The Earth Institute, 475 Riverside Drive, 520, New York, New York 10115www.earth.columbia.edu18 October 2016 Dear Prime Minister Solberg, A year ago I wrote an open letter urging you to carry out an act of transformational climate leadership. I held the faint hope that your government might yet waken to the realities of climate change, heed […]
By James McAuley and Michael Birnbaum 29 September 2016 CALAIS, France (Washington Post) – So far, Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the Mexican border is all talk. Last week, France and Britain actually began building one along theirs. Construction started here on a roughly mile-long concrete barrier intended to separate a sprawling […]
2 September 2016 (UN) – The United Nations refugee agency today flagged that while the number of deaths of refugees seeking safety via the Turkey-Greece route into Europe has fallen dramatically, the use of the North Africa-Italy route has remained constant – with the latter experiencing an increase in the number of deaths, making 2016 […]
COLLEGE PARK, Maryland, 31 August 2016 (UMD) – Following the arrival of early agricultural crops from southwest Asia, ancient European societies experienced a series of population booms followed by a collapse that historical scientists are still working to explain. New research from the University of Maryland published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of […]
By James Hakner22 August 2016 (University of Sussex) – A strong national commitment to nuclear energy goes hand in hand with weak performance on climate change targets, researchers at the University of Sussex and the Vienna School of International Studies have found. A new study of European countries, published in the journal Climate Policy, shows […]
By Arthur Neslen 11 August 2016 Ljubljana, the Upper Kolpa valley, and Zagreb (Guardian) – The death toll of animals killed by a razor wire fence designed to stop migrants crossing into Europe is mounting, amid warnings that bears, lynx, and wolves could become locally extinct if the barrier is completed and consolidated. The rising […]
By Kathrin Jones and Jonathan Gould; Editing by Alexander Smith9 August 2016 (Reuters) – Deutsche Bank had the highest potential capital shortfall, 19 billion euros ($21 billion), in a study of 51 European banks using U.S. Federal Reserve stress test methods, German economic research institute ZEW said. “European banks lack sufficient capital to offset the […]
By Linda Koffmar2 June 2016 (Uppsala University) – In a new study, published in Science, researchers from Uppsala University found that larval fish exposed to microplastic particles during development displayed changed behaviors and stunted growth which lead to greatly increased mortality rates. The researchers discovered that larval perch that had access to microplastic particles only […]
2 August 2016 (McKinsey) – While it’s broadly assumed that children will grow up to be better off than their parents, the reality is that a new generation of young people in advanced economies risks ending up poorer. In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey senior partner Richard Dobbs and McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) […]
29 July 2016 (LSE) – Increasingly hot summers can have devastating effects on worker productivity. As temperatures increase, workers feel decreased energy, loss of concentration, muscle cramps, heat rash, and in extreme cases heat exhaustion or heatstroke. Cities are especially prone to such productivity loses. First, cities tend to be warmer than surrounding areas. This […]
