Things keep going from bad to worse in Naples, where the piles of uncollected rubbish are still heaped up. Last week, the head of a waste disposal firm...
Alex Evans
Alex Evans is a Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, and the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren't Enough? (Penguin, 2017), a book about the power of deep stories to unlock transformational change. He lives in North Yorkshire and is currently working on political polarisation and learning dry stone walling. Full biog here.
Panic buying 101
Here in the UK, it looks like next week will see a major strike by the tanker drivers who keep Shell petrol stations fuelled up - catalysing fears of a...
Climate, scarcity and multilateralism
Speech by Alex Evans to United Nations Association UK (7 June 2008)
Things you don’t often see
Well, here’s something you don’t often see: a Prime Minister saying that the Club of Rome’s seminar 1972 Limits to Growth report “was right”. Here's an...
Food summit: what’s the story?
One of the catches with this week's UN food summit is that it's not immediately clear just what deal the various heads of state and ministers assembled here...
Ahmadinejad: erasing Israel is just for starters
As has been widely reported, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Rome in his usual style, saying that Israel would "soon disappear from the map". But a close...
From carbon footprints to grain footprints
The FT's Gideon Rachman has a terrific column today mulling over the question that this week's UN food summit in Rome is likely to sweep politely beneath the...
West Africa: stuck in a food / fuel pincer movement
I had a long chat with Pascal Fletcher at Reuters on Friday while he was writing this article on the effect of price rises for food and fuel in west Africa,...
Could soaring oil costs reverse globalisation?
Here's a question I've been wondering about for a while now. Just how much of an impact are soaring oil costs having on international trade through making it...
The dark side of flash mobs
Back in February, I wrote a couple of posts comparing the potential effects of social networking technologies. One referred to a talk by Clay Shirky which...
The UN’s summit on world food security
Next week, the UN is holding a major summit on food security in Rome - I'll be there throughout (and blogging regularly on what goes on). Ahead of the...
Oil prices close to peak?
Thta's the question lots of market analysts are starting to ask, according to Sarah O'Connor: French fishermen and British lorry drivers set up blockades in...
From greenwash to cornwash
You've heard of greenwash. Now: cornwash! A firm called Abengoa Bioenergy has a full page advertisement in today's FT, which begins thus: Manipulation:...
Gordon Brown’s new line on energy
No sooner do I finish my post this morning on high oil prices than I discover Gordon Brown in the Guardian, sharing our pain on energy prices ("...and I know...
Succeeding where Kyoto failed?
The FT has a long analysis piece this morning on how the political salience of environmental issues is faring in Britain as the economy nosedives. The news...
Development NGOs and the search for a new story on trade
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post noting that the global food prices debate was hallmarked by three competing schools of thought on trade contesting food...
As good as it gets
Not long ago, readers will recall, Richard wrote a downcast post explaining why think tank reports are often condemned to live out their lives in a dusty...
It’s appeasement all over again!
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1wSZBTAXRs] So says Kevin James, a right wing radio host, of Barack Obama. Problem is, as the news anchor...
The FT on peak oil
A whole page, no less (including transition towns, too). Not much new content here, but what's interesting is that the FT now reckon the concept of peak oil...
The US: wading further into biofuels
For all the media comment criticising biofuels lately, you might have thought that the tide had clearly turned against the increasing trend of using crops for...
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