President Nasheed of Maldives and his cabinet held the first everunderwater cabinet meeting on Oct. 28. The spectacle was intended todraw attention to the issue that plagues the archipelago — climatechange. Outfitted in scuba suits and surrounded by fish, the Maldiviangovernment focused on the U.N.’s Climate Change Conference inCopenhagen in December.
In a landmark address to the U.N. Climate Change Conference last month, Chinese President Hu Jintao announced Beijing’s commitment to trim the explosive growth of China’s carbon emissions “by a notable margin.” But he also reiterated his country’s hackneyed dictum that industrialized countries should bear most of the burden for emissions-cutting. Hu’s headline-grabbing speech captured the essence of China’s Janus-faced climate change policy — which, despite remarkable progress, continues to be bogged down with implementation problems and overshadowed by China’s concerns with economic growth and its leadership role in the developing world. Currently the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, […]
This week, “The Thinkers 50” Web site named their 50 most influential business thinkers in the world. Atop its list stood the Indian-born, University of Michigan professor, C.K. Prahalad — a visionary whose analysis of the market opportunities to be found in the emerging global middle class is must reading for anyone seriously given to strategic thought in the age of globalization. Globalization is often described as a “race to the bottom,” whether to the lowest price or the least protection for workers and the environment. While relevant, these statements are untrue: High levels of globalization connectivity clearly correlates with […]
As someone who thinks systematically about the future for a living, I frequently read science fiction with an eye for what it reveals about how today’s real fears are being projected upon tomorrow’s imagined landscapes. The books behind the 1973 movie “Soylent Green” (too many people!) and the 2006 movie “Children of Men” (no more babies!) make for a good example. Compare their central premises and you’ve basically captured the 180-degree turn the popular imagination has experienced on population growth over my lifetime. So what does today’s science fiction tell me? We have a lot of fears about biological technology […]