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The future of coal is grim, after the Paris Agreement
Dragana Mileusnić
Over the past several years, the impacts of climate change have become more visible across the globe. Unprecedented floods hit Southeast Europe in 2014, while 2015 was yet another hottest year on record worldwide. Such events set the stage for the discussion on the new international climate regime, for the period after 2020.
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Our Post-Carbon Future | Renewables Versus Nuclear Power: The Battle is Real
Maja Turković
Today’s energy sources cannot keep up with the future we want to live in. The easiest and cheapest way to satisfy the growing demand is to burn more fossil fuels. However, the fundamental shift in the geopolitics of climate change has transformed the perception of global warming, which is predicted to be much worse than mere pollution. At the same time, technological improvements made alternative energy available and affordable at a larger scale.
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The Paris Agreement: First Estimates and Projections
Vladimir Djurdjevic
The Paris Agreement adopted on December 12th, 2015, has secured its place in all future negotiations on climate change. Soon after the adoption of the agreement, it became clear that the document marked a turning point in the decades-long effort to avoid immense consequences of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
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Fab Labs as Tools for Sustainable Development
Ivana Gadjanski
Fablabs are open high-tech workshops where individuals have the opportunity to develop and produce custom-made things, not accessible by conventional industrial scale technologies. Fablabs offer the possibility of digital fabrication and rapid prototyping (especially additive manufacturing) for projects in the fields of science, education, and sustainable development. Each fablab possesses an evolving inventory of core capabilities (3D printers, computer-numerically controlled (CNC) milling machines, laser cutters, programming tools for low-cost high-speed embedded processors) to produce (almost) anything, allowing people and projects to be shared.
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Serbia and Renewable Energy: Facts to Consider
Nikola Rajaković
The field of energy, especially electric engineering, is facing transformative changes. With this in mind, actual energy strategy must be adjusted to account for these inevitable novelties.
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Energy Transformation for a Sustainable World
Nebojša Nakićenović
The greatest challenge for humanity is to achieve economic and social development while remaining within the safe operating space for a stable planet. To achieve this, rapid and equitable deployment of decarbonization technologies and systems are needed at all scales to improve energy efficiencies and to decrease emissions. This will require significant investments and research and development.
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Environment and Education
Mihailo Crnobrnja
The first great environmental alarms went off in the beginning of the 1970s, when the two reports from the Club of Rome—entitled The Limits to Growth (1972) and Mankind at the Turning Point (1974)—were published. Simultaneously, Stockholm hosted the UN's first environmental conference.
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A New Climate
Vladimir Djurdjević
The first ideas of possible anthropogenic (human caused) impacts on climate through greenhouse gas emissions, above all carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, were introduced at the end of the 19th century.
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Natural Capital: What Is the True Cost of Food?
Anna Behrend
A kilogram of new potatoes this week costs just €1.29 in some German supermarkets. But is that the whole story? Not by a long shot. Environmental costs are almost always completely ignored. Some, though, are trying to change that.
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Charting the Course for Nuclear Security: An Indian Perspective
Rakesh Sood
The immense potential of nuclear power is both seductive and scary. In the early years of the nuclear age, the scary aspect led the scientific community to raise the banner of nuclear disarmament, but the seductive component proved too strong for political leaders to ignore.
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The Islamic State
Zachary Laub
The self-proclaimed Islamic State is a militant movement that has conquered territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, where it has made a bid to establish a state in territories that encompass some six and a half million residents.
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The Future of Securing Global Cities
Raymond Odierno, Michael O'Hanlon
Making cities resilient against man-made crises and natural disasters is the key to the twenty-first century.
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Why Belgium is Europe's front line in the war on terror
Nima Elbagir, Bharati Naik and Laila Ben Allal
Brussels: It's a quaint but bustling city, famed for its picture postcard squares, its chocolate and its beer. But it is rapidly becoming infamous, too, as a fertile recruiting ground for jihadi fighters.
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U.S.-Cuba Relations
Danielle Renwick and Brianna Lee
On April 11, 2015, Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro shook hands at the Summit of the Americas in Panama, marking the first meeting between a U.S. and Cuban head of state since the two countries severed their ties in 1961. The meeting came four months after the presidents announced their countries would restore ties, and gave rise to President Obama's planned March 2016 visit to Cuba.
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5 Ways to View Putin’s Syrian Surprise
Nikolas K. Gvosdev
How are we to make sense of Vladimir Putin’s announcement that the bulk of the Russian expeditionary force in Syria is to be withdrawn over an as-of-yet undefined period in the coming weeks and months?
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What is a brokered convention, and are we going to have one in 2016?
Elaine Kamarck
There are very few Americans alive today who can remember the last time that the secretary at a national convention called the roll and no one won on the first ballot.
