Check out today’s Planet Panel featuring ASP Sr. Fellow Bernard Finel in the Washington Post. The question du jour:
Almost every key question at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen comes down to how should rich and poor countries shoulder responsibility for climate change. What would be a way of reconciling these differences?
Highlights from Dr. [...]

Last month, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus committed to making the US Navy a “green fleet” – by 2020, 50% of all energy consumed by the USN will be supplied by renewable energy sources. To that end the Navy will expand its use of hybrid vehicles, solar and wind, and perhaps even pave the way for [...]

British PM Gordon Brown had strong words yesterday for negotiators preparing for the climate summit in Copenhagen. Stressing the dire threats posed by rising summer temperatures across Europe and vanishing freshwater resources worldwide, Brown warned:
If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked [...]

British PM Gordon Brown had strong words yesterday for negotiators preparing for the climate summit in Copenhagen. Stressing the dire threats posed by rising summer temperatures across Europe and vanishing freshwater resources worldwide, Brown warned:
If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked [...]

An article in yesterday’s New York Times highlights the potential impacts of climate change on Vietnam should sea levels continue to rise in the coming decades. Home to millions and a major rice-growing region, the Mekong Delta has already been identified as one of the world’s biggest potential climate refugee hot spots.
Some excerpts:

In a worse-case [...]

The National Review Online today featured a Flashpoint post from ASP Senior Fellow Bernard Finel on the need for a changed U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, praising his sound, comprehensive analysis of the reasons behind and feasibility of “success” in our current operations there.
Read the NRO post here; read Bernard’s full posting on the subject, “The [...]

According to the National Climatic Data Center at NOAA, this summer’s global sea surface temperatures were “the warmest at least since 1880, when such records were first systematically compiled.”
Read the full article on Dot Earth here.

If you haven’t read Thomas Friedman’s op-ed piece today, do. It outlines the sorry state of the American solar industry, focusing on the U.S. company Applied Materials. Of its 14 solar panel factories worldwide, “not a single one is in America… five are in Germany, four are in China, one is in Spain, one is [...]

An article from New Scientist gave me chills this morning:
IF THE sinking Maldives aren’t enough to galvanise action on climate change, could losing a classic beer do it? Climatologist Martin Mozny of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and colleagues say that the quality of Saaz hops – the delicate variety used to make pilsner lager [...]

ASP Board Member and former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel has a fantastic piece in the Post today. In it he lays the case for a new American national security paradigm, based in the realities of the 21st century rather than the habits of the 20th, and calls for a reevaluation of our mission and ambitions [...]