Sustaining peace amid economic crisis

The hidden good news of the last two decades since the end of the Cold War is that, despite throwing up horrors to rank alongside history’s worst, this has been an era of growing peace. This progress is now threatened with reversal but it did not happen by chance and it is possible to prevent the worst from happening.

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Climate change: the tough task of getting from words to deeds

Before Christmas there was some much needed good news about global warming. In the wake of a deeply uninspiring climate ‘summit’ at Poznan in Poland, we cheered up as Barrack Obama appointed people who know and care about climate change to the key science and environment positions in his soon-installed administration. It looks like he really means to bring the US into the game as a player for change and definitively quit the coalition of the unwilling, the short-sighted and the bloody-minded obscurantist. As we say in the technical jargon of the global warming debate, at bloody last.
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