On Dec. 17, 1972, American astronaut Eugene Cernan paused to look up at Earth. At over 240,000 miles away it was small enough to be blotted out by an outstretched thumb. A few moments later he would enter the lunar lander, close the hatch and blast off to begin Apollo 17’s journey back to Earth. Cernan was the last person to leave footprints on the moon. Since then, humans have never ventured farther than 240 miles from Earth’s surface, let alone return to its only natural satellite. History has come to judge the Apollo program as a freak alignment of [...]
Stories abound in the U.S. press about the hollowing out of the State Department. Employees at Foggy Bottom have relocated from work desks to cafeteria tables to spend their newfound free time over paperbacks and coffee. But there is one table that U.S. diplomats could find themselves absent from this fall—the negotiating table at the next international climate meeting in Bonn in May. U.S. President Donald Trump’s skepticism of climate change guarantees that his administration will cede leadership on the issue. “We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Budget and Management, said [...]
As the worldwide movement to combat climate change gets underway in earnest following the 2015 Paris Agreement, oil-rich Saudi Arabia finds itself in an awkward position. The world’s largest producer of fossil fuels, the kingdom needs to pump ever-increasing amounts of oil to support a rapidly expanding population in a new era of relatively low global oil prices. But the hot, arid country is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of rising temperatures. There is the distinct possibility that if the emission goals of the Paris Agreement are not met, some areas of the Arabian Peninsula, including Mecca, [...]
