Every four years, for the benefit of the incoming administration, the US National Intelligence Council puts together a briefing on global trends. It’s a broad overview of where they think the world is going, and after November’s election, the latest one is available to read. Nice of them to share it with the rest of […]
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Why countries win Olympic medals
I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world, but in Britain there was really only one news story this weekend – the Olympics. On Saturday I reviewed the papers for local radio, so I browsed through all of the national papers. You had to get at least ten pages in before […]
Land leasing – an interactive map
With pressure on global food supplies, and with money to be made in carbon sequestration in forests, land leasing has become a increasingly common phenomenon. Countries with a shortage of land lease large tracts from countries with a surplus, in theory. They can then use that land for forestry, food production or resource extraction, in […]
Slave labour on the high street
At school, we all get taught that the slave trade was abolished in 1833 after a long campaign by William Wilberforce. It was a historic moment of course, but actually rather limited in the grand scheme of things. It stopped the trading of slaves within the British Empire, but in no way did it end […]
Hiut Jeans: Re-activating a town’s skill base
Last year my family rented a house for a week near the small Welsh town of Cardigan. It’s a small town of 4,000 people, on the coast and kind of in the middle of nowhere. In the past it was a significant port, but that was a long time ago. More recently, it had a […]
The network that runs the world
If you could map the connections between the world’s most powerful corporations, you could work out which ones were the most important, and which ones were critical to the functioning of the whole – the infamous ‘too big to fail’ companies. That’s what three systems analysts from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have done, […]
Video: Food speculation explained
Second in today’s double-bill of short videos on commodity speculation, this animation is from German NGO World Economy, Ecology and Development. (Here’s the first video if you missed it)
Video: speculation and the price of tortillas
It’s always worth watching the short video investigations from The Ecologist, and Tom Levitt’s report from Mexico is no exception. The price of corn has tripled in the last couple of years, due in part to speculation in the commodities markets. The first video of two about food speculation I’, posting today – here’s the […]
Globalism and Regionalism, by Johnathan Porritt
When dealing with two seemingly unreconcilable parties, the people who manage to annoy both sides are sometimes the ones presenting the best solutions. So it is with Johnathan Porritt, who is a meddling environmentalist to business, and a corporate sell-out to the greens. His 2005 book Capitalism as if the World Matters is very useful, […]
Total vs Per Capita emissions
A rather striking graphic from the Washington Post a while back. Click the link to see the rest of the top ten.
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