assessed the top risks the world faces in 2011. According to this analysis, climate change is the highest-ranking risk the world will face in the coming years, when its likelihood and impact are combined. What’s even more important …
Climate change negotiations—cold after the freeze at Copenhagen—have warmed up again.In early April, negotiators met in Bonn, Germany, on the possible agreement that could be signed at the meet scheduled in December 2010 in Mexico. This was followed by a US-convened meet of the Major Economies Forum, better named the …
ANTHONY MCMICHAEL heads the International Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, and is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He talks to VIBHA VARSHNEY and MARIO D'SOUZA about the health risks from global environmental changes What are the impacts of climate change …
Now that the jury is out on the very real threat of climate change, we must focus on what needs to be done. The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) should make climate-sceptics like us president George Bush blush. It establishes that the concentration of greenhouse …
I remember many years ago receiving a call from a bbc journalist asking which villages in India should they visit to see the impacts of climate change. This was the early 1990s. I was puzzled and asked "is climate change here?" Finally the television crew decided to shoot urban fires …
What is wrong with us? Over 800 people have died in north India, another 500 in Bangladesh, only because it is colder this winter. And these are government estimates. Who knows what the real human toll is, caused by nothing more than what the meteorological department passes off as abnormal …
The new buzzword in the climate research circles is vulnerability and adaptation. Just like most of the climate discussion the words have become so dense, that their meaning is lost on most, except the most conversant and involved. It is almost as if the effort is to convolute the science …
already the toll in the prolonged heat wave scorching most parts of north and central India has crossed 1100. In Andhra Pradesh alone the figure has touched 1000, with temperatures hovering in the region of an impossible 49
RIGHT now, it is politically correct to talk of water conservation. Yet ground realities have a different story to tell if one were to go by the spate of reports on water riots pouring in from across the country. It's a parched summer once again and water is suddenly precious. …
NAME PLACECHANGE ClIMATE CHANGE Kaushik Debnath NAGPUR Late summers. Prolonged monsoons with heavier rainfall S Mundayoor DIBRUGARH No rains in winter anymore. Unprecedented drought. Forest fires. Satish Kumar R CHENNAI May flowers bloom in late March and early April. Possibly because of climate warming Augustine Rongpi KARBI ANGLONG Springs much …
How does pollution affect the poor? In the developed countries, it is not the poor who are responsible for environmental problems. It is the richer class which owns more than one car per family, who dump their waste in the neighbourhood. Therefore, the rich are enjoying themselves at the expense …
Government offices in New Delhi generally have coolers and air-conditioners. They are quite effective at not only screening the heat but also at keeping officialdom at a safe distance from what the person on the street is going through. The death count of this year's heat wave has already touched …
On the state of Russia today: Russia is today facing economic degradation, environmental deterioration and human suffering. These environmental problems are due to natural resource degradation and neglect of arable land. Capital investment at present is less than one third of what it was in 1990, production has halved, investment …
Renewable energy sources and technologies have been researched and promoted in varying degrees in different countries over the past 2 decades. Do energy experts have a clearer idea now as to which renewable sources and technologies should play a greater role in meeting rural energy needs? I don't think that …
WHILE resource- and consumption-intensive development depresses most environmentalists, their ideas are acquiring popularity in ways little suspected. When a heat wave scorched parts of north and central India recently, a leading newspaper waxed eloquent of Delhi becoming a solar cooker and protested that such a change was hardly sustainable. In …
Everyone these days is aware of the phenomenon of global warming, even if they find it difficult to distinguish between stratospheric ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect. Global Warming: The Economic Stakes is about the greenhouse effect and the resultant environmental pollution and global damage. Incoming radiation from the sun …
THAT America rules the waves became abundantly clear to me when I witnessed USA flex its muscles over the entire world at the last session of the Climate Change Convention. The UN was reduced to functioning as an extension of the US state department. And George Bush made a "neutered" …
