Russia

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. From West Nile fever to asthma, climate change is exacerbating infectious diseases and hampering our ability to fight them.This is what emerges from research published in the magazine Nature Climate Change in August, according to which more than half of the infectious diseases known to impact humans have been made more dangerous by climate change. Diseases such as hepatitis, cholera, malaria and many others are spreading faster, affecting large segments of the population around the world and becoming more severe due to climate-related events.And it's not just transmissibility that's increasing:Climate change has impacts on health, immunity and access to medical care. “The global health response to these diseases will have to be massive,” he commented Erik Franklin, associate professor at the University of Hawaii and one of the study's authors.“It's more p...

The year 2022 was a tough one for the growing number of people living in food insecurity and energy poverty around the world, and the beginning of 2023 is looking bleak. Russia’s war on Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain and fertilizer feedstock suppliers, tightened global food and energy supplies, which in turn helped spur inflation. Drought, exacerbated in some places by warring groups blocking food aid, pushed parts of the Horn of Africa toward famine. Extreme weather disasters have left trails of destruction with mounting costs on nearly every continent. More countries found themselves in debt distress. But below the surface of almost weekly bad news, significant changes are underway that have the potential to create a more sustainable world – one in which humanity can tackle climate change, species extinction and food and energy insecurity. I’ve been involved in international sustainable development for most of my career and now teach climat...

Russia’s effort to conscript 300,000 reservists to counter Ukraine’s military advances in Kharkiv has drawn a lot of attention from military and political analysts. But there’s also a potential energy angle. Energy conflicts between Russia and Europe are escalating and likely could worsen as winter approaches. One might assume that energy workers, who provide fuel and export revenue that Russia desperately needs, are too valuable to the war effort to be conscripted. So far, banking and information technology workers have received an official nod to stay in their jobs. The situation for oil and gas workers is murkier, including swirling bits of Russian media disinformation about whether the sector will or won’t be targeted for mobilization. Either way, I expect Russia’s oil and gas operations to be destabilized by the next phase of the war. The explosions in September 2022 that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Europe, an...