Opinion

Get ready for carbon capture’s second coming

For those who have followed the energy transition over the past few decades, there’s one technology that is treated as much as a punchline as a serious industry: Carbon capture and storage.A decade or so ago, many still thought it the best hope for decarbonizing the world’s power systems...

Opinion

A torrid summer risks stalling Asia’s climate goals

What if climate change itself provided a lifeline to fossil fuels?That’s what’s shaping up to happen in Asia this summer. The continent’s largest economies have been racing to install more renewable generation, with India targeting 500 gigawatts of renewables by 2030 and China like...

Opinion

Peak emissions are just the start of the climate fight

Did we just … win? It’s certainly sounding that way. Emissions from fossil fuels — the key driver of global warming since the dawn of the industrial era — are set to peak within two years, according to Rystad Energy, an oil and gas consultancy. Carbon pollution from electric...

Opinion

It’s better to mine the world’s rainforests than farm them

As if the world’s rainforests didn’t have enough problems to contend with, even the transition to zero-carbon power is threatening to level them.Industrial mining ate up 3,265 square kilometers (1,260 square miles) of tropical forest between 2002 and 2019, according to a recent study in ...

Opinion

Now even chicken is getting expensive?

What do you get when three pandemics coincide with a drought? The most expensive chicken we’ve seen in years.Prices for the world’s most consumed meat have been surging in recent months. Retail whole chickens in the US cost $1.79 per pound in April, the highest price in 15 years of recor...

Opinion

Obesity stalking poor countries where hunger once reigned

You might not notice it from the way that inflation, conflict and pandemic have driven up the cost of food in recent years, but the specter of hunger that has haunted humanity for millennia is moving closer to being vanquished.In middle-income countries, the number of people undernourished fell by r...

Opinion

Solar power winning from the energy crisis

From the way the public conversation was going, you might think renewable energy was firmly on the back foot as a result of the energy crisis that’s roiled the world since late last year.Transport fuel taxes have been cut to ease the pain of high crude prices in the European Union, India, the ...

Opinion

Starvation is as much a threat to Afghan women as the Taliban

One of the Taliban's first acts after they swept to power in Afghanistan a month ago was to force most working women out of their jobs and into their homes. That’s going to add to the risk of starvation facing the country after years of crop failures and the collapse of this year’s w...

Opinion

Australia’s squandered pandemic luck bodes ill for its future

For much of the past 18 months, living in Sydney while a pandemic has raged around the rest of the world has been such an undeserved blessing that I’ve felt almost embarrassed in conversation with overseas friends.From May last year until a few weeks ago, life had been close to normal, beyond ...

Opinion

The real vaccine crisis isn’t about J&J or AstraZeneca

To judge by the headlines, you’d think the most critical immunization issue facing the world is the safety and hesitancy concerns over the AstraZeneca Plc and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.That debate is genuinely important. Still, it shouldn’t distract from the biggest challenge the wo...

Opinion

We’re never going to mine the asteroid belt

Where would science fiction be without space mining?From Ellen Ripley in “Alien” and Dave Lister in “Red Dwarf,” to Sam Bell in “Moon” and “The Expanse’s” Naomi Nagata, the grittier end of interstellar drama would be bereft if it weren’t fo...

Opinion

A polluter’s easy path to the zero emissions club

Suddenly, it seems all the world is heading to zero. Just a month after Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2060, the leaders of Japan and South Korea pledged to hit the same target 10 years sooner. The European Union and U.K. have already put their 2050 p...

Opinion

Capitalism caused climate change; it must also be the solution

Can the world shrink its emissions footprint without immiserating its population?We're seeing a brutal real-world experiment on that front right now. The coronavirus pandemic has caused the biggest drop in emissions in history. It has also resulted in more than a million deaths and the worst eco...

Opinion

Facebook’s Death Star menaces the news business

If you’re trying to fight the impression that you’re over-mighty and bullying, it’s probably best not to behave like you’ve got the Death Star at your disposal.So what’s Facebook Inc. doing in threatening to stop users in Australia from sharing news stories on the site ...

Opinion

COVID-19 could very well slow by summer

One great unknown about the coronavirus pandemic circling the globe is how it will respond as the weather gets warmer. The virus will “go away in April,” U.S. President Donald Trump told a meeting of governors last month, “as the heat comes in.” That over-confident assertion ...

Opinion

Small weapons are the most potent in virus fight

How do you turn a disease outbreak into an epidemic? The best way might be to mix infected people with the healthy for long periods in crowded conditions, and then move them around to new locations. That’s worrying, because that more or less describes the situation of many people at the center...

Opinion

HK could be a loser from trade deal

As the gateway for China’s trade with the world for more than 70 years, Hong Kong might be expected to benefit from the phase one deal that Beijing will sign with Washington on Wednesday. Chances are, things won’t pan out that way.Consider the $200 billion increase in Chinese imports fro...

Opinion

The US and China may not want a deal after all

David FicklingIn order to make peace, first you have to want it. That’s a major barrier to any de-escalation of the simmering U.S.-China trade war. The economic Defcon alert went up a notch at midnight on Friday, as U.S. tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports were lifted to 25 percent from...

Opinion

The US and China are living in different universes

Have U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators been meeting with each other in recent months, or with bands of convincing impostors?You almost have to ask the question, because media reports about who “ broke the deal” over the past week seem to have been filed from two different universes.In a...