The Conversation Weekly

This year, the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) — the world’s highest court — is hearing its first argument about climate commitments. In an effort to make sure countries and corporations follow existing laws and agreements relating to climate change and environmental protection, groups have started pushing for legal action at the international scale. Research shows that the current climate agreements won’t stave off the worst harms of climate change — and many countries are failing to meet their own commitments. A number of activist groups, mostly from developing nations already facing the realities of a changing climate, are taking a new legal approach to climate action. They are arguing that climate change cases are human rights cases and in doing so are wading into unprecedented legal waters. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly, we speak with three scholars about current legal cases tying climate change and human rig...

This episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast is about the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. Thwaites is among the largest glaciers on Earth and one of the single most important factors for future global sea level rise. We talk to three experts about what makes Thwaites so uniquely significant, why it’s melting and the creative techniques scientists are using to study it. Thanks to climate change, ice all over the world is melting. Greenland, the Arctic the Himalayas and Antarctica are all experiencing the fastest melting in recorded history. As ice that is currently sitting on land melts, it flows downhill and eventually reaches the ocean. If the ice melts faster than snow replenishes the glaciers, sea level rises. The Thwaites Glacier is one of many bodies of ice that are melting, but this massive, Antarctic glacier is uniquely important when it comes to sea level rise. “We’re talking about an area that’s the size of the island of Great Britain,&...