Climate change, responsible for the melting of the Andean glaciers, threatens the lives of millions in Latin America’s poorest country. Sitting atop a barren mountain in Bolivia is a chunk of ice. It might be hard to imagine, on first inspection, that there is anything special about it. Ice is ice, after all; cold, hard [...]
It goes without saying that a leader’s first judge will invariably be his or her own people. Presidents and prime ministers live or die, come election time, by their policies, by how well they have adapted to events beyond their control and by how effectively they have handled the three most rudimentary tasks of government: [...]
I’m a Guardian reader. Middle-class, well educated, long-haired and liberal, I don’t exactly dispel the stereotypes associated with the paper whose readers think they ought to run the country. Nor, as one of those lefty, anti-war, environmentalist types who grew up worrying about the state of the world, should it come as any surprise that [...]
It’s that time of year again. The silly season has ended, Parliament is getting ready to return from recess and, with swine flu beginning to look like a fuss about not very much and the worst of the recession said to be over, the British media is beginning to turn its attention to the party [...]
Not content with telling us that bananas and cucumbers must be straight, milk chocolate must be called vegelate1 and hula hoops are round, they’re staying round and they’ll be around for ever, the evil EU is now dictating what kind of light bulb hard working Brits are allowed to use in their own home. Apparently, [...]
India must invest in green technology, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday. Like China, India is a rapidly developing country. With the world’s second largest population, a rising economy and falling poverty, the country’s energy use is set to explode. India, however, cannot afford to follow the Western model of high-carbon industrial growth. Neither India, [...]
It’s extremely easy to criticise the politics of cultural products if you don’t agree with absolutely everything they say. If you consider your understanding to be more nuanced, it is very easy to say that a book, a film, or an article doesn’t go far enough. The point is that not every great film is [...]
Twelve years too late, the leaders of the G8 agreed today to prevent global temperatures rising by more than 2C. An ‘acceptable’ temperature rise that will, according to the latest research, destroy half the rainforest. As some of the largest carbon sinks on Earth, after the oceans, the disappearance of the rainforests will make efforts [...]
