Regular readers of GlobalDashboard know that we're big fans of fourth generation warfare theorists William Lind and John Robb. Both writers have warned...
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.
“Oil crunch in five years” – IEA
Usually when you see phrases like "oil crunch in five years", you assume that you're being addressed by a peak-oiler who is about to go on to explain to you...
Miliband on the Foreign Office
The FT has a big interview with David Miliband this morning (stories here on Iran and here on Britain as a 'global hub'; transcript here). Most of the FT's...
Reasons to be cheerful
Catching up with recent posts on John Robb's Global Guerrillas blog, I find a small ray of sunshine for a bright summer's day: We've all heard the term...
The US’s clueless (and now outsourced) intelligence system
Two great pieces on intelligence in the Washington Post over the weekend. RJ Hillhouse is worried that the US's national security is being outsourced: Over...
Nestlé chairman: high food prices are here to stay
From the FT today: Food prices are set for a period of “significant and long-lasting” inflation because of demand from China and India and the use of crops...
Towards High Reliability Organisations for foreign policy?
George Packer at the New Yorker has a terrific post asking why it is that bad news rarely seems to permeate to the top of organisations, and why those at the...
5 steps to conference nirvana
That was a pretty good conference. But here are five leftfield suggestions for how to make conferences even more fun - and get the speakers to perform. (Most...
How to set a stabilisation target
David’s right below about the lack of specifics on stabilisation levels. But it’s worth remembering the lessons of Ken Livingstone’s Congestion Charge in...
Nuclear waste vs carbon capture
Day 2. Danish Foreign Secretary Per Stig Møller explains that Denmark is not investing in nuclear power stations because there’s no long term solution to the...
What happened to energy services?
Emma Duncan, deputy editor of The Economist, has a nice graph showing the abatement costs of various different technology options. Over on the left hand side...
A tale of two narratives
From my old colleague Nick Mabey's presentation: a comparison of two competing narratives about future action. The Stern Review is in no doubt that the cost...
Where does the deal get done?
Quote of the day so far: Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, Japan's Ambassador for Global Environment, who opines that: "If [UNFCCC Conferences of Parties] were televised...
How much is a life worth?
Our second speaker: Bert Metz, the co-chair of the mitigation working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Metz regaled us with various...
Live blogging from Chatham House
Back from a brief radio silence (me on honeymoon, David doing public diplomacy stuff in Nigeria), we're off today and tomorrow to Chatham House's two day...
UN not joined up on biofuels
A gaggle of UN agencies have just published a report on biofuels, says the Guardian this morning (see also previous Global Dashboard posts on biofuels)....
Fixing the Foreign Office
When Gordon Brown takes over as PM, there will be no shortage of clouds on the international horizon. Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan will vie for his attention,...
Pentagon troop survey: torture widely condoned
A new survey undertaken by the US Defense Department's Mental Health Advisory Team, which interviewed over 1,700 soldiers and marines deployed in Iraq...
Open source spying
The NY Times magazine published a piece last December [free log-on required] describing how web 2.0 applications are revolutionising information sharing in...
Essential Middle East blogging
If you haven't already made the acquaitance of Michael Totten, then you should. Totten is an itinerant blogger who seems to wander around the Middle East on...
More from Global Dashboard
Reactions to the Secretary-General’s synthesis report
The post-2015 synthesis report was never going to be an easy task. No one can envy UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon his responsibility, mandated by UN member states last September, of writing a synthesis report of the many strands of the post-2015 development agenda....
On Andrew Lansley as the UK’s candidate for UN Emergency Relief Coordinator
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J_5CRaXNko[/youtube] A pretty good summary, one imagines, of how the UN Secretary-General's team reacted when David Cameron let them know that former Health Secretary Andrew Lansley was to be the UK's nominee for UN Emergency...
The morning after the US-China climate announcement (updated)
Never have I seen such a wave of social media euphoria as the one that swept through my Twitter and Facebook feeds this time yesterday, as news broke about the US-China deal on climate change. But now that it's the morning after, a few quick reflections. China's 2030...