Category Archives: Current Affairs

Sadi-Santos/Shutterstock Alain Naef, ESSEC There is “no science” behind demands to phase out fossil fuels, according to the current COP president. This level of cynicism at the top of the annual climate summit makes it less surprising that the conference … Continue reading →

fran_kie / shutterstock Steven R. Smith, University of Surrey; Caroline Zimm, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and Tim Lenton, University of Exeter A young boy is forced to sit at a dinner table with grown-ups talking endlessly about … Continue reading →

Carole Roberts, UCL; Mark Maslin, UCL, and Priti Parikh, UCL Rishi Sunak, David Cameron and King Charles are just three of the more than 70,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries at the latest UN climate summit in Dubai, COP28. But … Continue reading →

Scharfsinn/Shutterstock Nicholas Beuret, University of Essex Climate change is overwhelmingly a problem of wealthy people. The wealthiest 1% of humanity produce over 1,000 times the emissions of the poorest 1%. In fact, these 77 million people are responsible for more … Continue reading →

Olga Gordeeva/Shutterstock Piers Forster, University of Leeds As the latest UN climate change summit (COP28) gets underway in Dubai, conversations around limiting global warming to 1.5°C will confront a harsh reality. Global temperatures have surged over the past year, with … Continue reading →

UK workers have a high degree of concern about the climate crisis. MNBB Studio/Shutterstock Vera Trappmann, University of Leeds and Jo Cutter, University of Leeds Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to introduce a bill aimed at granting new oil and … Continue reading →

Christian Bretter, University of Leeds and Felix Schulz, University of Leeds The UK’s Tory government is rolling back climate legislation and is continuing to fund the expansion of domestic oil and gas reserves. Our new research suggests this might be … Continue reading →

Andrew King, The University of Melbourne The world is very warm right now. We’re not only seeing record temperatures, but the records are being broken by record-wide margins. Take the preliminary September global-average temperature anomaly of 1.7°C above pre-industrial levels, … Continue reading →

Giles Oldroyd, University of Cambridge Plants are among the most intrepid explorers on Earth. Roughly 460 million years ago, the first plants started leaving lakes and rivers and appeared on land. At that time, the surface of Earth was mostly … Continue reading →

Jared J. Finnegan, UCL In two recent speeches, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak highlighted the costs of everything from heat pumps to electric vehicles as justification for weakening the country’s climate policy. There is a strategy behind this, but it’s … Continue reading →