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Saturday, May 30, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Keystone XL: A Pipeline to Europe?
The proposed Keystone XL Canada-U.S. oil pipeline could play a key role in exporting Canadian tar sands crude to Europe.
CLIMATE CHANGE: Welcome to Bizarro World
Canada and the United States are now the centre of Bizarro World. This is where leaders promise to reduce carbon emissions but ensure a new, supersized oil pipeline called Keystone XL is built, guaranteeing further expansion of the Alberta tar sands that produce the world's most carbon-laden oil.Data Shows All of Earth’s Systems in Rapid Decline
Protecting bits of nature here and there will not prevent humanity from losing our life support system. Even if areas dedicated to conserving plants, animals, and other species that provide Earth's life support system increased tenfold, it would not be enough without dealing with the big issues of the 21st century: population, overconsumption and inefficient resource use.
BRAZIL: Small-Scale Land Speculators Contribute to Amazon Deforestation
Many migrants from southern Brazil who clear forests in Brazil’s state of Amazonas are making their living as small-scale land speculators and not as farmers or as cattle ranchers, new research has found.
Small-Scale Land Speculators Contribute to Amazon Deforestation
Among the various drivers of deforestation in the Amazon, a new study reports that families are moving into the rainforest and clearing the land in order to claim land titles, then selling the land to large corporate ranchers.Mentally Ill Suffer Medieval Treatment Across the Globe
A young girl in Somalia sits chained to a tree. Women in the Ukraine wander aimlessly in the halls of a decrepit psychiatric hospital. Those are the startling images in a recent article by a global panel calling the world's attention to the extent and tragedy of hundreds of millions suffering from mental illnesses and who go untreated in the global south.
Q&A: Cook Islands Aims for 100 Percent Green Energy by 2020
"One hundred percent renewable energy by 2020... It is ambitious but it is not impossible," Henry Puna, prime minister of the Cook Islands, told IPS in a recent interview.Selling Nature to Save Nature, and Ourselves
Avoiding the coming catastrophic nexus of climate change, food, water and energy shortages, along with worsening poverty, requires a global technological overhaul involving investments of 1.9 trillion dollars each year for the next 40 years, said experts from the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) in Geneva Tuesday.The Oxymoron of Political Leadership
Political will is all that's needed to bring electricity to the 2.5 billion people with no or unreliable access to power, or to feed the one billion who go hungry every day, or to finally begin to slash carbon emissions to avoid dangerous climate change, or just about any other global problem.Nuclear for the Poor, Renewables for the Rich?
In a debate about the future of energy, the global south wants to spend tens of billions of dollars on nuclear plants while the global north looks to spend hundreds of millions on decentralised, renewable energy.On the Road to Green Energy for All
Like our cave-dwelling ancestors of 200,000 years ago, nearly three billion people still use fire for cooking and heating. Of those, some 1.5 billion people have no access to electricity. For a billion more, their only access is to sporadic and unreliable electricity networks.
Carbon Markets Are Not Cooling the Planet
Carbon markets have been widely promoted as the only way to generate enough money to enable industries and countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, which are largely responsible for global warming. The only problem is that nearly 20 years after their conception, they have failed to work, and have also been subject to fraud and other financial crimes.Postponing Emissions Cuts Carries Steep Price-tag
If we're lucky, by the time a tough but fair international treaty to meet the climate change challenge is finalised, it will be largely unnecessary. The snail's pace of negotiations certainly gives countries plenty of time to understand the financial, social and environmental advantages of kicking their dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.Developing Countries Pledging More Emissions Cuts Than Industrial North
Negotiations over a new international climate agreement are on the brink as new analyses show that carbon emission reduction promises by industrialised nations are actually lower than those made by China, India, Brazil and other developing nations. Even with all the promises or pledges added together they are still far short of cuts needed to prevent global temperatures from rising two degrees Celsius, experts reported here.Reducing Soot and Smog Would Help Stabilise Climate
Clean the air, cool the planet and prevent millions of deaths with fast action on soot and smog, a new report urges.Canada Spurns Kyoto in Favour of Tar Sands
Canada was roundly criticised by other nations at a major U.N. climate meeting last week after being caught underreporting carbon emissions from its tar sands oil production facilities, one of the country's biggest and fastest growing sources of global warming gases.
Millions May Soon Be Fleeing the Floodwaters
Mass migration will inevitably be part of human adaptation to climate change, experts agree, since parts of the world will become uninhabitable in the coming decades.
Using Forests to Bridge the Carbon Gap
As global greenhouse gas emissions rise instead of decreasing, forests play an even more crucial role in fighting global warming, since experts believe it will be impossible to prevent a disastrous increase in global temperature without drastically curbing deforestation.Bike vs Car on a Hot Planet
As global carbon emissions hit record-high levels last year, officials from leading Asian nations told the 2011 International Transport Forum in nearby Leipzig that their citizens want more cars.Lend Your Car, Save, and Save the World
The world's more than 850 million cars and small trucks are parked 20 to 22 hours a day. Why not use these vehicles more efficiently by letting other people drive them when the owners aren't, asks Robin Chase, CEO of Buzzcar, a car- sharing network to be launched shortly in France.Putting Road Safety on the Development Agenda
The leading killer of children over the age of five is not malaria or dysentery, but cars and trucks. And 90 percent of those children are killed on roads in developing countries.« Previous Page — Next Page »
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