English references

For the first 300,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering Homo sapiens lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to change.

A UN commission has found Israel’s war in Gaza ranks among history’s greatest crimes. The UK government must stop hiding behind legal fictions and recognise the reality

This article examines the technocentric bias that characterizes climate mitigation literature, focusing on the reports of the IPCC's Working Group III. This bias stems from structural features of the scientific field that prioritizes innovation, leading to the overrepresentation of technological solutions in climate research. Funding mechanisms further reinforce this tendency by incentivizing collaboration with industrial R&D, creating a self-reinforcing loop in which scientific authority and industrial interests converge. The IPCC's institutional positioning—as a policy-relevant yet politically cautious body—amplifies this dynamic by favoring allegedly “cost-effective” technological pathways that lack practical feasibility.

Societal downfalls loom large in history and popular culture but, for the 99 per cent, collapse often had its upsides

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

Identifying the socio-economic drivers behind greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to design mitigation policies. Existing studies predominantly analyze short-term CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, neglecting long-term trends and other GHGs. We examine the drivers of all greenhouse gas emissions between 1820–2050 globally and regionally. The Industrial Revolution triggered sustained emission growth worldwide—initially through fossil fuel use in industrialized economies but also as a result of agricultural expansion and deforestation. Globally, technological innovation and energy mix changes prevented 31 (17–42) Gt CO2e emissions over two centuries. Yet these gains were dwarfed by 81 (64–97) Gt CO2e resulting from economic expansion, with regional drivers diverging sharply: population growth dominated in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, while rising affluence was the main driver of emissions elsewhere. Meeting climate targets now requires the carbon intensity of GDP to decline 3 times faster than the global

Understanding how global mean surface temperature (GMST) has varied over the past half-billion years, a time in which evolutionary patterns of flora and fauna have had such an important influence on the evolution of climate, is essential for understanding the processes driving climate over that interval. Judd et al. present a record of GMST over the past 485 million years that they constructed by combining proxy data with climate modeling (see the Perspective by Mills). They found that GMST varied over a range from 11° to 36°C, with an “apparent” climate sensitivity of ∼8°C, about two to three times what it is today. —Jesse Smith

A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

A new study uncovers Earth’s deep temperature history and shows just how tightly carbon dioxide has always controlled the climate

The world’s oceans have been set to simmer, and the heat is being cranked up. Last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in recorded history, the sixth consecutive year that this record has been broken, according to new research.

In 1919, at the height of a global crisis that resulted from the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, the devastation of the first world war, and the collapse of Europe’s great continental empires, Irish writer William Butler Yeats penned his famed warning to humanity, mourning the end of the old world: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

Small modular reactors (SMRs) have been the subject of endless hype in recent years but in fact, no SMRs have ever been built, none are being built now and in all likelihood none will ever be built because of the prohibitive costs. SMRs are defined as reactors with a capacity of 300 megawatts (MW) or less with serial factory production of reactor components (or ‘modules’). No SMRs have been built, but dozens of small (<300 MW) power reactors have been built in numerous countries, without factory production of reactor components.

Applications to mine the seabed in our ocean commons can be made from 9 July, says Guy Standing, author of The Blue Commons

Fearful that the Able Archer 83 exercise was a cover for a NATO nuclear strike, the U.S.S.R. readied its own weapons for launch

Examination of trees alive at the time shows three years of severe drought that may have caused crop failures and famine

On Sept. 10, 1969, six and a half miles south of Rulison, Colorado, a 40-kiloton nuclear bomb exploded in the subterranean depths of the Piceance Basin. The device, more than twice as powerful as the weapon at Hiroshima and with muscle equivalent to 40,000 tons of TNT, was an unorthodox tool in a grand experiment to free natural gas and kickstart a boom. The nuclear age wanted to give the oil and gas age a hand up.

The current energy transition is powered by the realization that avoiding the catastrophic effects of climate change requires a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This infographic provides historical context for the ongoing shift away from fossil fuels using data from Our World in Data and scientist Vaclav Smil.

The war in Ukraine is laying bare a generational divide over what lessons Germany should draw from its own history of waging bloody conflicts, as some of the country’s leading artists and intellectuals line up in favour of or against supplying Kyiv with weapons in a series of open letters.

Inflation is a disease that disproportionately afflicts the poor. Even before Vladimir Putin unleashed his brutal war on Ukraine, whose byproducts include soaring energy and food prices, inflation was already over 7.5% in the US and above 5% in Europe and the UK. Calls for its taming are, therefore, fully justified – and the interest rate rise in the US, with the same expected in the UK, comes as no surprise. That said, we know from history that the cure for inflation tends to devastate the poor even more. The new wrinkle we face today is that the supposed solutions threaten not only to deal another cruel blow to the disadvantaged but, ominously, to snuff out the desperately needed green transition.

Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine is an act of aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between Nato and Moscow even more dangerous. The west’s new cold war with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but Nato’s arrogant, tone‐​deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter‐​century deserves a large share as well. Analysts committed to a US foreign policy of realism and restraint have warned for more than a quarter‐​century that continuing to expand the most powerful military alliance in history toward another major power would not end well. The war in Ukraine provides definitive confirmation that it did not.