According to data, only 5% of the world’s population or some 154 million people benefit from anti-smoking laws. Additionally, statistics show that passive smoking is responsible for about 600,000 deaths a year. The anti-tobacco lobby is a lost battle especially in developing countries and emerging economies where smoke-free laws are not strictly implemented, if ever [...]
A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), entitled Recycling – From E-waste to Resources, discloses the amount of e-waste being generated in 11 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The data on current estimates are also used to project future e-waste
e-waste is just a euphemism for waste materials coming from products of [...]
Ben Quinn, correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, reports that Virgin owner and megawealthy Richard Branson supports the alarmist ‘warning of an impending peak oil crisis.’ Branson and some fellow British business leaders funded a recent study whose report supports the claim that peak oil will be real by 2015. The impending scenario where oil [...]
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a Geneva-based body, warned that ‘the world must prepare for a mass increase in climate-linked migration.’ Deemed as a certain reality in the foreseeable future, it is what leaders who wrangled deals at the Copenhagen Climate Conference failed to be alarmed about. The United Nations Climate Change Conference closed [...]
Realists claim that the Copenhagen Climate Conference or the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference 2009 will fail in its intended agenda, and that no climate deals will be forged between December 7 and 18 of 2009. Months before the climate summit, it had already been clear that climate negotiations will hit a standoff. ‘The rest [...]
In the wake of worsening climate change, the big question is which societies will do best in coping with climate change and mitigating its devastating effects. The warming of the earth’s temperature that translates to rising sea levels and changing weather patterns will see societies that have to cope with political, social, technological, and [...]
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, more popularly called as the Copenhagen Climate Conference scheduled to be held from December 7-18 2009 is a much-awaited event where the representatives of the global community will sit, talk, negotiate a deal, and hopefully sign the deal on how to save our warming planet.
These are some [...]
Between now and 2050, advanced countries will be dealing with a stark reality: ‘the fiscal burden of the crisis [will be] about 10% of the ageing-related costs. The other 90% will be extra spending on pensions, health and long-term care.’ Ageing is creeping up in the rich world. The poor section of the globe is [...]
The problem of food insecurity affects the world’s small-scale farms and rural areas the most. This is because these places are also where ‘70 percent of the world’s hungry live and work.’ As the world commemorates World Food Day on October 16, some depressing statistics confront the governments of the world: an estimated increase of [...]
Major negotiating camps in the upcoming climate deal are lapsing into ‘a new and dangerous form of trade and technology protectionism’ in the name of climate change. The unfortunate turn of events is ‘poisoning North-South relations in the two negotiating arenas on climate change and on trade.’ It seems that developed countries, especially the [...]